So I was learning 1:12 הלכות יסודי התורה with Jose this morning and I was wondering why the Rambam invokes לשון בני אדם here. He could have said that the Torah is written in homily, or it is דרך סוד, but instead he uses this funny phrase, the "language of man". Jose and I came up with two explanations (although I don't think the Rambam would like either one, necessarily).
1. We, as people, are somehow fundimentally bound by language (see PI), all the concepts which we are given are restricted by the words we have to talk about them. The Author realizes that man is limitted and thus using phrases like "zroah netuya" are equivelent to something like "in an awesome manner". The same way "low table with a back" and "things that holds you when you are squatting" might be the same for someone who lives in a universe w/o chairs, they are both equadistantly wrong from the right formulation. (I am not happy with this example, I will try and fix it later)
2. Merely by talking about a chair in a universe without chairs you are already uttering blasphemy, so you might as well write in a form that the audience can understand. (As there is no formlessness that we are familiar with that is of the same kind of formlessness of G-d) Thus the chumash embrases a humanized prose in order to make it a work for humanity (eg the argument between Moshe and the Malachachim wrt for whom the Torah was written)
In any event there has to be understood that there is a qualitative difference between לשון בני אדם and the True לשון. That is only one of the many paradoxes about "scripture" (ie תורה שבכתב)
I am still left feeling empty because I don't think that the Rambam would buy either of these two answers. Maybe they are really one answer. Oh well.
Blackbird singing in the dead of night
13 years ago
6 comments:
If I understand you correctly your thesis is this: "It is not unreasonable that the author of scripture would be forced to use human-focused language if this was all that was available."
I feel that there is a deeper question though which is implicit. If G-d is the epitome of that which is formless, then why attach explicitly anatomic terms to Him? The thesis you prepose does not appear to address this question. I attempted (and possibly failed) to address this by 1. the equadistant answer 2. It is blasphemous already, so you might as well let them have a good read. The answers are not exclusive of one another, but they just focus on different aspects 1. the language gap 2. that the text has embraced humanization.
1- someone with time and resources needs to check where leshon benei adam is used in "chazal" in order to understand what it means - it's not the Rambam's turn of phrase.
2-
a thought, in some semblance of order:
Whereas leshon benei adam has some sort of right to claim a real correspondence with benei-adam-events, it doesn't have that right wrt divine things. the rambam (as far as i undersrand) thinks this about language in general - cf his dislike of ascribing positive attributes to God at all. the real question is, what (if anything) makes anthropomorphic language worse* than other (definitionally) non-accurate language?
Rambam does also say anthropomorpism is "mashal" (1:9). my guess is by metaphor he doesn't necessarily mean whatever we mean by metaphor (i know very little about all that theory) so much as an imagistic _super-natural_ perceptive experience.
Using a metaphor of "arms of steel" about, say, a human king, does not carry meaning the same way it would if you used it about God.
In the former case, the world to which arms are shayyach is also the world to which the king is shayyach. in the latter case, no.
So rambam may just be emphasizing that - metaphor wrt God is more disconnected than wrt worldly beings - it can never actually make sense, but at best it reflects some sort of super-conscious perception - mahazeh or mar'eh hanevuah. (a regular mashal makes sense without nevuah.) at worst, it represents a more polluted theology because it is so bound up n worldly experience - the more worldly the language, the more disconnected.
that's my thought, though i think i still need a sharper dsitinction between anthropomorphisms and general God-attribute-talk. [maybe: the former ascribes properties by invoking an image, which is more risky (b/c less quantifiable, analyzable) and only ok in the context of the super-humanly-rational prophetic experience. the latter is "just plain" attributive? - i don't necessarily think that's how language works, but rambam might have...]
that's what i think at 1:30 am. good shabbos. miriam
*a hasty reading of the chapter in question does suggest that at the very least Rambam treats anthropomorphism differnetly (eg, in different places)than other innacurate forms of God-talk, soeven if it's not "worse" the question of why it is considered different persists.
I'm proposing a simple answer to your question, Miriam: the Rambam spent a lot of his life battling those who took anthropomorphic language a little seriously; the first book of the Moreh Hanevuchim is just drashos on anthropomorphisms, showing how each could not possibly be taken in a literal sense, and revealing at least one possible non-literal meaning.
