The Proof from the Negation of Corporeality to the Existence of the Intellect and the Doubt about the Distinction – Note (d) | Part I Chapter 73 (17) | Guide for the Perplexed 172 (Auto Translated)

Part I, Chapter 73: The Distinction Between Intellect and Imagination and the Negation of Corporeality

Review: Two Types of Proofs for the Difference Between Intellect and Imagination

We are at this point where he has proven to us the difference between intellect and imagination, right? And he said we essentially had two proofs, or two types of proofs, one could say, regarding things that the intellect proves exist or are true, and the imagination denies them.

First Example: The Sphericity of the Earth and the Relativity of Up and Down

He brought the example, he brought one example of this: that the world, the earth, is round, and people stand on both sides, and each one stands upright, right? Each one, his head is up and his feet are down, except that up and down are not absolute things as our imagination proves, because we have never experienced a reality of up and down that is relative, that is not something real, and therefore it is also impossible for us to picture in our imagination what this is even supposed to be, that up and down are not real things.

So our imagination says there is a contradiction here, as it were, a logical contradiction, which we claim is not a logical contradiction, because logic necessitates, the intellect proves that this is so. So we distinguish and say that this is not a logical contradiction but an imaginative contradiction—it is impossible to imagine this, it is impossible to picture this in the imagination, but it is indeed possible to picture this in the intellect.

As I explain, there is a very simple definition here, so up and down, they essentially need to be replaced with the words center and outer and inner, or central and less central. But this is a substitution that only the intellect can make and not the imagination. Because we do distinguish here up and down, that things fall down, and not, things don’t fall inward. So there is still this matter that we identified in our imagination as up and down, except that we say that this thing itself doesn’t work as our imagination expects it to work, right? That’s the first example.

Second Example: Lines That Approach Forever and Never Meet

He had a second example, perhaps more interesting, of non-meeting lines—sorry, lines that approach forever, approach infinitely and never meet, which our imagination says is impossible. If it stops approaching, then I understand that it never arrives, but if it never stops approaching, how can it be that lines never stop approaching but still never arrive?

And precisely from an intellectual perspective we can even prove—there are proofs. I said this, one can say this in a simple way, in the style we know, that the distance keeps dividing, and always, because it’s always possible to divide it further, there always remains space, right? Zeno’s paradox is based on this thought. And then it’s easy to show, right? Easy to prove intellectually that it will never arrive, even though it keeps approaching. But our imagination says, this is unacceptable, right? Yes, when it hears these sentences, approaches forever and doesn’t arrive, it says, there’s a contradiction here. But whoever studies mathematics or geometry or whatever it is, whatever the science is called exactly, that teaches this thing, will know that there is something else, that there are intellectual proofs that the imagination refuses to accept.

The Opposite Direction: The Intellect Negates What the Imagination Necessitates

Okay? And then, we are holding here essentially, I’ll start reading here. And he says like this, “And likewise be amazed at the demonstration,” so we have a demonstrative proof, “that negates what the imagination necessitates,” right? So first he brought negative examples, that the imagination negates them and the intellect necessitates them, and this is one way to show us this division between intellect and imagination, and one can go in the opposite direction and say that we have a demonstrative proof that necessitates the existence of a thing—sorry, the negation of a thing that the imagination says must exist.

The Negation of Corporeality: The Imagination Necessitates Corporeality

“And it is that the Name, may He be blessed, is a body or a force in a body.” He says the imagination necessitates that the Name, may He be blessed, be a body or a force in a body. And what does he mean by “necessitates”? He explains: “For there exists in the imagination only a body or something in a body.” That is, when we said that the imagination necessitates that the Name, may He be blessed, be a body or at least a force in a body—it could be an attribute of the body, or a force that exists within the body that depends on it—this is necessary on condition that the Name exists, right? Of course the imagination doesn’t prove that the Name exists. There could be imaginative proofs for the existence of God, but what he means when he says the imagination necessitates, is that for one who says the Name exists, then in the imagination there is only one type of existence, which is corporeal existence, right?

The Central Point: The Imagination Identifies Existence with Corporeality

And this is actually a proof even more, one could say, this is actually a definition or proof that perhaps best captures the division between intellect and imagination in the thought of the Guide of the Perplexed, and this is one of the things that runs throughout the entire first part of the Guide of the Perplexed. And I’ll show this in a moment, but what he’s saying is, in the imagination there are only two types of things: there are existing things and non-existing things, and existing things are identified with things that can be imagined, that is, and we understand that it’s impossible to imagine abstract things, things that don’t even have a force in a body, right, a force in a body perhaps can be imagined, it’s not clear, but somehow it can be imagined, right, one can imagine what we sometimes call perhaps the energy of motion, or the force of motion, the force of pleasure, perhaps one can imagine this, even though this too can only be imagined as a story, not as a static thing, so I think at least.

But the Rambam claims that one can imagine this, because our imagination recognizes not only static things, it also recognizes things that do things. So we can imagine in our head, right, on this screen of the imagination, we can run movies too, not just static pictures. And this would be, I think, the way to imagine a force in a body. But to say something doesn’t exist and isn’t a body, this is something the imagination contradicts, right?

The Connection to the Mutakallimun and the Negation of Corporeality

And indeed, I’m sure the Rambam brings this because the negation of corporeality from God is something that the Kalam, right, those we’ve been discussing here throughout the chapter and throughout this entire section, admit to. None of them says that the Name is a body, even though they do err in saying that He has attributes, right? We spoke about this in the chapters on attributes. And it could be that this is actually connected to the fact that it’s very difficult for them to imagine God as not a force in a body at all. But in any case, at least verbally they admit that the Name is not a body, and he says, here’s the proof that there are things that the imagination absolutely refuses to accept, only the intellect does. And there’s a structural reason why the imagination cannot accept this—the imagination will never understand, that is, according to its standards, God doesn’t exist, the non-corporeal God, because it only pictures corporeal things or things that are a force in a body.

