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On Guide for the Perplexed (1168).
What is God? Central to Judaism, at least, is the idea that He's a unity: "God is One." Maimonides thinks that this means you can't attribute properties to God at all. Why? Because (according to M's Aristotelian metaphysics, anyway) size, color, spatial and temporal location, mental state, etc. are really parts of a thing. Unity = no parts = no properties, not even essential properties, i.e. those that define a thing. So God has no definition, and all the statements about God (He's good, he's all-powerful, omniscient, etc.) central to religion are strictly speaking false. You can only say what God is not.
Mark and Seth are joined by Danny Lobell, comedian host of the Modern Day Philosophers podcast to figure out what this could possibly amount to. Read more and get the text.
End song: "Double Negative Theology" by Mark Lint. Read about it.
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The picture is by Corey Mohler for PEL.
Guys, you are amazing, ive been listening to you for 4 years now, and im pritty excited to finally see you in the 100 episode celebration! im from argentina and travel a lot so im able to follow you as my entreteintmet episode no matter where i am. Thanks for such a great program.
It was a lot of fun being on the show and the guys made me feel very comfortable. Great experience!
To be honest, Maimonides’s account of God is strongly reminiscent of a lot of these new age mystics who talk about consciousness and “oneness” with the universe. Lots of vague expressions that ultimately don’t amount to much in my opinion. It was a nice discussion though, and Danny was a great guest.
Thanks for having Danny Lobell on!
I’ve been listening to his terrific pod casts all year and he really shines during this episode.
PEL has always been at the top of my list and this ep was like a thing that combines 2 great things and makes an all new greater thing.
Yeah… that’s what it was like!
Seriously, Mr Lobell has never sounded better and you folks meshed perfectly with him.
A Kudo to each and every one of you!
No offense meant to be directed at Danny, but I didn’t think he was a good choice of guest. It seemed like you two were struggling to teach him — he wasn’t actually adding to the conversation. He also sidetracked the discussion a few times.
One of my least favorite new episodes; but some people may enjoy it for exactly the reason I didn’t! If not for Danny, you might not have talked so much about primary and secondary qualities, which is probably useful for a lot of listeners.
It was definitely a different dynamic than usual, and trying to keep us on topic made me more pushy than usual, trying to pull things (like Aristotelian metaphysics) out of my hat that weren’t really what we read that day. Still, I think and hope this one was more accessible than most of our discussions, and will serve as a good introduction or re-introduction to some of these issues that we haven’t touched on this podcast for literally years. I’m all psyched now to do more Middle Ages, more old-time metaphysics (e.g. Plotinas, Parmenides, Aristotle), and Dylan has wanted us for some time to get to more Spinoza (since he hadn’t joined us when last we covered this).
http://backdoorbroadcasting.net/2013/05/spinoza-and-nietzsche-in-dialogue-2-day-conference/
Mark, this was a really enjoyable episode, my favorite in quite a while. As a former student of a similar tradition (Aristotle/Aquinas) the vocabulary of this episode felt very comfortable to me, but I hadn’t ever read Maimonides prior to listening. Your guest was really funny and the banter was wonderful. If you dig deeper into this era as you suggest above, I think you’ll find that the Medieval synthesis was a pretty neat period as the Greek sources being commented upon after transmission from Muslim to Jewish and Christian communities has all sorts of implications for later philosophers to consider, such as questions of hermeneutics and the encounter between competing scientific paradigms. Again, thanks for an enjoyable listen.
I absolutely agree. It would have helped to have somebody more knowledgeable about the subject. He kept saying things that were just plain wrong, and (not that this wasn’t to be expected) the regular crew just didn’t know enough to correct him. This is especially true when he started trying to weave in mystical ideas (which the Rambam explicitly rejected) in with the readings. For anybody looking to learn more about this topic in particular, I highly recommend Maimonides’ Confrontation with Mysticism by Menachem Kellner. He goes topic by topic and compares the Rambam’s halakhic and philosophical with contemporaneous mystical and proto-kabbalistic ideas.
This is certainly not Danny’s fault. I want to be clear on this. The Rambam is not taught in yeshiva except in legal discussions where the Rambam was ultimately followed. It was just very clear that he was not an expert on Maimonides or Jewish philosophy in general, and he only read the readings prescribed. It probably wasn’t fair to ask him to weigh in on such a complicated figure as the Rambam without being an expert. I myself study Jewish philosophy, and consider myself a Rambamist, but I wouldn’t consider myself competent to have this discussion.
Is it anti semitic to say how typically Jewish it is with the whole “I’m scared to talk cause you’re so great.” “oh no, I’m more scared cause you’re better and I’m not really any good.”? Made me smile.
