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The Matter and Form of Maimonides' Guide / Josef Stern.

Stern, Josef, author.
2013
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Title
The Matter and Form of Maimonides' Guide / Josef Stern.
Author
Stern, Josef, author.
ISBN
9780674075948
DOI
https://doi.org/10.4159/harvard.9780674075948
Published
Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, [2013]
Copyright
©2013
Language
English
Language Note
In English.
Description
1 online resource
Item Number
10.4159/harvard.9780674075948 doi
Dewey Decimal Classification
181.06
Summary
Maimonides' Guide of the Perplexed has traditionally been read as an attempt to harmonize reason and revelation. Another, more recent interpretation takes the contradiction between philosophy and religion to be irreconcilable, and concludes that the Guide prescribes religion for the masses and philosophy for the elite. Moving beyond these familiar debates, Josef Stern argues that the perplexity addressed in this famously enigmatic work is not the conflict between Athens and Jerusalem but the tension between human matter and form, between the body and the intellect. Maimonides' philosophical tradition takes the perfect life to be intellectual: pure, undivided contemplation of all possible truths, from physics and cosmology to metaphysics and God. According to the Guide, this ideal cannot be realized by humans. Their embodied minds cannot achieve scientific knowledge of metaphysics, and their bodily impulses interfere with exclusive contemplation. Closely analyzing the arguments in the Guide and its original use of the parable as a medium of philosophical writing, Stern articulates Maimonides' skepticism about human knowledge of metaphysics and his heterodox interpretations of scriptural and rabbinic parables. Stern shows how, in order to accommodate the conflicting demands of the intellect and the body, Maimonides creates a repertoire of spiritual exercises, reconceiving the Mosaic commandments as training for the life of the embodied mind. By focusing on the philosophical notions of matter and form, and the interplay between its literary form and subject matter, Stern succeeds in developing a unified, novel interpretation of the Guide.
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Access limited to authorized users.
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Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.
Digital File Characteristics
text file PDF
Source of Description
Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 08. Jul 2019)
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Frontmatter
Contents
Editions and Abbreviations of Frequently Cited Primary Sources
1. Matter and Form
2. Maimonides' Theory of the Parable
3. The Parable of Adamic Perfection
4. Physical Matter and Its Limitations on Intellects
5. Maimonidean Skepticism I
6. Maimonidean Skepticism II
7. In the Inner Chamber of the Ruler's Palace
8. The Embodied Life of an Intellect
9. Excrement and Exegesis, or Shame over Matter
References
Acknowledgments
Index

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