Maimonides in His World. Portrait of a Mediterranean Thinker

118 CHAPTER FOUR time, women were readily available. They therefore become emblematic of the shallow, superstitious multitudes, ...

Sages’ words literally, unquestioningly accept these fantastic tales. When it suits him, Maimonides plunges into elaborate inter ...

120 CHAPTER FOUR whether those raised from the dead require ablutions, and says: “Since our Master Moses will also be present am ...

with his pen. But the ignorant simpletons are those for whom the fact that something is written proves its truth.”^159 The misle ...

122 CHAPTER FOUR evidence that the preachers’ activity is not restricted to the Jewish com- munity was thus readily available to ...

kept their mouth shut! “Would that you kept silent, it would be counted as wisdom on your part” [Job. 13:5]. Or else, they could ...

124 CHAPTER FOUR On the other hand, when he exhorts his simple readers to remain within the limits of their understanding and no ...

Chapter Five A Critical Mind: Maimonides as Scientist Medicine and Science In modern consciousness Maimonides the physician is p ...

126 CHAPTER FIVE In his youth in al- Andalus he studied “the ancient sciences,” that is to say: philosophy and the sciences that ...

A CRITICAL MIND 127 introduction to the Treatise presents its composition as having been sug- gested by “an eminent man, one of ...

128 CHAPTER FIVE Davidson’s claim that this treatise was misattributed to Maimonides met (as Davidson predicted) with scholarly ...

A CRITICAL MIND 129 in Cairo.^22 And yet, neither of these two tells us much about Maimonides’ training. The claim made by Leo A ...

130 CHAPTER FIVE alone, because he [felt that he] lacked collaboration^28 [with others]. He had no skill either (in treating [th ...

A CRITICAL MIND 131 in Aleppo) had a total and unwavering admiration for his teacher Mai- monides. The criticism is so much out ...

132 CHAPTER FIVE Despite the shortcomings of the Egyptian system, Maimonides favors the collaborative method, according to which ...

A CRITICAL MIND 133 accomplished in theory but not yet confi dent in practice. The closer ex- amination that allows us to correc ...

134 CHAPTER FIVE Maimonides’s source for his taxonomy of medicine may well have been Farabi’s Encyclopedia of the sciences (Ihsa ...

A CRITICAL MIND 135 repetition, because the practice of this art [of medicine] is subordi- nate to [theoretical] speculation and ...

136 CHAPTER FIVE text in his commentary on Aristotle’s Topics (104. b. 5– 18), was puzzled by the fact that in Farabi’s words no ...

A CRITICAL MIND 137 physician, and like Maimonides, he speaks of ridiculing Galen for his views. But in
Amiri’s text the ridicu ...