Application: Chapter 1 of the Guide of the Perplexed — “Let Us Make Man in Our Image”

I think this is the most relevant point, the deepest foundation of all the arguments of the Guide of the Perplexed regarding the negation of corporeality, and I want to show this for a moment. In the first chapter of the book this is already written. The Rambam quotes that people thought that the Name has an image and form, from the verse “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness,” and he says like this: “And complete corporeality was necessitated for them and they believed in it.” Those who said that this verse is correct in its plain sense, complete corporeality was necessitated for them, that the Name is a complete body, “and they believed in it, and they feared,” these people saw that there is an argument, there is an argument that stands behind the identification of the Name as a corporeal thing.

The Imaginative Dilemma: Either Body or Non-Existent

“That if they separate from this belief,” if they give up this belief, “if they make a separation between themselves and this belief, they will deny Scripture,” that’s the first thing, they will go against Scripture, for Scripture says that the Name is an image, that man is in the image and likeness of his Creator, and behold, this says that the Name is in the form of man, the form of man in the imaginative sense of form, in the popular sense of form, which is image and shape.

So that’s one thing, and then there’s a second argument: “And they will also make the Name non-existent if He is not a body with a face and hand like them in image and shape.” This is the argument for which we have now learned the theoretical basis. The people said that if they don’t say that the Name has shape and form like man, that He has a hand and hands, hand and limbs etc., face and hand—face and hand are apparently two very central words in the scriptural descriptions of God. So they “will make the Name non-existent.” Why? Now we understand why. Because there exists in the imagination only things with bodies. So they have only a simple dilemma: either He doesn’t exist or He is a body. There is no third option, right?

The Imaginative Compromise: A “More Elevated” Body

And then the Rambam adds, “except that He is greater and brighter according to their opinion.” Right, here he surely alludes to things like Shi’ur Komah, which if understood literally, simply say that the Name is a very large body or brighter, right? A different type of body one could say, right? So perhaps no one thinks that the Name is a body exactly like us, but in a metaphysical sense, in a basic sense He is a body, just a brighter body, “and His matter also is not blood and flesh,” it’s not that He is made of blood and flesh, He is made of light, right? Right, let’s say, made of fire, right, as it is written, “the Lord is a consuming fire,” such things, this is the ultimate…

The Imagination as Cognitive Limitation and the Educational Dilemma of Negating Corporeality

Return to the Rambam’s Language: The Imagination Cannot Escape from Matter

And this itself, if I return to our language that we’re standing with here, this is exactly what is written here about the imagination, right? He said “But the imagination, the imagination cannot in any way escape in its apprehension from matter, even if it abstracts one form to the utmost abstraction.”

Abstracting one form to the utmost abstraction—this is exactly what he describes in Part I, Chapter 1, to the people who said that the Name is a body but a very bright body, very swift, made of a different type of matter. This is called abstracting one form to the utmost abstraction, but still because your standard, the receptive tool you’re using is imagination, you cannot reach more than this, right?

The Educational Dilemma: Chapter 35 — Educating the Young to Negate Corporeality

The Commandment to Teach Everyone

Therefore I must say that there is a very fundamental problem here, and I’ll show this in more chapters of the book, of the first part, right? In Chapter 35 it is written that one must teach even the young that God is not a body and not a force in a body, right? As he says, just as it must spread among the masses and the youth must be educated that the Name is one, and one must not worship anything else, right, they must accept that the Name is not a body, there is no likeness—right, this is the likeness here, this is comparison, right, not imagination as we’re learning—between Him and His creatures at all in any matter, right? And so on.

And he explains what “no likeness” means, and this lesson will suffice for the young and the masses, settling in their intellects that there exists a perfect being that is not a body and not a force in a body, right? So he gives us almost the words that need to be said to people, even to people and the weak, to explain to them that God is not a body and not a force in a body, and also that the difference between Him and us, right, is not in quantity, not in amount, but in the kind of existence, right? In the type of reality. There is no equivalence, no participation, right, between the strength of God, or the existence of God and our existence.

He explains precisely that regarding attributes and other things one doesn’t need to explain to everyone, but the removal of corporeality and the removal of likeness and passion is a matter worthy of clarification to every person and to be transmitted by tradition to the young and to women and to the intelligent and to those lacking intellect.

The Internal Contradiction: How Can the Young Understand?

There is something very strange here. For we said that it’s impossible to grasp at all something called not having a body, not a body, not a force in a body, except through the power of intellect, right? And now we have an actual test case for this. Who is the person who has only imaginative power and not intellectual power? Those he calls here the young and women and the intelligent and those lacking intellect, right?

And whoever has spoken with children, I think there’s no doubt that children, indeed when you tell them that God is not a body, they more or less think He’s wonderful, right? Perhaps there are formulas one can train them in, that they’ll say, yes, not a body, one can repeat three times, not a body, not a force in a body etc., but it doesn’t seem to me that they can understand this, because they don’t have at all the tools, the intellectual tool. One needs, as the Rambam said, one needs to study at least mathematics in order to become accustomed to this type of reality, to this type of understanding.

Dissenting Positions: Ibn Sina and the Muslim Teachers

And with all this, I think there’s a real question here, and already when we studied this chapter, we saw that the Rambam’s teachers, the Muslims all of them, did not agree with this. Everyone said that one must teach—right, I think we brought Ibn Sina, who said that one must tell women that God is a very bright light body. Exactly as the Rambam negated in Part I, Chapter 1, because one cannot expect them to seriously accept the reality of something that is not a body, right?

