See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.

net/publication/328949027

Does Maimonides's Mishneh Torah Forbid Reading the

Guide of the Perplexed ? On Platonic Punishments for
Freethinkers

Article  in  AJS Review · November 2018

DOI: 10.1017/S0364009418000508

CITATIONS READS

0 1,026

1 author:

Yehuda Halper
Bar Ilan University
32 PUBLICATIONS   7 CITATIONS   

SEE PROFILE

Some of the authors of this publication are also working on these related projects:

The Reception and Impact of Aristotelian Logic in Medieval Jewish Culture View project

All content following this page was uploaded by Yehuda Halper on 24 March 2019.

The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.

 AJS Review 42:2 (November 2018), 351–379
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 191.101.76.41, on 24 Mar 2019 at 10:25:07, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms.

© Association for Jewish Studies 2018

doi:10.1017/S0364009418000508

D OES M AIMONIDES ’ S M ISHNEH T ORAH F ORBID

R EADING THE G UIDE OF THE P ERPLEXED ?
O N P LATONIC P UNISHMENTS FOR F REETHINKERS
Yehuda Halper
Abstract: In one passage of the Mishneh Torah, Maimonides explicitly
forbids Jews from philosophical inquiry or even freethinking. This pro-
hibition apparently includes a ban on reading or thinking about the
topics of the Guide of the Perplexed. This paper argues that Maimoni-
des’s Mishneh Torah presents a consistent rejection of open philosoph-
ical inquiry. However, what is prohibited in the Mishneh Torah is not
only permitted in the Guide, but the terms of the prohibition can be
used as an outline of the structure of the Guide. That is to say, the
Guide in a sense covers precisely the topics whose inquiry is forbidden
to Jews in the Mishneh Torah. In the Mishneh Torah Maimonides does
not suggest a punishment in this world for freethinkers, but in the
Guide he punishes freethinkers with more study, especially metaphysi-
cal inquiry. It is possible that the Guide itself is the punishment for free-
thinking as defined by the Mishneh Torah. This kind of intellectual
punishment has a parallel in Plato’s Laws, where freethinkers are sen-
tenced to spend five years living in the center of the city, studying
physics and metaphysics with city elders.

In his account of the biblical prohibition against idolatry in the Mishneh

Torah, Maimonides says:

Idol worshippers have compiled many books about [idol] worship…. The
Holy One Blessed be He has commanded us not to read those books at all,
not to think about [idol worship], not even about one of its details.… It is
not only idol worship that it is forbidden to turn after in thought, but regarding
any thought that causes man to uproot one of the roots of the Torah we are
cautioned not to raise it to our hearts [i.e., not to think about it], not to
direct our intellect1 toward it, not to think about it, and not to be pulled

1. The Hebrew here, daʿatenu, is used by Maimonides in the Mishneh Torah to mean “intellect,”
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0364009418000508

“knowledge,” “moral knowledge,” and “moral disposition.” See my “Daʿat Ha-Rambam and Daʿat
Samuel ibn Tibbon: On the Meanings of the Hebrew Term, Daʿat, and Central Questions of the
Mishneh Torah and the Guide of the Perplexed” [in Hebrew], Daʿat: A Journal of Jewish Philosophy
& Kabbalah 83 (2017): 47–67, esp. 50–53 and 63, 65, where I discuss this example. Any or all of those
five meanings can work in this context with the ensuing discussion. Alternatively, Bernard Septimus
argues that the word here and elsewhere probably means “mind.” See Bernard Septimus, “What Did
Maimonides Mean by Maddaʿ,” in Meʾah Sheʿarim: Studies in Medieval Jewish Life in Memory of
Isadore Twersky, ed. Ezra Fleischer, Gerald Blidstein, Carmi Horowitz, and Bernard Septimus (Jerusa-
lem: Magnes, 2001), 83–110, esp. 99–102. Septimus argues that deʿah includes the meanings of

351
 Yehuda Halper
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 191.101.76.41, on 24 Mar 2019 at 10:25:07, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms.

after the murmurs of the heart. For man’s intellect is short, and not all intellects
can grasp the truth in its essence. If each person would be pulled after the
thoughts of his heart, each would be found to destroy [or: one would be
found who destroys] the world by the shortness of his intellect. How? Some-
times he would err after star worship and sometimes he would think about the
unity of the Creator, whether He is or whether He is not, what is up, what is
down, what is in front, and what is behind. Sometimes [he would think] about
prophecy, whether it is true or not, and sometimes about the Torah, whether it
is from heaven or not. He would not know the measures by which to judge
[these questions] until he knows the truth in its essence. [Such a person]
would find himself in fulfilment [of the legal definition] of heresy. The
Torah warns against this when it says, “so that you do not follow your
heart and eyes in your lustful urge.”2 This is to say, every one of you ought
not be pulled after his short intellect and imagine that his thought grasps
the truth.… Even though this negative commandment causes man to be
driven out of the world to come, it does not carry the punishment of lashes.3

Maimonides apparently leaves no room here for philosophical inquiry or even

freethinking in a Jewish context. According to this passage, following one’s
own heart, often associated with the seat of thought and even intellect in the
Middle Ages, causes a person to go astray. Suspending judgment until one
“knows the truth in its essence” leads to heresy. The human intellect is small,
cannot grasp the truth, and thus should be satisfied with received knowledge
about God, prophecy, and even “what is up, what is down…” According to this
account, freethinking about these issues is legally forbidden to all; Maimonides
makes no exception for an intellectual elite or for himself, and indeed highlights
this with his use of the first-person plural. Consequently, philosophy and scientific
inquiry are incompatible with Jewish law.
This passage does not accord with the depiction of Maimonides we find in
the literature. Indeed, this passage is rarely cited in academic scholarship.
For the most part, those who mention it, such as Leo Strauss4 and Jacob

“intellect,” “state of mind,” “judgment,” “intention,” “ethical disposition,” and “psychological state.”
What holds these meanings in common, according to Septimus, is that they refer to internal processes
of the mind. The word “mind” could also work here and in the examples brought throughout this article
as a translation of deʿah and daʿat.
2. Numbers 15:39. Maimonides lists this verse as the forty-seventh negative commandment in
his list of commandments in the introduction to the Mishneh Torah. According to his words there, the
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0364009418000508

negative commandment is “not to stray after the thoughts of the heart or the sights of the eyes.” The
biblical prohibition in Maimonides’s interpretation is considerably less comprehensive than Maimoni-
des’s explanation quoted here.
3. Maimonides, Mishneh Torah (Kedumim: The Mishneh Torah Project, 2009), 64 (my trans-
lation); henceforth: MT, hilkhot ʿavodah zarah 2:2–3.
4. Leo Strauss alludes to this passage in his “Notes on Maimonides’ Book of Knowledge,” in
Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1983), 200–201.
Strauss notes that Maimonides’s hilkhot ʿavodah zarah are “at variance with the teaching of the
Guide, according to which the creation of the world is not demonstrable and the prohibition against

352
 On Platonic Punishments for Freethinkers
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 191.101.76.41, on 24 Mar 2019 at 10:25:07, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms.

Levinger,5 do so only briefly and treat it as an example of a law not applicable to

the intellectual elite, even though Maimonides gives no indication that such is the
case. Elsewhere, the passage is dealt with in connection with Modern Orthodox

idolatry is not accessible to reason.” According to Strauss, this variance is present because of “the
defects of the minds of most men” (clearly referring to the passage I quoted above) and the fact that
“what is true of most minds is not true of all.” The problem with Strauss’s interpretation is that Mai-
monides gives no indication that he is referring to only some minds and not to all human minds;
this is not even suggested in the passage Strauss refers to, hilkhot ʿavodah zarah 2:3. Indeed, his char-
acterization of the human intellect as “short,” i.e., “inadequate,” seems to refer to the differentia of
humans among beings with intellects. See, e.g., hilkhot yesode ha-Torah 3:9: “The intellect of the
stars and the spheres is smaller than the intellect of the angels, but greater than the intellect of human-
ity.” Strauss notes the distinction between the vulgar and the intellectual elite in 11:16 and wonders if
the text might be including belief in idolatry along with belief in superstitious practices as the stuff of
fools, known to be incorrect by “clear proofs” to “those who possess science and are perfect in mind.”
The context, however, concerns only superstition, and given the strength of the wording of the prohi-
bition in 2:2–3, we would expect direct affirmation that it does not refer to the intellectual elite. Did
Strauss not notice that the passage in 2:2–3 seems to refer to all human beings equally? Strauss also
refers in a footnote to Guide II 33 (75a), and this, indeed, seems to be the only source for the notion
that a generally worded law could somehow not apply to the intellectual elite. In the passage referred
to in the Guide, Maimonides discusses the different ways the Ten Commandments were understood.
Moses, according to Maimonides, received the commandments directly and the people received the
commandments from Moses. According to Maimonides, only the first two commandments, which
refer to God’s existence and oneness, were comprehended by the people, since only those command-
ments are accessible to human reason. Strauss’s use of this footnote in relation to chapter 2 of hilkhot
ʿavodah zarah in Mishneh Torah is presumably intended to suggest that there too the law has a dual
character, where some laws are accessible to human reason, e.g., the existence and oneness of God,
and other laws, perhaps all other laws, are not. Strauss does not ask where the prohibition against ques-
tioning God’s existence or oneness that we quoted above falls in this story. Does one need to question
these things in order to come to knowledge about them, or can one come to know them without ques-
tioning? In any case, the simple, surface reading of hilkhot ʿavodah zarah 2:2–3 speaks to intellectual
and vulgar alike. Indeed, the passage does not even admit a radically different reading for “philosoph-
ically aware students” than for “conventionally minded rabbinic readers” as Menachem Kellner noted
for a number of other passages in the Mishneh Torah. See his “The Literary Character of the Mishneh
Torah: On the Art of Writing in Maimonides’ Halakhic Works,” in Fleischer et al., Meʾah Sheʿarim, 29–
45.
5. Jacob Levinger, Maimonides as Philosopher and Codifier [in Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Mosad
Bialik, 1989), 211. Levinger mentions this passage in the context of enumerating the 613 command-
ments as listed in the Mishneh Torah in an effort to locate their treatment in part 3 of the Guide. Regard-
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0364009418000508

ing the forty-seventh negative commandment, he says, “This is not justified explicitly, but according to
Maimonides’s words [Guide III 51], an error in theory can be the source of a great obstacle even for
other people, with the result that it can become obligatory to kill the errant. From the form of this com-
mandment’s formulation in the hilkhot ʿavodah zarah 2:2–3, one gets the impression that the perfectly
wise person may be able to rise above this prohibition and that Maimonides himself, who declared that
he read all of the books of foreign worship that were available to him … did not see himself bound to
[this prohibition]” (my translation). Note that hilkhot ʿavodah zarah 2:2–3 does not suggest death as a
penalty and that there is no direct connection between that section and Guide III 51, or any other part of
the Guide.

