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Maimonides

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On the Coordinates: 1.8 Natural Theology · 2.2.5 Revelation · 3.3.1 Bioethics and Medical Ethics +1 more

משה בן מימון

Also known as Moses ben Maimon, Rambam, Mūsā ibn Maymūn

1135 or 1138 – 1204 · Córdoba, Fez, Fustat (Cairo)

Traditions: Jewish

Schools: Aristotelianism

In brief

Moses Maimonides (1138–1204), known in Jewish tradition as Rambam, was born in Córdoba and spent most of his working life in Fustat, the old city of Cairo. He was at once a towering legal scholar, a court physician and a philosopher. His Mishneh Torah organised the whole of Jewish law into a single code. His Guide of the Perplexed, written in Judaeo-Arabic, addressed readers torn between scripture and Aristotelian philosophy. It argues that God is best described by saying what God is not, and that reason cannot prove whether the world had a beginning. Christian scholastics, including Aquinas, read it closely.

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Places
Cairo workedFez workedCórdoba born
Tradition
JewishAristotelianism
Influences
4 sourced relationships

Life

Moses ben Maimon was born in Córdoba, then under Muslim rule; the SEP gives 1138, while other sources give 1135. In 1148 the Almohads took the city and offered non-Muslims conversion, exile or death. The family left and moved about for years, settling in Fez in 1160. Around this time he wrote his first notable philosophical work, a treatise on logic. In 1166 he arrived in Egypt and settled in Fustat. Soon afterwards his brother died in a shipwreck. He finished his Commentary on the Mishnah in 1168 and completed the Mishneh Torah around 1178. According to Fred Rosner, by 1174 he had become physician to the vizier who governed Egypt while Saladin was campaigning. He became the spiritual leader of Egypt’s Jewish community. He completed the Guide of the Perplexed in 1190. A letter of 1199 describes days of medical duty so long that by nightfall he could hardly speak. He died in Fustat on 13 December 1204 and was buried in Tiberias.

Problems

  • What can be said about God
  • Whether the world is eternal or created
  • How to read scripture that speaks of God in bodily terms
  • What prophecy is
  • What human perfection consists in

Core ideas

Negative theology

Scripture speaks of God as seeing, hearing, sitting and becoming angry. Maimonides argued that none of this can be literally true of God, who is absolutely one and without body. Even positive terms like ‘wise’ or ‘powerful’ fail, because they would introduce composition into God. The correct reading of ‘God is powerful’ is a negation: God is not lacking in power. Other descriptions are ‘attributes of action’: they describe what God does in the world, not what God is. The more negations we understand, the closer we come to knowing God. The SEP suggests that, for a traditional theist like Aquinas, a God known only through negations is too thin for the average worshipper, while an atheist could ask what value such a conception has at all.

Creation and eternity

In the Guide (II.13–28) Maimonides sets out three views: Moses’ view that God created the world from nothing; Plato’s view that God formed the world from eternal matter; and Aristotle’s view that the world is eternal and necessary. He argues that none can be demonstrated. Aristotle’s arguments for eternity work only by assuming that the world’s present state tells us how it began. Since reason is undecided, he accepts creation on the authority of the prophets, while allowing that Plato’s view is compatible with the Torah. This argument shaped the Latin debate on the world’s eternity, including Aquinas’s view that it cannot be settled by reason alone.

Reading scripture and the perplexed reader

The Guide is addressed to a religious reader who has studied philosophy and is troubled because the Bible seems to say things reason rejects. Maimonides’ answer is that much biblical language is figurative and must be interpreted, and the Guide begins with long studies of the meanings of terms such as ‘image’ and ‘place’. He also warns that the book deliberately contains contradictions. He lists seven causes of contradiction in writings and says he will use two of them, so that the deepest teachings reach only readers prepared for them. This has made the Guide one of the most debated texts in the history of philosophy.

Prophecy and human perfection

Maimonides reads biblical talk of prophets ‘seeing’ God as intellectual, not visual: it is like seeing the solution of a geometry problem. When scripture says God ‘spoke’ to a prophet, it means the prophet came to understand what God wants. Even Moses saw only God’s ‘back’, which Maimonides identifies with God’s effects in the world, not God’s essence. Human perfection lies above all in intellectual perfection, knowing what human nature allows us to know (Guide III.27); moral perfection is a means to it. The Guide’s final chapters urge the reader to turn from wealth and honour towards the eternal. Critics felt this made the life of the mind more central to Judaism than many believers accepted.

