Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
  1. Home
  2. Search

Refine search

Refine search

Access:
Content type:
Publication date:
Apply   From and To filters
Subject: Show more
Journals Show more
Publishers: Show more
Societies Show more
Series: Show more
Collections: Show more

Actions for selected content:

Select all | Deselect all
  • View selected items
  • Export citations
  • Download PDF (zip)
  • Save to Kindle
  • Save to Dropbox
  • Save to Google Drive

Save Search

You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
Cancel
×

1 results

  • Chapter 1 - The Structure and Purpose of the Guide

  • from Part I - Form
  • Edited by Daniel Frank, Purdue University, Indiana, Aaron Segal, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
  • Book:
    Maimonides' <I>Guide of the Perplexed</I>
    Published online:
    18 June 2021
    Print publication:
    01 July 2021, pp 11-28

  • Summary

    In delineating the causes or reasons for a thing’s being, Aristotle notes, “what something is and what it is for are one …” (Aristotle 1984, 198a25–6). The nature and structure of a thing and its purpose coincide. The nature and structure of a table is what it is for. The nature and structure of the heart is no different than its purpose, to pump blood. And so it is, as I shall argue, with Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed (c. 1190). The structure of the work is intimately related to its purpose and ultimate goal. That there is an overall structure needs to be unpacked, and that the structure, overall and even within its discrete parts, serves a particular end also needs to be clarified. If this programmatic essay succeeds, it will provide a framework for reading the essays that follow. Each essay may be read as offering insight to the specific issue at hand, but also may be read as, in its own way, aiming at the ultimate purpose of the work as a whole.