353
 Yehuda Halper
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 191.101.76.41, on 24 Mar 2019 at 10:25:07, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms.

notions of Torah u-maddaʿ (the relationship between Judaism and science).6 The
ample rabbinic scholarship on the Mishneh Torah, when it treats this passage, is
primarily focused on Maimonides’s talmudic sources and other medieval inter-
pretations of them.7 The talmudic passages on whose basis Maimonides is

6. I am aware of four such cases: (1) Norman Lamm, Faith and Doubt: Studies in Traditional
Jewish Thought (New York: Ktav, 1971), 39–40 n. 52. Lamm argues that the passage in question should
be compared to MT, hilkhot talmud Torah 1:12 (1:11, in the edition cited above), “according to which
the study of metaphysics is included in the category of Gemara.” Accordingly, Lamm thinks that MT,
hilkhot ʿavodah zarah 2:2–3 is intended for the masses of Maimonides’s time, while the elite are
enjoined to study metaphysics in accordance with his reading of MT, hilkhot talmud Torah. MT,
hilkhot ʿavodah zarah 2:2–3, however, makes no such distinction, and my reading of MT, hilkhot
talmud Torah 1:11 below does not see it as prescribing a kind of study that contradicts the former
law. (2) Yehuda Parnes, “Torah U-Madda and Freedom of Inquiry,” The Torah U-Madda Journal 1
(1989): 68–71. Parnes argues, “Torah u-Madda can only be viable if it imposes strict limits on
freedom of inquiry in areas that may undermine the [thirteen principles of faith]” (71). Yet, the thirteen
principles of faith, found in Maimonides’s Commentary on the Mishnah, tractate Sanhedrin, introduc-
tion to chapter 10, are not mentioned in this passage in the MT (nor at all in the MT). Parnes, too, grants
an exception to this prohibition for Maimonides himself and for anyone else who studies these issues to
understand and to teach others to avoid their heretical pitfalls. (3) Lawrence Kaplan and David Berger,
“On Freedom of Inquiry in the Rambam—and Today,” The Torah U-Madda Journal 2 (1990): 37–50.
Comparing MT, hilkhot ʿavodah zarah 2:2–3 with Maimonides’s Commentary on the Mishnah, Book of
Commandments, and Guide of the Perplexed, Kaplan and Berger argue, “the Rambam’s prohibition is
not directed against intellectual inquiry in sensitive areas, but, rather, against intellectual inquiry in
these areas improperly conducted” (40). In particular, they argue that the sentence I have translated,
“He would not know the measures by which to judge [these questions] until he knows the truth in
its essence” means that if they had attained the measures (middot) by which to judge the questions,
they would be able to do so. Again, this implies a distinction between an elite, who have studied
Torah and science and know the measures in question, and a general populace that has not—a distinc-
tion not found in Maimonides’s formulation in the MT. My method in reading the MT here is to read it as
a legal work whose injunctions can be understood on their own, i.e., without the need for external
works, even those of Maimonides himself, to explain the simple meaning of its injunctions. This
method is suggested by Maimonides’s words in the introduction to the MT, “I, Moses Maimonides
the Spaniard … saw fit to compose [the MT] … so that all of the laws would be revealed to small
and great alike with regard to each commandment and to each thing the sages have enacted—in
general so that one would not need another composition in the world for any of the laws of Israel,
but this composition would be a compendium of the entire oral law.” (4) Aharon Lichtenstein,
“Torah and General Culture: Confluence and Conflict,” in Judaism’s Encounter with Other Cultures:
Rejection or Integration?, ed. Jacob Schacter (Northvale, NJ: Aronson, 1997), 279–82. Lichtenstein
includes all of the points attributed to sources 1 and 3 above, adding still more sources (particularly
talmudic, but also literary) for his argument than found in 3. Somewhat surprisingly, toward the end
of his discussion, he says, “In Mishneh Torah, the Rambam in effect omitted the qualification of [per-
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0364009418000508

mitting the study of these forbidden topics in order to understand them and teach others to avoid their
pitfalls] entirely” (282). However, Lichtenstein is writing as rabbi and halakhic decisor; he is not
writing to explicate Maimonides, or even the law as it appears in MT, but in order to determine the
approach to open inquiry among his students and followers.
7. See, e.g., Shem Tov ben Abraham ibn Gaon, Migdal ʿoz (Constantinople, 1509), ad loc.;
Joseph Karo, Kesef mishneh (Venice, 1574), ad loc.; H.ezekiah da Silva, Peri h.adash (Karlsruhe,
1757), Hilkhot ʿakum 2:2; Isaac Shangi, Beʾerot ha-mayim (Salonica, 1755), ad loc.; and Zadok Rabi-
nowitz of Lublin, ʾOz.ar ha-melekh (New York: Biegeleisen, 1954), 91–92. An exception to this is
Nahum Rabinovitch, Mishneh Torah … ʿim perush yad peshutah, Sefer maddaʿ, vol. 2 (Maʿaleh

354
 On Platonic Punishments for Freethinkers
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 191.101.76.41, on 24 Mar 2019 at 10:25:07, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms.

assumed to have written the statement above are, however, neither as broadly
condemning nor as forceful as Maimonides’s words.8 Moreover, Maimonides’s
comments on these passages in his Commentary on the Mishnah do not
presage his views in the Mishneh Torah.9 That is, Maimonides’s prohibition of
freethinking in the Mishneh Torah represents a break from talmudic precedent
and even his own previous legal writings.10 Nevertheless, the implications of
this prohibition are broad.

ʾAdumim: Maʿaliyyot, 2007), 525–33. Like Kaplan and Berger, Rabinovitch argues that MT, hilkhot
ʿavodah zarah 2:2–3 does not apply to those who have learned the proper “measures” (middot) for
studying these topics. Moreover, he also argues that Maimonides’s wording here prohibits serious
thought about these issues (based on his interpretation of the phrase ‫)להעלות על הלב‬, but the main
thrust of the prohibition is directed against adopting idolatrous opinions as doctrines (based on his inter-
pretation of the phrase ‫להעלות על הדעת‬, which does not actually appear in the passage in question).
8. The thinkers mentioned in the previous note mention four talmudic passages. (1) B. Shabbat
149a: ‫ אף בחול אסור להסתכל‬- ‫ ודיוקנא עצמה‬.‫ אסור לקרותו בשבת‬- ‫ כתב המהלך תחת הצורה ותחת הדיוקנאות‬:‫תנו רבנן‬
“Our rabbis taught: The .‫ אל תפנו אל מדעתכם‬:‫ אמר רבי חנין‬- ?‫ מאי תלמודא‬.‫ משום שנאמר אל תפנו אל האלילים‬,‫בה‬
writing under a painting or an image may not be read on the Sabbath. And as for the image itself, one must
not look at it even on weekdays, because it is said, Turn ye not unto idols. How is that taught? — Said
R. H.anin: [Its interpretation is,] Turn not unto that conceived in your own minds.” (2) B. Sanhedrin 100b:
.‫ בספר בן סירא נמי אסור למיקרי‬:‫ רב יוסף אמר‬.‫ בספרי מינים‬:‫ תנא‬.’‫ אף הקורא בספרים החיצונים וכו‬:‫רבי עקיבא אומר‬
“R. Akiva said: Also he who reads uncanonical books, etc. A Tanna taught: [This means], the books of
the Sadducees. R. Joseph said: it is also forbidden to read the book of Ben Sira.” (3) B. H.agigah 11b:
“Everyone who .‫ ומה לאחור‬,‫ מה לפנים‬,‫ מה למטה‬,‫ מה למעלה‬:‫כל המסתכל בארבעה דברים רתוי לו כאילו לא בא לעולם‬
tries to know the following four things, it were better for him if he had never come into the world, viz.:
What is above and what is beneath, what was before creation, and what will be after all will be destroyed.”
(4) B. Pesah.im 63b (Makkot 16a, Sanhedrin 10a, and elsewhere): ‫וכל לאו שאין בו מעשה אין לוקין עליו‬
“The transgression of a prohibition involving no material action is not punishable by flogging.” All
translations of the Talmud are from the Soncino edition.
9. (1) Regarding B. Shabbat 149a, Maimonides says that it is forbidden to read anything aside
from prophetic writings and their interpretations on the Sabbath. Even a book containing words of
wisdom and science, but not interpreting prophetic writings, may not be read on the Sabbath. (2) Mai-
monides’s introduction to Perek h.elek links the “external books” to the heretics (minim) and to the Epi-
cureans (see below), and these, along with the book of Ben Sira, history books, and music books, are
said to be frivolous works that do not contain wisdom, i.e., a waste of time. This statement appears to be
a recommendation rather than a legal prohibition. (3) Regarding B. H.agigah 11b, Maimonides says the
prohibition about asking what is above and what is beneath, etc., applies only to one who has not
studied the sciences in order or to one who has not studied science at all. These questions, which he
says are the foundations of the Torah, may, however, be asked by those with proper scientific back-
ground (a position directly contrary to the one in MT) so long as they seek answers by themselves
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0364009418000508

and not share them with others. (4) Maimonides does not associate any of the three abovementioned
passages with any kind of punishment.
10. Maimonides’s Book of Commandments, however, presents an explanation of the forty-
seventh negative commandment that is quite close to MT, hilkhot ʿavodah zarah 2:2–3, probably
because of the character of Book of Commandments as a kind of preparatory work for MT. Maimonides
states: “Commandment 47: We are forbidden from releasing our thoughts with the result that we would
believe in opinions that are the opposite of those put forth by the Law. Rather we should make our
thought short and place a boundary at which our thought will stop. That boundary is the prescriptions
and prohibitions of the Law, as it says, ‘so that you do not follow your heart.…’” Maimonides, Sefer

355
 Yehuda Halper
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 191.101.76.41, on 24 Mar 2019 at 10:25:07, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms.

M ISHNEH T ORAH
Scholars have long noted that Maimonides’s description of God at the
opening of Sefer ha-maddaʿ (the book of knowledge), the first of the fourteen
books that make up the Mishneh Torah, is heavily indebted to Aristotle and the
Islamic falaˉ sifah. God is the first existent, who gives existence to every existent.
All existents in the world thus depend on God, but God does not depend on other
existents. Moreover, God conducts the concentric spheres that make up the uni-
verse. Nevertheless, God is not a body, not a force of body, but is “the Knower,
the Known and the Knowledge itself—all one” (‫הוא היודע והוא הידוע והוא הדעה‬
‫)עצמה—הכל אחד‬.11 This description does not come from the Bible or Talmud,
but from the philosophers, some of whom—most notably Aristotle—were idola-
ters. Nevertheless, Maimonides is not advocating open and free thought about
these issues. Instead, acceptance of these principles is equated with various
central biblical precepts. “Knowledge of this thing [i.e., this description of
God],” Maimonides tells us, “is a positive commandment, as it says, ‘I am the
Lord your God.’”12 Maimonides’s biblical source for this commandment is no
less than the first of the Ten Commandments.13 Rejection of this account of
God is thus, for Maimonides the jurist, a rejection of the first of the Ten Command-
ments. Indeed, even questioning the oneness of God is, according to Maimonides
the jurist, a violation of the second of the Ten Commandments: “Thou shalt have
no other gods before Me.”14 That is to say, although Maimonides draws on

ha-miz.vot: mekor ve-tirgum, ed. and trans. Joseph Qafih. (Jerusalem: Mosad Harav Kook, 1971), 205–6
(my translation, quoting from Numbers 15:39). Both laws prohibit freethinking about topics that can
lead to contradictions with the Law. The formulation of Book of Commandments does not go into
detail, but is clear about exercising control over one’s thoughts and not allowing them to exceed the
bounds of the Law. Yet, Maimonides’s statement, “we should make our thought short” (‫)נקצר פכרנא‬,
suggests that people can make their thoughts larger (i.e., turn to think about metaphysical topics?) if
they so choose. At the same time, in the MT man’s intellect is short to begin with, and thus he
ought to control his thoughts. Note further that Maimonides’s use of the first-person plural here in
the Book of Commandments suggests that he includes himself in this prohibition.
11. MT, hilkhot yesode ha-Torah 2:10. On the use of deʿah to mean “intellect” here, see my
“Daʿat Ha-Rambam and Daʿat Samuel ibn Tibbon,” 50. Maimonides explicitly refers to this statement
made in “our great compilation” (i.e., in the MT) in the Guide of the Perplexed I 68, when he uses the
Arabic expression ‫ ﻋﺎﻗﻞ ﻭﻣﻌﻘﻮﻝ‬,‫ﻋﻘﻞ‬. The latter expression is frequently used to translate Aristotle’s νοῦς
νοῦν νοει̃ν; see, e.g., Avicenna, The Metaphysics of the Healing, trans. Michael Marmura (Provo, UT:
Brigham Young University Press, 2005), 297 and Averroes, Tafsir ma ba‘d at-tabi‘at, ed. Maurice
Bouyges (Beirut: Imprimerie Catholique, 1938–42), 1616 ff.
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0364009418000508

12. MT, hilkhot yesode ha-Torah 1:6, quoting Exodus 20:2 and Deuteronomy 5:6.
13. It is also the first positive commandment enumerated in Maimonides’s Book of the Com-
mandments and introduction to the Mishneh Torah. On the significance of understanding “I am the
Lord your God” as a separate commandment and the opposition to this interpretation by Crescas
and Abarbanel, see Menachem Kellner, Science in the Bet Midrash: Studies in Maimonides (Brighton,
MA: Academic Studies Press, 2009), 133–43.
14. MT, hilkhot yesode ha-Torah 1:6, quoting Exodus 20:2 and Deuteronomy 5:6: ‫וכל המעלה על‬
This is the .‫ "לא יהיה לך אלהים אחרים על פני" וכפר בעקר‬,‫ שנאמר‬,‫דעתו שיש שם אלוה אחר חוץ מזה עבר בלא תעשה‬
first of the negative commandments enumerated in Maimonides’s introduction the Mishneh Torah,

