Journal of the History of Philosophy

Language and Ethics: Reflections on Maimonides' "Ethics" RAYMOND L. WEISS MAIMONIDES PRESUPPOSESthat to be a Jew and to be a philosopher are incompatible with one another? Nevertheless, a Jew can use philosophy to supplement and refine the Jewish tradition. Maimonides wrote two works on ethics, De'ot and Eight Chapters, both of which are part of much larger works on Jewish law, and both contain Aristotelian elements. De'ot is written in Hebrew, while Eight Chapters, like the Guide o/the Perplexed, is in Arabic.2 The language of DePot is of special interest because the Hebrew language had not yet developed a philosophic terminology. De'ot indicates, directly as well as indirectly, some of the terms indigenous to "Jewish ethics." Its language also reveals certain important differences between the philosophic and Jewish traditions. Inherent in De'ot is the problem of transforming basic concepts from one language to a radically different language. Rabbinic Hebrew has no words which translate literally such key terms in Aristotle's ethics as "virtue," "happiness," "nature," "passion," or even "ethics," a Within the limitations of rabbinic Hebrew, Maimonides conveys these concepts with sufficient precision for the practical purpose of De'ot. The fact that he studied the Aristotelian corpus in the Arabic language rather than in Greek does not alter significantly the problem he had to face, for by his time Arabic had a fully developed philosophic terminology corresponding to Greek usage. De'ot shows how small a portion of the terminology in Aristotle's Ethics is 1 See Leo Strauss' Introductory Essay to the Guide o~ the Perplexed, trans. S. Pines (Chicago, 1963), p. xiv. 2 Maimonides says in the Introduction to the Book o/ the Commandments that he wrote the Mishneh Torah in the Hebrew of the Mishnah. De'ot is part of the Mishneh Torah, which is Maimonides' code of Jewish law. The Mishneh Torah will be designated henceforth as Code. s Concerning the lack of a word for "happiness" in rabbinic Hebrew, I follow here the medieval translators of Maimonides' Arabic works. See below, n. 12. In the Code, Maimonides introduces the word leva" as meaning "nature" by a subtle comparison with "way" and "custom" (Laws of the Foundations of the Torah, IV 2); see Leo Strauss, "Notes on Maimonides' Book of Knowledge," in Studies in Mysticism and Religion Presented to Gershom Scholem (Jerusalem, 1967), p. 273. [425] 426 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY literally indispensable for a morality which is still in certain broad features Aristotelian. Although Maimonides occasionally reinterprets Hebrew words, he makes surprisingly few changes. Even when a conventional word is freighted with new meaning, some basis usually can be found in the Jewish tradition for Maimonides' usage. The context, however, conveys a different conception of morality from that of the biblical-rabbinic tradition. Often he simply places conventional Hebrew words, with their conventional meaning, into a new setting. For example: "The right way is a middle measure . . . a man will not become angry except over a big thing about which it is proper to be angry in order that something similar will not be done at another time..." (I 4). Old words can convey new concepts when they are combined in a new manner. With the exception of humility, Maimonides does not name the virtues in De~ot. He simply defines the middle way for a number of character traits (I 4). The middle way in bodily desire, for example, is to confine desire to what the body needs. Maimonides does not need a word for "moderation" in order to convey what moderation is. He indicates elsewhere that in the rabbinic tradition, the expression "fear of sin" is roughly a Jewish equivalent of the virtue of moderation. 4 He omits this expression in De'ot in favor of stating more specifically what the "virtue" requires. Although some expressions are more adequate than others, there are different ways to describe the same moral virtues. A people's character is, practically speaking, the crucial thing. A nation does not need a word in its language for every moral virtue found among its people. 5 Nobility may also be present in a people that knows nothing about the "nobility" of moral...