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Thinkers

Moses Maimonides

Jewish · Africa · 1138 to 1204

Jewish scholar and physician who sought to show that reason and revealed law agree, in his Guide for the Perplexed.

What it is

Maimonides (1138 to 1204) was a medieval Jewish philosopher, physician and legal scholar who tried to reconcile religious knowledge with reason in his book the Guide of the Perplexed, and who gathered Jewish law into a fourteen-volume code, the Mishneh Torah. He is regarded as the greatest Jewish philosopher of the Middle Ages, and his work shaped thinkers well beyond the Jewish world.

He later lived in Egypt, where he worked as a physician in the Muslim court. His writings caused great controversy in his own time, especially about how reason and revelation relate.

The main ideas

  • Law and philosophy together. In the Mishneh Torah he set out the whole of Jewish law in an orderly code, and it made him the leading rabbinic authority of his time. In the Guide of the Perplexed he worked on the thought behind the law.
  • Reason and revelation. The Guide tries to settle the conflict between religious knowledge and secular knowledge. Scholars still argue about how he balanced his commitment to philosophy against his commitment to a revealed religion.
  • The limits of knowledge. He drew heavily on the Aristotelian thought of his day but departed from it by stressing the limits of human knowledge.
  • What we cannot say about God. He gave an uncompromising defence of negative theology, the view that the right way to speak about God is by saying what God is not.
  • Thirteen principles. He listed thirteen beliefs that he considered binding on every Jew, among them the existence and unity of God and that God has no body.
  • Prophecy and creation. Prophecy is a main topic of his philosophy, with Moses as the greatest prophet. On creation, revelation and redemption his views depart from Aristotle's.

What it looks like in practice

Picture a student who has read Aristotle and also keeps the practices of Jewish life, and who feels the two pull against each other. The Guide of the Perplexed was written for exactly this kind of tension, and it is a good place to see how a careful thinker tries to hold both. This is an illustration, not a passage from the Guide.

Books and moments

  • Commentary on the Mishnah was an early major work on Jewish law.
  • Mishneh Torah is his fourteen-volume code of Jewish law.
  • The Guide of the Perplexed is his philosophical masterpiece, a sustained treatment of Jewish thought and practice.
  • Medical writings show that he was famous as a physician as well.

Questions and criticism

  • Philosopher or believer first? Readers disagree about which commitment led, or whether he saw them as one.
  • Can God be spoken of only by saying what God is not? Negative theology limits what believers can claim. It is fair to ask how a religion can be practised on such terms.
  • What does the Guide really teach? Readers disagree about how to read it, and some ask whether parts are deliberately hard to follow.

Close neighbours

Maimonides influenced Aquinas and Leibniz, among others, so the page on Aquinas shows one way his ideas travelled. The page on Averroes covers another thinker of the same century who worked on the relation of philosophy and religion.

Written by epchē in our own words, and checked against independent sources on 9 October 2026. The sources are listed below.

Philosophies they belong to or are close to

Who they connect to

Influenced

  • Leo Strauss · He studied Maimonides closely and took from him the idea that careful writers hide meaning between the lines.
  • Thomas Aquinas · Aquinas cites Maimonides often, especially on how to speak about God.

Influenced by

  • Al-Farabi · Maimonides held al-Farabi's logic and political writings in high regard.
  • Aristotle · The Guide for the Perplexed uses Aristotle's science and his ideas about the basic nature of reality as its background.
  • Averroes (Ibn Rushd) · Maimonides knew and used Averroes' commentaries on Aristotle late in life.
  • Ibn Sina (Avicenna) · The Guide for the Perplexed uses Avicennan arguments for the necessary being.
  • Saadia Gaon · Maimonides built on his effort to show that reason and revelation agree.

Reacted against by

  • Baruch Spinoza · Spinoza criticised Maimonides' way of reading scripture in the Theological-Political Treatise.

Other Jewish thinkers

Sources we used

  • Maimonides · Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, read on 9 October 2026
  • Maimonides · Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, read on 9 October 2026
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