A Guide to TheGuide to the Perplexed: A Reader’s Companion to Maimonides’ Masterwork - Hardcover

Goodman, Lenn

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1503629538 ISBN 13: 9781503629530

Publisher: Stanford University Press, 2024

Synopsis

In this volume, noted philosopher Lenn E. Goodman shares the insights gained over a lifetime of pondering the meaning and purpose of Maimonides' celebrated Guide to the Perplexed. Written in the late twelfth century, Maimonides' Guide aims to help religiously committed readers who are alive to the challenges posed by reason and the natural sciences to biblical and rabbinic tradition. Keyed to the new translation and commentary by Lenn E. Goodman and Phillip I. Lieberman, this volume follows Maimonides' life and learning and delves into the text of the Guide, clearly explaining just what Maimonides means by identifying the Talmudic Ma'aseh Bereshit and Ma'aseh Merkavah with physics and metaphysics (to Maimonides, biblical cosmology and theology). Exploring Maimonides' treatments of revelation, religious practice and experience, law and ritual, the problem of evil, and the rational purposes of the commandments, this guide to the Guide explains the tactics Maimonides deployed to ensure that readers not get in over their heads when venturing into philosophical deep waters.

About this title

About the Author

Lenn E. Goodman is Professor of Philosophy and Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities at Vanderbilt University.

Edition details

• Publisher: Stanford University Press
• Publication date: 2024
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1503629538
• ISBN 13: 9781503629530
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 270