Maimonides by Alberto Manguel

Author:Alberto Manguel
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 2023-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

15

What Is Virtue?

If, then, the virtues are neither passions nor faculties, all that remains is that they should be states of character.

—Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 2.5

BOTH THE Epistle to Yemen and the Epistle on Conversion are concerned with the problem of how to deal with contemporary catastrophes without increasing the anguished state of individuals and that of the whole community, while at the same time underlining the importance of adhering tenaciously to the Jewish faith and the Law. In the address to Rabbi Ya’akov, Maimonides put forward an argument concerning the proper conduct of a Jew, and then proceeded to develop in depth the question What constitutes virtue?

For Aristotle, virtue lies in the imitation of nature, but since this is an ideal, social laws and rational judgment are necessary to guide us toward it. For Maimonides however, virtue lies not in the imitation of nature but in the will of the unknowable God. Certainly, nature has to be studied. To his student Joseph ben Judah, whom Maimonides addresses in his Epistle Dedicatory of the Guide, he says repeatedly that his studies require a gradual order: first logic, second mathematics, then natural sciences, and finally metaphysics. One of Joseph’s main errors has been to ignore the natural sciences and plunge straight into metaphysical questions. The study of nature is essential to achieving enlightenment.1

However, according to Maimonides, the virtuous human qualities belong either to the appetitive faculty or to the deliberative faculty; they can consequently be divided into moral and intellectual virtues or vices. Courage (moral) and reflection (intellectual) are virtues deriving from these different faculties, for instance, just as cowardly and rash actions would be vices corresponding to the same division. Maimonides provides a number of useful definitions, scattered throughout his writings. Virtue is an action of the will to do what is approved by reason, and it stems from a natural potential for action. Virtue, in order to grow and expand, requires exercise and intelligence. Ethical virtue is the permanent direction of the will which maintains our best conduct, and it is intellectually determined. A virtuous life (as previously noted) should not depend on the coming of the Messiah. We should await it hopefully, of course, but not weigh our actions according to the promised expectation.2

Virtue requires courage, the middle point between cowardice and rash audacity, the spiritual temperance that lies between unrestrained desire and stolid indifference. Concerning measured courage, Maimonides refers to an episode in the Tanakh in which a priest addresses the people on the eve of battle, exhorting them to have courage and not fear the enemy. Maimonides understood this verse as normative. Both in the Mishneh and the Sefer HaMitzvot he lists as a negative prohibition the opposite of cowardice: not having fear of the enemy.3 The Talmud gives the following example. In the second century BCE, a slave of King Yannai of Judea killed a man, and the king himself was called to account for this action by the rabbinical court. When Shimon ben Shetah, a

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