Maimonides' Guide shaped Aquinas and later Western thought

Person: Moses Maimonides
Lived: c. 1138–1204
Field: Law, philosophy, medicine
From: Andalusian-Egyptian

The story

Moses ben Maimon, known as Maimonides or Rambam, was born in Córdoba in 1138, when the city was under Muslim rule and stood among the great intellectual centres of the world. After the Almohads conquered the region in 1148 and demanded that non-Muslims convert, his family left, living in Fez in Morocco and then briefly in the Land of Israel, before settling at Fustat near Cairo. There he became the greatest Jewish philosopher of the Middle Ages.

By then he had finished a commentary on the Mishnah and was deep into the Mishneh Torah, his great code of Jewish law. In 1176 he began a different kind of book. The Guide of the Perplexed, written in Arabic and completed in 1190, takes the form of a letter to an advanced former student who was torn between his commitment to Jewish tradition and his commitment to reason and science.

Maimonides argued that the two need not conflict. Much of the Guide explains biblical words that seem to give God a body or human feelings, and shows that they must be read figuratively. He insisted that all attempts to picture God in human terms are mistaken, and that we can speak truly of God mainly by saying what God is not. He also argued that some great questions, such as whether the universe was created or eternal, cannot be settled by logic alone.

The book was controversial. Some rabbis banned it, and copies were burned in Paris in 1233. But its reach grew steadily. Samuel ibn Tibbon translated it into Hebrew around the time of Maimonides' death in 1204, and Latin versions followed. It came to be regarded as a Jewish scholastic Summa. Thomas Aquinas referred to "Rabbi Moses" in several works and shared his view that creation cannot be proved by demonstration, and A Muslim philosopher, al-Tabrizi, wrote a commentary on part of it, and it remains in print in Arab countries.

Later generations wrote extensive commentaries on the Guide, and his ideas influenced thinkers as diverse as Baruch Spinoza, Gottfried Leibniz and Isaac Newton. In 1985, on the 850th anniversary of his birth, scholars from around the world met at a UNESCO conference in Paris, where the scholar Shlomo Pines called him the most influential Jewish thinker of the Middle Ages and quite possibly of all time.

The Guide is still required reading in Jewish studies departments, and it remains a model for anyone trying to hold faith and critical thinking together with honesty.

Why it matters

By showing that careful reason and religious faith could talk to each other, Maimonides helped set the agenda for centuries of Jewish, Christian and Islamic philosophy.

About Moses Maimonides

The Rambam: refugee, court physician in Cairo and author of the Mishneh Torah and the Guide for the Perplexed, the most influential Jewish thinker of the Middle Ages.

Read the full profile

Moses Maimonides

c. 1138–1204 · Law, philosophy, medicine

View profile →