Also, I don't like your translation of "mashal" into metaphor.. a "mashal" is much closer to analogy. The point being, that some properties are transferable, but most are not; the difference being that this transference of properties is intended to be limited. When chazal make a "mashal" between G-d/servant and "melech bassar vedam"/"eved" they are doing this specifically to focus in on certain properties of the relationship, which might not be available in an anaology with "av/ben" - so that when the Rambam says anthroporphism is "mashal" he means that the torah is focusing in on certain properties, not necessarily to "come down to our level" as suggested by Zev above, but as part of the content of the passage. Your translation into "metaphor", makes it sound more like Zev's approach above, where the torah is tring to appeal to things we understand, and perhaps involve some emotional response, to get the message across. Metaphors are generally much harder to describe in logical terms, they "just work", whereas the word analogy sounds more to me like something that suggests discrete logical and semantic relationships of the sort the Rambam probably believed in, being a rugged Aristotelian. I absolutely must go to sleep now, more on this later perhaps.
Jose, you are not allowed to use the term "grok". Zev can, but would look foolish - you're just not allowed.
While "לשון בני אדם" was certainly used before the Rambam, it is likely, as with many of his expressions, that the Rambam intended his own meaning with these words. This "funny phrase" is used many many times in the מורה and it is at least possible that Rambam's conception of language is important for all of his works. After all, as Oren pointed out, the first book is a kind of dictionary of biblical language.
Although Wittgenstein undoubtedly made many important contributions to our understanding of language, it would be hard to argue that he contributed to *Rambam's* understanding of language. Perhaps it would be better to look at Aristotle's idea of language -- or, as he called it, "logos". In this regard I recommend an essay of Jacob Klein entitled "Aristotle, an Introduction" (from *Lectures and Essays By Jacob Klein.* St. Johns Press, 1986. 175-6). Klein says of Aristotle's "logos":
"The principle and inextinguishable meaning of this word is speech. We mean by speech . . . a sequence of sounds uttered by somebody in such a way as to be understandable to others. The verb 'to understand' refers primarily, if not uniquely, to speech. Hearing somebody speak we may say, "I understand what you are saying." We may, in fact, misunderstand, but even misunderstanding involves understanding. But *what* do we understand in hearing somebody speak? Not the sounds in themselves, the audible and articulated, low and high-pitched noises issuing from somebody's mouth (or some machine, for that matter). We *hear* these noises. But hearing is not understanding. That is why we do not understand speech in a foreign tongue. In a manner which, itself, is hardly or not at all understandable, the sounds carry with them -- or embody or represent -- something else, precisely that which *makes* us understand, whenever we understand. This source and target of our understanding consists of units to which single words correspond, as well as combinations of those units to which whole sequences of words correspond. The speaker and the hearer share -- or, at least, intend to share -- the understanding of those units and of those combinations of units. . . . The intended meaning is what the Greeks call *to nohton*; its single units are the *nohta*. . . . Speech and understanding are inseperable. *Logos* means inseperably both speech and that which can be and is being understood *in* speech. It is in *man* and through *man* (*anthropos*) that *logos* manifests itself conspicuously, so much so that Aristotle is able to say: 'Man is a living being possessing specch,' and that means possessing the ability to *understand* the spoken word."
To return to the Rambam, we must remember that for him too speech is a defining characteristic of man. In מורה הנבוחים I.34 he says that the mysteries of the Torah "have been hidden because . . . the [human] intellect is incapable of receiving them; only flashes of them are made to appear so that the perfect man should know them." Further he claims that this character (or defect) of the human intellect is "the cause of the fact that the *Torah speaketh in the language of the sons of man*" (Maimonides, Moses, *The Guide of the Perplexed*, Shlomo Pines trans. U of Chicago Press, 1963. 71).
Since the Torah speaks to all Jews, it must speak with a logos that everyone can understand. Logos, however, may not be the best way of communicating the secrets of the Torah. We must keep in mind though that logos used by the Torah must be intended to convey unerstanding through speech. When we talk about parables, we speak about a case where nohta of the story convey a meaning that is not directly in them. With regard to those parables that describe the secrets of the Torah, the understanding conveyed by those parables is beyond our comprehension. The perfect man gets that understanding (or perhaps some part of it) in flashes, but cannot hold on to it because of the limits of his use of logos.
On second thought, the name of Rambam's famous and contreversial treatise is probably best spelled: מורה הנבוכים.
גוט שבת
Oren,
1- I thought of the historical explanation (really I did, I'm not just saying that!) and I think it may be accurate, but I also think there is room for a more comprehensive, and interesting, answer.
(agav, i'm not sure it's really a good idea to get into the business of interpreting quasi-canonical texts too much wrt to specific historical circumstances...)
2- re: mashal as analogy: point well taken.
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