Abstract
Maimonides’ Eight Chapters is the introduction to his commentary on Pirqei Avot, a Talmudic tractate popularly known as “Ethics of the Fathers.” This work of Maimonides clearly has its roots in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, which furnishes a model for the first phase of Eight Chapters, before it turns in the last two chapters to matters of particular biblical concern: an opening analysis of the human soul leads to a consideration of virtues and vices, understood as health and disease of soul, arriving at a peak in Ch. 5, with contemplation—the perception of God—as the single goal for all the powers of the soul. In the sixth and pivotal chapter, Maimonides speaks for the first time of a conflict between the sages and the philosophers: while both accept the distinction between virtue and self-restraint, or vice and akrasia, they disagree about which condition is superior to the other. Maimonides ends the chapter with a claim to have offered an analysis of “marvelous subtlety,” which exhibits a “wonderful reconciliation of the two views.” This chapter suggests how that “reconciliation” may in fact imply two very different perspectives on the human condition.
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Notes
- 1.
For these quotations, see Weiss and Butterworth (1983, 60 and 80), Aristotle (2011), and Halper (2011, 195). I am grateful to Ed for inviting me to participate in a panel he organized at the Academy for Jewish Philosophy in the American Philosophical Association meeting, December 2006. The roots of this paper go back to that occasion, and Ed’s comments inspired me to continue with the exciting but challenging study of Maimonides.
- 2.
Maimonides’ defense of anonymity is especially striking in light of the fact that, in Pirqei Avot itself (6.6), repeating a statement in the name of the speaker is said to bring redemption to the world. See Halper, “Maimonides’ Aristotelianism in the Eight Chapters,” paper based on a talk delivered at the Society for Jewish Studies, December 2004, ms., 1.
- 3.
See especially Aphorisms 1 through 21, in Butterworth (2001, 11–22). All subsequent references to Selected Aphorisms are from this translation.
- 4.
The notable exception is friendship, the most extended topic of Aristotle’s Ethics, to which Maimonides in fact alludes in his commentary on Avot I.6: “Acquire a friend for yourself.”
- 5.
On this characterization of the movement of the argument of the Ethics, see my Introduction, especially pp. 6–8, in Burger (2008).
- 6.
In Ch. 7, which begins for the first time with references to Midrash, Haggadah, and Talmud, we watch Greek philosophy get transformed into Biblical and Rabbinic language, as the vices, which were originally diseased states of the soul, become the “veils” through which the prophets are said to see God (Weiss and Butterworth, 82). The eighth and final chapter takes up the subject of responsibility for action, in light of the distinctively biblical problem of justifying divine punishment if God preordains human action.
- 7.
All quotations from and references to pagination of the Eight Chapters are from Weiss and Butterworth (1983).
- 8.
Aristotle notes that the function of desire, insofar as it can listen to reason, could be subsumed under the rational part of the soul, but when he returns to an analysis of the soul in Ch. 1 of Book VI, as the basis for the treatment of intellectual virtues, he does not bring up desire, but divides the rational part of the soul into a theoretical and a practical function, whose respective virtues are prudence and wisdom.
- 9.
Maimonides follows Alfarabi here almost word for word. See Aphorism 7 (14).
- 10.
Aristotle raises but brushes aside the question whether speaking of “parts” of the soul means divisions like parts of the body or only distinctions in speech (Ethics 1102a29–31). Maimonides seems much more concerned with emphasizing the unitary character of the soul of man, so any power within it that seems to be shared with other animals is not in fact the same in another species: the nutritive part in the human soul is not the same as in a donkey. Whatever the case may be with other species, the unity of the human soul is apparently due to the intellect, if, as Maimonides concludes, intellect stands to the other powers as form does to matter.
- 11.
We might think of the “delight to the eye” that the first woman perceived in the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil (Gen. 3:6).
- 12.
Once more, Maimonides follows Alfarabi. See Aphorism 4 (32).
- 13.
See Aphorisms 4–5 (12–13).
- 14.
With Eight Chapters’ first set of biblical citations, Maimonides seems to acknowledge these possibilities:
-
1.
“For in the stubbornness of my heart I walk” (Deut. 29:18):
those who recognize their illness but continue pursuing their pleasures.
-
2.
“The way of the fool is straight in his eyes, but he who listens to counsel is wise” (Prov. 12:15):
The first phrase, as Maimonides notes, characterizes those who do not recognize their illness, which the biblical passage contrasts with the wisdom of those who listen to counsel; but Maimonides does not characterize as wise one who simply “accepts the opinion of the wise man.”
-
3.
“There is a way which seems straight to a man, but its end is the ways of death” (Prov. 14:12):
those who do not recognize their illness and do not submit to medical treatment.
-
4.
“The way of the wicked is like darkness; they know not why they stumble” (Prov. 4:19):
those, as Maimonides put it, “whose souls are sick and who do not know what is harmful or useful to them.”
