Maimonides’ Contribution to the Philosophy of Judaism

Maimonides, a seminal Jewish commentator, based his philosophical findings on Aristotle’s logic as the exemplar of reason. Maimonides’ views on creation, revelation, and redemption depart from Aristotle’s views, even though he used Aristotelian methods. Creation, revelation, and redemption were the core of Maimonides’ reality. In The Guide of the Perplexed, Maimonides argued that the eternity of the world is not demonstrable. He found that God is the First Cause as Creator, which providentially governs the world with concern for the human beings created in its image. Through study of the created order enlarges our understanding of God. Revelation is important because human beings receive help through divine graciousness. Torah enables human beings with a direction to perfection. Some even call him the forefather of the Jewish Enlightenment of the latter 18th and early 19th centuries. Maimonides remained a strictly observant Jew to his last day. In many respects, he defined normative Judaism, both in his own Sephardi (Spanish) world and in the rabbinical Ashkenazi academies.