I don’t have a real answer to this dilemma of the Rambam’s. I think the Rambam had very high expectations of human beings, and it’s not clear to me that people who are taught the third principle of the Rambam truly understand what it means. It seems to them a kind of exaltation and very great greatness, and no more than that, right?

The Rambam’s Solution: Educational-Practical Value

And with all this, this is very important to the Rambam, because the Rambam thinks there is an educational matter in the negation of corporeality. Similarly, exactly as he understands that there is educational value, he claims this, exactly as there is in Chapter 36, which I’ve now opened, exactly as there is educational value in telling everyone that God is one, and what is the practical educational difference—normal people won’t understand the matter of unity in the sense of His simplicity, that He is simple, He is simple, He is not composite etc., but they understand that one doesn’t worship anything else.

So the Rambam claims that one can tell them, one can give them to say, that everyone should know to say that the Name is not a body, and therefore they won’t try to picture Him, such things. But truly it’s not clear that they’ll understand this in any real way. That’s what I think.

And not only do I think so, right, and there are other people, who preceded the Rambam, not only Muslims, also Jews who said this quite explicitly, and also after the Rambam there are Jews who say this quite explicitly. And not only are there Jews who say this quite explicitly, right, that yes one must educate everyone that God is a body, because you don’t have at all this connection to grasp something that is not a body.

Uniting the Two Causes of Corporealization: Scripture and the Imaginative Limitation

Chapter 1: Two Causes for Corporealization

Rather the Rambam himself hinted at this already in the part, in Chapter 1, and in Chapter 46 he has an explicit explanation of this, right? The Rambam himself in Chapter 1 said that there are two reasons why people say that God is in the form of man: one is Scripture and the second is this necessity, right?

But when we advance in Part I we learn that these two reasons are not so different from each other. Why?

Chapter 26: “The Torah Spoke in the Language of Human Beings”

First of all, there is this statement that the Rambam quotes in chapter, I think, in Chapter 26, let’s see. Yes, in Chapter 26 he quotes this statement, already in Chapter 26, “The words of the Torah are in the language of human beings,” right? And he also quotes later, I don’t remember the place right now, this statement of the power of the prophets who liken the form to its Creator, right?

And the language of human beings is exactly the language of the common people, right, and he says this explicitly, right, I’m reading Chapter 26. You already knew—right, this is actually the answer, right, let’s elaborate on this a bit more.

The Rambam says, there are people who because they are orthodox, they must believe what is written, so they say that whoever says that the Name is not a body, he denies Scripture, right, and what is the Rambam’s answer to this Jew? No, Scripture is a parable, right, and he brings proof. What is the proof? For it is written, okay, we already spoke about this that this isn’t really proof, but the Rambam uses this word, “The words of the Torah are in the language of human beings.”

And he explains, the Rambam explains in Chapter 26 what it means that the words of the Torah are in the language of human beings. Because all that is possible for human beings, all of them—human beings is a word for common human beings, as written in Chapter 9 or 7, there is a difference between ish and ben adam, ben adam is sometimes a word also for people who have only the power of imagination.

And he says here, “His understanding and his picturing at the beginning of thought”—that is, beginning of thought is not exactly the same thing as imagination, but it’s also a technical term for unrefined thought, which essentially thinks like the imagination—“is what is fitting for the Creator, may He be exalted, and therefore”—he says explicitly—“and therefore He is described with attributes indicating corporeality, to indicate that He, may He be exalted, exists.”

Why is corporeality described in the Torah? Precisely because of this limitation, that in the eyes of the beginning of thought of most human beings, or of all human beings in the sense of their common aspect, “it is impossible to indicate existence except through corporeal likeness, for the masses do not grasp at the beginning of thought existence except for body alone, and whatever is not a body or is not in a body does not exist in their view.”

So therefore God is described as a body, precisely because of the reason he explained to us here, in Chapter 73.

Chapter 46: Indication vs. Definition

And so it is also written in Chapter 46 in the same statement, where he explains this in a more complex way, but says the same thing, speaking about the difference between indication of existence and definition, right. He claims that the Torah doesn’t intend to give a definition of God’s existence, but to direct human beings to His existence, and in any case he says, “It confirmed the opinions of human beings that He exists in the imagination of corporeality,” right? Exactly this word, imagination.

And so, because human beings understand only corporeal existence, the Torah itself guides human beings to God’s existence in terms of corporeality.

The Conclusion: The Two Causes Are One

And yes, so this was the second stage that says that not only is there a limitation of human beings, and not only is there another thing which is that people are found…

Prophecy, Imagination, and the Apprehension of God

Third Stage: The Limitation of Prophecy Itself

And not only this, but there is here another third stage, which I’m not going to show now because I don’t remember and we haven’t yet reached studying these chapters but it comes out more complicated but it also comes out from what he brought here. I need to bring, let’s remember where this is in which… I don’t remember. But there is a more fundamental matter here and this, ah, this is in Chapter 106 actually.

Chapter 106: The Forms That Prophets See Are Created

The statement he brings from the Sages, their saying “Great is the power of the prophets who liken the form to its Creator.” And the Rambam explains, so I yes, “They have already explained, that all these forms”—they have already explained, that is, the Sages explained in this statement—“that all these forms that all the prophets apprehend in the vision of prophecy are created forms that the Name created.” Right, so that is, he brings proof that the forms, that is, the likeness as the appearance of a man, right? That is, the image of God in Genesis Chapter 1, Chapter 2, are created things, and this is what the prophets themselves saw, and this is the truth, for every imagined form is created, and he apparently means created in the sense of corporeal, because there are created things and they are not bodies. So it could be that he thinks that prophets also see intellectual things, but even this they see through their power of imagination. And this is something he doesn’t fully bring here, but it belongs to the second part.

