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14 - Maimonides on Worship, True and False

from Part IV - Forms and Functions of Worship

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 January 2025

By
Josef Stern
Edited by
Aaron Segal  and
Samuel Lebens
Aaron Segal
Affiliation:
Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Samuel Lebens
Affiliation:
University of Haifa, Israel
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Summary

In this chapter, I examine Moses Maimonides’ conception of worship, concentrating on two questions: (1) On what grounds is a being worthy of worship? and (2) How is worship enacted? Concerning (1), I begin with Maimonides’ objects of false worship, aka idolatry, which are not only material but paradigmatically the intellects that were taken to be the ultimate causes of change in the world. Indeed thinking of God Himself as an intellect is the height of anthropomorphism and idolatry for Maimonides. Instead, the deity is worship-worthy as the unknowable necessarily existent being in virtue of itself on which the existence of everything else is causally dependent. Our attitude of radical contingency on this being is the ultimate grounds for His worship. Addressing (2), I argue that what enacts Maimonidean worship are not bodily acts but totally devoted, constant intellectual activities to achieve the humanly possible understanding of God and the natural world. Worship is not distinct from intellectual activity but a manner of engaging in it – worshippingly – and a way of life that embraces everything the worshipper does. Finally, I argue that idolatrous or false worship really consists in activities of the mind directed toward the wrong beings on which we are not contingent – and specifically ourselves and our own intellects.

Keywords

intellectidolatrycontingencyway of lifeanthropomorphism.
Type
Chapter
Information
The Philosophy of Worship
Divine and Human Aspects
 , pp. 255 - 277
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2025

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