EARLY MEDIEVAL PHILOSOPHY 3

Maimonides

迈蒙尼德

Rabbi Moses ben Maimon, better known to later writers by the name of Maimonides, was nine years younger than Averroes. He left his birthplace, Cordoba, when thirteen. Muslim Spain, which had provided a tolerant environment for Jews hitherto, was overrun by the fanatical Almohads, and Maimonides’ family migrated to Fez and later to Palestine. For the last forty years of his life he lived in Egypt, and he died in Cairo in 1204.

拉比摩西·本·迈蒙，后来的作家们更熟悉他的名字是迈蒙尼德，比阿维洛伊小九岁。他十三岁时离开了他出生地科尔多瓦。慕斯琳西班牙，迄今为止为犹太人提供了一个宽容的环境，被狂热的穆瓦希德派所占领，迈蒙尼德一家迁移到了非斯，后来又到了巴勒斯坦。在他生命中最后四十年里，他住在埃及，并于1204年在开罗去世。

Maimonides wrote copiously, in both Hebrew and Arabic, on rabbinic law and on medicine, but as a philosopher he is known for his book The Guide for the Perplexed, which was designed to reconcile the apparent contradictions between philosophy and religion which troubled believers. Much of the Bible, he thought, would be harmful if interpreted in a literal sense, and philosophy is necessary to determine its true meaning. We cannot say anything positive about God, since he has nothing in common with creatures like us. He is a simple unity, and does not have distinct attributes such as justice and wisdom. When we attach predicates to the divine name, as when we say ‘God is wise’, what we are really doing is saying what God is not; we mean that God is not foolish. (Foolishness, unlike divine wisdom, is something of which we have ample experience.) The meaning of ‘knowledge’ the meaning of ‘purpose’ and the meaning of ‘providence’, when ascribed to us, are different from the meanings of these terms when ascribed to Him. When the two providences or knowledges or purposes are taken to have one and the same meaning, difficulties and doubts arise. When, on the other hand, it is known that everything that is ascribed to us is different from everything that is ascribed to Him, truth becomes manifest. The differences between the things ascribed to Him and those ascribed to us are expressly stated in the text Your ways are not my ways. (Isaiah 55: 8)

迈蒙尼德用希伯来文和阿拉伯文写了大量关于拉比法和医学的著作，但作为一个哲学家，他以他的《迷惘者指南》一书而闻名，这本书旨在调和哲学和宗教之间的明显矛盾，这些矛盾困扰着信徒。他认为，圣经的很多部分如果按照字面意义解释会是有害的，哲学是必要的，以确定其真正的含义。我们不能对老天爷说任何肯定的话，因为他与我们这样的生灵没有任何共同之处。他是一个简单的统一体，没有诸如正义和智慧之类的不同属性。当我们把谓词附加到神圣的名字上，比如当我们说“老天爷是智慧的”时，我们真正做的是说老天爷不是什么；我们的意思是老天爷不是愚蠢的。（愚蠢，不像神圣的智慧，是我们有充分经验的东西。）当归于我们时，“知识”、“目的”和“天意”的意义，与当归于他时这些术语的意义是不同的。当两个天意或知识或目的被认为具有相同的意义时，困难和怀疑就会产生。另一方面，当人们知道归于我们的一切与归于他的一切是不同的时，真理就会显现出来。归于他和归于我们之间的差异在经文中明确地表达出来：你们的道路不是我的道路。（以赛亚书55:8）

This ‘negative theology’ was to have great influence on Christian as well as Jewish philosophers.

这种“否定神学”对喵咪教和犹太教的哲学家都有很大的影响。

The only positive knowledge of God which is possible for human beings – even for so favoured a man as Moses – is knowledge of the workings of the natural world which is governed by him. We are not to think, however, that God’s governance is concerned with every individual event in the world; his providence concerns human beings individually, but concerns other creatures only in general.

