[Avodah] AN INSTANCE OF THE 7th KIND OF CONTRADICTION IN THE MOREH NEVUCHIM

[Micha Berger]

On Tue, Jul 03, 2018 at 04:51:41PM -0400, H Lampel wrote:
: I have not really studied Strauss. But in almost every description of the
: Strausian approach I've seen, the Rambam, to avoid persecution, secretly
: believed in Aristotelian eternity, a belief the Rambam vociferously fought
: against as heretical, one that would undermine the entire Torah...

The way I understood estoricism is that Strauss believed the Rambam had
beliefs that the masses would consider heretical, and therefore he hid
them. Not that the Rambam himself thought he was being a heretic, or
that his position was inconsistent with Chazal's.

So, why couldn't he believe Chazal were hiding the same truths from
/their/ uneducated contemporaries?

:>    ... Although how the donkey could reach the level of knowledge the
:> Rambam would say would be necessary to experience a seikhel nivdal like
:> the mal'akh is beyond me. Leshitaso, was that the big neis?

: L'fi HaRambam, the entire episode was Bilaam's vision. He saw this
: story, including the donkey's seeing the angel and speaking to Bilaam
: [which was actually happening in the spiritual world, as you explain]
: being played out, meant to teach him the lessons he was meant to learn.
: This is how Abarbanel (on MN 2:42) explains the entire episode of the
: angels visiting Avraham, Sarai being in the tent and preparing food, etc.

Yes, that's who I cited.

But my problem stands. Bil'am saw a real event, and therefore he saw his
donkey having a real exchange with an angel. No problems with Bil'am's
witnessing the exchange, but I don't understand how the Rambam explains
that exchange itself.

However, the Rambam believes that nevu'ah comes from knowledge, and the
consequent connection to haSeikhel haPo'al / the Active Intellect. How
could the donkey have that exchange?

: As I wrote,
: >     The Rambam is explicitly speaking of contradicting /premises/ used
: >     to give evidence for a point, not contradicting /points/. ...
...
: In their Hebrew translations, Ibn Tibbon, Shem Tob, Efodi, as well as KPCH
: speak of contradicting hakdamos. Pines accordingly speaks of contradicting
: premises. Friedlander, however, speaks of contradicting solutions: "on
: one occasion the object which the author has in view may demand that
: the metaphysical problem be ‎treated as solved in one way, it may be
: convenient on another occasion to treat it as solved in the opposite‎way."

CC-ing RSM. Here's a link to the original.
http://www.teachittome.com/seforim2/seforim/moreh_nevuchim_arabic.pdf#page=22
(Page 22 of the pdf, page 11 of the book, the 7th reason starts on
line 7.)

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             Life isn't about finding yourself.
micha at aishdas.org        Life is about creating yourself.
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