356
 On Platonic Punishments for Freethinkers
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 191.101.76.41, on 24 Mar 2019 at 10:25:07, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms.

philosophers for developing his account of the divine, his juridical position does
not allow that crucial element of philosophical inquiry, namely, questions.15
Indeed, those who reject the description of God and prophecy that Maimon-
ides lays out can be considered heretics or Epicureans, neither of whom has a
“share in the world to come” according to Maimonides.16 Among those consid-
ered heretics are those “who say that there is no God and that the world has no
Conductor” and those who say that God is a body.17 Maimonides enumerates
three kinds of Epicureans: “those who say that there is no prophecy at all and
that there is no knowledge [maddaʿ] that reaches man’s heart from the Creator;
those who deny the prophecy of Moses our master; and those who say that God
does not know the actions of human beings.”18 While Epicurus and other materi-
alists are clearly included among the condemned here, so are all pagans. Moreover,
even Jewish Aristotelians would be included in this condemnation, since, as Mai-
monides tells us in the Guide of the Perplexed III 17, “in Aristotle’s opinion God’s
providence ends at the sphere of the moon.”19

where his words are '‫לא לעלות במחשבה שיש אלוה זולתי ה‬: “One ought not raise to his thought that there is a
god other than the Lord.” The latter formulation is somewhat similar to the Muslim shahaˉ dah, or at
least the first part: ‫ﻻ ﺇﻟﻪ ﺇﻻ‬, “There is no god but Allah.”
15. Regarding the first chapters of the Mishneh Torah, Shlomo Pines says, “I did not find in the
text in question the slightest hint as to the possibility of doubt with regard to the conceptions that are
expounded there.” See “The Philosophical Purport of Maimonides’ Halachic Works and the Purport of
the Guide of the Perplexed,” in Maimonides and Philosophy, ed. Shlomo Pines and Yirmiyahu Yovel
(Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff, 1986), 5. Similarly, Menachem Kellner, Science in the Bet Midrash, 145–
55, discusses Maimonides’s prohibition against doubting God’s existence and oneness (and the rest of
the of thirteen principles of faith) in his Commentary on the Mishnah. Kellner argues there that Mai-
monides’s legal injunctions leave no room for doubt at all and do not even allow inadvertence (shega-
gah) as a mitigating circumstance.
16. MT, hilkhot teshuvah 3:6. Isadore Twersky notes that the meaning of the term Epicurean in the
Mishneh Torah is not yet well understood. See Introduction to the Code of Maimonides (New Haven, CT:
Yale University Press, 1980), 430 n. 183. Since Twersky wrote those words, there has been a vast literature
on the topic of heresy and heretics in Maimonides. See, e.g., Hannah Kasher, Heretics in Maimonides’
Teaching [in Hebrew] (Tel Aviv: Ha-kibbutz Ha-meʾuh.ad, 2011) and the sources cited therein. For a dif-
ferent approach that associates Maimonides’s own views in the Guide with Epicureanism, see Gadi Weber,
“Maimonides and the Epicurean Approach to Providence,” The Review of Metaphysics 68 (2015): 545–72.
The difficulty in pinning down precisely what Maimonides meant by “Epicurean” is due to his different
uses of the term in his different works. He writes in the Commentary on the Mishnah, Sanhedrin 10:1,
“The word Epicurean [ʾapikoros] is an Aramaic word, whose meaning is making light of and scorning
the Law or the sciences of the Law. Accordingly, this term is applied to one who does not believe in
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0364009418000508

the foundations of the law or disparages the sages, whether any student of the sages or his teacher.”
However, it is clear in Guide I 74, II 13, II 32, and III 17 that Maimonides understands Epicurus to be
an independent thinker, an atheist, and an atomist. Given these vastly different understandings of Epicurus
and Epicureanism in the Commentary on the Mishnah and in the Guide, I think it not unreasonable to try to
understand “Epicurean” on its own terms in the Mishneh Torah, as I do here.
17. MT, hilkhot teshuvah 3:7.
18. Ibid. 3:8.
19. Moses Maimonides, The Guide of the Perplexed, trans. Shlomo Pines (Chicago, IL: Univer-
sity of Chicago Press, 1963), 465. See also, e.g., II 22, Pines trans. pp. 319–20. Maimonides’s

357
 Yehuda Halper
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 191.101.76.41, on 24 Mar 2019 at 10:25:07, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms.

It is in light of these observations that we must interpret Maimonides’s call

to Torah study. Maimonides famously places study as the center of Jewish life in
his Mishneh Torah, as a commandment legally binding on all Jewish men, to be
performed every day and every night until the day of one’s death.20 Yet, this
study is of the religious sort, rather than of the questioning, even skeptical aca-
demic sort we promote in modern universities. According to Maimonides:

One is required to divide his study time into three: one third directed to the
Written Torah, one third directed to the Oral Torah, and one third to under-
standing and contemplating the end of a thing from its beginning, to inferring
one thing from another, to likening one thing to another, and to discussing the
mores [deʿot] that the Torah treats so as to know what the root of the mores is
and how to derive the permitted and forbidden and the like from among the
things learned from tradition [mi-pi ha-shemuʿah]. And this matter is what
is called “Talmud.”21

In other words, one’s study should consist of three parts: Written Law, Oral Law,
and Talmud. Given the elaborate description of the latter, there is no reason to
assume that the first two are anything but reading and understanding the texts
of the Bible and the Mishneh Torah itself (which Maimonides says encompasses
the entire Oral Law and relieves the need for reading any other text of law). It is in
Talmud that we find topics associated with philosophy in the ancient world. Thus,
it seems to include logic, ethics, and the relationship between ethics and law.
Moreover, all of this study that Maimonides calls “Talmud” is governed by tradi-
tion (ha-shemuʿah), that is, it would seem, not open for independent inquiry.
That what Maimonides has in mind when he says “Talmud” is not the same
as what today’s talmudic scholars have in mind is emphasized when he gives
another description of Talmud in the next paragraph. There he says, “One contem-
plates with his intellect so as to understand one thing from another; … and the
matters that are called ‘Pardes’ are included in Talmud.” Thus, it seems that the

understanding of this principle has been a source of much controversy. See, e.g., Shlomo Pines, “The
Limitations of Human Knowledge according to Al-Farabi, Ibn Bajja, and Maimonides,” Studies in
Medieval Jewish History and Literature, ed. Isadore Twersky, 3 vols. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Uni-
versity Press, 1979), 1:82–109; Zev Harvey, “Maimonides’ Critical Epistemology and Guide 2:3,”
Aleph: Historical Studies in Science & Judaism 8 (2008): 213–35; and Aryeh Leo Motzkin, “On the
Limitations of Human Knowledge,” in Philosophy and the Jewish Tradition: Lectures and Essays
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0364009418000508

by Aryeh Leo Motzkin, ed. Yehuda Halper (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 147–52.
20. MT, hilkhot talmud Torah 1:8–10.
21. Ibid. 1:11. The first line of this passage is derived from B. Avodah Zarah 19b and B. Kid-
dushin 30a: “One is always required to divide his studies into three: a third for Bible, a third for
Mishnah, and a third for Talmud.” Elsewhere, the Babylonian Talmud suggests that the term
“talmud” may refer to oral study or derivation or inference from the Bible (e.g., B. Bava Kamma
104b). Maimonides’s formulation, however, appears to include in “talmud” any kind of inference,
not only those based on the Torah. On Maimonides’s use of deʿot to mean “mores” in the MT, see
my “Daʿat HaRambam and Daʿat Samuel ibn Tibbon,” 52.

358
 On Platonic Punishments for Freethinkers
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 191.101.76.41, on 24 Mar 2019 at 10:25:07, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms.

scholar ought to begin with logical inferences and use them to lead to an under-
standing of the “Pardes.” The “Pardes” (orchard) is used in the Mishnah and
Gemara to refer to the esoteric knowledge of the Account of Creation and the
Account of the Chariot.22 Here Maimonides includes it as the pinnacle of study
and one to which one can increasingly devote himself after attaining proficiency
in the Written and Oral Law.
Yet for Maimonides in the Mishneh Torah “Pardes” refers to the account of
God, angels, elements, animals, humans, and the world in the first four chapters of
Hilkhot yesode ha-Torah (laws of the foundations of the Torah) with which he
opens his code of law.23 There Maimonides made clear that the study of the
Pardes is not for questioning or skeptical inquiry, but rather “to see the wisdom
of the Holy One Blessed be He in all of his creatures,” thereby increasing
man’s love for God in fulfilment of the commandment to love the Lord thy
God.24 This study of God and the world is not available to all, Maimonides
tells us, and even some of the great sages of Israel “did not have the power to
know or grasp all these things in their essence.” Maimonides cautions his
readers not to “walk about in the Pardes unless one has filled his belly with
bread and meat—and this ‘bread and meat,’” he says, “is clear knowledge of
the permitted and forbidden.”25
Maimonides, then, places contemplation of God and the world—subjects
treated by the philosophers as metaphysics and physics—as central pillars of
Judaism. Yet the contemplation he has in mind is not philosophical inquiry.
Error about any of these topics leads to violation of central tenets of religion
and can even lead to heresy and idolatry. Maimonides thus urges would-be schol-
ars to fill their minds with knowledge of what is permitted and what is forbidden
and only then to undertake to navigate the seas of such contemplation. Only one
who is well acquainted with what the law allows should set out to contemplate
God. For, as we have seen, even thinking about uprooting a principle of
Judaism is a violation of the Law.

T HE G UIDE OF THE P ERPLEXED

Maimonides’s hardline anti-free-inquiry viewpoint in the Mishneh Torah
meets with a major difficulty: the Guide of the Perplexed. In the Guide, Maimon-
ides raises all of the questions that he said could cause someone to uproot one of
the roots of the Torah. Indeed, his approach to these questions, as has been noticed

22. B. H.agigah 11b. In the Guide, Maimonides identifies these two Accounts with Aristotelian
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0364009418000508

physics and metaphysics (introduction to part 1, p. 6). Maimonides claims there that this identification is
made in the Mishneh Torah as well. However, in the Mishneh Torah he makes no mention of the sci-
ences of physics or metaphysics, to say nothing of Aristotle, but rather associates the Account of Cre-
ation with chapters 3 and 4 of yesode ha-Torah and the Account of the Chariot with chapters 1 and 2 of
yesode ha-Torah. See MT, hilkhot yesode ha-Torah 4:10–13. That the contents of these four chapters
correspond to Aristotelian science is not obvious. See my discussion below.
23. MT, hilkhot yesode ha-Torah 4:12.
24. Ibid.
25. See also Amos 8:11 and Maimonides’s discussion of it again in Guide I 30.

