Religion in the west today is almost universally associated—by adherents and detractors alike—with the belief in a 'personal' God—that is, a God who has a psychology somewhat similar to that of a human being: God created the world and is involved in it; prayers are listened to and answered; God punishes the wicked and rewards the good. Miracles happen. God is good, just, all-knowing, all-powerful. For more orthodox believers, God is an arch-conservative; for liberals, God is often very concerned with social justice. And, according to the terminology employed by most people today, someone who doesn't believe in any of this stuff is an atheist. Or at least an agnostic.
But these matters weren't always viewed that way. In the Middle Ages, there were many religious philosophers—mostly Muslims and a few important Jews—who thought in ways that in some senses might today be called secular. Many subscribed to one of various kinds of 'naturalistic' worldviews according to which 'the world runs according to its natural course' (ha'olam keminhago noheg), and God does not (or cannot) interrupt the natural course of nature. Some, such as the Muslim philosopher Averroes, and the Jewish philosopher Gersonides, did not subscribe to the belief that God created the world out of nothing; the world (or at least the matter from which everything in it is made) is, according to them, eternal. And some thinkers—such as the great mediaeval Jewish philosopher, Moses Maimonides, famous for his Jewish legal works and his medical writings as well as for his philosophical treatise, the Guide of the Perplexed, held views about God's essence that can fairly be described as agnostic. This aspect of Maimonides' thought was not at odds with his religious outlook; on the contrary, it was a deeply religious form of agnosticism.
I should add here that I have a particular meaning of the word 'agnostic' in mind here. The term is used in (at least) two ways: The first definition, referred to above, sees agnosticism as a statement of uncertainty about whether a particular statement is true or not; in this case, whether or not 'God exists'. This use of the term assumes an agreed meaning to the claim that 'God exists', which some people agree with, others disagree with, and some are uncertain about. It is these unsure people who are referred to as 'agnostic' according to the first, more shallow, definition of the term.
There is also a deeper sense in which the word is used. This use of the term 'agnostic' involves a far more radical kind of unknowing, tied to a recognition of the limits of human cognition and of religious language. The meaning of God's 'existence' is emptied of anything that we can know about or meaningfully discuss. This kind of religious posture entails standing in awe before the radically incomprehensible; it lacks knowledge not because it is 'not (yet) convinced', but because there is nothing that can be known.
It is in this second sense that Maimonides was agnostic. He put forward, as I hope to briefly show here, a conception of God—or, rather, a non-conception of God—very different to the 'personal' God that is often associated with religious thought.
Maimonides devotes a number of chapters of the Guide to the problem of religious language (Book I, chapters 50-60). I'm going to try to sum up some of the important aspects of his argument here; the material is taken from a number of chapters (not necessarily in order), primarily: I:50, I:54 and I:56.
Maimonides’ starting point is God’s total otherness. If the claim that God is one, unique, is to be taken seriously, then we cannot really say anything at all about God's attributes. God, according to Maimonides, cannot be described in terms of any features that are transient, like being 'old', or 'happy' ('accidental attributes'). This is fairly uncontroversial. But Maimonides goes further than this: As well as lacking any 'accidental' features, God also has no 'essential attributes'; that is, we cannot talk about God as having any defining features, like absolute power, knowledge or goodness.
Religious language, words that are used to describe God, are for Maimonides equivocal: They are used about God in a way that is in no way similar to the way that they are used about anything in the world. Maimonides rails against those who have misunderstood the religious use of words such as 'wise', 'good', 'powerful', in describing God. Some, he complains, have understood the difference between our use of these words in describing human beings or other things in the world, on one hand, and God, on the other, as a difference of degree rather than kind. An aged university professor is very, very wise. God's wisdom is much, much, much, much greater. Barack Obama is powerful, as is a D9 bulldozer, albeit in a very different way. God is exponentially more powerful than both.
This conception of God, claims Maimonides—and here I am merely paraphrasing, though I think I'm doing justice to his sentiment—is bullshit. Why? Because when we use the same vocabulary to describe two different things, there is an implied similarity between the two. To adapt an example that Maimonides himself brings: A mustard grain is very small; a planet is very big.* But in a certain sense, they are similar: Both exist in time and space and can be described in terms of size. Those people who describe God as super-powerful, super-wise, etc, are presenting God as a planet in comparison to a mustard-grain. Maimonides rejects this conception outright.
Since God is totally other, totally unique, words that are used in describing God are actually being employed as homonyms, that is, words that look the same but have two different, unrelated meanings. The word 'bank' can refer to the place where I deposit my savings, or it can refer to the side of a river—there is no connection between the two meanings. So too, claims Maimonides, words such as 'good', 'powerful', and 'wise' carry one meaning when used to describe anything at all in the world except for God, and another to describe God. And these meanings are unrelated. In the traditional sense of our understanding of these words, then, it would actually be incorrect to say that God is powerful, or that God is wise, or even—and Maimonides himself brings this example—even, that God exists. When we use any of these words with respect to God, they lose their regular meaning altogether. To paraphrase Maimonides once more: God is 'powerful', but not in power; God is 'wise' but not in wisdom; God 'exists' but not in existence.
