Maimonides' Ethics: The Encounter of Philosophic and Religious Morality

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University of Chicago Press, Oct 25, 1991 - Biography & Autobiography - 224 pages
In this book Raymond L. Weiss examines how a seminal Jewish thinker negotiates the philosophical conflict between Athens and Jerusalem in the crucial area of ethics. Maimonides, a master of both the classical and the biblical-rabbinic traditions, reconciled their differing views of morality primarily in the context of Jewish jurisprudence. Taking into consideration the entire corpus of Maimonides' writings, Weiss focuses on the ethical sections of the Commentary on the Mishnah and the Mishneh Torah, but also discusses the Guide of the Perplexed, the letters of Maimonides, and his medical works.

The gulf between classical philosophy and the Torah made the task of Maimonides extraordinarily difficult. Weiss shows that Maimonides subtly preserves the tension between those traditions while producing a practical accommodation between them. To explain how Maimonides was able to accomplish this twofold goal, Weiss takes seriously the multilevel character of Maimonides' works. Weiss interprets Maimonides as a heterodox thinker who, with utter integrity, faces the Law's encounter with philosophy and gives both the Torah and philosophy their due.
 

Contents

Introduction to the Ethics of the Code
85
Some Ethical Issues in the Guide
163
Theoria and Praxis
177
The Noahidic Commandments
204
Index of Maimonidean Passages
213
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About the author (1991)

Raymond L. Weiss, professor of philosophy at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, is the coeditor of Ethical Writings of Maimonides.

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