359
 Yehuda Halper
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 191.101.76.41, on 24 Mar 2019 at 10:25:07, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms.

by a number of scholars, is perhaps less answer focused than many would like, and
in some cases contains contradictions, leading commentators to radically different
views of what Maimonides says. Here we note that Maimonides radically contra-
dicts his legal opinion in the Mishneh Torah, hilkhot ʿavodah zarah (laws of idol
worship) 2:2–3.
In the Mishneh Torah, Maimonides forbids thinking about and questioning
six things: (1) God’s unity; (2) the existence of the Creator; (3) what is up, down,
inside, or outside; (4) prophecy; (5) the divine origins of the Torah; and (6) idol-
atry, including reading idolatrous books and thinking about their contents. In fact,
these are the main topics of the Guide. While the complexities of the Guide gen-
erally do not permit a simple characterization of its 179 chapters, divided into three
parts, these forbidden topics of inquiry could make up a kind of loose outline of the
topics of the Guide.26
1. The first part of the Guide dedicates some thirty-six chapters to corporeal
Hebrew terms used in the Guide for describing God.27 One of the main points of
these chapters, and indeed of the first part of the Guide as a whole, is to explain
that God is in fact incorporeal and also one, even though numerous biblical pas-
sages apparently present God as corporeal and having more than one body part.28
That is, the chapters raise the question of God’s unity and, while ultimately
arguing in favor of it, they present the opposing view, note its origins in the
Bible itself, and certainly encourage thinking about it.29
2. God as Creator (boreʾ in the Hebrew of the Mishneh Torah) is discussed in
the first half of the second part of the Guide. This discussion culminates in Mai-
monides’s famous account of the different views of whether and how the world
was created in II 13 and following. We might note that Maimonides famously sup-
ports creatio ex nihilo here (though aeternitas post creationem), while he main-
tains the eternity of the sphere in the Mishneh Torah.30 The reader of this

26. This way of describing the Guide in no way undermines or invalidates other enumerations of
its chapters. Indeed, the artistic construction of the Guide is intentionally suited to a number of orga-
nizational principles.
27. Chapters 1, 3–4, 6–16, 18–25, 28–30, 37–45, 67, and 70. Additionally, chapter 65 discusses
words for speaking about God and chapters 2, 61–64 discuss names of God.
28. On God as simply one, without parts, and the difficulty of characterizing this One in scrip-
tural language, see, e.g., Guide I 57.
29. Indeed, Maimonides famously notes in Guide II 25 that God’s incorporeality, as explained
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0364009418000508

in part 1 of the Guide, is in fact a figurative interpretation of the Bible, which literally states that God
does have a body and body parts, and so is not simply one.
30. See MT, hilkhot yesode ha-Torah 1:5: ‫הגלגל סובב תמיד‬, “the sphere revolves eternally,” or
perhaps “continuously.” In either case the reader will question the eternity of the world. See also
Guide I 71, where Maimonides says, “the proofs for the oneness and existence of the deity and of
His not being a body ought to be procured from the starting point afforded by the supposition of the
eternity of the world, for in this way the demonstration will be perfect, both if the world is eternal
and if it is created in time” (Pines trans., 180–81). Such a statement certainly encourages the reader
to question creation.

360
 On Platonic Punishments for Freethinkers
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 191.101.76.41, on 24 Mar 2019 at 10:25:07, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms.

section would certainly be led to raise the question of creation31 and therefore also
the question of the existence of the Creator.32
4. The second half of the second part of the Guide is dedicated to a discus-
sion of prophecy. Chapters 32–48 of the second part form a detailed, though at
times contradictory, account of prophecy as intellectual overflow. That prophecy
as such could be understood in a radically different way is suggested by Maimoni-
des’s insertion, perhaps invention, of “the philosophers’ view of prophecy” in II
32.33 That the philosophers have a view of prophecy raises questions about the
extent to which prophecy is a natural phenomenon. Maimonides is explicit in
raising these questions, though his answers have led some medieval commentators
to say that Maimonides himself prefers the naturalistic account of prophecy to the

31. See especially statements like that in II 17: “we do not wish to establish as true that the world
is created in time. But what we wish to establish is the possibility of its being created in time” (Pines
trans., 298). Kenneth Seeskin argues convincingly that Maimonides’s approach to the question of cre-
ation is more inviting to questioning and more skeptical than that of Aquinas. See “Maimonides and
Aquinas on Creation,” Medioevo: Rivista di Storia della Filosofia Medievale 23 (1997): 453–74.
32. In Guide I 71, Maimonides criticizes the matakallimūn for, inter alia, grounding their proofs
of the existence of God on the assumption that the world is created (see Pines trans., 179–80). Instead,
Maimonides argues that the proof for the existence of God should be grounded on the assumption that
the world is eternal (see also II 25). In either case, the question of creation is crucial for establishing the
existence of the Creator. Accordingly, merely asking about creation invites questions about the exis-
tence of God. Additionally, W. Z. Harvey argues that the statement in the MT that God’s existence
is derived from the eternal motion of the heavens is “pedagogically (if not epistemologically) prepara-
tory to the metaphysical proof based on the distinction between necessity and contingency” a la Avi-
cenna. According to Harvey, the proof of the MT is pedagogically useful because it appears to those
insufficiently versed in physics to hold both if the world is eternal and if the world is created in
time. In Harvey’s view, those who learn enough physics and question the premises of the pedagogical
proof will be drawn to study the Avicennian proof of God’s existence pointed to in the Guide. However,
“the Avicennian proof [pointed to in the Guide], even if perfectly valid, is … not thoroughly compre-
hensible, and presumably never will be. Doubt and perplexity, like awe, are inherent in the quest to
know God.” See W. Z. Harvey, “Maimonides’ First Commandment, Physics, and Doubt,” in H.azon
Nah.um: Studies in Jewish Law, Thought and History Presented to Dr. Norman Lamm on the Occasion
of His Seventieth Birthday, ed. Yaakov Elman and Jeffrey Gurock (New York: Yeshiva University
Press, 1997), 149–62, quotes from 160–61.
33. While Maimonides’s account of prophecy is likely based on al-Farabi’s The Perfect State,
chap. 14 (see trans. Richard Walzer [Oxford: Clarendon, 1985], 210–27 and see also Joel Kraemer,
Maimonides [New York: Doubleday, 2008], 387–88), al-Farabi does not claim that there is a “philo-
sophical view” of prophecy. An Arabic treatise purporting to be part of Aristotle’s Parva naturalia
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0364009418000508

did attribute to Aristotle a view of prophecy in dreams, but this view, while it does mention the
active intellect, is more concerned with predicting future events than Maimonides’s Guide II 32. See
Shlomo Pines, “The Arabic Recension of Parva Naturalia and the Philosophical Doctrine Concerning
Veridical Dreams according to al-Risaˉ la al-Manaˉ miyya and Other Sources,” Israel Oriental Studies 4
(1974): 104–53. Compare with Aristotle’s Parva naturalia, which also discusses predicting the future.
Prediction of the future as a primary function of prophecy is a central part of Maimonides’s Letter on
Astrology. In Guide II 32 Maimonides is remarkably silent about the content of prophecy according to
the philosophical view of prophecy, and it is possible the philosophers see prophecy as a kind of
heighted form of philosophy. See, however, Guide II 36.

361
 Yehuda Halper
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 191.101.76.41, on 24 Mar 2019 at 10:25:07, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms.

view of “our Law.”34 That is, Maimonides’s words here can lead, indeed have led,
to questioning what he calls the Jewish view of prophecy.
5. Part 2 of the Guide ends with the specific difficulties inherent in the bib-
lical depictions of prophecy, especially in biblical parables. Maimonides turns to
the most difficult of these parables, the chariot seen by Ezekiel, at the beginning of
part 3 of the Guide. He then turns to the Law’s understanding of providence and
evil, continuing with an interpretation of the perhaps most challenging biblical
depiction of providence and evil: the book of Job. The second half of part 3 of
the Guide treats the reasons for the commandments in the Bible. Maimonides’s
assumption throughout is that there is “a cause for all of the commandments.”35
Yet the causes for the commandments are often historical, based not on universal
truths, but on eradicating certain opinions prevalent among the people at the time
of the giving of the Torah. Maimonides famously points out a kind of evolution of
thought about the divine in III 29 and suggests ways in which common opinion
may change further in the future. The discussion in part 3 of the Guide invariably
leads readers to question the divinity of the Torah. Even while Maimonides clearly
advocates for the divine roots of the Law, the reader is at the very least led to ques-
tion whether the Torah is from heaven or not.
6. The Mishneh Torah’s prohibition against reading books of idolatry or
even thinking about their content turns out in the Guide to be related to,
perhaps even a special case of, the prohibition against questioning the divinity
of the Torah. Maimonides discusses this in Guide III 29 and 37, where it
becomes clear that he himself has read books of idolatry and even used them to
understand the historical context of the biblical commandments. In Guide III 29
he says:

The meaning of many of the laws became clear to me and their causes became
known to me through my study of the doctrines, opinions, practices, and cult
of the Sabians.36 … I shall mention to you the books from which all that I
know about the doctrines and opinions of the Sabians will become clear to
you so that you will know for certain that what I say about the reasons for
these laws is correct.… The knowledge of these opinions and practices is a
very important chapter in the exposition of the reasons for the commandments.
For the foundation of the whole of our Law and the pivot around which it

34. See, e.g., Profiyat Duran, H.eshev ha-ʾefod in Maimonides, Moreh ha-nevukhim (Jerusalem:
Barzeni, 2004), 67b–68a and Joseph Kaspi, Maskiyot kesef in Joseph Kaspi, Commentaria hebraica in
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0364009418000508

R. Mosis Maimonidis Dalalat al Haiirin sive Doctor Perplexorum, ed. Salomo Werbluner (Frankfurt
am Main: 1848), 113. The confusion is compounded by the fact that the ambiguous presentation of
prophecy in MT, hilkhot yesode ha-Torah 7 may lend itself more easily to the philosophical under-
standing of prophecy than to that of “our law.” See Kellner, “Literary Character of the Mishneh
Torah,” 39–42.
35. Guide III 26, Pines trans., 508.
36. Maimonides apparently uses the term “Sabians” to refer to all idolaters. On the portrayal of
the Sabians in Arabic literature see Sara Stroumsa, Maimonides in His World: Portrait of a Mediterra-
nean Thinker (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009), 84–105.

362
 On Platonic Punishments for Freethinkers
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 191.101.76.41, on 24 Mar 2019 at 10:25:07, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms.

turns, consists in the effacement of these opinions from the minds and of these
monuments from existence.37

Not only does Maimonides acknowledge having read, indeed studied books of
idolatry, he explicitly draws on these books for interpreting the reasons for the
commandments of the Torah. Lest there be any ambiguity, Maimonides in the
same chapter refers to the “books of idolatry” (‫ )ספרי עבודה זרה‬in Hebrew, rather
than Arabic, the language of the Guide, using the same expression he uses in
the Mishneh Torah. His ensuing summary of these idolatrous books is apparently
intended for the reader to verify his claims about idolatry, thereby encouraging the
reader to open the books himself. Far from the Mishneh Torah’s prohibition
against thinking about idolatry, Maimonides’s Guide says that idolatry must be
understood so that Judaism can be understood. That is, thinking about idolatry
and thinking about the divinity of the Law go hand in hand—one needs to consider
one in order to think about the other.
Careful readers may have noticed that I skipped number 3: the Mishneh
Torah’s prohibition against asking “what is up, what is down, what is in front,
and what is behind.”38 The language of this prohibition is taken from the Babylo-
nian Talmud, H.agigah 11b, where it is framed less as a prohibition, more as good
advice. The Mishnah there states, “Every one who tries to know the following four
things, it were better for him if he had never come into the world.”39 In context and
in the ensuing discussion it is clear that these “four things” are connected to, and
perhaps constitute the essential parts of the Account of the Beginning and the
Account of the Chariot. These two areas of study, the Talmud makes clear,
make up the Pardes, the orchard of divine knowledge that only few can enter
and only with extreme care. We have already seen that Maimonides associates
this Pardes with his account of God, the angels, and the world at the beginning
of the Mishneh Torah. The prohibition against these four questions would thus
seem to be a prohibition against asking questions about the Pardes, or at the
very least asking potentially critical questions.40
The Pardes is treated quite differently in the Guide of the Perplexed. In the
introduction to the first part of the Guide, Maimonides apparently includes the
Account of the Beginning and the Account of the Chariot among the parables
that the Guide seeks to explain. Under the guise of repeating something from
the Mishneh Torah, Maimonides says, “The Account of the Beginning is identical
with natural science, and the Account of the Chariot with divine science.”41 In
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0364009418000508

37. Guide III 29, Pines trans., 518, 521.

38. Maimonides explicitly recommends inquiring into the first of these questions in Guide I 47:
“The sages have said … Know what is above thee, a seeing eye and a hearing ear. Now when you
investigate the true reality …” (Pines trans., 105).
39. Soncino trans.
40. Such a prohibition could only apply to those readers familiar enough with the Talmud to
recognize the connection between this statement and the Pardes. Maimonides makes clear in his intro-
duction to the Mishneh Torah that these are by no means his only readers.
41. Pines trans., 6.

