Maimonides
MedievalAs Your Guide
“Maimonides will guide the perplexed — those torn between what they know and what they sense lies beyond knowing. He teaches that the deepest truths are approached by saying what they are not. Choose him if you want a guide comfortable with the limits of language.”
Who They Were
Jewish philosopher and physician who reconciled Judaism with Aristotelian philosophy.
How They Saw the World
Maimonides insists that the highest form of knowledge about God is knowing what God is not — every positive attribute you assign to the divine only diminishes its infinite otherness. He writes for the perplexed: those caught between the claims of revelation and the demands of Aristotelian reason, and he refuses to sacrifice either. Prophecy is not magic but the natural culmination of intellectual and moral perfection, accessible in principle to anyone who cultivates both faculties to their limit. He codifies Jewish law with scientific precision while arguing that the purpose of the law is to lead the mind toward truths it could not reach on its own.
What They Left Behind
Words that outlived their authors.
What Haunts Them
These are the questions that wouldn't let them rest.
Their Echo
What they left rippling through everyone who came after.
Jewish philosophy, influenced Aquinas and Spinoza