[Avodah] Truth and the Rambam

[Micha Berger]

RDR wrote a number of replies to my position / personally troubling
problem with the Rambam. I'm going to reorder his points to deal with
the logically prior first.

The emails were at
    Tue, Oct 12, 2010 at 8:00:49pm EDT
    Thu, Oct 14, 2010 at 1:59:30pm EDT
    Thu, Oct 14, 2010 at 6:59:39pm EDT

So, on Tues RDR wrote:
> 3.  Truth:  I think the Rambam changed his mind about TruthwithacapitalT  
> between the time he wrote the introduction to ShM and the time he wrote  
> the MN.  At the earlier time he thought that great metaphysical truths  
> were embedded deep in the details of halacha; by the later time he  
> thought that they were to be found in aggadta, and that halachot had  
> general significance, but the minutae of halachot did not.  Hence, for  
> example, he casts aspersions on "havayyot d'Abbaye v'Rava" in one of his  
> letters.

To which he added on Thu afternoon:
> I realize once again that I don't fully understand RMB's claim.   
> According to the Rambam man's telos is the study of metaphysics...
>                                                        Halacha is a  
> means of setting up a community which enables that goal, and hence  
> summarizing halacha in a way that will leave more time for the study of  
> metaphysics is a contribution to man's telos.  The study of the minutae  
> of halacha, except in a few incidental details, is not.

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).

So bichlal I would say the Rambam's notion of life's purpose is more
the study of theology than metaphysics. The Rambam explains that it it
yichud hayodei'ah vehaYadu'ah which enables a person who knows more about
the Borei to gain nitzchiyus into Olam haBa. Form is internalized as
inFORMation. When you think of a table, you have the tzurah of a table,
often an incomplete one, in your head. Nitzchiyus is part of the Tzelem
whose tzurah we internalize through yedi'ah.

Returning to RDR of Thur afternoon:
> What's unclear to me is RMB's understanding of the Rambam's  
> understanding of the relationship between halachic study and man's  
> telos.  If halachic study is the search for Truth, is it an example of  
> man's telos, or not?

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.

On Tue RDR wrote:
> 1.  Clutter:  The Rambam did not like clutter...
> He did not like the idea that Moses might not have been able to give  
> decisive answers to any halachic query...
> I suspect that it really bothered him that the 13 midot shehatorah  
> nidreshet bahem do not yield unique answers...
> 2.  Psak:  The Darkei Moshe uses the inspired phrase "nohagin lifsok"  
> and variants thereof quite often....
> The Rambam knew quite well that by the time of the Holy Babylonian  
> Talmud there were machloksim in just about everything, and he knew quite  
> well that often klalei hapsak do not yield unique solutions..

And on Thu, Oct 14, 2010 at 05:57:09PM -0400, R Zvi Lampel commented:
> The Rambam says in Sefer HaMItzvos Shoresh Shayni that "rov" laws were  
> deduced by them, and being that there were thousands that Osniel ben  
> Kenaz reconstructed, the Rambam says, the number that were not forgotten  
> must have been much more.

So, neither derashah nor sevarah yeild unique solutions, most dinim come
from derashah. And some Truths are miSinai, and some truths are those
derivations a Sanhedrin chooses to make law.

Leshitas haRambam, machloqes is only when deriving laws for which the
methods allow multiple answers, and that in arguments over interpretation
of existing law, one is beta'us.

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. The notion that a law could
be left blurry around the edges and solidified through interpretation
and shaped through reinterpretation -- eg a new pesaq becomes more
commonplace -- simply isn't within his codicil.

And while the haqdamah to the Yad talks about the authority of a rav
on the community to whom his pesaqim are nispashetim (and no others),
recall that this is only within the context of this limited definition
of the role of pesaq.

E.g. Within the Rambam's system, only one tzad can be right about mayim
acharonim -- whichever one happens to match the daas of the beis din
that enacted it. The fact that Ashkenazim follow the Tosafos (which fits
the Y-mi's only mentioning melach sedomis with no comparisons to mayim
rishonim, and thus was likely Ashkenazi pesaq ever since EY Jews from
Italy got there) would not make it more permissable for us to be lenient.
Since he holds Tosafos are wrong on this, their ruling is ta'us, not
eilu va'eilu, nispasheit doesn't matter.

RDR, Tues again:
> that the Rambam thought he was doing just what the Rama later described;  
> he was writing a book of normative practice for Egyptian Jewry.

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.

Now for R David Riceman's Thu evening post:
>> So, he cataloged the pesaqim as he saw them. That's not to establish
>> precedent. That's to enable people to find the truths he did in an easy
>> organized way, rather than needing to know Mishnah, Tosefta, medrashei
>> halakhah, Y-mi, and Bavli well enough to find them, to be able to figure
>> out a pesaq from a shaqla vetarya, etc..

> But the "people" who can't go back and determine the meaning of "the
> original taqanah, derashah, or pasuq" because the MT lacks footnotes
> will perforce lack "authority". So what good has he done?

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.

...
>> #42 in the haqdamah says the Yad is "kedei shelo yehei adam tzarikh
>> lechibut acheir be'olam bedin". Which is why he called it MISHNEH Torah.

>> However, in Hil TT he tells you the role of mishnah, and how a talmud
>> chakham is supposed to go beyond it to gemara, such that only "betechilas
>> talmudo shele'adam" (TT 1:12) would someone spend even 1/3 of his time
>> on the mode of study called mishnah. Leshitaso, "mishnah" is somewhat
>> more than zil kerei bei rav, but still, future pesaq comes from gemara
>> (1:11), not mishnah. Including not Mishneh Torah, which was so that
>> "ad sheyei TSBP kulah sedurah befi haqol" -- for the masses.

> No, gemara is analysis, not a text "He should deduce conclusions from
> premises... how permitted and prohibited, etc. are deduced from the oral
> law.(1:11)" That can be done using the MT as a base text. Gemara also
> includes metaphysics: "and the subjects called pardes [cf. HYhT 4:13]
> are considered part of Talmud (1:12)."

It can't be done using MT as a beis text. 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".

The MT is for the masses, who are still at 1/3 talmud, and aren't going
to be taking their conclusions down to lemaaaseh action.

>> In the letter I'm discussing, the Rambam tells chakhmei Luneil to study
>> the topic for themselves, and if they find an error, they should rule
>> according to their own correction.

> You are correct that the Rambam views that as the correct way for them
> to pasken. In his letter to his own student, however, he tells him to
> study MT and Rif, and to look at the gemara only when they disagree.
> I suspect that, while he respected the old school of students of Talmud,
> he was trying to establish a new school.

Here's how I saw it:

The Rambam tells his students to use their brains to find original intent.
He says the same thing to chakhmei Luneil. That fits his explanation of
what machloqes comes from -- only when new law is created.

To chakhmei Luneil, who aren't his talmidim, he tells them that their
understanding could well be different than his, and it could simply
be that he erred. In which case, they should follow the Luneilian
understanding of original intent.

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. And recall that he said that
this "original intent" thing was not what his predecesors -- including
the Rif -- did. So, if handed down interpretation and the Rambam don't
match, that's where talmidim should spend their time looking for their
own understanding of the original record.

:-)BBii!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             "Man wants to achieve greatness overnight,
micha at aishdas.org        and he wants to sleep well that night too."
http://www.aishdas.org         - Rav Yosef Yozel Horwitz, Alter of Novarodok
Fax: (270) 514-1507