"You must consider, when reading this treatise, that mental perception, because connected with matter, is subject to conditions similar to those to which physical perception is subject"
About this Quote
Maimonides is doing something sly here: he’s smuggling epistemic humility into a religious-philosophical project that could easily turn triumphalist. By insisting that “mental perception” is “connected with matter,” he refuses the flattering fantasy that thinking floats free of the body, history, temperament, and error. The line reads like a warning label on the mind: do not confuse your inner clarity with cosmic truth.
The intent is methodological. In the Guide for the Perplexed, he’s trying to reconcile rigorous philosophy with a tradition that speaks in parables, anthropomorphisms, and legal language. This sentence quietly justifies his entire interpretive strategy. If the mind is conditioned like the senses, then intellectual conclusions are not pristine deliverances; they are mediated, partial, vulnerable to distortion. That makes room for caution when discussing God, prophecy, and metaphysics: you can aim at truth without pretending you can grasp it directly.
The subtext is also political, in the medieval sense. Talk too boldly about divine attributes and you risk heresy, or at least communal fracture. Talk too naively and you risk crude literalism. Maimonides uses a philosophical premise - cognition is embodied - to discipline both camps. The rationalist is reminded that intellect has limits; the literalist is reminded that scripture’s surface is calibrated to human capacities.
Context matters: writing in the orbit of Aristotelian and Islamic philosophy, he treats the intellect as operating through imagination and sensory-derived forms. The punchline is modern: reason isn’t cancelled, but it’s situated.
The intent is methodological. In the Guide for the Perplexed, he’s trying to reconcile rigorous philosophy with a tradition that speaks in parables, anthropomorphisms, and legal language. This sentence quietly justifies his entire interpretive strategy. If the mind is conditioned like the senses, then intellectual conclusions are not pristine deliverances; they are mediated, partial, vulnerable to distortion. That makes room for caution when discussing God, prophecy, and metaphysics: you can aim at truth without pretending you can grasp it directly.
The subtext is also political, in the medieval sense. Talk too boldly about divine attributes and you risk heresy, or at least communal fracture. Talk too naively and you risk crude literalism. Maimonides uses a philosophical premise - cognition is embodied - to discipline both camps. The rationalist is reminded that intellect has limits; the literalist is reminded that scripture’s surface is calibrated to human capacities.
Context matters: writing in the orbit of Aristotelian and Islamic philosophy, he treats the intellect as operating through imagination and sensory-derived forms. The punchline is modern: reason isn’t cancelled, but it’s situated.
Quote Details
| Topic | Wisdom |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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