363
 Yehuda Halper
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 191.101.76.41, on 24 Mar 2019 at 10:25:07, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms.

fact, Maimonides does not call these accounts “science” in the Mishneh Torah, and
it is not entirely clear that he even has a Hebrew word for science in the book, that
is, a word equivalent to the Arabic ᶜilm, which he uses throughout the Guide.42
What is clear is that the science that is to be employed by the addressee of
the Guide is fundamentally different from the way the Pardes is to be employed by
the addressee of the Mishneh Torah. In the Mishneh Torah, the Pardes leads
directly to a better understanding of God’s wisdom; in the Guide, the subjects
of the Pardes lead, at least initially, to perplexity. The addressee of the Guide is
not only expected to study the Pardes, he is also expected to be perplexed. This
perplexity is a result of the addressee’s confusion as to how to reconcile the
Pardes with the Law. Maimonides says:

It is not the purpose of this Treatise to make its totality understandable to the
vulgar or to beginners in speculation, nor to teach those who have not engaged
in any study other than the science of the Law—I mean the legalistic study of
the Law. For the purpose of this Treatise and of all those like it is the science of
the Law in its true sense. Or rather its purpose is to give indications to a reli-
gious man for whom the validity of our Law has become established in his
soul and has become actual in his belief—such a man being perfect in his reli-
gion and character, and having studied the sciences of the philosophers and
come to know what they signify. The human intellect having drawn him on
and led him to dwell within its province, he must have felt distressed by the
externals of the Law.… Hence he would remain in a state of perplexity
and confusion as to whether he should follow his intellect, renounce … the
foundations of the Law. Or he should hold fast to his understanding of [the
Law] and not let himself be drawn on together with the intellect, rather

42. The Hebrew word h.okhmah was used to translate the Arabic ᶜilm by numerous thinkers,
including the Ibn Tibbons, and is often considered to be Maimonides’s word for “science.” Maimonides
discusses the meanings of the Hebrew term h.okhmah at Guide III 54, but even there he does not
unequivocally assign to it the meaning of “science.” See, however, Twersky, Introduction to the
Code of Maimonides, 366–68, 395, 473–76, and 595–97. Bernard Septimus, “What Did Maimonides
Mean by Maddaʿ,” 86–88, esp. n. 16, argues that h.okhmah in Maimonides’s Hebrew refers specifically
to “objectified knowledge” such as a “discipline.” That this is the meaning of the term in the Letter on
Astrology (written after the Guide) is not in doubt, however, the term appears at least twenty-seven
times in the Mishneh Torah and only in one instance is it clearly referring to “science” as a discipline:
Sefer shoftim, hilkhot sanhedrin 2:1. Elsewhere, it seems to refer to general “wisdom” associated with
the “wise man” (h.akham). In any case, the term h.okhmah does not appear in connection with the
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0364009418000508

Account of the Beginning or the Account of the Chariot in the Mishneh Torah. The term h.akham is
used in hilkhot yesode ha-Torah 4:10–13, but only to refer to the (presumably talmudic) sages who
cautioned against studying the two Accounts in public, and in some cases were not able to understand
fully the topics of the two Accounts, and to the wise student who can understand the Accounts on his
own. Note that in the account of h.okhmah in Guide III 54, Maimonides distinguishes repeatedly
between the science of the law and “the verification of the opinions of the Torah through correct spec-
ulation” (Pines trans., 634). It is not clear to me that either these of statements (or any others in III 54)
refers unequivocally to “science” as understood by Aristotle and the Islamic Aristotelians, though either
statement could be interpreted to explain h.okhmah in the Mishneh Torah.

364
 On Platonic Punishments for Freethinkers
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 191.101.76.41, on 24 Mar 2019 at 10:25:07, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms.

turning his back on it and moving away from it. … [He] would not cease to
suffer from heartache and great perplexity.43

The Guide of the Perplexed is dedicated to the reader who has studied sciences and
strives to maintain his religious belief. In other words, the study of science has not
(or at least not only) led this reader to deeper understanding of the manifestation of
God’s wisdom in the world or even to love of God, but to perplexity. That is, it has
led to questions. These questions place the addressee in a quandary: he can either
give up the Law or live a life of heartache and perplexity.
The passage from the Mishneh Torah with which I opened this article
describes an individual in a similar quandary. He is questioning the fundamentals
of the Law on the basis of his “short intellect” and finding himself at an impasse. In
the words of the passage from the Mishneh Torah, such a person “would not know
the measures by which to judge until he knows the truth in its essence.” This
impasse, in both the Mishneh Torah and the Guide, can lead to abandoning the
Law and becoming a heretic. Yet the two works approach the perplexed in a strik-
ingly different manner. The Mishneh Torah prohibits the free use of the mind,
while the Guide encourages the perplexed to study further, in particular, to
study the Guide.
The main discussion of the talmudic prohibition against asking “what is up,
what is down, what is in front, and what is behind” in the Guide occurs in the
context of the discussion of the limitations on human knowledge in I 32. Here
too we see a difference in approach from the Mishneh Torah. In the Mishneh
Torah Maimonides advocates not asking open questions about the Pardes at all,
but instead recommends using logical reasoning to back up and support the
basic depiction of the Pardes Maimonides gives in chapters 1–4 of Hilkhot
yesode ha-Torah. In Guide I 32, Maimonides explains that these four questions
—what is up, what is down, what is in front, and what is behind—have as
“their purpose, in its entirety … to make known that the intellects of human
beings have a limit at which they stop.”44 Maimonides asserts here that human
beings ought not ask what is beyond their capacity to understand, but, neverthe-
less, the sages’ purpose in the talmudic text “is not … wholly to close the gate
of speculation and to deprive the intellect of the apprehension of things that it is
possible to apprehend.”45 That is, in Guide I 32, there is no general prohibition
against asking open-ended questions about metaphysics, only against extending
the intellect beyond what it can comprehend.
The limitations mentioned here are natural, not legal, as in the Mishneh Torah.
Moreover, they concern only those things that are demonstrated. R. Akiva, “who
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0364009418000508

entered [the Pardes] in peace and went out in peace” is said by Maimonides to
have believed only those things that have been demonstrated and to have rejected
only those things whose contradictories have been proved false.46 Regarding

43. Pines trans., 5–6.

44. Guide I 32, Pines trans., 70.
45. Ibid.
46. Ibid., Pines trans., 68.

365
 Yehuda Halper
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 191.101.76.41, on 24 Mar 2019 at 10:25:07, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms.

everything else,
, R. Akiva is said to have suspended judgment, in a manner compa-
rable to the εποχή (suspension of judgment) of the ancient Pyrrhonists.47 Elisha ben
Abuyah is said by Maimonides to have earned his condemnation from the Talmud
because he believed things that were not demonstrated and was consequently
“overcome by imaginings.”48 Unlike Elisha, R. Akiva is said to have pursued
demonstration as far as it goes and not to have aspired to go beyond the limits of
demonstration. The limitations imposed by demonstration are clearly different
from those imposed in Mishneh Torah, hilkhot ʿavodah zarah, chapter 2.
We might ask further: How would the R. Akiva of Guide I 32 treat the sub-
jects of the Pardes discussed in Hilkhot yesode ha-Torah, chapters 1–4? Certain
points of the Pardes are demonstrable, according to Maimonides, such as the exis-
tence of God and His unity, but others are not.49 The eternity of the world, for
instance, is maintained at Hilkhot yesode ha-Torah 1:5, but said to be questionable
if not entirely incorrect at Guide II 25. Other issues, such as the number of spheres,
the unchanging character of the heavens, and the natural makeup of ether, also turn
out to be not demonstrated and perhaps not demonstrable. R. Akiva, then, would
not be able to accept the Pardes of the Mishneh Torah. R. Akiva may have entered
the Pardes in peace and gone out in peace, but he could not have accepted those
propositions in the Pardes that are not demonstrations. As exclusive followers of
demonstration, he and the readers of the Guide who adopt his approach must place
themselves in some sense outside of the Pardes of the Mishneh Torah and outside
of its theoretical assumptions. They may in some sense be at peace with the
Pardes, that is, not disturb it, but they must also “go out” of the Pardes into a
place where they can dedicate themselves to following only demonstration.

P UNISHMENT
The Guide of the Perplexed, then, is directed to one who is in violation of the
Mishneh Torah’s prohibition against freethinking about the foundations of the
Law. What are the consequences of this violation? At the end of the statement
from the Mishneh Torah quoted at the beginning of this article, Maimonides
notes that violation of this law “causes man to be driven out of the world to
come, [but] does not carry the punishment of lashes.” That is, there is no
court-ordered punishment for violation of this prohibition in the Mishneh Torah,
only a threat about the world to come.50 Lashes, of course, are relegated by Mai-
monides and his contemporaries to the time of a functioning Sanhedrin, but Mai-
monides grants wise men the authority to apply isolation and exile to, inter alia,
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0364009418000508

47. See Josef Stern, The Matter and Form of Maimonides’ Guide (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 2013), 85–86.
48. Guide I 32, Pines trans., 69.
49. On the equivocal uses of the term burhaˉ n regarding these proofs see Josef Stern, “Maimon-
ides’ Demonstrations: Principles and Practice,” Medieval Philosophy and Theology 10 (2001): 47–84.
50. On the different kinds of punishment that include not attaining the world to come, see
Hannah Kasher, “On the Meanings of the Biblical Punishment of Karet (Excision) and the Midrashic
‘He Has No Share in the World to Come’ According to Maimonides” [in Hebrew], Sidra: A Journal for
the Study of Rabbinic Literature 14 (1998): 39–58, esp. 49–53.

366
 On Platonic Punishments for Freethinkers
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 191.101.76.41, on 24 Mar 2019 at 10:25:07, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms.

heretics and people who speak ill of the sages.51 Yet, the perplexed inquirers into
the foundations of the Law incur no such penalty so long as they do not make their
views too public.52 Practically speaking, someone who asks questions and raises
doubts about any of the six things about which he is forbidden from thinking
would have only to worry about the threat of being driven out of the world to
come. If the questioner is at all serious, his worry about his share in the world
to come cannot be too great, since most of his questions would entail questioning
reward and punishment in the world to come as a kind of corollary.53
Violators of this precept would then find themselves without any conse-
quence in this world. Indeed, they would find an entire book, Maimonides’s
other magnum opus, dedicated to them. Rather than court-ordered punishment,
they would have a book to read. That is, the Guide of the Perplexed serves in
some sense in lieu of other punishment, or perhaps, indeed, it is their punishment.
Instead of lashes or isolation, they read the Guide.
Yet the Guide is not entirely silent on the notion of punishment for theoret-
ical sins; Maimonides addresses this notion in his discussion of sacrifices
and divine worship in Guide III 46. There, he develops a principle according to
which the external act of atonement, including at least some sacrifices, is reminis-
cent of the sin that was committed.54 While Maimonides’s application of this prin-
ciple to the sacrifices is not entirely convincing (presumably, intentionally so),55 it
does seem to work for other kinds of atonement. Thus, for example, people can
seek atonement for sins involving property by expending property, or for corporeal
pleasures in corporeal afflictions like fasting and awakening at night. Maimonides
explicitly mentions that disobedience in connection with morals requires attaining

51. See esp. MT, hilkhot talmud Torah 6:14.

52. This is in contrast to Maimonides’s statement in Guide III 51 with regard to the errant whose
backs are turned to the ruler’s habitation, “They are those whom necessity at certain times impels killing
them and blotting out the traces of their opinions lest they should lead astray the ways of others” (Pines
trans., 619). Levinger suggests that this passage is in direct correspondence with MT, hilkhot ʿavodah
zarah 2:2–3.
53. Questioning the Creator’s existence and His relation to the natural world obviously entails
questioning divine reward and punishment. Questioning God’s unity or the possibility of idolatry
entails questioning whether what is punished by one god is not rewarded by another and therefore
whether there is not a standard outside of the divine realm. Asking what is up, down, inside, or
outside implies asking what, if anything, will happen in the next world. Questioning prophecy and
the divine origins of the Torah entails questioning the rewards and punishments mentioned in the
Torah and works of prophecy.
54. See Pines trans., 587–91.
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0364009418000508

55. E.g., it is not impossible to believe, as Maimonides says, that the Yom Kippur sacrifice of a
calf is meant to be reminiscent of the sin of the golden calf. However, Maimonides also suggests that the
reason a goat is sacrificed for every other sin offering is either because of Israel’s worship of goats in the
desert (which he identifies with pre-Islamic worship of the jinn) or because Joseph’s coat was shown to
Jacob covered in goat’s blood. Neither case would seem to be sufficient reason for sacrificing a goat in
every sin offering. Neither involved the entire people and neither is treated in the Bible as Israel’s worst.
See Pines trans., 588–89. For the midrashic sources on which Maimonides is likely drawing here see
Michael Schwarz’s Hebrew translation of the Guide (Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University Press, 2002), 620
nn. 86 and 91.