Prophecy Operates Through the Power of Imagination

But the point is that prophecy itself, except perhaps for Moses’ prophecy, but prophecy itself operates through the power of imagination, and therefore even a prophet cannot see the Name in prophecy, because prophecy is limited in that it is a sensory tool, an imaginative tool, and therefore it can see only created things, it can see only created forms that indicate God by way of parable or by way of teaching or something like that, but the prophets indeed see the likeness as the appearance of a man, which is not God, but there is here some greatness that they liken the form to its Creator.

The Three Layers of the Argument

And this says that the reason is, and here there’s something third, not only that the Scriptures, meaning the prophets, speak in corporeal language because their addressee is the people, a people who understand only imaginative things, but prophecy itself, prophecy itself, because of how it operates, at least the other prophets, and there’s a problem here, because it’s also the prophecy of Moses, because the account of Creation is in Moses’ prophecy, but even prophecy itself cannot apprehend beyond the imagination, and therefore cannot apprehend God.

God is Apprehended Only by Philosophers

Therefore God is apprehended only by philosophers and not by prophets, because prophecy operates through the imaginative faculty, and God is apprehended only by the intellect, which is the only thing that can grasp non-corporeal things, and therefore as we return here in Chapter 73 there is a fundamental distinction between intellect and imagination that every Jew must accept. So here is the very clear approach of the Rambam.

The Paradox of Education in Negating Corporeality

The Fundamental Difficulty

As I said, there is a very great difficulty for me that I don’t know the true answer to, which is how the Rambam really thinks, as he writes in Chapter 35, that one must educate everyone to know that God is not a body, when he himself admits that the Torah itself doesn’t think that way, the Torah itself educates with the knowledge that the masses will think that God is indeed a body, because this at least gives us reality. And furthermore, this is also against the Torah, and this is also against reality, which is what stands behind the Torah’s choice to speak in corporeal language, that the masses have only imagination, and it’s impossible for them to grasp intelligible things, right? So this is a fundamental problem.

Three Levels: Imagination, Utterance, and Understanding

The only thing I can think is that words, yes, and here the Rambam perhaps believes a bit too much in words, words can indeed grasp a definition of not-a-body, because there’s a distinction here between words that we can say or even think and apprehension, right? This is very important, and we spoke about this in Part I, Chapter 50, Chapter 50, that belief is not what is uttered by the mouth, but what is conceived. Conceived here, he doesn’t mean conceived in the sense of imagination, conceived in the sense of intellectual apprehension. And the Rambam uses this as an introduction to say that one cannot say He has attributes. In any case, but there is indeed some indication there, throughout those chapters, that our words are even broader than imagination, one could say, or in this sense that the intellectual definition, in the sense of the intellectual definition, there are two things here and we need to pay attention to them.

The Intellectual Formula: God is Not a Body

We can say that God is not a body, we can simply define this and it’s not difficult, I think this is also how mathematics, the mathematical or astronomical examples he brought, work, it’s not difficult to give the formula. The formula goes, for example, regarding God who is not a body, the formula is very simple. You connect, you the believer, connect the reality of, sorry, connect these two categories, you combine two divisions that aren’t necessarily connected to each other. You connect, first thing, existence versus non-existence, with body versus not-body, or at least force and body. And I inform you that this is not correct. The definition of existence is broader than the definition of body. It’s not difficult to think, to conceive, write it on paper, there are existents of two types, there are corporeal existents and there are non-corporeal existents. No problem, that’s all. Now God is of that type of non-corporeal existents. This is correct, because of this, and this isn’t the only distinction that distinguishes God from other existents, but this is at least enough to say that God is not similar to other existents.

Utterance Without Internalization

You can say these words, not similar, not a body, and everyone can repeat this. Even very small children, one can teach them the Third Principle. And they will say it, and it’s coherent at the level of utterance. If they try to understand it, they won’t understand, right? They necessarily won’t understand. And it could be, meaning to internalize it, if one wants to rise from the level of utterance, there are three levels here, there is imagination and utterance and understanding. One must grasp this, what the Rambam calls the level of contemplation, the third level.

The Danger in Internalization Without Preparation

And something very interesting emerges here, it emerges here that people who were educated, as the Rambam wants to educate, as he indeed succeeded in educating, that God is not a body, as long as they haven’t studied mathematics, it’s forbidden for them to try to internalize this. Because if they internalize it, they will arrive at one of two conclusions: either that God doesn’t exist or that He is a corporeal thing, an imaginary thing, and He isn’t, and then it’s somewhat like idolatry.

The Connection to the Prohibition of Studying Ma’aseh Merkavah

Chapter 34: Five Reasons

And I think this restriction is what stands behind, because this is the connection between the chapters there in Chapter 35, this is actually what connects Chapter 35 to Chapter 31, one could say 32, 33, 34, or perhaps 31, there throughout the chapters the Rambam gives an explanation for the prohibition to teach Ma’aseh Merkavah. Right? And he values in this explanation, this is one of the very important things for him to teach here, right? And he explains, and here there is for example, here there is for example a very very clear expression, he writes like this I need to… yes, here it’s written like this, and he gives, yes, there’s some very famous chapter, I’m making the chapters famous, and Chapter 34 is a very fundamental chapter on this issue, he gives five reasons why one must prevent people from studying Ma’aseh Merkavah.

The Third Reason: The Length of Preparations

And the third reason is the length of preparations, that one must study all the sciences in order. And now in this section about intellect and imagination we discovered one very fundamental reason why one must educate to study mathematics before studying matters of divinity. Right?

The Problem of Doubts in Hasty Inquiry

And he explains like this, and he gives several explanations for why these introductions are needed. And he says, and he gives something very interesting, and one can be precise, I think it’s important, and this is “For a person will have many doubts arise at the time of hasty inquiry”. And here the Rambam essentially says what many people have said about the Guide for the Perplexed, that there’s a problem that people will understand the questions and won’t understand the answers, and the Rambam himself recognizes this problem, and here we also have the epistemic theory.

