Sarah Stroumsa, Maimonides in His World: Portrait of a Mediterranean Thinker (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009) (original) (raw)
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This work provides a cultural biography of Moses Maimonides, examining his multifaceted thought within its historical and cultural contexts. Unlike existing works, which often focus on specific disciplines such as philosophy or law, the book aims to showcase Maimonides as a thinker whose diverse engagements reflect a coherent intellectual pursuit to direct thought towards the divine and the meaning of humanity. While acknowledging the extensive scholarship on Maimonides, the author proposes a fresh perspective that intertwines his intellectual achievements with the broader cultural landscape of his time.
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Maimonides Review of Philosophy and Religion 3 / 2024
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MAIMONIDEAN ETHICS REVISITED: DEVELOPMENT AND ASCETICISM IN MAIMONIDES
Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy, 2003
Most recent interpreters of Maimonides argue that his ethical views develop from support of the mean in Eight Chapters to support of asceticism in "Laws Concerning Character Traits" and the Guide. This article challenges that interpretation: first, through a reconsideration of Aristotle's views on the mean and the relation of the ethically virtuous life to the contemplative life, and, second, through a reconsideration of Maimonides' texts. One riddle recommends we not jump to conclusions about Maimonides' views: In Eight Chapters he appears to advocate the mean, on the basis of Aristotelian sources. In the Guide he ascribes his most ascetic recommendations to Aristotle.
Maimonides was strongly drawn to philosophy, we all know, even as we know that he was content, by and large, to work within the philosophical theories current in his day. Much research has been devoted to identifying the particular philosophers with whom Maimonides agrees, and to clarifying the specific points at which he disagrees with his predecessors. 1 As Maimonides makes clear, he is not offering his readers a full, let alone original, exposition of any one area of philosophical discourse. He assumes that the reader knows the material, and can follow him in his adoption or rejection of it. Of course, he does not fully subscribe to either of the two dominant philosophical paradigms current in his time, the Aristotelian or the Neoplatonic. But he does not critique them wholesale either.
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