367
 Yehuda Halper
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 191.101.76.41, on 24 Mar 2019 at 10:25:07, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms.

the contrary moral habit “as we explained in Hilkhot deʿot” in the Mishneh
Torah.56 The explanation in the Mishneh Torah concerns not atonement or for-
giveness, but correction of moral imbalance. Thus, in Guide III 46 Maimonides
moves seamlessly from sacrificial atonement to moral balance and adjustment
of habits toward the mean.
It is in this context that he brings up sins caused by theoretical errors: “If the
act of disobedience consists in theorizing—I mean by this that if he believes in an
opinion that is not sound because of his incapacity and his slackness in inquiry and
in devoting himself to theorizing—he must counter this by suppressing his think-
ing [ fikratihi] and preventing it from thinking about anything pertaining to the
things of this world [al-dunyaˉ ], but direct it exclusively to the intelligible
[maᶜqūl] and to an exact study of what ought to be believed.”57 Maimonides
here discusses a person who is led to an incorrect opinion through incapacity,
the Arabic of which literally means “because of his shortness,”58 or by his unwill-
ingness to study and theorize enough. Such a person repents by not thinking about
this world, but thinking only about the intelligible and analyzing what ought to be
believed. That is, the corrective counter to sins of theorizing is theorizing, albeit of
a different kind. The kind of thinking the penitent theorizer is supposed to under-
take concerns only metaphysics and opinions. Even the “exact study of what ought
to be believed” places the focus of the corrective measures on the study, rather than
on the beliefs; Maimonides does not advise revising one’s beliefs, but rather better
inquiry.59
The suppression of thought about this world is not a suppression of inquiry
into natural science, as might seem from the English translation above. Rather the
word for “this world” that Maimonides uses, al-dunyaˉ in Arabic, is derived from
the word daniya, “to be low,” and accordingly refers to the “lower world,” usually
in opposition to the final world, al-aˉ khira, that is, the world to come. Maimonides
uses the term dunyaˉ only two other times in the Guide, once in his discussion of
Ash’arite views of reward and punishment in this world (fī al-dunyaˉ ) and the
world to come in III 17, and once in his discussion of intellectual prayer in III

56. Pines trans., 589. The reference is to Mishneh Torah, hilkhot deʿot 2:2–3. Cf. chap. 4 of Mai-
monides’s “Eight Chapters.”
57. Guide III 46. Pines trans., 589. I have modified Pines’s translation in two ways. Pines uses
“speculation” for naz.r, but I prefer “theorizing,” since it can more clearly indicate a scientific activity.
Pines translates fikrah “reflecting,” which I find rather too scientific; I use “thinking” instead. Ibn
Tibbon has mah.shavah, which may be intended to recall its use throughout the Mishneh Torah.
58. Ar. ‫לקצורה‬. Note that the Mishneh Torah at hilkhot ʿavodah zarah 2:2 (quoted at the begin-
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0364009418000508

ning of this paper) refers to ‫קוצר דעת‬.

59. I am reading Maimonides’s immediately subsequent example of Aaron and the golden calf
as an example of a moral failing, rather than a theoretical sin. That Aaron’s involvement with the golden
calf is connected to moral habits, rather than a theoretical misunderstanding, is supported by his and his
descendants’ act of atonement: sacrificing “a bullock and a calf.” This sacrifice both recollects the crime
and serves to wean the priestly family off of idolatrous moral habits. It does not involve exclusive devo-
tion to the intelligible or abstention from thinking about this world. Moreover, Maimonides turns from
this example to that of the worship of goats, making it clearer still that the sins in question are not of
theorizing, but of action.

368
 On Platonic Punishments for Freethinkers
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 191.101.76.41, on 24 Mar 2019 at 10:25:07, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms.

51. The relevant passage in III 51 states, “Know that all the practices of the
worship, such as reading the Torah, prayer, and the performance of the other com-
mandments, have only the end of training you to occupy yourself with His com-
mandments, may He be exalted, rather than with matters pertaining to this world
[al-dunyaˉ ]; you should act as if you were occupied with Him, may He be exalted,
and not with that which is other than He.”60 This passage is part of Maimonides’s
recommendations to the reader about how to pray and observe the commandments
with a view to attaining “intellectual worship” (al-‘ibaˉ dah al-‘aqliyyah) of God.61
This intellectual worship bears two striking similarities to the repentance Maimon-
ides recommends for theoretical errors in III 46: removing oneself from the world
(al-dunyaˉ ) and focusing on the intellectual, that is, the intelligible. Both also con-
centrate on the conventional, whether established opinions or rituals. In III 51, the
conventional rituals are used to train one to be truly occupied with God, that is, to
intellect actively. It is not impossible to read the passage from III 46 as giving a
similar role to conventional opinions. That is to say, the penitence of theoretical
sinners is very similar, if not entirely identical, to Guide III 51’s ideal form of
worship that either is or leads to “intellectual worship.” If so, then Maimonides
may see theoretical errors as part of the path to ideal theoretical achievement.
Perhaps it is with this in mind that Maimonides addresses the Guide pre-
cisely to the perplexed, that is, to those who, if not guilty of theoretical errors,
are in danger of becoming so. Such people have the potential to attain the ideal
“intellectual worship” of Guide III 51. Yet this potential is not always realized,
and while Maimonides states that introducing and encouraging intellectual
worship is the goal of III 51,62 his stated goals for the entire Guide of the Perplexed
are more circumspect. Thus, for instance, toward the end of the introduction to the
Guide, Maimonides says regarding the goals of the entire book, “I claim to liberate
that virtuous one from that into which he has sunk, and I shall guide him in his
perplexity until he becomes perfect and finds rest.”63 Maimonides does not
claim to do away with the perplexity entirely, as one might expect from the suc-
cessful intellectual worshipper, but rather to help the perplexed choose perplexity
over heresy and thereby find perfection and rest.64

60. Pines trans., 622.

61. Ibid., 623. On this form of worship see Steven Harvey, “Avicenna and Maimonides on
Prayer and Intellectual Worship,” in Exchange and Transmission across Cultural Boundaries: Philos-
ophy, Mysticism and Science in the Mediterranean World, ed. Haggai Ben-Shammai (Jerusalem: Israel
Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 2013), 82–105.
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0364009418000508

62. “The subject of this chapter [III 51] … is to confirm men in the intention to set their thought
to work on God alone after they have achieved knowledge of Him, as we have explained. This is the
worship peculiar to those who have apprehended the true realities; the more they think of Him and of
being with Him, the more their worship increases” (Pines trans., 620).
63. Pines trans., 17.
64. Drawing on al-Farabi’s account of perplexity (h.ayra) in the Philosophy of Aristotle, W. Z.
Harvey reaches an even stronger conclusion: “the philosopher never frees himself or herself from per-
plexity.” Moreover, he says, “To be a philosopher means to be continually perplexed—continually con-
fronted with new and ever more challenging perplexities. The Guide of the Perplexed is simply the

369
 Yehuda Halper
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 191.101.76.41, on 24 Mar 2019 at 10:25:07, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms.

One who is in violation of the Mishneh Torah’s prohibition against free-

thinking about the foundations of the Law would find in the Guide the theoretical
counter to both potential and actual theoretical sins. As we saw in Guide III 46,
those guilty of theoretical sins are urged to abandon the things of this world and
concentrate on the intellectual objects of thought and accepted opinions.
Reading and studying the Guide itself, insofar as it would involve the precise
study of the relationship between the intelligible and accepted Jewish opinions,
could fulfill the requirement for punishment for theoretical sins.

P LATO ’ S L AWS
The function of the Guide as a punishment has a parallel in Plato’s Laws.
The Laws is one of the few of Plato’s dialogues extant today in some form in
Arabic. Sources mention two Arabic translations of the Laws, neither of which
is now extant,65 and at least two Arabic summaries of the work, one of them a
translation of Galen’s epitome of the Laws,66 as well as al-Farabi’s well-known
commentary on the Laws.67 One of these summaries and al-Farabi’s commentary
include only the first nine books of the Laws, but it is possible that other texts con-
taining more of the Laws were available to Maimonides. We do not know, there-
fore, in what form Maimonides could have encountered Plato’s Laws. It is thus not
impossible that the similarity pointed to below is entirely coincidental. However,
this similarity is also loose enough that Maimonides could even have heard it indi-
rectly from a secondhand account of the Laws.
In Plato’s Laws, an unnamed Athenian stranger, in discussion with a Spartan
and a Knossian, comes up with a system of laws for a city to be built in the Cretan
countryside. While the Athenian Stranger gives some accounts of what law is in
general, most of the dialogue is dedicated to laying out actual laws, some in
great detail. Thus, we find laws about market regulation, marriage and families,
and also numerous laws related to worshipping the gods through sacrifices,
games, and choral dances. In books 9 and 10 of the Laws, the Athenian Stranger
turns to the punishments due to violators of various laws. He is especially

Guide of the Philosophers.” See Harvey, “Maimonides on the Meaning of ‘Perplexity’ (ẖayra =
aporía),” Conference on Jewish Studies CISMOR Proceedings 7 (2013): 74.
65. Ibn al-Nadim, a tenth-century Arabic bibliographer, lists two translations of the Laws, one
by Hunayn ibn Ishaq and one by Yahya ibn ᶜAdi. See The Fihrist of al-Nadīm, trans. Bayard Dodge
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1970), 2:592–93.
66. On the summaries of the laws and their manuscript tradition as well as their relation to
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0364009418000508

al-Farabi’s summary, see Steven Harvey, “Did Alfarabi Read Plato’s Laws?,” Medioevo: Rivista di
Storia della Filosofia Medievale 28 (2003): 51–68. In addition to these summaries, there are also a
number of other manuscripts of Arabic works entitled Kitab al-nawamis (Book of the laws) that are
not written by Plato. See Dmitri Gutas, “Galen’s Synopsis of Plato’s Laws and Fârâbî’s Talkhîs.,” in
The Ancient Tradition in Christian and Islamic Hellenism, ed. Gerhard Endress and Remke Kruke
(Leiden: CNWS, 1997), 101–20, esp. 102.
67. The most recent and best edition of al-Farabi’s commentary on Plato’s Laws is edited by
Thérèse-Anne Druart, “Le Sommaire du Livre des ‘Lois’ de Platon,” Bulletin d’études orientales 50
(1998): 109–55.

370
 On Platonic Punishments for Freethinkers
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 191.101.76.41, on 24 Mar 2019 at 10:25:07, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms.

concerned with violators of divine laws. In book 9, he begins with temple robbery,
and book 10 concerns laws of heresy.
The laws of heresy of book 10 are primarily directed at young people who
do not believe that “the gods are according to the laws” (885b)68 and are thus
likely to act or speak impiously in the future. Yet these wayward youths are not
interested in “doing unjust things” (885d),69 but want to be persuaded of the
laws’ account of the gods. According to the Athenian Stranger, they turn directly
to the lawgivers, in this case the interlocutors of the dialogue the Laws, for gentle
persuasion that the gods exist, are concerned with human affairs, and are not easily
bribed through sacrifices and prayers. Their request for gentle persuasion puts a
demand on the lawgivers to come up with an account of the divine, an apology,
as it were, for the laws, and one that can without spiritedness (θυμός) convince
the questioning youth to follow the laws. The requirement that the account not
involve spiritedness means that it must involve rationality, or something close
to rationality.
The account the Athenian Stranger gives is a critique of materialism and an
argument for the centrality, indeed divinity of soul. Soul is a god and the first soul
is a kind of One God. As conductor of the world, soul governs all things and is not
easily bribed to do injustice. These arguments, which take up the better part of
book 10 of the Laws, are said to be a “prelude” (προοίμιον) to the law against
impiety, that is, a kind of persuasive argument encouraging its hearers to follow
the law.70 Following the prelude, the Athenian Stranger gives the law: impious
words or actions are to be reported to the magistrates who are to punish the
impious with imprisonment.
The prison for those who are not convinced by the Athenian Stranger’s
account of divine soul is to be separate from the other prisons. It is to be in the
center of town, near the senior council. Its prisoners are to be those who have
been deemed to reject the arguments about divine soul because of lack of νοῦς,
not because of “evil temperament and mores.”71 That is, these prisoners are not
intellectually convinced of the arguments, but are not otherwise a threat to the
peace of the city. Their sentence is to be imprisoned for at least five years,
during which time they meet with members of the senior nocturnal council,
who admonish and teach them for the “salvation of the soul.”72 That is, they
are imprisoned in the center of town for five years, during which they discuss

68. Plato, Laws 885b. Loeb Classical Texts, Plato X (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1926),
2:298. All citations from the Laws refer to this edition. Translations are my own.
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0364009418000508

, ,
69. The Greek here is ουκ επὶ τὸ μὴ δρᾶν τὰ ἄδικα τρεπόμεθα, “we do not turn to doing unjust
things.” The Loeb translation of “instead of seeking to avoid wrong-doing” is overly and inaccurately
interpretive of the sentence.
70. 907c–d.
71. 908e. I am rendering ἦθος here as (the noun) “more” because Aristotle uses it this way in the
Ethics, i.e., in a way parallel to that of ‫ דעה‬in Maimonides’s MT, hilkhot deʿot. Plato, of course, may have
a different meaning in mind, but this does not affect its meaning in this context. Note that those who do
have bad temperaments and mores, those who are “like beasts,” are held in a different prison.
72. 909a.