This leads us to a very important question: If these words don't carry their regular meaning, and if they can't be used to say anything substantive about God's essence, what is their purpose? Why not get rid of religious language altogether? Maimonides does not call for an end to the use of religious language. Rather, he offers two ways in which religious language can be understood in the context of a radically agnostic worldview:
First, words can be used to describe what Maimonides calls God's ‘attributes of action’. What he means by this, is that religious language that is seemingly being used to say something about God, is actually referring to one or another feature of the natural order. If, says Maimonides, a given feature was produced by a person, we would describe them as having a particular trait. When we use such a feature in talking about God, what we really mean is that an aspect of creation (ie the natural order), if it were formed by a human, then that human would likely be described as having this attribute. Thus, for example, the natural order of the world is such that embryos are able to find surroundings that help them to survive; natural conditions are such that they are able to grow and develop. If I had established this set of conditions, I might be called ‘gracious’. By calling God 'gracious', what we are really saying, according to Maimonides, is that the world's natural order has aspects that are experienced as beneficial. Similarly, there are earthquakes and natural disasters; if you had inflicted them, you would possible be described as 'jealous' or 'zealous'; this is all that is meant when these traits are attributed to God.
In other words, the statements made ‘about God’ in this form are actually not being made about God at all; they are being made about the world. But this does not lessen the importance of such statements for Maimonides. To know the world well, and to gain a thorough understanding of its natural order, is religiously significant—the better we know it and understand it, the more we are able to comprehend what God is not.
The second way in which Maimonides understands religious language is as negation. When a term is used in this way about God, it is not being used to say anything positive, but rather just to negate the truth of a different claim. For example, if I say that 'God is alive', I cannot mean, as we saw, that God 'lives' in the way that humans live. But my statement can be understood as a rejection of another, equally problematic claim: that God is dead. You might be thinking: This kind of speech tells us almost nothing! If the statement 'God is alive' really just means that God is neither dead nor alive in the sense that we normally use the word, what is the purpose of saying it at all? Maimonides suggests a reason to employ this kind of language, and in so doing we once again see his deep agnosticism come through: These statements, Maimonides claims, eliminate one by one the things that God is not. In some sense, this act brings us 'closer' to understanding God. But this increased 'closeness' is in a sense illusory, since these statements cannot ever tell us anything about what God is. What we have, then, is a kind of religious posture or stance in which the individual looks toward the unknown, walking infinitely in its direction, knowing that no destination will ever be reached.
The God that Maimonides 'believed' in cannot be described in any real way. Maimonides' God is not 'good', 'wise', or 'powerful' in the senses in which we regularly employ these words. God also does not 'exist' in the sense in which we normally use that word. And when religious language is used, it is not really directed towards God. Its purpose is to understand the world and its natural order, or to further categorise the things that God is not.
Maimonides' religious outlook is one that is in awe of the consistency of the natural order of the world, and humbled by the limitations of human cognition and language in perceiving anything beyond that order. That which is beyond, which can't be described in any meaningful way, which is totally unknowable, Maimonides refers to as 'God'. Beyond that, he has nothing to say.
Different from the kinds of opinions we tend to associate with religion today, no?
There is also a deeper sense in which the word is used. This use of the term 'agnostic' involves a far more radical kind of unknowing, tied to a recognition of the limits of human cognition and of religious language. The meaning of God's 'existence' is emptied of anything that we can know about or meaningfully discuss. This kind of religious posture entails standing in awe before the radically incomprehensible; it lacks knowledge not because it is 'not (yet) convinced', but because there is nothing that can be known.
It is in this second sense that Maimonides was agnostic. He put forward, as I hope to briefly show here, a conception of God—or, rather, a non-conception of God—very different to the 'personal' God that is often associated with religious thought.
Maimonides devotes a number of chapters of the Guide to the problem of religious language (Book I, chapters 50-60). I'm going to try to sum up some of the important aspects of his argument here; the material is taken from a number of chapters (not necessarily in order), primarily: I:50, I:54 and I:56.
Maimonides’ starting point is God’s total otherness. If the claim that God is one, unique, is to be taken seriously, then we cannot really say anything at all about God's attributes. God, according to Maimonides, cannot be described in terms of any features that are transient, like being 'old', or 'happy' ('accidental attributes'). This is fairly uncontroversial. But Maimonides goes further than this: As well as lacking any 'accidental' features, God also has no 'essential attributes'; that is, we cannot talk about God as having any defining features, like absolute power, knowledge or goodness.
Religious language, words that are used to describe God, are for Maimonides equivocal: They are used about God in a way that is in no way similar to the way that they are used about anything in the world. Maimonides rails against those who have misunderstood the religious use of words such as 'wise', 'good', 'powerful', in describing God. Some, he complains, have understood the difference between our use of these words in describing human beings or other things in the world, on one hand, and God, on the other, as a difference of degree rather than kind. An aged university professor is very, very wise. God's wisdom is much, much, much, much greater. Barack Obama is powerful, as is a D9 bulldozer, albeit in a very different way. God is exponentially more powerful than both.
