Please join us for our upcoming seminar on: "Choosing Truth over Facts: Maimonides’ Finessing of Kalam Attribute Theory" by Prof. Y. Tzvi Langermann (Bar-Ilan University)

Monday, November 2, 2020, from 17:30 to 19:00 (Israel time) via zoom.

The theory of divine attributes was by far the most significant import from Islamic thought into
medieval Jewish theology. It developed into a major topic, engendering both a “Jewish kalam” but
also resistance. By the time that Moses Maimonides (d. 1204) wrote his famous Dalālat al-
Ḥā’irīn (Guide of the Perplexed), the topic had had currency among Jewish thinkers for about two
hundred years. I suspect that Maimonides’ attitude was ambivalent. On the face of it, he argues
that no attributes (ṣifāt) may be affirmed of the deity, for any affirmation or predication
necessarily entails complexity in the subject; hence a true muwaḥḥid cannot predicate anything of
the deity. However, I believe that Maimonides deliberately overstates his case. I have as yet not
worked out Maimonides’ stance to my own satisfaction. However, the leads that I am working on
involve a close look at Maimonides’ exposition and some of the terms he employs. One potentially
valuable clue is found in Maimonides’ usages of the key verb waṣafa. When used as a verb to
denote predication, waṣafa is accompanied by the auxiliary verb awjaba, which means “to
impose”, “to make necessary”. This opens the possibility of using waṣafa alone in a softer sense. If
waṣafa + awjaba together convey the sense of stridently affirming, waṣafa alone would mean to
humbly suggest; ṣifa is the noun associated with the first and means “attribute” in the commonly
used technical sense, whereas waṣf is the noun associated with waṣafa alone and would mean
“description”. Ultimately, I see Maimonides to be choosing the truth of religious experience over
the facts of logic. Maimonides ostensibly endorses “negative theology” as a method of guiding, or
directing, the mind (irshād al-dhihn) “toward that which must be believed of Him, may He be
exalted”.1 But one cannot apprehend, believe in, or worship the not-multiple, the not-bodily.
Maimonides acknowledges that our intellects must be in a certain “state (ḥāl)” when we desire to
apprehend God—and this “state” must include some description of the object of our
apprehension, apprehension being the highest form of worship.

Tzvi Langermann earned his doctorate in History of Science at Harvard. After cataloging
manuscripts for many years at the Institute of Microfilmed Hebrew Manuscripts in Jerusalem, he
joined the Department of Arabic at Bar Ilan, from which position he retired in September 2019.
His most recent book is Subtle Insights Concerning Knowledge and Practice, an annotated
translation of a treatise by Ibn Kammūna published by Yale in 2019.