The Danger of Study Without Adequate Preparation and the Paradox the Rambam Created

The Parable of Falling into a Pit: The Danger of Study Without Introductions

The Rambam gives an explanation that refutation is very easy, like demolishing a building, which is easier than building a building. In any case, people can understand, you start to think, so when will you understand questions. Indeed the establishment of propositions and the resolution of doubts is only possible with many introductions taken from those propositions, and the investigator without preparation will be like one who walks on his feet to reach a place and falls on his way into a deep pit from which he will die, whereas if he had lacked the walking and remained in his place it would have been more fitting for him. And he brings verses about this parable.

And I translate regarding the problem that it took him until the chapter of the Calf to reveal to us the foundation of the problem here throughout all these things. And I discover here, there are people who were told that God is not a body. Now, it’s impossible for them to understand this in any way. Why? Because they don’t have the skills to understand a non-corporeal thing. To say it is free, one can say, and the Rambam claims this is good, because there’s some true point here, that the intellect itself is clothed in these words, even though it’s not intellectualization, it’s only utterance.

And the truth is that utterance has a problem, right? Because as he values in Chapters 51, 52, 53, one can also say stereotypical things or distinctions that sound good, but they are definitions that don’t correspond to anything in reality, and therefore aren’t correct. And in any case one can also say true things that the imagination cannot contain. But if you haven’t studied mathematics, which is one of the preparatory sciences here, which he details here, and therefore you will try to internalize what they taught you to say, and you don’t have the tools, you will arrive either at negation, or at atheism, or at corporealization, which aren’t things so far from each other according to what we’re learning.

The Result: Inevitable Fall to Negation or Corporealization

And you have no counsel, the only counsel is don’t think. Because you are like that Jew who doesn’t know the way and therefore it’s better for him to stay home, right? And his desire, his good desire to understand, is what kills him. Without the desire you would have been better off. And why? Because you don’t have the tool which is the intellect that will enable you to grasp, to internalize what we call internalizing intelligible things, right? In the sense.

And therefore it emerges, I know many Jews who fell into this trap, I think, I don’t blame them, I think they are righteous, and it could be that there’s a special section in the Garden of Eden for people who stumbled in Ma’aseh Merkavah, so at least claims Sefer Raba Ish, who took this thing upon himself.

One of the fundamental things in Kabbalah is to transgress these chapters of the Rambam’s warning, and indeed to jump to the wisdom of divinity without the scientific introductions, and this is a very problematic thing.

The Practical Problem: Formulas Without Understanding

And one of these things, but we know this also in people who aren’t Kabbalists, in general, many Jews, who because they were taught things, formulas, verbal formulas, that have no existence in imagination, and they have no tool other than imagination, this is what they identify as internal understanding, as independent understanding, not rote, just repeating what they tell you, which everyone agrees is just a recording, it’s just being managed by, yes, like a blind person managed by a sighted person etc.

So they try to understand, and they are unable, they can’t, they don’t have the tools at all to understand, therefore necessarily they fall to one of these two things. And it could be that they, all their effort is to reach the level of those people whom the Torah speaks to, right, not so terrible.

The Paradox: The Rambam Cut Out the Intermediate Level

Before the Rambam who changed the Torah and he changed the education and he said teach everyone the formulas that they don’t have, right, something interesting emerges for me, that because of the leap that the Rambam taught us, the Rambam jumped and taught all people, all Jews, right, all people, that God is not a body, which is itself a leap, right, because after all they don’t, they don’t yet have the tools to understand this, in this he obligated himself to forbid even more the opening into Ma’aseh Merkavah before studying these sciences, when teaching the values of abstraction. Right? Understood?

The Natural Process Before the Rambam

Precisely because if in their wholeness you are a simple Jew, who studied Scripture in its plain sense, you won’t have Targum Onkelos and you won’t have any of these innovative educations that educated everyone in formulas of negating corporeality without understanding, then you would do the normal philosophical process, the maturation process, you contemplate what you saw in the Torah, and you, let’s say in the Torah there’s no perfect image of divinity, so you do like Ezekiel, complete, gather from all kinds of places, until you have a complete and independent internal picture of God, and this is what you work with, right?

And this will work, even though the Rambam will tell you, all this is still not true, because you still need to advance even more to understand that He is not a body at all, then to receive the intellectual apprehension, okay? Very nice.

The New Situation After the Rambam

But the Rambam cut out all this level. He said, we will teach everyone the conclusions of the highest level without the possibility to see them, so many more people must remain in the sense of belief from tradition, from reception, from recording, in imitation, than in a kind of internalization. Why? Because now the internalization requires much more than the internalization of the simple level of Scripture.

And therefore the Rambam caused all those who obey him to be stuck in reception, right, and to turn it from what… and this is indeed the state of Rambamists today.

Three Approaches That Were Created

And this is actually these two recordings that I’m describing, this is more or less the description of what we call today Rambamists or rationalists versus mystics and Kabbalists and such people, right? Hasidim is a third thing, I need to get to that. But what we know as this distinction is more or less:

Rambamists: Correct Formulas Without Independent Understanding

Rationalists are people who usually don’t have intellectual apprehension, but they have faith in the Rambam, and in the sages and other philosophers who told them that God is not a body, and therefore they on one hand have sentences, they have more correct statements, on the other hand, what the Rambam demanded from everyone to know God in an independent way, right? What already Hovot HaLevavot demanded and everyone, to move from taqlid to ijtihad, right? To move from reception from others to independent effort to understand, this they really don’t have.