-
1.
- 15.
See the last note in this chapter.
- 16.
See Nicomachean Ethics II.8. 1108b20–26.
- 17.
See Nicomachean Ethics II.8, 1108b31–1109a19.
- 18.
The “virtuous man” referred to here is, in Maimonides’ Mishneh Torah, “Laws Concerning Character Traits” Ch. 1, the “pious man,” who moves away from a haughty heart to the opposite extreme, in contrast to “the wise man,” who moves only to the mean of humility. Acting “inside the line of the law,” Maimonides remarks in that context, characterizes the behavior of the pious, who direct themselves away from the mean toward one extreme (29–30).
- 19.
In the last chapter of Ethics II, Aristotle revises the original discussion of the mean as a standard and introduces the need for a “second sailing” (1109a35): one cannot aim directly at the mean but must incline toward the opposite of the extreme most opposed to the mean, in general or for oneself individually.
- 20.
“Maimonides’ central move,” as Halper puts it, “is to identify obeying the commandments with the repeated performance of virtuous acts: both are repetitive acts that habituate the desires and so instill moral virtue in the soul. The equation assumes that the commandments dictate actions that are in accordance with the mean” (Halper 2004, 2–3).
- 21.
It is by denying the status of the moral virtues as ends in themselves, Ralph Lerner observes, that Maimonides’ argument can hold out “the possibility of bridging the chasm between the philosophers’ understanding of ethics, on the one hand, and that of Scripture and the Talmudic sages, on the other (2000, 68).
- 22.
Maimonides does not explain the “greatness and magnificence of this notion.” One wonders if he could be driving at something like the radical consequences Socrates implies in Republic IV, when he identifies justice as health of soul and insists that everything else should be called just or unjust only insofar as it enhances or harms this proper inner order (443e–444a). Discussing the problem Maimonides faces in his effort to explain certain secrets of the Law, when such explanation in public is forbidden, Leo Strauss (1963, xv) observes: “Maimonides transgresses the Law ‘for the sake of heaven,’ i.e. in order to uphold or to fulfill the Law.”
- 23.
Socrates could not accept that, when knowledge (epistēmē) is present in a person, something contrary could prevail and “drag it around like a slave” (Ethics 1145b24–25). Aristotle alludes to Plato’s Protagoras , where Socrates questions the Sophist whether he shares the opinion of the many, who “think about knowledge as they do about a slave, that it is dragged around by all else.” Or does he believe that “if in fact someone knows the good things and the bad, he won’t be overpowered by anything so as to do anything other than what knowledge bids him to do, but rather prudence is competent to come to the person’s aid?” See Protagoras 352a–c, translated by Bartlett (2004).
- 24.
See my analysis in Burger (2008), especially 143–145 and 151–152.
- 25.
The self-restrained person, Maimonides adds, can replace the virtuous in most things, paraphrasing Alfarabi. See Aphorism 14 (19). On Alfarabi’s ranking of the two conditions, see note 30 below.
- 26.
Maimonides cites one other line from Proverbs that is supposed to show the “speeches of the Law” in agreement with the philosophers: “A joy to the righteous is the doing of justice, but dismay to evil-doers” (21:15). That statement does imply the Aristotelian notion that there is a pleasure accompanying virtuous action when it flows from a virtuous character; it is not clear, however, that the evil-doers who perform just actions without any satisfaction are necessarily the self-restrained, and not just those acting under some external source of compulsion.
- 27.
See Weiss and Butterworth (1983, 79). Butterworth and Weiss do not provide a reference for this passage, but refer to the Sifra to Lev. 20:26, where a similar statement is attributed to R. Elazer ben Azariah (101n10).
- 28.
See Aristotle Topics I.1. Cf. Nicomachean Ethics VII. 1145b2–8.
- 29.
These are five of the seven Noahide commandments, which Maimonides discusses in his Mishneh Torah “Laws of Kings and Their Wars.” He does not speak of these commandments as natural law, Leo Strauss observes, since, for one thing, he considers the prohibition against incest or inchastity to belong to revealed laws. See Strauss (1973, 97n4).
- 30.
Alfarabi contrasts the self-restrained person, who “does the actions of the traditional law, while his yearning is for their contrary,” with the individual possessing the virtue of moderation who “does only what traditional law requires of him with respect to eating, drinking, and sexual intercourse, without having a desire or a longing for what is in addition to what the traditional law requires” (19, Aphorism 14). He goes on to distinguish the case in which virtue is superior from the one in which self-restraint is superior—a ranking based, not on different actions, but different classes of individuals: natural virtue is preferable for the ruler, restraining oneself in accordance with what nomos requires is preferable for the ruled (Aphorism 15). If Maimonides had Alfarabi’s distinction in mind, his analysis of the different rankings of virtue and self-restraint would imply that the philosophers find their standard in the ruler, the sages in the ruled.