371
 Yehuda Halper
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 191.101.76.41, on 24 Mar 2019 at 10:25:07, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms.

soul and the divine with the eldest and most respected members of the city—a fate
closer to college than to what we typically consider prison.
The goal of this prison is to induce a kind of “moderation” (σωφροσύνη) in
the imprisoned. Accordingly, the Athenian Stranger calls this prison a
σωφρονιστήριον, probably a wordplay on the φροντιστήριον of Aristophanes’s
Clouds. In the φροντιστήριον of the Clouds Socrates convinces young men to
become φρόνιμος, “thoughtful.” In the σωφρονιστήριον the nocturnal council is
to convince the wayward, questioning youths to be become moderate. The Athe-
nian Stranger says no more about what this moderation consists of, other than that
the one who becomes moderate can then dwell among the moderate.73 The goal
then is apparently that the youths be reintroduced to society and then dwell as cit-
izens among them.
The wordplay with Aristophanes’s φροντιστήριον emphasizes that
“thought” (φρονήσις) is in fact not the object of the Athenian Stranger’s
σωφρονιστήριον; “moderation” (σωφροσύνη) rather than thought is the object.
Indeed, the Athenian Stranger does not specify that the imprisoned need agree
with his account of soul and the divine or with the other arguments put forward
by the members of the nocturnal council. The goal of the prison sentence is mod-
erate living, not agreement with the views of the city. The penalty for those who do
not agree to live moderately is death.74 This penalty is not said to be for disagree-
ment with the city’s views, but for not agreeing to live within the city “moder-
ately.” The wayward youth, then, has every incentive to live within what the
city considers a moderate lifestyle, even if he is not necessarily convinced by
all the arguments of the city.

M ODERATION AND R EST IN THE G UIDE OF THE P ERPLEXED

If we take the Guide of the Perplexed in the context in which it fits in the
Mishneh Torah, it seems to play the part of the σωφρονιστήριον of Plato’s
Laws. The Mishneh Torah, Maimonides’s code of law, prohibits questioning the
divine and the connection of the divine to humanity. There is no direct punishment
in this world for violating this prohibition, but Maimonides wrote a separate book
directly addressing all of the main issues brought up in the prohibition, namely, the
Guide of the Perplexed. This book, in my own estimate, should take about five
years to read. Moreover, the Guide ostensibly answers the questions raised in
the Mishneh Torah, but the answers are complicated, contradictory, and often so
unclear that commentators disagree on what they are. Its goal, indeed, may not
be to provide answers to all questions.
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0364009418000508

Is the goal of the Guide to provide σωφροσύνη? I want to suggest that mod-
eration is included as part of the “rest” (’istiraˉ h.) that Maimonides tenders as a
reward for the reader of the Guide. We saw above that in his introduction to the
Guide, Maimonides says he will guide his addressee “in his perplexity until he
becomes perfect and he finds rest.” Later, at the end of his introduction to part

73. Ibid.
74. Ibid.

372
 On Platonic Punishments for Freethinkers
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 191.101.76.41, on 24 Mar 2019 at 10:25:07, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms.

1 of the Guide, Maimonides says that the Guide will be a “key permitting one to
enter places the gates to which were locked. And when these gates are opened and
these places are entered into, the souls will dwell therein, the eyes will be
delighted, and the bodies will find rest [’istiraˉ h.] from their toil and from their
labor.”75 In this place to which the Guide leads souls can dwell, but it is bodies
that will find rest.76
“Rest” is not a standard philosophical term and Maimonides does not tell us
precisely what he means by it. We are thus left to look to the other uses of the term
in the Guide to discern its senses from context. This term for “rest,” or its base
form, raˉ h.ah, appears in ten other chapters in the Guide.77 Two of these chapters
use “rest” in contrast to “toil and labor”78 and pain and suffering.79 Three of
these chapters refer to the process of changing habits,80 four chapters discuss
rest in relation to the Sabbath and holidays,81 and one chapter refers to rest
(’istiraˉ h.) as self-knowledge and not “seeking a final end for what has not that
final end.”82 In all cases, Maimonides appears to understand rest as not doing
some kind of labor, either bodily toil or the toil of thinking and having opinions.
This latter kind of rest from having opinions, especially those inculcated by
habit, is associated with civilized life in Guide I 31. Maimonides makes the fol-
lowing analogy:

The people of the desert—notwithstanding … the lack of pleasure and the

scarcity of food—dislike the towns, do not hanker after their pleasures, and
prefer the bad circumstances to which they are accustomed to good ones to
which they are not accustomed. Their souls accordingly would find no rest

75. Pines trans., 20 (translation modified).

76. Compare Saʿadiah’s largely negative portrayal of bodily rest (raˉ h.ah) in The Book of Beliefs
and Opinions (Kitab al-‘amanat wa-l-‘itiqadt), treatise 10, chapter 16 (for English, see trans. Samuel
Rosenblatt [New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1948], 397–99). Saʿadiah associates bodily rest
with laziness and negligence, which can in their extreme lead to a variety of bodily illnesses. Rest
of the soul, however, can be “a premonition [tadhkīr] of the quiet and the tranquility that will
prevail in the world to come, and by means of which one can come to love it” (based on Rosenblatt’s
translation, 399). We may note that the biblical support Saʿadiah brings for this notion of the rest of
souls, Isaiah 32:17–18 (“And the work of righteousness shall be peace …”), is used by Maimonides
to say that nothing bad will result from giving charity (MT, hilkhot matanot ʿaniyim 10:2), i.e., to
refer to peace and prosperity in this world alone.
77. They are: Guide I 2, I 31, I 67, II 31, III 12, III 13, III 24, III 35, III 41, and III 43. The term
’istiraˉ h. appears in I 31 and III 13, and the term raˉ h.ah occurs fourteen times in the other eight chapters.
Pines is not consistent in his translation of either term and renders them at times “rest,” “ease,”
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0364009418000508

“repose,” “solace,” and “well-being.” Some of these English terms are used for other Arabic terms
in other places in the Guide.
78. Guide I 2, Pines trans., 26.
79. Guide III 12, Pines trans., 441. Maimonides twice cites and then argues against Razi’s unfa-
vorable comparison of the raˉ h.ah (“well-being” according to Pines’s translation) of this life with all of
the pains and bad things of this life.
80. Guide I 31, III 24, and III 41.
81. Guide I 67, II 31, III 35, and III 43.
82. Guide III 13.

373
 Yehuda Halper
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 191.101.76.41, on 24 Mar 2019 at 10:25:07, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms.

in living in palaces, in wearing silk clothes, and in the enjoyment of baths,

ointments and perfumes. In a similar way, man has love for, and the wish
to defend, opinions to which he is habituated and in which he has been
brought up and has a feeling of repulsion for opinions other than those. For
this reason also man is blind to the apprehension of true realities …83

In this analogy, someone raised in a desert is compared to one brought up on

certain (religious, it turns out, text-based) opinions and one who apprehends
true reality is compared to one enjoying the pleasures of civilized life. Just as
the desert dweller will not enjoy civilized pleasures, one immersed in certain opin-
ions cannot easily abandon them to begin to contemplate true realities, that is,
metaphysics. One who intends to contemplate true realities must somehow over-
come those opinions inculcated in his youth so that he can enjoy the pleasures of
the intellectual life.
Surprisingly, Maimonides gives an entirely contradictory description of the
relationship between habit and civilized rest in III 24: “It is as if [the Bible] said
that He, may He be exalted, has first accustomed you to misery in the desert in
order to make your rest greater when once you came into the land. And this is
true, for to pass from weariness to rest is more pleasant than to be constantly at
rest. And it is known that but for their misery and weariness in the desert, they
would not have been able to conquer the land and fight.”84 That is, Maimonides
says not only that the Israelites became tougher by enduring the hardship of
desert life, but that they were better able to enjoy the pleasant settled life of
Israel after, indeed because of, the hardship of the desert. This is a direct contra-
diction: in I 31, Maimonides says that those accustomed to desert life do not enjoy
civilized pleasures, while in III 24, he says they enjoy civilized pleasures more
because they have become accustomed to greater hardship! If the analogy of I
31 were to be applied to this statement in III 24,85 it would suggest that opinions
inculcated through habits can be a good preparation for civilized life, that is, it
would seem, for proper metaphysical speculation. Moreover, it could perhaps
also imply that habits and opinions need to be viewed as toil and hardship in
order to aid people in apprehending true realities beyond them.86
I propose another interpretation. In I 31, the civilized pleasures are the
apprehension of true reality. In III 24, the civilized pleasures are associated with
living in the Land of Israel, with following the Law in its full application under
a political regime. That is, in III 24, the analogy of civilized pleasures refers to
actual civilization, with its accompanying laws, habits, and opinions. In III 24,
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0364009418000508

83. Pines trans., 67. Pines translates tastirīh., “repose,” which I changed to “rest” to conform to
other uses of the term.
84. Pines trans., 499. Pines translates raˉ h.ah here “well-being,” which I have changed to “rest”
for the sake of consistency.
85. Is there any significance to the fact that Guide I 31 and III 24 have parallel positions in the
Guide? There are thirty chapters preceding I 31 and thirty chapters following III 24.
86. This is more or less the position I attribute to Samuel ibn Tibbon in my “Daʿat HaRambam
and Daʿat Samuel ibn Tibbon.”

374
 On Platonic Punishments for Freethinkers
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 191.101.76.41, on 24 Mar 2019 at 10:25:07, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms.

the Israelites are not abandoning their habituated opinions in favor of apprehend-
ing the true realities. Rather, they are abandoning those opinions and habits they
adopted in Egypt in favor of a new set of opinions and habits with which they will
conduct their civilized life. Maimonides famously does not consider this an easy
process,87 but as more conducive to pleasure than abandoning opinions altogether.
“Rest,” then, has two different meaning in I 31 and III 24. In I 31, rest is appre-
hension of the true realities, and in III 24, rest is living according to acceptable habits
and opinions, such as those adopted by the Israelites when they took possession of
the Land of Israel. This comparison highlights that the civilized pleasures of the
apprehender of true realities of I 31 are not shared by the entire civilization;
indeed, they are not civilized in the sense of being political goals or politically
attained goals. The city inhabited by the apprehender of true realities in I 31 is a
city of the mind, which can perhaps be identified with the divine city of apprehenders
of God described in III 51. It is a city where law is insufficient and habit and opinion
must be overcome in pursuit of pure intellectual apprehension. In contrast, the civi-
lization of III 24 is a political association and as such has laws, habits, opinions, and
even a holy text. The pleasures of resting in the civilization of III 24 surely do not
involve undermining that political order by dissolving those laws, habits, etc.
The other meanings of rest can be understood in accordance with these two
views of civilized pleasures: proper opinions and apprehension of true realities.
Most of the meanings concern developing the former, proper opinions through
rest. In III 41, Maimonides connects rest with “noble moral qualities” when
explaining the biblical command to allow a captured woman to mourn for a
month before assuming full marital relations. Maimonides says she finds “rest
in weeping and grieving” until she is too tired to continue.88 This rest seems
intended to relieve the captive woman of her previous idolatrous opinions as
part of the process of adopting new opinions, that is, of joining the community
of Israel. In another instance of the term for “rest,” one of the main purposes of
the Sabbath, Maimonides says repeatedly, is to support the opinion that the
world is created.89 This opinion is important, we learn in one place, because “at
first go and with the slightest of speculations [it] shows that the deity exists.”90
However, in I 71, Maimonides argues at some length that proving God’s existence
from the creation of the world is a fallacy of the kalaˉ m and incompatible with dem-
onstration.91 The Sabbath, then, promotes opinions about the creation of the world
and the existence of God, but not according to scientific demonstration. Rest on
the Sabbath, then, is a rest with acceptable opinions, not a rest with true apprehen-
sion of reality, which presumably relies on demonstration. The role of rest (raˉ h.ah)
in these examples is somewhat different: in III 24, it is the state of holding accept-
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0364009418000508

able opinions, in III 41 it is part of the process of adopting new opinions, and in the

87. Cf. Guide III 29 ff.

88. Pines trans., 567. Pines translates raˉ h.ah here “solace.”
89. See Guide II 31, Pines trans., 360; III 35, Pines trans., 537; and III 43, Pines trans., 570. See
also III 32, Pines trans., 531, and III 41, Pines trans., 562.
90. Guide II 31, Pines trans., 360.
91. Pines trans., 179 ff.