And anyone who knows Rambamists knows that they are the simplest believers in the Rambam, and this is necessarily so, because they aren’t philosophers.

The Anti-Rambamists: Independent Apprehension Over Correct Apprehension

Whereas the other people, in order to reach independent apprehension, which they value more than correct apprehension, right? This is actually a kind of dispute, it depends if you value more, right? If you’re such a romantic, then you value more, you say, I, better my errors than the truth of others, and there’s some point of truth here, right? Because people indeed identify and act in a true way in what they believe.

That is, I don’t know what the Rambam says when he says not a body, I don’t understand it, and therefore I prefer to try to picture for myself in some imaginative way, personal, right? The God written in the Torah without the Rambam’s interpretations, and these are the anti-Rambamist people, like Rabbi Hirsch and others, Shadal, all those who disputed the Rambam, and also the Kabbalists in a very fundamental sense, disputed the Rambam precisely because of this thing.

The Debate Between the Two Approaches

And the Rambam will claim about them that you are actually foolish, because you simply don’t want to make the effort to know God in an intellectual way, and therefore you are stuck in imaginative apprehensions, which the Rambam claims are even more distant, right? This is actually the debate.

The Rambam claims that one who says the correct formulas, even though he doesn’t understand them, is closer, at least he’s not a kind of idolater, right? At least he directs his worship to the true source, even though he doesn’t understand it, so he relies on others, this is a rational and normal thing.

Whereas the others say that because this remains from the lips outward, it’s worse, right? And perhaps this also leads to all kinds of problems.

This is actually the… what do I call it? This is the story here. As far as I understand it. Understood? Yes, this is nice. This is my sermon. I think, it’s nice, it’s a nice idea. It’s not an idea, it’s an analysis of what’s happening. I didn’t mean to say sermon, I meant to produce analysis.

The Third Option: Hasidut

I think there is, now I think, there is perhaps one third option that can work, and perhaps some of the Kabbalists go in this direction, but Hasidut in many senses certainly goes in this direction, and it could be that this has roots already in Hasidut Ashkenaz, not such a bad direction, and it’s to try to receive both advantages by giving up on a third thing, right, and I’ll explain exactly what.

I think this, now I think this is a good analysis, I need to think. Until now I’ve thought many times, and it seems clear to me, but now I’m saying something that’s experimental.

What is the Third Option?

There is a third option. What is the third option? To say like this, I’m not so smart, whoever really, I think that the Rambam’s demand to understand things in a true way, clearly, and to make all the effort to study all the sciences, is still in force. Indeed, but this requires a lot of effort and a lot of time and a lot of strength etc. But because we don’t have time and we’re in exile and we have to earn a living and all kinds of other things that interfere with us, so there’s another answer, right? The other answer goes like this.

Alternative Approaches to the Problem of Corporealization of God and Summary of the Parables

Third Approach: Giving Up on Coherence

Not exactly an answer, another tactic. You can say like this, first of all I believe the Rambam and all the other sages. I believe him without doubt that God is not a body and nothing… also not only God is not a body, even the angels are not bodies etc., everyone, nothing of these things we’re talking about is corporeal, no problem. But this I cannot understand, right?

There’s a question here, why are they so insistent that they cannot understand? I think I have a more subtle critique here, but let’s leave that for a moment, just to describe the way.

They say, I don’t understand this, I don’t think I can fall in love with this God who is not a body, etc., all kinds of things that people say, that one can connect. The Rambam denied this completely, right? Because the Rambam claims that the strongest love is intellectual love, and the strongest connection is after all reality. How can it be that the type of apprehension that grasps reality as it is in itself, will be a less good connection, worse than a connection based on some imagination. The Rambam certainly feels this, and about this I’ve already elaborated enough, to say that he is much more for closeness to God, only that he claims that closeness to God is like this.

The Practical Move: Living With Contradiction

But there are those who say, and the Rambam himself would admit to this, in the sense, insofar as you are a prophet and not Moses, insofar as you are not capable, you are not an intellectual person, you are a person who indeed lives in a body and indeed believes in corporeal things as if they are more real things, and non-corporeal things which is exactly the definition of imagination and still you don’t want to give up on the independent approach yes on the independent approach the independent apprehension the apprehension of the independent effort to know God you don’t want only to rely on the Rambam and to say Yigdal in the correct tune then you say like this:

You say I don’t give up on any of these steps and what do I do? I give up on coherence. I give up on the effort to be a coherent person.

And why do I give up on this? Not because I believe, because there are people who go all the way, say reality is not coherent, like Rabbi Nachman of Breslov. I don’t think one needs to go that far, I think the opposite, that this comes from too much desire for coherence and too much overestimation of our capability.

Humility Instead of Coherence

I think we can go with more humility, and I think that people, many good righteous people went in this direction. They said, I perhaps cannot intellectualize completely non-corporeal things. I also don’t want to give up on some imagination, on some thing that’s understandable to me as I am, that will be the apprehension of God. So I give up on coherence.

I say, I’m not the greatest sage, I don’t need a completely fitting picture. True, I believe all the time without doubt that God is not a body, and I also say that I see Him in a corporeal form, how will both be maintained, a sage greater than me will come and explain, not my problem. So he’s constantly limping on both branches, but actually giving up on coherence.

Justification of the Approach: Simple People and Modern People

And this, I think, is a thing, if we’re not people, what I sometimes call modern, with excessive self-esteem, that we need a coherent apprehension and are willing because of coherence to give up on things that seem true but we can’t arrange them within that same complete picture, then we don’t have such a problem. True, it’s not coherent, it could be that only when the Messiah comes we’ll understand this, I don’t know, perhaps there will be a sage greater than whoever understands, but I play on both these sides. Sometimes I see like this, and I say, even though I see God, this is not God, right? So how do I say a thing and its opposite? No problem, I’m not a philosopher, I don’t need to say only coherent things. I want to know God and live Him, so I live with Him like this. But I meanwhile declare that He is not a body, I say, I believe, I really believe in this, because not only say, I believe in this because I rely on the sages wiser than me who said this.