I’d never read any of or heard about Maimonides but I was happy to have heard you guys cover him. Probably like many theologians, no matter the faith, it seems they have to do a lot of mental gymnastics to make the theology jibe with philosophy or science. I wonder if anybody else had the same feeling. Mark’s song about double negative properties seem to capture the absurdity of the position. If anyone were to advance the position today, say, that we can’t say that God is just but we can say that God is not unjust, people would just stare at them for a long time. So too with the claim that God did not create the world so much as it emanated from him. Again, long stares. You guys explained his position, though, as well as could be explained. Happy to have heard it.
I really enjoyed this episode. While I fully appreciate the higher-level/abstract discussions of more recent episodes, I find it valuable to be exposed to thinkers from religious traditions I don’t know very well. Might you do one pertaining to Islam? Or maybe you already have; I don’t remember. I would also enjoy episodes on more general religious topics, such as perhaps souls.
I also liked hearing more from Seth than usual.
Very much enjoyed this podcast. It is nice to hear a little mysticism without that being a dirty word – there is a lot of interesting mental ground between metaphysics and mysticism which is not explored very well by most people. Also Danny was a nice change of pace, dare I say, comic relief? While some of this may seem “new age” it should be clear that there is nothing new – all “new age” is largely a (poor) rehashing of older occult ideas, and occasionally occultists were natural philosophers and vice versa (Roger Bacon, people?) Anyway, interesting departure from typical material.
all kinds of theology sites out there on the web:
http://www.chabad.org/multimedia/media_cdo/aid/1800934/jewish/Maimonides-Rationalist-or-Mystic.htm
I’m a facetious poster trying to arouse admiration from mark.
Replied on Twitter but that isn’t good for philosophy . . .
So on the comment about “Can God make a sandwich that is too large for God to eat?” being a good argument for atheism . . .
Why must God be omnipotent in order to be God? I would imagine all of the PEL regulars have at least dipped a foot into process philosophy/theology. I’d love an episode on how process thought has attempted to contribute to the discussion “What is God?” especially touching on John Cobb’s contributions.
Cobb is a really poor reader of Whitehead from a philosophical perspective (versus his role as a Christian apologist which I’ll leave to others to judge), I believe that Whitehead is on the PEL to-do list but in the mean time for a thoughtful contemporary take you might enjoy Shaviro’s Without Criteria:
http://shaviro.com/Othertexts/articles.html
Whether or not Cobb is a good reader of Whitehead is not particularly important to the argument against God as omnipotent. Why must some (including some at PEL) insist that God must be omnipotent in order to be God? “Because God must be able to do God’s will” is not an answer but rather further begs the question.
I would also object to Shaviro’s labeling Whitehead’s description of God as non-Christian to be inaccurate as well. There are MANY Christian philosophers/theologians that believe just Whitehead’s description.
“Why must some (including some at PEL) insist that God must be omnipotent in order to be God?”
Because that’s what makes God philosophically interesting, along with his other power omniscience.
Here’s how one should answer the sandwich argument:
“Surely by saying that God is omnipotent one means to say he can do anything that is possible.”
Then philosophy ensues, by argumentation of what is and what is not possible.
Infact it was to answer those sort of questions that modal logic was developed a great deal in the medieval age.
I’m sorry, but “because that isn’t as interesting” isn’t an exact or rigorous counter. 🙂
Just wanted to say that this was a very enjoyable episode, Danny was a fun guest and brought you chaps down from your Philosophical ivory tower. 🙂
I also love a good aside and distractions and there were some really interesting ones in this episode. The part about the Torah having a written and oral traditional was fascinating, for example.
Keep up the great work by the way, I’ve learned an awful lot from you chaps.
Just recently stumbled across PEL and found the podcasts very interesting and enjoyable so far. The episode on Maimonides was a lot of fun, too, but I do struggle with the basic premises. It seems to me that the meaning of the phrase “unity of God” is not very well-founded. I can think of many different ways to understand it without it coming down to “having no parts”. And why is God’s being “one” found to be more valid than all the many other, rather personal and often quite concrete, properties attributed to Him in the Bible? I could just as well say that since God is personal and obviously does have properties, He cannot be some kind of singularity. Like this, there’s not so much for me to take home from these puzzles, funny as they may be. Am I just missing the theological basics? Does all this follow from Aristotle?
That aside, it would be interesting, as some of the commentators already mentioned, to discuss all those properties that are commonly attributed to (the Jewish/Christian) God in philosophical and theological works. For example, „properties“ like omnipotence and omnibenevolence are used as premises in logical approaches by everybody from Epicurus to Mackie and Plantinga to prove or disprove the existence of God. But so far, I could not find a single fully convincing explanation as to why God should have these attributes at all.