Upload to Google Docs

Section 11; Group 1 (Maimonides)

Elizabeth Barnard

            Maimonides was a philosopher and a medical doctor. He was into falsafah ideas. He wrote Jewish law called The Torah. He wrote this so that the Jewish could resort to this and find laws on how to behave quicker than having to look it up in the larger version. He wrote The Guide for the Perplexed. “What Maimonides expressed was essentially a midway position between belief in prophecy and belief in rationalism”. He was a physician. He knew that people believed in “the existing state of things is the result of accidental combination and separation of the elements, and the Universe has no ruler or Governor”. He tries to explain people can only see what is capable by the human eye and therefor for humans the elements that make up an object do not exist because humans cannot see them with the naked eye. He explains how visualizing objects are misleading. They can look a certain way but may become or act like something totally different.

Fact: What book did Maimonides write to sum up Jewish Law quickly? Guide for the Perplexed.

Discussion: Maimonides describes the similarities between different beings by saying they have some familiar humanlike qualities. Why does he claim what makes them different is a non- existing being? Could it be because he is explaining the “process of creating patterns” from a “singular essence”?