Identification With Hasidut and Tradition

I think this is a relatively traditional approach to such an apprehension. I think Hasidut in general goes in this kind of direction. One can indeed justify this, right? One can give it justifications, but one doesn’t need to. One can say, we’re not those who understand best, certainly most people are simple, but there’s a permission, right?

As Rabbi Soloveitchik says, perhaps it is permissible to imagine God as corporeal. This is not—it is forbidden to believe. So we fulfill the Rambam’s requirement, we don’t believe, but we still imagine—what’s the problem? Ah, the problem is that it’s not coherent. True, people who go in this direction become a bit crazy, which is itself a kind of problem and a kind of sin, but it’s a choice of the better option among them rather than the other options.

Critique of the Modern Approach

This is another option, only of modern people, I don’t know if such people still exist, actually I know some of them, it’s not an option because they greatly value coherence, and supposedly a person needs to grasp the complete picture all at once, etc., right?

There are of course explanations, deeper kabbalistic justifications for this thing, and to say that the intellect itself doesn’t grasp God, and therefore anyway everything is only a parable, even if to say only a parable, even the intellect is only a parable, so why does the corporeal parable bother you so much? Okay, this would already be a fourth option which I’ll skip for now.

Return to the Rambam: Summary of the Three Parables

Okay, let’s return to the Rambam a bit. Up to here, where was I? Yes, I hope this, I think it’s clear what I said, but let’s return, I want to progress, do we have time? Okay, yes, I hope we have time to do another section, because I need to finish this introduction already today.

Vision and Imagination versus Intellect

Yes, so this is the matter of vision, that imagination knows only corporeal things, but the intellect knows also non-corporeal things, and this is an example, as I said, agreed upon by both sides in the discussion here, so he uses a good example.

The Conclusion: Existence of an Additional Power Beyond Imagination

So the Rambam concludes thus: Behold, what emerges from all this? It has already been clarified within these three parables, within the law, that there exists in reality another thing, yet another thing, by which the proper shall be examined, yes, what should be, I think, not sure now, proper I think is what must be and the possible what is possible and the impossible what is impossible, yes? And it is not the imagination, yes? For behold the imagination said that these things are not possible and they are possible, and that these things are not possible and they are possible. So there must be something else that makes this distinction.

Praise of Speculation and Salvation from Darkness

And how good is this speculation and how great its benefit for one who wishes to be saved from this darkness, meaning to learn from the imagination, yes? The Rambam says I myself praise very, very much this speculation that I have now presented before you, because it is what enables people to be saved from the darkness. Darkness is Ibn Tibbon’s translation, I don’t remember the Arabic word he writes here. One can check, not like that, maybe one can check for a moment, if I find it. Al-zulmah, I don’t know, don’t know what the word is.

The Metaphor of Darkness and Light

In any case, Ibn Tibbon translated darkness, and I think he’s right, at least in this sense, that this is exactly the darkness that the Rambam spoke about, where? Many times, yes? Darkness and light is a beloved image, but one of the very basic places is in the introduction, yes? When he spoke about us being in darkness, and… that we are in darkness and sometimes a lightning flash illuminates for us, yes? Sometimes, let me ask. Yes, ultimately beyond what they say. Yes, and sometimes a lightning flash illuminates for us and shows us the truth, and there are other places I don’t remember that I use here, the people who see, who walk in darkness, such things.

And it could be that literally it’s not darkness, I need to check this and compare to the other places where the Rambam uses this word, but I assume that Ibn Tibbon at least means this idea, that darkness, yes, the darkness is the world that distinguishes existence and non-existence through imagination, it is the dark world, yes, and the intellect is the world of light that distinguishes in a different way, and this is actually the psychological process of the work, when we want to move the person throughout the chapter, this book, to ascend from the level of darkness to the level of light, or from the level of imagination to the level of intellect. And here he has essentially given us the tool to do this, how to show at all that there is something else which is intellect and it is not a branch of imagination.

Opening a New Discussion: The Mutakallimun and Coherence

Okay. Now, now the Rambam says, he wants to complicate the matter for us in a very fundamental way, so I’ll try to read this and understand.

The Claim: The Mutakallimun Did Not Remain Ignorant of This

The Rambam says thus: And do not think, well, that the Mutakallimun will remain ignorant of this matter. You’ve read until now, you assume, okay, so the Mutakallimun, they’re simply crazy, they think that imagination is what distinguishes, and therefore they say that anything that passes through imagination, yes, is possible, but one must distinguish between the…

The Tenth Introduction (Continued): The Fundamental Debate Between Intellect and Imagination — The Kalam Are Not Naive

The Kalam Themselves Distinguish Between Thought and Imagination

So they suppose, they feel, sometimes translated as feel, they felt that there is some problem here, some distinction between thought and intellect and imagination. And not only that, and they call what is imagined but is impossible, such as God being corporeal, thought and imagination. Sometimes they indeed admit, for they mainly admit that God is not corporeal, and they themselves call the thought that God is corporeal, sometimes thought, sometimes there are also technical terms here that need to be checked for their background, which I don’t know now. And many times they will clarify that the thoughts are false, they don’t think that every thought is possible. Sometimes they truly say, the thoughts, that are not knowledge, yes? There is some distinction here between thought and knowledge or something like that, it is false.

So don’t think that we are the ones who discovered this.

Why the Kalam Required the Nine Premises

But the Rambam says, what happens here is a much more fundamental debate. For this they required the nine premises that we mentioned, until they established with them this tenth premise, which is the transfer of what they wished to transfer from the imagined things due to the similarity of substances and the equality of accidents in their accidentality as we explained.

