[Avodah] Fwd: Re: Truth and the Rambam

[David Riceman]

  On 10/15/2010 11:36 AM, Micha Berger wrote:
>  I understand the Rambam, the middle section of the Moreh cheileq III,
>  differently. I'm drawing mostly from peraqim 26-33, and the "approaching
>  the palace" mashal of 51.
>
>  Pereq 27 opens with the notion that mitzvos exist for 2 reasons, to
>  perfect the soul and to perfect the body. (Echos of Juvenal's "mens sana
>  in corpore sano", a quote from his poem Satire X". Another version uses
>  the word "anima", refering to nefesh rather than ruach, the rashei teivos
>  of which were adopted by sneaker company ASICS. Just to reiterate the
>  point that there are huge parallels between the Rambam's hashkafah and
>  the Greeks.)
>
>  He then continues that the latter is a precondition for the former.
>  That halakhah helps create an orderly body, notions of property and
>  society, in order to enable the refinemnt of the soul. And so, in total,
>  halakhah exists to refine the soul.
>
>  Pereq 28 concludes discusses laws that impart theological and metaphysical
>  truth.
>
>  Then he sets up pereq 32, which is about those laws aimed at traning
>  man away from AZ -- falsehood.
>
>  Last is 33, mastery of taavos. But as we saw in 26-27, these exist as
>  a necessary precondition to yedi'ah and inevitable expressions of it.
>  Thus true Yedi'ah is impossible without vehalakhta bidrakhav (pulling from
>  the end of Dei'os pereq 1 -- and note the dei'os - yedi'ah connection).
There's an important distinction in the Rambam between heretical ideas
(e.g., that God has a body, see
H. Teshuva 3:7 and Raavad ad. loc.) and false but not heretical ideas
(e.g., the denial of physical law, see MN I:73-76, and the denial of
human free will, see H. Teshuvah 5:1-3).

There's a second important terminological distinction: sometimes the
Rambam uses Torah in a wide sense, to
include philosophy, and sometimes in a narrow sense, to include only
interpretations of scripture or halacha.  See
the beginning of the Rambam's introduction to MN "It is not here
intended to explain all of these expression to ... those who confine
their attention to the study of the holy Law, I mean the canonical law
alone; for the true knowledge of the Torah is the special aim of this
and similar works (tr. Friedlander p. 2)," and see HYhT 4:13.

So yes, in addition to indirectly helping the study of metaphysics by
ensuring a settled community (cf. H. Teshuva 9:1) the Torah directly
helps by inculcating some metaphysical doctrines, but by no means all of
them.  See the Rambam's introductory epistle to the MN, where he
emphasizes the importance of studying philosophy in an orderly way, not
in the disorderly way induced by Talmud Torah.

To quote the palace metaphor "Those who arrive at the palace but go
round about it are those who devote themselves exclusively to the study
of the practical law; they believe traditionally in true principles of
faith, and learn the practical worship of God, but are not trained in
philosophic treatment of the principles of the Law, and do not endeavor
to establish the truth of their faith by proof. (tr. Friedlander pp.
384-385)"
>  RMB:
>  So bichlal I would say the Rambam's notion of life's purpose is more
>  the study of theology than metaphysics.
This is an anachronism; for the Rambam and his contemporaries theology
and metaphysics were the same subject.
>
>  RMB:
>  I see the Rambam as describing dinim as tools to enable the search for
>  Truth. So, I think he holds that halachic study is quite directly a
>  means of acheiving the telos of knowing theology.
See the citations above which stress the limits of "practical law" for
theology.
>
>  Thus, what the law was becomes a truth to track down. There is no legal
>  process shaping that law over time; pesaq is either getting to one's
>  best understanding of what Moshe was told, or an act of getting into
>  the heads of the enacting Beis Din. Original intent.
>
>  This is what I'm saying is uniquely Rambam.
Really? See Ish HaHalacha (tr. Kaplan pp.37-38): "The ideal of halakhic
man is the redemption of the world ... via the adaptation of empirical
reality to the ideal patterns of halakha."  Admittedly RYBS was
influenced by the Rambam.  But even the Ramban, in the introduction to
Milhamot HaShem, agrees that when the Rif's opinion seems inexplicable
we shouldn't take it as precedent.
>    RMB:
>  Except when he didn't actually write the practices as they were normative
>  in Egypt. The Rambam tried to /set/ normative practice, not recording
>  what was already accepted.
True.
>  RMB:
>  The posqim are the ones who are learning lower-case-g gemara, not just
>  relying on mishnah (Mishnah or Mishneh Torah). The hamon am who never
>  go beyond the MT aren't expected to have to detemine the original intent
>  of the law because they aren't to pasqen for themselves.
I think that's wrong.  Remember he advises his student to look at the
gemara only when the Rif and the Rambam disagree.  He was hoping to
supplant the gemara.
>
>  It can't be done using MT as a beis text.
Why not?
>    Going back to the haqdamah of
>  the Yad, he tells you that Mishnah, Sifra, Sifri, Tosefta, Yerushalmi
>  and Bavli (#40) are the necessary base texts in order to try to pull off
>  gemara to the extent of being able to be capable of pesaq -- "ve'achar
>  kakh yivada meihem hedrekh hanekhochah badevarim ha'asurim vehamutarim
>  ushe'ar dinei Torah hei'ach hi".
Before he accomplished his great feat of summarizing all of these sources.
>  RMB:
>  To his talmidim, who are also therefore indirectly the Rif's talmidim,
>  he tells them that the most likely places to find error are where he and
>  the Rif didn't reach the same conclusion.
Why does it matter whose talmidim they are? The halakha is only as they
themselves see it.  Furthermore, isn't it possible that the Rambam, who
was greatly influenced by the Rif, is likely to make the same error?

David Riceman