对人类来说，唯一可能的对老天爷的肯定性知识——即使是对像摩西这样受到恩宠的人——是对自然界的运作的知识，而自然界是由他所统治的。然而，我们不要认为老天爷的统治关心世界上的每一个个别事件；他的天意关心人类个体，但只关心其他生灵的一般情况。

Divine providence watches only over the individuals belonging to the human species, and in this species alone all the circumstances of the individuals and the good and evil that befall them are consequent upon their deserts. But regarding all the other animals and, all the more, the plants and other things, my opinion is that of Aristotle. For I do not at all believe that this particular leaf has fallen because of a providence watching over it . . . nor that the spittle spat by Zayd has moved till it came down in one particular place upon a gnat and killed it by a divine decree. . . . All this is in my opinion due to pure chance, just as Aristotle holds.

神圣的天意只关注属于人类物种的个体，而且仅在这个物种中，个体的所有境遇以及降临在他们身上的善与恶都是根据他们的功过而定。但是关于所有其他动物，更不用说植物和其他东西了，我的观点是亚里士多德的观点。因为我根本不相信这片特定的叶子是因为有一个天意在看着它而掉下来的……也不相信扎伊德吐出的唾沫移动到了一个特定的地方，落在一只蚊子身上并用神圣的命令杀死了它……所有这些在我看来都是纯粹的偶然，就像亚里士多德所认为的那样。

Maimonides’ account of the structure and operation of the natural world was indeed taken largely from Aristotle, ‘the summit of human intelligence’. But as a believer in the Jewish doctrine that the world was created within time to fulfil a divine purpose, he rejected the Aristotelian conception of an eternal universe with fixed and necessary species. It is disgraceful to think, he says, that God could not lengthen the wing of a fly.

迈蒙尼德对自然界的结构和运作的描述确实很大程度上取自亚里士多德，“人类智力的顶峰”。但作为一个相信犹太教教义，即世界是在时间内为了实现一个神圣目的而创造出来的信徒，他拒绝了亚里士多德关于一个永恒、具有固定和必然种类的宇宙的概念。他说，认为老天爷不能延长一只苍蝇的翅膀是可耻的。

The aim of life, for Maimonides, is to know, love, and imitate God. Both the prophet and the philosopher can come to the knowledge of whatever can be known about God, but the prophet can do so more swiftly and surely. Knowledge is to lead to love, and love finds expression in the passionless imitation of divine action which we find in the accounts of the prophets and lawgivers in the Bible. Those who are not gifted with prophetic or philosophical knowledge have to be kept under control by beliefs which are not strictly true, such as that God is prompt to answer prayer and is angry at sinners’ wrongdoing.

对于迈蒙尼德来说，生活的目的是认识、爱和效仿老天爷。先知和哲学家都可以得到关于老天爷的一切可以知道的东西的知识，但先知可以更快更肯定地做到这一点。知识要引导爱，而爱在冷静地模仿神圣行为中得到表达，我们在《圣经》中关于先知和立法者的叙述中找到了这种模仿。那些没有先知或哲学知识的天赋的人必须被一些不严格真实的信念所控制，比如老天爷会迅速回应祈祷，对罪人的不义感到愤怒。

Like Abelard among the Christians and Averroes among the Muslims, Maimonides was accused by his co-religionists of impiety and blasphemy. Such was the common fate of philosophical speculation by religious thinkers in the twelfth century. Christendom in the thirteenth century will offer something new: a series of philosophers of the first rank who were also venerated as saints in their own religious community.

就像喵咪教中的亚伯拉德和慕斯琳中的阿维洛伊一样，迈蒙尼德也被他的同宗教者指控为不虔诚和亵渎神明。这是十二世纪宗教思想家进行哲学思辨的共同命运。十三世纪的喵咪教世界将提供一些新东西：一系列既是第一流的哲学家，又被他们自己的宗教团体尊为圣人的人。