The Rambam says think for a moment if indeed the Kalam did not distinguish between the intellect—meaning the ability to distinguish between what exists in reality. Apparently now he has defined what exactly, what exactly we meant by the word intellect. Intellect is what shows us reality apparently. Imagination is not reliable, yes, it negated for us existing things and obligated for us non-existing things. So it turns out that the intellect is what is more reliable regarding reality. Okay.

The Rambam says, they also understand this, they don’t think that every thought that comes to mind is the truth. And therefore precisely they were compelled to build their entire physical structure to explain that precisely what we can imagine is indeed possible because all things in the world are composed of atoms identical to each other and from accidents that can also apply any accident to any atom however they wish, yes? So it’s not at all, it’s not at all true that they simply err in thinking that everything is imagination. This I call imagination, but they precisely think that this is the truth, and therefore if they were just people of imagination, they wouldn’t need all their science. They, yes they have science, and they have a metaphysical and physical basis for their conception, yes? And they themselves admit that it would be imagination and false thought to say that God is corporeal.

The Deep Problem: What Distinguishes Between Intelligibles and Imaginables?

Now the Rambam concludes thus, it turns out that there is a very big problem here. And you the examiner should contemplate and see that behold there emerges through very deep speculation. There is something very deep here in the sense of difficult, in the sense of fundamental, in the sense of cunning. And this, that there are some images. For there are images here, meaning, for example, like saying that a man can be a great mountain. One person will say they are intellectual. Someone, meaning, our debater, the Kalam, says they are intellectual. And another will say they are imaginative images.

For the debate is not whether imagination is truth. The debate is, for imagination and truth, we claim they are powers in man, but what truly distinguishes between these powers? Only reality, which is the very reason we arrived at this division. So now, we don’t really have something that will decide for us a debate when there is a debate about this very thing.

The Structure of the Debate Between the Philosopher and the Mutakallim

There is someone who says, it’s not intellectual to imagine a man the size of a mountain, and the other says no, this is possible. Why do I say it’s not possible? Because I say, the nature of man is not to be at this height. The second says, no, the nature of man, there is no such thing as the nature of man, there are only atoms and void and accidents, yes? This is the nature, there is no such thing as a human being at all. So it’s you who imagines there is such a thing, yes?

The Rambam says, and we wish to find one thing, and these intelligibles from the imaginables. We need something that distinguishes between the intelligible and the imagined. And if the philosopher says existence is sufficient, as he will say, and by it the proper and the possible and the impossible will be examined, the man of religion will say to him, yes, here they become religious, and about this very thing is the dispute, that this existent, I say was made by will, not that it was necessitated, there are no causes for things, and when it was made with this attribute it was possible that it be made otherwise. Unless the intellectual image decrees, that it is impossible otherwise, as you think.

The religious person says to the philosopher, I admit that if there were an intellectual image here, meaning, for example, if there were a true logical contradiction, not just a logical contradiction given the physics of this world. Then I admit to you that there is intellect separate from reality that shows us, because we learn that reality must conform to this level of intellect. But here, when you say it’s impossible for a man to be a mountain, about this very thing, this is our dispute. You claim there is such a thing as human nature and human beings don’t become mountains etc., but about this precisely I disagree. I say that there is not in the world, the world is not an intelligible thing in your definitions, yes? Yes, I say that the world is made by will, and every moment God gives accidents to everything in every second and in every instant. So certainly this is possible, I have here an intellectual explanation, I’m not just an imaginative explanation, I have here an intellectual explanation, yes?

The Rambam Leaves the Debate Without Resolution

So this is the dispute, and the Rambam essentially here leaves it in tension, yes? He leaves it in aporia, he doesn’t resolve it. After all his elaboration that there is intellect and imagination and imagination is darkness, when he truly holds this position, but when he comes to think about it, at least in this passage, he doesn’t refute it in a true manner at all. He says that if indeed there were a coherent possibility for the conception of the Kalam, one cannot claim about them that they are imaginary, because they are not imaginary, because they claim this is reality.

The Kalam Are Coherent — Not Crazy

The Rambam essentially admits here that they are coherent, that they are not crazy. They are crazy because they think the world is crazy, by definition this is crazy, but one cannot truly claim within this statement that they are imaginary, there is truly no argument against them, because this itself is the argument—whether this is reality or whether this is not reality.

Thus far the Rambam.

Reference to Additional Places and Warning Against Quick Dismissal

And the Rambam concludes and says, and the rest of this transfer, yes, meaning the topic, this topic of possibility, I have things about it, listen, not in places, this the Rambam here directs us to other places where he will give us his conception regarding the matter of possibility, and one must indeed examine all these places. I don’t think we’ll do this now, but we’ll reach it and return to this matter then.

And he says, and it is not a matter that a person should hasten to reject it all suddenly in a brief moment. The Rambam claims that even though he in practice doesn’t accept or doesn’t work with this system of the Kalam, he says, the fundamental matter of possibility, which is connected to this arrangement of intellect and imagination, don’t think it’s possible to reject it in one moment. There is here indeed deeper speculation, and he leaves it in doubt, yes? He truly really leaves it without resolution.

The Rambam’s Intellectual Integrity

He doesn’t bring proof against the Kalam regarding something that is a pillar of Kalam wisdom, yes? There is here a large part of the credibility of this book, yes? There is, you’ll say, the skepticism, but at least that he is very credible, he never lies to us. That the Rambam, when he reached the central point of his dispute with the Kalam, he said, true, I think they’re crazy, but if I think about it in a fundamental way, in a deep way, I don’t say I have an argument that refutes their coherent system.

Thus far what I can know from this chapter today. Thank you very much.