Journal of the History of Philosophy

Mathematical Construction, Symbolic Cognition and the Infinite Intellect: Reflections on Maimon and Maimonides DAVID R. LACHTERMANt SALOMON MAIMON WAS, perhaps, the first, although certainly not the last, Jewish thinker to undertake a thorough collation of modern philosophy in its most critical articulation, by Kant, and Maimonideanism, the most radically philosophical expression of the pre-modern Jewish tradition., Unlike Spinoza , whose relation to Maimonides is, on the surface, unrelentingly antagonistic , and unlike Hermann Cohen, for whom only the ethical teachings of the prophets and the sages are to be brought in line with Kantian moral theory,, Maimon sought to harmonize his revised Kantianism with the noetics and epistemology of Maimonides. His adopted nora de plume seems to be a pledge of durable, if always ambivalent, loyalty to Rambam.s tDavid R. Lachterman died on May zo, 1991. ' See the studies collected in Wolftnibfa~ltr Studitn zur AtgOd~rung(WolfenbOttei, 1977), especially Friedrich Niew6hner, " 'Primat der Ethik' oder 'erkennmistheoretische Begr~ndung der Ethik'? Thesen zur Kant-Rezeption in der j0dischen Philosophic," 119-61; and the "Nachwort" to SolomonMaimonsLebtnsgeschichu,neu hrsg. yon Zwi Batscha (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1984), 329-9z. A more general conspectus is offered by Nathan Rotenstreich, Jtws and GermanPhilosophy : The PolemicsofEmancipation(New York: Schocken, 1984). 9For Spinoza and Maimonides, see the classic statement by Leo Strauss, spinoza's Critiqueof Religion (N.Y.: Schocken, 1965). Strauss's view of the conflict between Maimonides and Spinoza has been mitigated or rejected by Shlomo Pines, "Spinoza's Traaa~usThtologico-Pol;aicm,Maimonides and Kant," Scripta Hitroso!ymilana ao (1968): $-54 and by W. Zev Harvey, "A Portrait of Spinoza as a Maimonidean,"Journa/of theHisto~ ofPMlosophy 19 0981): 15t-Ta. For Cohen, see his concise statement in "Innere Beziehungen der Kantischen Philosophie zum Judentum," JiidischeSchrifttn (Berlin, 19~4), Bd. 1: a84-3o5; cf. Sylvain Zac,LaphidosophitreligitusedeHermann Cohen, Avant-propos de Paul Ricoeur (Paris: Vrin, 1986), esp. t81--zoL )On his change of name from Shlomo ben Yehoshua to Salomon Maimon, see Samuel Hugo Bergman, The Philosophyof SolomonMaimon, trans. Noah Jacobs (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1967 [Hebrew original, 193z]), t-$ and n. z. [497] 498 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 30:4 OCTOBER X992 To illustrate how this loyalty is more than merely programmatic and to bring into relief some of its ambivalent contours, I shall examine certain features of Maimon's philosophy of mathematics. The central place of mathematics in Maimon's elaboration of Kant's theory of knowledge has, of course, been noted and analyzed, sometimes in markedly different ways, by all major students of his work, from Kuntze, Gueroult, and Bergman to Atlas and, most recently, Zac.4 In the main these scholars have concentrated their attention on the part assigned to differentials as the bridge between noumena and phenomena and on Maimon's anticipations of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century conceptions of the purely formal, arbitrary, or system-relative character of mathematical axioms.5 My addenda to their work are focussed on the roles played by construction (Section i) and by symbolization (Section ~) in Maimon's teachings about mathematical knowledge. Once these roles have been expounded, I shall turn to Maimon's and Maimonides' noetic, in the hope of establishning both resemblances and discrepancies (Section 3). 1. CONSTRUCTION Maimon's concept of mathematical construction remains tied, in some respects , to its Kantian source in the Critique of Pure Reason, even while being significantly liberated from it in other respects. Let me begin, then, by citing Maimon's most vivid formulation of the power of mathematical construction, from his entry in the Royal Academy (Berlin) competition of i79~, Ober die Progressen derPhilosophie 0793): God, as an infinite power of representation [Vorstellungsvermtgen], from all eternity, thinks himself as all possible essences [Wesen], that is, he thinks himself as restricted in everypossible way. He does not think as we do, [namely], discursively; rather, his thoughts 4A full bibliography of secondary studies of Maimon (to 1966) appears in Noah Jacobs, "Schrifttum fiber Salomon Maimon," in WolfenbfittelerStudien, 353-95 (translated by G. Leisersohn from Kiryat Sepher41 [1966]: ~45-62). The most important book-length studies to appear after Jacob's terminus ante quem are F. Moist, Lafilosofia di SalomoneMaimon (Milan: Feltrinelli, 1972), Sylvain...