Works

  • Treatise on the Art of Logic c. 1160sAn introduction to logical terminology, his first notable philosophical work.
  • Commentary on the Mishnah completed 1168Includes the Eight Chapters, an ethical introduction to the tractate Avot.
  • Mishneh Torah completed c. 1178A fourteen-volume code of the whole of Jewish law.
  • Guide of the Perplexed (Dalalat al-haʾirin) completed 1190His main philosophical work, written in Judaeo-Arabic and later read in Hebrew and Latin translation.
  • Treatise on Resurrection 1191A defence of his belief in bodily resurrection against critics.

Influences and relationships

4 sourced relationships. Open one to read why, and the source.

Shaped or answered Maimonides 3

Maimonides shaped 1

  • InfluencedThomas Aquinasc. 1225 – 1274

    His third way draws directly on the Guide of the Perplexed (II.1), and Maimonides’ argument that the world’s eternity cannot be demonstrated shaped the Latin debate he joined.

    Source: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy · stated on the profile of Thomas Aquinas

    Aquinas’s third way draws directly on Guide II.1, and the Guide’s chapters on creation (II.13–28) were a leading source for the Latin debate on the world’s eternity.

    Source: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy · stated on the profile of Maimonides

    Thomas Aquinas’s relationships

Reception

In Hebrew translation the Guide’s rationalism sparked bitter controversy. In some rabbinic circles it was banned, and his Thirteen Principles were disputed. Others defended and commented on it, and it became the central text of medieval Jewish philosophy. A Latin version made it available to Christian scholastics: Aquinas drew on it for one of his proofs of God and for the debate on the world’s eternity. Later readers included Spinoza, Leibniz and Newton. The Mishneh Torah remains a basic reference work of Jewish law. In the twentieth century Leo Strauss’s esoteric reading made the Guide central to debates about how philosophers write under religious and political pressure.

Disputed interpretations

What did Maimonides really believe about creation?

Maimonides says he accepts creation from nothing. Some scholars, such as Warren Zev Harvey (1981), argue that the Guide’s hints show he secretly held Aristotle’s eternal world; others, such as Herbert Davidson (1979), argue that he secretly favoured Plato’s view of creation from eternal matter. Still others take his stated position at face value, noting that he argues carefully that neither side can be demonstrated.

How esoteric is the Guide?

Leo Strauss (1952) argued that the deliberate contradictions are the key to the Guide and that its surface teaching hides a more radical philosophical one. Critics reply that Maimonides’ stated purposes, protecting unprepared readers and teaching in stages, explain the contradictions without a hidden doctrine. The SEP notes that the strongly esoteric reading appears to be losing favour.

Primary texts

  • The Guide for the Perplexed Free to read · Project GutenbergM. Friedländer’s translation, 2nd edition revised throughout (London: Routledge, 1910); free on Project Gutenberg. The standard scholarly translation is Shlomo Pines (University of Chicago Press, 1963).

Sources

Scholarly sources and reference works, free to read online.

Guides

In the Book corner

  • The Guide for the Perplexed c. 1190 · Advanced
    Written in Judeo-Arabic as a letter to a student torn between the Torah and Aristotelian philosophy, the Guide is in three parts.…

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On the Atlas

  • Cairo worked here, 1166–1204
  • Fez worked here, 1160–1165
  • Córdoba born here, 1138

See on the Atlas Who else was alive then?

Cite this page

Written and kept up to date by the Coordinates of Thought editors. Each statement was checked against the sources listed above before publishing; this page is not peer-reviewed. Last updated 26 October 2026. How to cite this site.

APA (7th edition)

Coordinates of Thought Editors. (2026, October 26). Maimonides. Coordinates of Thought. Retrieved [date accessed], from https://coordinatesofthought.com/thinker/maimonides/

MLA (9th edition)

“Maimonides.” Coordinates of Thought, 26 Oct. 2026, coordinatesofthought.com/thinker/maimonides/. Accessed [date accessed].

Chicago (17th edition)

Coordinates of Thought Editors. “Maimonides.” Coordinates of Thought. Last modified October 26, 2026. https://coordinatesofthought.com/thinker/maimonides/.

BibTeX

@misc{cot-maimonides-2026,
  author       = {{Coordinates of Thought Editors}},
  title        = {Maimonides},
  howpublished = {Coordinates of Thought},
  year         = {2026},
  month        = oct,
  url          = {https://coordinatesofthought.com/thinker/maimonides/},
  note         = {Last updated 26 October 2026}
}

RIS

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AU  - Coordinates of Thought Editors
TI  - Maimonides
T2  - Coordinates of Thought
PB  - Coordinates of Thought
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/10/26
UR  - https://coordinatesofthought.com/thinker/maimonides/
LA  - en
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Where next

  1. On the Atlas · where they workedCairoSee the place, century by century, and who else was there.

Tradition: Jewish philosophyThinkers A–Z