- 31.
Avot begins: “Moses received the Torah at Sinai and handed it on to Joshua, Joshua to elders, and elders to prophets. And prophets handed in on to the men of the great assembly.”
- 32.
Maimonides returns to Rabban ben Gamliel: he did not try to prevent anyone from claiming “I do not want to kill, or steal, or lie,” but only traditionally forbidden actions—eating meat with milk, wearing mixed fabric, or engaging in illicit sexual unions. Maimonides does not dispute the inclusion here of “illicit sexual unions” in the class of traditional laws, after just referring to a Talmudic passage (Yoma 67b) that places such actions among the generally accepted things. The status of “illicit sexual unions” looks like a particularly controversial issue for the separation of the two categories of law.
- 33.
Halper (2004, 13) notes the seemingly inconsistent way Maimonides speaks of certain prohibitions—forbidden foods as well as sexual relations—which in Ch. 6 he seems to designate “statutes” (huqqim) rather than commandments, while in Ch. 4 (71–72), he includes them among commandments whose purpose is to move us far from the extreme of lust toward the other extreme, insensibility, in order to inculcate the mean disposition of moderation. Since Ch. 4 is concerned with the aim of all divine laws to foster virtue, “commandment” may be meant to designate the genus, like mitzvot in Guide III.26. Still, when Maimonides includes “illicit sexual unions” among traditional laws in Ch. 6, perhaps he does put into question, as Raymond Weiss (1991, 76) observes, the usefulness of such laws for moral training.
- 34.
See the Guide of the Perplexed, especially III.26 (Pines 1963, 508).
- 35.
The huqqim or religious laws, Halper (2011, 194) argues, can be understood as ruses or devices that operate indirectly to produce decent social conditions, without their utility being apparent to the person who observes them.
- 36.
Halper (2004, 1) calls attention to this connection in “Maimonides’ Aristotelianism in Eight Chapters.”
- 37.
This would include Saadia Gaon, who distinguishes, among the laws God gave us through the prophets, those our reason recognizes as good or bad from those tradition imposes on us. In the one class, God has implanted a sense of approval or disapproval in our reason, whereas the Law has made the others objects of commandment or prohibition and reason passes no judgment. Those sorts of commandments are imposed primarily for us to be rewarded for obedience, although, Saadia remarks, he can discern some minor motives that explain them. While Saadia includes adultery, along with bloodshed, theft, and falsehood among laws of reason, he speaks of prohibitions against certain forms of sexual intercourse as traditional laws. See Altmann (2002, 94–100).
- 38.
We now understand better why, as the title of Ch. 2 indicated, the presence of a virtuous disposition is not identical with obedience to the Law: obedience could result from self-restraint as much as from a virtuous disposition, or indeed, more clearly through self-restraint.
- 39.
Maimonides puts this distinction to work when he identifies only the first two propositions of the Decalogue as “rational”—knowable by human speculation alone—while the other commandments belong to the class of generally accepted opinions or those adopted by tradition (Guide II. 33). Cf. Strauss (1973, 97).
- 40.
In quoting Genesis 3, Maimonides refers to “good and evil,” which seems to be the knowledge required by Elohim in the sense introduced at the beginning of Guide I.2—the rulers governing the cities. The result, though, of acquiring the forbidden knowledge is a descent from apprehending only truth and falsehood to discerning things as “fine and bad” (or “noble and base”), and that dichotomy leaves open the status of good and evil.
- 41.
Eight Chapters
Nicomachean Ethics
Ch. 2
Ch. 4
Book II
Moderation
Insensibility—moderation—lust
Cowardice—courage—rashness
Liberality
Miserliness—liberality—extravagance
Insensibility—moderation—indulgence
Justice
Cowardice—courage—rashness
Stinginess—liberality—prodigality
Gentleness
Dullness—wittiness—buffoonery
Meanness—magnificence—vulgarity
Humility
Abasement—humility—haughtiness
Smallness of soul—greatness of soul—vanity
Contentment
Stinginess—generosity—prodigality
Lack of love of honor—anonymous—love of honor
Courage
Laziness—contentment—greed
Unirascibility—gentleness—irascibility
Servility—gentleness—irascibility
Surliness—friendliness—obsequiousness
Shyness—modesty (shame)—impudence
Irony—sincerity—boastfulness
Boorishness—wittiness—buffoonery
Bashfulness—shame (not a virtue)—shamelessness
Schadenfreude—nemesis (not a virtue)—envy
Works Cited
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Burger, R. (2022). VIRTUE AND SELF-RESTRAINT: Maimonides’ Dialogue with Aristotle in Eight Chapters. In: Bloom, D., Bloom, L., Byrd, M. (eds) Knowing and Being in Ancient Philosophy. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-98904-0_10
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