Bodying Forth Truth with a Transcendent Purpose
Truth is embodied in and articulated through relationships with a transcendent purpose.
I cannot help but read the assertion “Tell the Truth” and the claims by those repeating this assertion that ‘truth trumps all things’ in light of the example of Solomon Maimon. Maimon is an eighteenth century Jewish philosopher who abandoned his family, his faith, and pretty much everything that makes life meaningful and worthwhile in pursuit of what he considered to be ‘total truth.’ It’s a cautionary tale. In seeking intellectual perfection above all things, he succeeded in entirely missing the point as to what truth is and why the whole truth in balanced relation to all the human faculties matters. The notion that truth trumps all things begs the question as to what that truth is. In my experience, the people who make this claim are those who equate truth with statements of fact and logic and nothing more. And in the main, those statements of fact are scientific statements. If such statements relate to history, the view is clearest positivism, of the kind which shows little understanding as to how the facts of history are made by flesh and blood human beings pursuing material interests, moral motivations, and metaphysical ideals. The idea that there is such a thing as moral truth and moral knowledge is not considered. The fact that there is such a thing as emotional intelligence and emotional truth is not considered, other than to say that the emotions frequently mislead. The emotions can also serve to keep our faculties in balance. Those pursuing truth above all things very often prostitute that cause out of a deficiency or lack in political and moral awareness. I never did care for the work of Francois Lyotard and have criticized him in many places in my own writing. But he wrote well here:
“In the discourse of today's financial backers of research, the only credible goal is power. Scientists, technicians, and instruments are purchased not to find truth, but to augment power.”
Jean-Francois Lyotard - The Postmodern Condition
But that’s not truth, and that’s not science and technology, will come the reply. But when you downgrade and devalue politics and ethics as a sphere of non-reason and sophist power struggle, you most certainly hand the world over to an instrumentalism. The notion that a truth defined in positivist terms trumps all things most certainly does lend itself to the instrumentalization of the world.
The Autobiography of Solomon Maimon (1753-1800), (translated from the German by Paul Reitter and expertly edited and introduced by Yitzhak Melamed and Abraham Socher), offers ample scope for exploring the nature of truth, exposing the inadequacies of those who define truth narrowly and proceed to consider that narrow truth to trump all things. Reduced to absurdity, that truth is no more the trite observation that physics or nature trump all things. That is human life, language, and culture reduced to a physical meaninglessness. To which my response is that if life is indeed worthless and pointless, and valueless, then nothing is more so than the truth which says it is so. A brief consideration of Maimon’s Autobiography reveals precisely what the truth-telling trumpers of art, culture, and relationships are missing – which is almost everything other than cold, indifferent physical facts. Maimon’s devotion to truth above all things led him to independent study history, astronomy, kabbalah, and Jewish philosophy. He read voraciously. Most of all, he was impressed by the great Jewish religious philosopher Moses Maimonides, who lived between 1138 and 1204, after whom he would come to name himself.
Maimon abandoned his family and faith in his thirst for knowledge. He was not without success in this quest. He studied Immanuel Kant’s immense and almost impenetrable Critique of Pure Reason and wrote a treatise on it that so impressed Kant that the great man declared that “none of my critics has understood me . . . to the degree that Herr Maimon does.” As one who has struggled long and hard to master Kant’s three great critiques, and who has also written on Kant, I can tell you that that is some accolade.
At the core of Maimon’s philosophical program is his statement that what impressed him most about Moses Maimonides was his commitment to the “love of truth above all else.” That love of truth was expressed in the declaration that the pursuit and acquisition of truth leading to intellectual perfection is the highest goal of human existence. Maimon inferred from this that all human activities other than the pursuit of truth, including moral conduct, to be of merely instrumental value. He stated that ethical norms are “useful in society, for other people,” to the extent that they help create the social stability that philosophers require in order to pursue their intellectual goals. In his summary of the Guide, Maimon makes a very big jump here, which is entirely possible once you have denied the notion of moral knowledge and truth: “Strive then, human, after that which is your very self, and don’t work for others.” The various details that Maimon reveals about his life in his Autobiography reveal an approach to moral conduct which is strictly instrumentalist. Indeed, his view is both arrogant and misanthropic. In Maimon, the pursuit of intellectual perfection shorn of moral, social, and emotional dimensions, becomes arrogant, narcissistic, unbalanced, and misanthropic. The inhumanism of the pursuit becomes plan, as Maimon recounts how he pursued his own sensual and intellectual pleasures and swept those who stood in the way of them away as nuisances.
Whilst Maimon claimed to be pursuing a state of “true blessedness,” his conduct took him far away from such a happy condition, whatever his intellectual achievements. Even by Maimon’s own admission in his autobiography, his life was a record of misery, involving at least one attempt at suicide. Maimon ends his autobiography with the words:
“I haven’t yet reached the harbor of tranquility, but rather quo nos fata trahunt retrahuntque sequamur.” (Solomon Maimon, The Autobiography of Solomon Maimon: The Complete Translation 239).
