"On Evil," by Maimonides

The next discussion will take place on Monday, June 23d in the Village Library auditorium at 7 p.m. We'll discuss some of the following questions (page citations from Great Books Reading and Discussion Program, Third Series, Vol.2):

Interpretive Questions

Page 83: Based on Maimonides’s discussion of matter vs. form, do you accept or reject his statement that “All man’s acts of disobedience and sins are consequent upon his matter and not because of his form, whereas all his virtues are consequent upon his form.”

Page 87: Maimonides writes, “Matter is a strong veil preventing the apprehension of that which is separate from matter from matter as it truly is.... Hence whenever our intellect aspires to apprehend the deity or one of the intellects, there subsists this great veil interposed between the two. This is alluded to in all the books of the prophets ….” How does matter prevent our “apprehension” of pure form? Is M. speaking metaphorically, e.g, when he invokes the line from psalm 97, “Clouds and darkness are around him.”

Page 84: Is Maimonides's statement of the necessity of matter and form to coexist an argument in support of the permanent existence of evil?

Page 90: What does Maimonides mean when he writes, “All evils are privations.” Do his examples (death, illness, poverty, ignorance) support this statement?

Page 91: Maimonides states that “the prophets and the Sages” teach about the “good being in its entirety an essential act of the deity,” and goes on to quote the Talmudic saying that "Nothing that is evil descends from above," but do Maimonides’s own arguments support this belief?

Page 92: Maimonides writes, “Just as a blind man, because of absence of sight, does not cease stumbling, being wounded, and also wounding others, because he has nobody to guide him on his way, the various sects of men – every individual according to the extent of his ignorance – does to himself and to others great evils from which individuals of the species suffer. If there were knowledge, whose relation to the human form is like that of the faculty of sight to the eye, they would refrain from doing any harm to themselves and to others.” If evil comes from ignorance, does M. believe that knowledge can overcome it?

Evaluative Questions

Maimonides states there are three kinds of evil (p. 95-100) : (1) those that result from our physical imperfection ; (2) those that "men inflict on one another," and (3) those "inflicted upon any individual among us by his own action." He says the third kind is much more prevalent than the second kind. Agree? Disagree? What would be some examples of evils we perpetrate upon our own selves?

Page 86: Do you buy Maimonides's argument as to why “Thoughts about sin are worse than sin.”?