375
 Yehuda Halper
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 191.101.76.41, on 24 Mar 2019 at 10:25:07, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms.

chapters that refer to the Sabbath it supports and presumably promotes the accept-
able opinions. Yet, despite these disparities, in all of these cases, rest (raˉ h.ah) is
part of the process of adopting and keeping acceptable opinions, one of the hall-
marks of Maimonides’s understanding of Judaism.
We find the second view of rest in Maimonides’s characterization of the
Garden of Eden, where he associates rest with pure intellectual apprehension and
“toil and labor” with man’s removal from pure intellect in the realm of good and
evil.92 Later in the Guide, in III 13, Maimonides states that when man knows
himself and his limits, his thoughts are at rest and he does not seek the unknowable
final cause of the universe.93 This seems similar to the peace (Hebrew, shalom) R.
Akiva is said to have found when he went out of the Pardes. Yet Maimonides does
not say in III 13 that one should not apply his intellect at all, but rather that he should
not apply his intellect to things that are beyond the intellect. In fact, the addressee of
III 13, like R. Akiva of the Pardes, is encouraged to contemplate only those things
that can be grasped by the intellect. That is, this person finds rest only through intel-
lection and not through extending the intellect beyond what it can comprehend. This
rest, like that of the Garden of Eden, is one of pure intellectual cognition.94
A third meaning of the term “rest” that does not fit into my twofold categori-
zation is given in Maimonides’s account of the Sabbath in Guide I 67. There Mai-
monides says, “refraining from speech is likewise called rest [menuh.ah].” Now,
Maimonides is primarily interested in divine speech, which he associates with
divine will and creation. But he notes, “the signification of the [Hebrew] verb
[va-yanah.] derives from that of rest [al-raˉ h.ah]”95 and relies on examples of resting
from speech from the human realm. These examples are 1 Samuel 25:9, where
David’s emissaries to Nabal speak and then rest from speech while waiting for a
response, and Job 32:1, where Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar finish up their speeches,

92. Guide I 2. Note the rest described in III 12 as pertaining to bodily pleasure is attributed to
Razi, not Maimonides directly.
93. “For when man knows his own soul, makes no mistakes with regard to it, and understands
every being according to what it is, he becomes calm [ᵓistiraˉ h.a] and his thoughts are not troubled by
seeking a final end for what has not that final end; or by seeking any final end for what has no final end
except its own existence, which depends on the divine will—if you prefer you can also say: on the
divine wisdom” (Pines trans., 456).
94. We find a similar view of rest as intellectual grasp in connection with the Hebrew term for
rest, menuh.ah, or its verb nah., in the three instances in the Guide outside of I 67 and the other references
to the Sabbath. In Guide I 40, Maimonides says that the verse “when the air rested upon them”
(Numbers 11:25: …‫ )כנוח עליהם הרוח‬refers to “the divine intellectual overflow that overflows to the
prophets and in virtue of which they prophesy” (Pines trans., 90). In Guide II 32, Maimonides says
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0364009418000508

Baruch ben Neriah’s statement, “I am weary with my groaning, and I find no rest” (Jeremiah 45:3:
‫ )יגעתי באנחתי ומנוחה לא מצאתי‬refers to not receiving the intellectual overflow after having prepared
himself for prophecy (Pines trans., 362. Note that Pines’s translation speaks of prophecy resting on suit-
ably prepared individuals at the bottom of p. 361, but the Hebrew has ‫שורה‬, which is not elsewhere
connected with raˉ h.ah or ᵓistiraˉ h.). At Guide II 45, the second view of prophecy, which is an intellectual
overflow manifesting itself through speech, is said to be present in the verse in Numbers 11:25, referred
to above in Guide I 40. Note that Samuel ibn Tibbon translates both raˉ h.ah and ᵓistiraˉ h. with menuh.ah,
suggesting that he considered the words to share the same meaning.
95. Pines trans., 162.

376
 On Platonic Punishments for Freethinkers
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 191.101.76.41, on 24 Mar 2019 at 10:25:07, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms.

that is, their theological arguments. Indeed, the Arabic word for speech here is kalaˉ m,
a word perhaps not unsuitable for the style of arguments of Eliphaz, Bildad, and
Zophar. Rest, in this view, means not speaking, or possibly not engaging in kalaˉ m.96
Let us now return to Maimonides’s promise of rest to the addressee of the
Guide. The first mention of it is ambiguous, permitting one to read all three mean-
ings of rest into it: pure intellectual apprehension, adopting and keeping acceptable
opinions, and refraining from speech. The second mention at the very end of the
introduction notes, “bodies will find rest [’istiraˉ h.] from their toil and from their
labor.”97 This cannot refer to rest as intellectual cognition, since that rest does
not involve bodies. It can only refer to the two other meanings of rest: adopting
and keeping acceptable opinions and refraining from speech. The addressee of
the Guide, then, can be expected to live among other members of his faith with
a quiet acceptance of their opinions. While this addressee may continue to
strive for pure intellectual cognition, also called rest by Maimonides, he is also
expected to adopt the other forms of rest: accepting, or at least not contradicting
the general opinions of his society. If indeed, the addressee of the Guide is one
who is in violation of the Mishneh Torah’s laws against freethinking, then he
can be expected to return to accept the common opinions, or at least refrain
from speaking about them after reading the Guide.98 That is, Maimonides’s
Guide could lead wayward, perplexed youths to a kind of σωφροσύνη.

96. Al-Ghazali also uses the term ᵓistiraˉ h. with reference to refraining from speech and instruc-
tion in his description of the period of his life when he gave up teaching religious matters in favor of a
life of seclusion. For al-Ghazali, however, ᵓistiraˉ h. is a negative term, one he employs to criticize himself
for refraining from teaching others. The negativity is emphasized in his pairing of the term with the
Arabic term kasal, “laziness.” See al-Munqidh min al-Dalal (Beirut: Dar al-Kutub al-ᶜIlmiyyah,
1988), 75. English translation by Joseph McCarthy in Freedom and Fulfilment (Boston: G. K. Hall,
1980), 106. I thank Dong Xiuyuan for pointing out this source to me.
97. Pines trans., 20 (translation modified).
98. This is apparently in many respects the view of Moses Nah.manides in his letter asking the
rabbis of northern France to repeal their ban on reading the Guide and the first book of the Mishneh
Torah (in Kitve rabenu Mosheh ben Nah.man [Jerusalem: Mosad Harav Kook, 2005/6], 339):

‫והוא ]הרמב"ם[ כמוכרח ואנוס לבנות ספר מפני פילוסופי יון שמה לנוס‬
?‫ אם טעיתם אחרי ראיותיהם‬,‫ השמעתם דבריהם‬,‫לרחוק מעל ארסטו וגליאנוס‬
,‫ הביטו וראו היש מכאוב כמכאובינו‬,‫לא אליכם רבותינו‬
.‫ ויתגאלו בפת בג המלך וביין משתיהם‬,‫כי גלו בנים מעל שלחן אביהם‬

[Maimonides] was as one necessarily forced to construct a book [viz., the Guide of the
Perplexed] because of the philosophers of Greece—a book to which one can flee far
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0364009418000508

away from Aristotle and Galen. Have you heard their words, have you erred after
their proofs? Let it not come unto you, my masters! Behold, and see if there be any
pain like our pain [cf. Lamentations 1:12]. For children are banished from the table
of their fathers [cf. B. Berakhot 8a] and have defiled themselves with the king’s food
and with the wine which he drank [cf. Daniel 1:8, referring to Nebuchadnezzar’s non-
kosher meals of which Daniel refuses to partake].

This view is an expression of one common approach to the Guide that understands the work to be
addressed only to the navokh, i.e., the perplexed student, not the upright, pure believer. The latter

377
 Yehuda Halper
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 191.101.76.41, on 24 Mar 2019 at 10:25:07, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms.

*****
It is possible, then, to view the Guide of the Perplexed as a vehicle for phil-
osophical punishment for theoretical crimes, as defined in the Mishneh Torah and
perhaps also in Guide III 46. This notion of philosophical inquiry as punishment is
a Platonic notion that is seen most clearly in the Laws, where inquiry into the
divine only comes up in a developed way as a response to freethinking youth.99
That is, inquiry into the divine in the Laws develops out of a concern for protecting
the laws of the city. This is in contrast to Plato’s discussion of the development of
inquiry into the divine in book 2 of the Republic, where Socrates builds his
account of the divine prima facie as a preface to saying what kinds of speech, espe-
cially poetry, can be allowed in the city.100 That is, in the Republic, the account of
the divine determines the makeup of the city, while in the Laws the makeup of the
city, namely, the laws, determines the account of the divine. It is only in the
moderation-inducing prison that thoughtful but wayward-leaning youths are
able to publicly discuss the divine outside of concerns for the city. Once they
leave this prison, these youths are expected to keep their thoughts to themselves.
Maimonides’s Guide similarly provides a semipublic forum in the form of a pub-
licly disseminated book for the perplexed to ask questions explicitly forbidden in
the Mishneh Torah. After finishing the Guide, readers are encouraged to live in the
city and quietly accept the traditional law.
Yet at the same time, the addressee of the Guide is encouraged to adopt intel-
lectual worship in III 51 and to strive for rest through pure intellectual cognition of
reality. This goal may not contradict Maimonides’s other goal of bringing bodily rest,
that is, moderation, since intellectual activity is a solitary pursuit. Indeed, it is clear
from numerous chapters throughout the Guide that nearly everyone who seeks
such intellectual activity is quite far from accomplishing it. It is possible, then, that
one could strive for perfect intellectual comprehension of reality while at the same
time quietly living in accord with the opinions and habits of one’s society.
Let us end by noting that the punishment that the violator of the Mishneh
Torah’s laws against freethinking faces in the Guide is in crucial respects the oppo-
site of the punishment Adam faced when he was expelled from the Garden of
Eden. Adam, according to Maimonides, enjoyed rest (raˉ h.ah) in Eden, until he
was punished with “work and toil.” This work and toil, it seems from the
context of Guide I 2, refers to opinions and politics. The body of the addressee
of the Guide is to “be eased of [its] toil and of [its] labor” and to find rest. In
one sense, the addressee can be made to go beyond opinions, habits, and politics
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0364009418000508

would read only the Mishneh Torah. See, e.g., the words of Joshua Rokeah., the Belzer Rebbe, cited in
Jacob Levinger, Maimonides as Philosopher and Codifier [in Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Mosad Bialik,
1989), 13. The Belzer Rebbe’s insistence that one need only study the Talmud is parallel to the
study of the laws, or perhaps the study of the book, the Laws, that the Athenian Stranger recommends
at various points in the Laws.
99. This notion of punishment may also be present in Plato’s Gorgias, which was almost cer-
tainly not available to Maimonides.
100. Plato, Republic 381b ff.

378
 On Platonic Punishments for Freethinkers
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 191.101.76.41, on 24 Mar 2019 at 10:25:07, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms.

to enjoy rest in intellectual apprehension, that is, to return to the Garden of Eden.
In another sense, the addressee of the Guide finds rest in quiet accommodation to
society. He thus both returns to Eden and lives in the world around him.

Yehuda Halper
Bar-Ilan University
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0364009418000508

379
View publication stats