The Latin is a quote from Virgil (Aeneid, bk. 5, 709), and translates: ‘Where fate takes us, we must follow.’ Yet more fatalism, yet more denial of free will, yet more shirking of moral responsibility, yet more devaluation of the moral imperative. Maimon’s intellectual perfectionism was accompanied by an intellectual arrogance that removed him ever further from the society of others. Intellectual growth and moral diminution thus proceeded hand in handed. Despite his pretensions for the metaphysical truth of Maimonides leading to spiritual growth, Maimon’s intellectual perfectionism solicited the recognition and praise of others. I see no evidence in the Autobiography that, despite not achieving peace of mind through the pursuit of truth, that Maimon regretted the course of action he took at the expense of moral conduct. Whilst Maimon claimed to pursue knowledge and virtue out of a commitment to intellectual growth as a spiritual growth, his mode of conduct was narcissistic, callous, arrogant, cynical, unethical, and misanthropic. The value of any truth bought in those terms is zero.
And the biggest irony of all in this is that Maimon, an undeniably clever philosophy, most certainly misunderstood his intellectual hero and inspiration Moses Maimonides. Maimon encapsulated the Maimonidean philosophical quest which inspired him with these words: “Strive then, human, after that which is your very self, and don’t work for others.”
But this is not what Maimonides argues at all. Despite the fact that Maimon summary of Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed is generally faithful, in the concluding chapter of that work, Maimonides actually argues precisely the opposite of what Maimon claims in his statement on the nature of the philosophical quest. Maimonides’ view is that intellectual perfection at its apex is expressed through ethical action. These final pages are conspicuous by their absence in Maimon’s commentary.
Chapter LIV begins:
The term ḥokmah (“wisdom”) in Hebrew is used of four different things:
(1) It denotes the knowledge of those truths which lead to the knowledge of God.
(2) The expression ḥokmah denotes also knowledge of any workmanship.
(3) It is also used of the acquisition of moral principles.
(4) It implies, lastly, the notion of cunning and subtlety
There is an ambiguity here:
“It is possible that the Hebrew ḥokmah (“wisdom”) expresses the idea of cunning and planning, which may serve in one case as a means of acquiring intellectual perfection, or good moral principles; but may in another case produce skill in workmanship, or even be employed in establishing bad opinions and principles. The attribute ḥakam (“wise”) is therefore given to a person that possesses great intellectual faculties, or good moral principles, or skill in art; but also to persons cunning in evil deeds and principles.”
According to this explanation, a person that has a true knowledge of the whole Law is called wise in a double sense; he is wise because the Law instructs him in the highest truths, and secondly, because it teaches him good morals. But as the truths contained in the Law are taught by way of tradition, not by a philosophical method, the knowledge of the Law, and the acquisition of true wisdom, are treated in the books of the Prophets and in the words of our Sages as two different things; real wisdom demonstrates by proof those truths which Scripture teaches us by way of tradition.
Our Sages further say, that man has first to render account concerning his knowledge of the Law, then concerning the acquisition of wisdom, and at last concerning the lessons derived by logical conclusions from the Law, i.e., the lessons concerning his actions. This is also the right order: we must first learn the truths by tradition, after this we must be taught how to prove them, and then investigate the actions that help to improve man’s ways.
This proves that our Sages distinguished between the knowledge of the Law on the one hand, and wisdom on the other, as the means of proving the lessons taught in the Law by correct reasoning.
Having set out this explanation, Maimonides argues that the ancient and modern philosophers have demonstrated that man can acquire four kinds of perfection:
1 “The first kind, the lowest, in the acquisition of which people spend their days, is perfection as regards property; the possession of money, garments, furniture, servants, land, and the like; the possession of the title of a great king belongs to this class.”
Maimonides states that the philosophers have shown that “he whose sole aim in all his exertions and endeavours is the possession of this kind of perfection, only seeks perfectly imaginary and transient things.” Even if these things remain a person’s lifetime property, they do not give that person any perfection.
2 “The second kind is more closely related to man’s body than the first. It includes the perfection of the shape, constitution, and form of man’s body; the utmost evenness of temperaments, and the proper order and strength of his limbs.”
This kind of perfection also cannot form the chief aim of human beings, on account of being “a perfection of the body,” which human beings possess not as human beings but as living beings, a property shared “in common with the lowest animal.” “The soul derives no profit whatever from this kind of perfection.”
