Maimonides in His World. Portrait of a Mediterranean Thinker

138 CHAPTER FIVE hasty interference. As he himself points out, the restraint is not in itself a mark of modesty or humility. Rat ...

A CRITICAL MIND 139 its historical context, and argue that it always designates pseudo- science and the philosophy that is based ...

140 CHAPTER FIVE it was also used contemptuously, to designate senseless mythologies.^73 IbnTufayl reports that Farabi, in his l ...

A CRITICAL MIND 141 Babylonians, and Canaanites (the same nations grouped in the Guide under the name “Sabians”) occupied themse ...

142 CHAPTER FIVE Astrologers, the hozim ba- kokavim, are called hereal-hadhiiyyin bi- qadaya al- nujum. Their science is mere r ...

A CRITICAL MIND 143 Razi in the list are two Aristotelian pseudepigrapha, the Book of the Apple and the Book of the Golden House ...

144 CHAPTER FIVE approaches it. Then I proceeded to summarize the sheer ravings and the pure obscenities^90 which this book cont ...

A CRITICAL MIND 145 argument qualifi es a person’s argument as “ravings,” particularly when one can point to a mythical discours ...

146 CHAPTER FIVE association of hadhayan with non- Aristotelian systems of thought and to its use as a pointer to such systems. ...

A CRITICAL MIND 147 “they invented the notion that it can be done by fl ying rather than walk- ing, and they imagined a fl ying ...

148 CHAPTER FIVE larger context remains that of the interpretation of the commandments against the background of the ancient pag ...

A CRITICAL MIND 149 InGuide 2:25, Maimonides sets down the reasons for his denial of the eternity of the world and his refusal t ...

150 CHAPTER FIVE the term to denigrate any form of nonscientifi c thinking. Two examples of this general use may suffi ce here. ...

A CRITICAL MIND 151 than to God. It is this latter notion— that true reliance on God precludes the use of medicine— which Maimon ...

152 CHAPTER FIVE those who speak incoherently in their sleep.” Indeed, an important char- acteristic of “ravings” for Maimonides ...

Chapter Six “From Moses to Moses”: Maimonides’ Vision of Perfection Notwithstanding maimonides’ complete immersion in the cultur ...

154 CHAPTER SIX a person’s behavior or understanding. With the disintegration of the body, the vegetal and animal souls, which d ...

“FROM MOSES TO MOSES” 155 nothing we know from our worldly experience, from which it differs in both its permanence, the diffi c ...

156 CHAPTER SIX (hishma).^7 Avicenna also employs meta phorical language of the kind that is usually described as mystical. Typi ...

“FROM MOSES TO MOSES” 157 often refer to the hereafter with another term, “the world to come.” In later Midrashic literature, th ...