This conception of God, claims Maimonides—and here I am merely paraphrasing, though I think I'm doing justice to his sentiment—is bullshit. Why? Because when we use the same vocabulary to describe two different things, there is an implied similarity between the two. To adapt an example that Maimonides himself brings: A mustard grain is very small; a planet is very big.* But in a certain sense, they are similar: Both exist in time and space and can be described in terms of size. Those people who describe God as super-powerful, super-wise, etc, are presenting God as a planet in comparison to a mustard-grain. Maimonides rejects this conception outright.
Since God is totally other, totally unique, words that are used in describing God are actually being employed as homonyms, that is, words that look the same but have two different, unrelated meanings. The word 'bank' can refer to the place where I deposit my savings, or it can refer to the side of a river—there is no connection between the two meanings. So too, claims Maimonides, words such as 'good', 'powerful', and 'wise' carry one meaning when used to describe anything at all in the world except for God, and another to describe God. And these meanings are unrelated. In the traditional sense of our understanding of these words, then, it would actually be incorrect to say that God is powerful, or that God is wise, or even—and Maimonides himself brings this example—even, that God exists. When we use any of these words with respect to God, they lose their regular meaning altogether. To paraphrase Maimonides once more: God is 'powerful', but not in power; God is 'wise' but not in wisdom; God 'exists' but not in existence.
This leads us to a very important question: If these words don't carry their regular meaning, and if they can't be used to say anything substantive about God's essence, what is their purpose? Why not get rid of religious language altogether? Maimonides does not call for an end to the use of religious language. Rather, he offers two ways in which religious language can be understood in the context of a radically agnostic worldview:
First, words can be used to describe what Maimonides calls God's ‘attributes of action’. What he means by this, is that religious language that is seemingly being used to say something about God, is actually referring to one or another feature of the natural order. If, says Maimonides, a given feature was produced by a person, we would describe them as having a particular trait. When we use such a feature in talking about God, what we really mean is that an aspect of creation (ie the natural order), if it were formed by a human, then that human would likely be described as having this attribute. Thus, for example, the natural order of the world is such that embryos are able to find surroundings that help them to survive; natural conditions are such that they are able to grow and develop. If I had established this set of conditions, I might be called ‘gracious’. By calling God 'gracious', what we are really saying, according to Maimonides, is that the world's natural order has aspects that are experienced as beneficial. Similarly, there are earthquakes and natural disasters; if you had inflicted them, you would possible be described as 'jealous' or 'zealous'; this is all that is meant when these traits are attributed to God.
In other words, the statements made ‘about God’ in this form are actually not being made about God at all; they are being made about the world. But this does not lessen the importance of such statements for Maimonides. To know the world well, and to gain a thorough understanding of its natural order, is religiously significant—the better we know it and understand it, the more we are able to comprehend what God is not.
The second way in which Maimonides understands religious language is as negation. When a term is used in this way about God, it is not being used to say anything positive, but rather just to negate the truth of a different claim. For example, if I say that 'God is alive', I cannot mean, as we saw, that God 'lives' in the way that humans live. But my statement can be understood as a rejection of another, equally problematic claim: that God is dead. You might be thinking: This kind of speech tells us almost nothing! If the statement 'God is alive' really just means that God is neither dead nor alive in the sense that we normally use the word, what is the purpose of saying it at all? Maimonides suggests a reason to employ this kind of language, and in so doing we once again see his deep agnosticism come through: These statements, Maimonides claims, eliminate one by one the things that God is not. In some sense, this act brings us 'closer' to understanding God. But this increased 'closeness' is in a sense illusory, since these statements cannot ever tell us anything about what God is. What we have, then, is a kind of religious posture or stance in which the individual looks toward the unknown, walking infinitely in its direction, knowing that no destination will ever be reached.
The God that Maimonides 'believed' in cannot be described in any real way. Maimonides' God is not 'good', 'wise', or 'powerful' in the senses in which we regularly employ these words. God also does not 'exist' in the sense in which we normally use that word. And when religious language is used, it is not really directed towards God. Its purpose is to understand the world and its natural order, or to further categorise the things that God is not.
Maimonides' religious outlook is one that is in awe of the consistency of the natural order of the world, and humbled by the limitations of human cognition and language in perceiving anything beyond that order. That which is beyond, which can't be described in any meaningful way, which is totally unknowable, Maimonides refers to as 'God'. Beyond that, he has nothing to say.
Different from the kinds of opinions we tend to associate with religion today, no?
Posts
Very interesting and thought provoking
ReplyDeleteThank you!
ReplyDeleteMaimonides is my favorite Jewish scholar. He is the reason why, when someone asks me if I am jewish, I reply with the following question: it depends on how you define the word "jewish".
ReplyDeleteReading his work also reinforces my dislike of orthodoxy: human cognition is limited and g-d can never be fully known by human beings. Contrast that with religious fanatics who are certain the know the right way and use that "knowledge" to commit all kinds of perversions.
Maimonides also brings to mind the similarities between his conception of judaism and buddhism: all is one, and any ultimate reality or G-d cannot be fully known.
Maimonides is required reading for anyone interested in these types of metaphysical questions.