We come to the third kind of perfection, where it becomes clear that Maimon has simplified Maimonides’ views to have them read the opposite. Recall that Maimon argues for the philosophical quest in terms of striving “after that which is your very self, and don’t work for others.” That denigration of moral conduct is not actually what Maimonides argues. Lest there be any misunderstanding, I shall give the full passage from Maimonides:
3 The third kind of perfection is more closely connected with man himself than the second perfection. It includes moral perfection, the highest degree of excellency in man’s character. Most of the precepts aim at producing this perfection; but even this kind is only a preparation for another perfection, and is not sought for its own sake. For all moral principles concern the relation of man to his neighbour; the perfection of man’s moral principles is, as it were, given to man for the benefit of mankind. Imagine a person being alone, and having no connexion whatever with any other person, all his good moral principles are at rest, they are not required, and give man no perfection whatever. These principles are only necessary and useful when man comes in contact with others.
Moral perfection is not denied, but is qualified as “a preparation for another perfection.” It is a necessary stage in the attainment of perfection which, whilst it is not to be sought for its own sake, it is not to be discarded. Maimon’s view that morality is only “useful” for others, maintaining a social stability which allows the philosopher to pursue intellectual self-perfection separates Maimonides stages of perfection. These moral principles are integral to the nature of human beings as social beings and thus concern the relation of the individual to others in community. There is no sense of the cynical, instrumental conception of morality as valuable merely for its social uses in maintaining peace. Maimonides’ notion of utility is quite different, arguing that “the perfection of man’s moral principles is … given to man for the benefit of mankind.” Taken as an isolated statement, Maimonides’ argument that moral principles “are only necessary and useful when man comes in contact with others” can give the impression that morality is valuable only for instrumental purposes, but context reveals the meaning. Maimonides’ argument is that moral principles are only activated through human interconnection: “Imagine a person being alone, and having no connexion whatever with any other person, all his good moral principles are at rest, they are not required, and give man no perfection whatever.” That point is crucial with respect to truth as such, moral or otherwise: truth is merely passive and inert in a world of abstraction unless it is activated through human interconnection, assimilation, and articulation. Truth cannot just be passively stated as an ideal and relayed downwards from some abstract realm, but has to be actively willed, known, socially embodied, and expressed in lived experience. Otherwise, truth is merely “at rest” and yields “no perfection,” no utility in the sense that it makes no difference.
But this moral perfection within the social realm of human connexion in time and place is not an end in itself, but subservient to another end, the highest end of all. Maimon in his assertion of truth over all things as part of his personal quest of intellectual perfection makes a critical error here. He claims that Maimonides argues that ethics is merely for others and is useful only for social peace. That’s not what Maimonides argues. Maimonides argues against moral perfection for its own sake in order to emphasize that the necessary and useful role that morality plays in ordering human relations in society is itself oriented by a higher truth which transcends time and place:
The fourth kind of perfection is the true perfection of man; the possession of the highest intellectual faculties; the possession of such notions which lead to true metaphysical opinions as regards God. With this perfection man has obtained his final object; it gives him true human perfection; it remains to him alone; it gives him immortality, and on its account he is called man. Examine the first three kinds of perfection, you will find that, if you possess them, they are not your property, but the property of others; according to the ordinary view, however, they belong to you and to others. But the last kind of perfection is exclusively yours; no one else owns any part of it, “They shall be only thine own, and not strangers’ with thee” (Prov. v. 17).
Maimonides’ meaning is that human beings transcend the worlds of material possession, the body, and social relationship to come to relate to God alone. The individual can only reach this final perfection alone. But the individual is not alone in the egoistic and narcissistic sense, but in the sense of a direct relation to God. “Your aim must therefore be to attain this [fourth] perfection that is exclusively yours, and you ought not to continue to work and weary yourself for that which belongs to others, whilst neglecting your soul till it has lost entirely its original purity through the dominion of the bodily powers over it.” Maimon misreads this to mean a purely narcissistic perfection, a pursuit that curves in on itself. Maimonides’ meaning entails a personal moral effort that expands individual being outwards in relation to God. His point is that material wealth, bodily health, and social connection can only take us so far on the road to perfection, but to go all the way requires that individuals transcend the temporal and material realm, and eschew an absorption in which any of these things become ends in themselves. He cites the prophets and the philosophers as saying distinctly that “perfection in property, in health, or in character, is not a perfection worthy to be sought as a cause of pride and glory for us; that the knowledge of God, i.e., true wisdom, is the only perfection which we should seek, and in which we should glorify ourselves.”
Maimonides takes Jeremiah 9:24 as his proof-text:
But let him who glories glory in this, That he understands and knows Me, That I am the LORD, exercising lovingkindness, judgment, and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I delight,” says the LORD.
Maimonides parses as follows:
Jeremiah, referring to these four kinds of perfection, says: “Thus saith the Lord, Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, neither let the mighty man glory in his might, let not the rich man glory in his riches; but let him that glories glory in this, that he understands and knows me” (Jer. ix. 22, 23). See how the prophet arranged them according to their estimation in the eyes of the multitude. The rich man occupies the first rank; next is the mighty man; and then the wise man; that is, the man of good moral principles: for in the eyes of the multitude, who are addressed in these words, he is likewise a great man. This is the reason why the three classes are enumerated in this order.
The key words are understands and knows. Jeremiah does not merely state that the knowledge of God is the highest kind of perfection. Had this been his intention, he would simply have stated that truth without reference to the others in order. But that truth would have been abstract and inert.
Our Sages have likewise derived from this passage the above-mentioned lessons, and stated the same theory that has been explained in this chapter, viz., that the simple term ḥokmah, as a rule, denotes the highest aim of man, the knowledge of God; that those properties which man acquires, makes his peculiar treasure, and considers as his perfection, in reality do not include any perfection; and that the religious acts prescribed in the Law, viz., the various kinds of worship and the moral principles which benefit all people in their social intercourse with each other, do not constitute the ultimate aim of man, nor can they be compared to it, for they are but preparations leading to it.
Jeremiah says that human beings can only glory in the knowledge of God and His ways and attributes in expounding the passage, “Show me now Thy ways” [Exodus 33:13]. Jeremiah tells us that truth is revealed in the divine acts which ought to be known, and ought to serve as a guide for our actions, are ḥesed, “loving-kindness,” mishpat, “justice,” and ts’dakah, “righteousness.” This degree of human perfection can only be attained by those who never forget the presence of the Almighty, and remain firm in their fear and love of God.
We are thus told in this passage that the Divine acts which ought to be known, and ought to serve as a guide for our actions, are, ḥesed, “loving-kindness,” mishpat, “judgment,” and ẓedakah, “righteousness.”
Importantly, Maimonides makes it clear that God’s providence is earthly and not simply other-worldly. The transcendent ethic does not abandon the corporeal and the social as of no ethical significance, the very opposite, in fact:
Another very important lesson is taught by the additional phrase, “in the earth.” It implies a fundamental principle of the Law; it rejects the theory of those who boldly assert that God’s providence does not extend below the sphere of the moon, and that the earth with its contents is abandoned, that “the Lord hath forsaken the earth” (Ez. viii. 12). It teaches, as has been taught by the greatest of all wise men in the words, “The earth is the Lord’s” (Exod. ix. 29), that His providence extends to the earth in accordance with its nature, in the same manner as it controls the heavens in accordance with their nature.
Maimonides returns to Jeremiah’s practical truths of ‘loving-kindness,’ ‘judgment,’ and ‘righteousness.’ These are not transcendent truths alone but are incarnated in the Earth:
This is expressed in the words, “That I am the Lord which exercise loving-kindness, judgment, and righteousness in the earth.” The prophet thus, in conclusion, says, “For in these things I delight, saith the Lord,” i.e., My object [in saying this] is that you shall practise loving-kindness, judgment, and righteousness in the earth.
The truth that Maimonides elaborates is not merely theoretical but is eminently practical. In stating God’s transcendent attributes, it is Maimonides’ concern that human beings “should acquire similar attributes and act accordingly.”
The object of the above passage is therefore to declare, that the perfection, in which man can truly glory, is attained by him when he has acquired—as far as this is possible for man—the knowledge of God, the knowledge of His Providence, and of the manner in which it influences His creatures in their production and continued existence. Having acquired this knowledge he will then be determined always to seek loving-kindness, judgment, and righteousness, and thus to imitate the ways of God.
The points established here by contradict Maimon’s claim that Maimonides made morality as of purely instrumental significance for the society of others, wholly subservient to the end of social stability and irrelevant to contemplative truth. Maimon read Maimonides in light of his own conceits and thereby rendered truth partial, arrogant, imbalanced, and inhuman. Maimon stated repeatedly that the pursuit of theoretical knowledge or truth was his sole concern. He declared that he was “uninterested in practical undertakings.” He thereby not merely disregarded the realm of practical reason but devalued it. This separation of the realms of theoretical reason and practical reason is utterly self-defeating, ensuring that truth remains on ice, frozen in an abstract world instead of coming to life in the affective and social realms of human interpersonal relationships as a warm and existentially meaningful and vital truth.
The way that Maimon misinterpreted Maimonides’ careful ordering of the stages mediating the relationship between theoretical reason and practical reason, Plato’s ancient concern with the bridge between contemplation and action, set him in an entirely opposite direction to his great intellectual hero and namesake, as well as to the central truths of the Jewish religious philosophical tradition.
The upshot is that the life of reason is of more than theoretical significance. And there is such a thing as moral truth. And that truth is practical. If we had to summarize the most important lesson taught by Maimonides in one line, it would be that truth can only be articulated and lived in its wholeness and wholesomeness through acts of loving-kindness, righteousness, and justice. And those acts are always within relationships to others, themselves enfolded within the personal relation to God.