Hi, welcome back to The New Thinkery. I'm David Barr and with me as always is my good friend Alex Priya. How are you? I'm doing well, David.
How are you? Good. Our third child was born a week ago. So I'm playing congratulations.
Yeah, I'm somewhat more befuddled than normal, which is great because today we're talking about the easiest philosopher in the world. I'm just the book that Leo Strauss called that in a chance of forest or something like that. And then enchanting for us there. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. That always that line always stuck with me. How are you doing, Greg?
I'm doing pretty good. Excellent. Good. And what would we have with us today?
I know you had this punk story that you're dying to tell. Kind of don't know if I'm dying to tell it, but we have a lot of parents with us tonight. We'll introduce him in just a second. But yeah, my wife was from the country.
She called me yesterday and said, Hey, I found some skunks. I was like, that's great. Come on home. And then she's like, there's no mother.
And so she made me go over there and catch two little baby skunks. And then there was a third. And then we saw some more people now. So anyway, all night long, we eventually got six skunks and we took them this morning to a little sanctuary, little skunks sanctuary.
Well, that's nice to be Greg because the year prior you just consumed the skunks. Yeah. So this is a change. I was a funny thing that we're doing an episode of my monadings.
I have to assume there's there's an esoteric teaching. There is story. There's a lot of the canceling of a few, actually. OK, I thought it was a slight at David's new child.
No, no, he has a letter because you went to to to. Oh, there you go. That's pretty good. That's not bad.
One little funny thing about them for you is that the little baby skunks apparently they can release the little sink, but they don't really know what they're doing and they can only be like sad little pathetic ones. So it was only minorly irritating. That's disgusting. Great.
Sorry. Let's get on a serious thing. We have a serious thing. Yes.
I'm here. I've got solely with I'm very sorry. Our guest tonight is professor Dean professor Joshua Parris at the University of Dallas. Professor parents received a speech from the University of Chicago where he wrote on Plato's laws and Alforabi's summary of Plato's laws.
He got his masters from the University of Chicago as well and got his BA from St. John's College where both Alex and David received MAs. He studied as an at large student at the University of Maryland where I got my PhD. He's currently full professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Dallas where he's also the graduate dean of the Graduate School of Liberal Arts.
Professor Parris is the author of numerous monographs, including metaphysics as rhetoric, Alforabi's summary of Plato's laws and Islamic philosophy of virtuous religions introducing Alforabi. Third, my monadies and Spinoza, their conflicting views on human nature seems appropriate for today. And his most recent book is on Leo Strauss and the recovery of medieval political philosophy. He's also added a couple of books, including for our audience, probably important for audience would be the source book, the medieval political philosophy source book, the second edition, which is a wonderful edition of primary sources from Christian Jewish and Islamic medieval political philosophy.
I actually, I can serve Joshua friends. I met him actually I met him at St. John's when I was still graduate student. He gave a talk at St.
John's, but then we became friends in the summer 2010. We studied medieval flot. We were at a conference studying medieval Jewish philosophy together and Joshua was kind enough to host some additional sessions where I learned a great deal about my monadies. In fact, so Josh, thanks for coming on.
It's great to have you on. Glad to be here. Thanks. Yeah, of course.
So I was sorry. No, go ahead David. I was going to say so Josh, we ask this of all of our guests, but I'm particularly interested in your back story since Charles Butterworth was a mentor of Greg's mine and Alex too. I once asked him, I said, so who's next in line who's holding the torch for Islamic slash Arabic political thought Jewish political thought and you see the other sort of few of us left, but you know you your name.
It was one of the people he brought up and so we're so fortunate to have you here, but I'd love to hear a little bit about your like an intellectual biography and how you came to study what you study and enjoy this. So it's a little bit round about actually. So it's St. John's.
I wrote my senior thesis on Haida. And as a Jewish son of a Holocaust survivor, that was kind of a heavy thing to be writing on Haidaer. I wrote on Haidaer in part because when I read him, he blew it out of the water. The main thing that I've been caring for in my life, which was Freudian psychoanalysis.
My father is a Freudian psycho. Well, come on. And so I read Heidegger. I was troubled and you about the Nazi stop and I was talking about it's one of my mentors and he pointed me to Strauss's autobiographical preface.
Now this was John White. I don't know if any of you know John White, not, not especially a big Strauss. He did study on Thunder Howard White. He was a bacon scholar and a bit of a Strauss.
But John White wasn't in particular, but he knew that this was really, it would be really valuable for a preface for me to read. That was how I got hooked on stress. It was the autobiographical preface as a response to Haidaer. And from then on, I started working on Strauss, my monogies.
I got interested in my own Jewish background because I wasn't really raised Jewish. I was raised on psychoanalysis and. No, he was like no Hebrew school antecedents. No.
Okay. So psychoanalysis from the Holocaust. So how in the world did you find St. John's then?
Because both of my parents were just people who were having into books. I had a great deal with respect to books and my father wrote books himself. My mother was a bit of a playwright, not very successful, but a bit of a playwright. So anyway, started working on Strauss, I saw in Strauss this return to the pre-modern, especially in guys by monogies.
And from that moment, I was working on my monies that worked on my monogies and Alvarabi in grad school. But I should tell you from, more or less from the beginning, it was a debate in my life as to whether or not I was in the right of dissertation on Heidegger or on the medievals. So Heidegger is always there in the background as the thing against which Strauss is pushing back. And my interest in the medievals is guided to a very great set by the sort of how my monogies, Alvarabi, I know it looks sounds kind of strange, but how they can guide us in very important ways towards some kind of response.
And actually I have some connections later pretty directly from the book of religion back to Heidegger. And any quickly before we start our text for today, are there any teachers along the way that were especially helpful in your journey? So Charles Butterworth, in the same year that I was studying with Charles Butterworth, I was studying with Stephen Harvey at Multipur even college at the time. Now at Barlan University, one of the most important scholars living on this area.
And the grad school, Ralph Winter was my primary mentor, studied with Joe Cropsy, Nathan Parkoff. Really one of the very best courses I ever had in grad school was on my monogies, The Eight Chapters, an entire U of C trimesp of course on The Eight Chapters. Just for listeners who might not be aware, that's like 20, I'm exaggerating, but that's a very short text. Very, very short.
One will be doing with Charles, that's right. Yeah, we're doing an episode on The Eight Chapters. What was achieved with that book was the thing that was never achieved in any other course, which was to do the kind of close reading we all aspire to, but we can't do it because we actually have to teach a regular course. And never, nothing else has ever quite matched that.
Yeah, amazing. Who was the teacher? Oh, was that learner? That was a little rapid.
Oh, OK. Cool. Right. Now, that's an institute.
Right. Right. I mean, what translation did you use? Because that was, it was, it was, OK.
I wasn't sure how old that better translation was. Didn't you work on that with, with Weiss? Wait, what? Yeah.
Did he just pass away? That's what I heard from that. Was that what I heard from that? Charles sent, OK.
So today, what do we have? What do we have in the doctor? Yeah. So Josh, if you don't mind, a lot of our listeners are going to, you know, we have a range of audience.
We're going to know this book fairly well and we're going to people for whom this is entirely new. So who is the author? What is this text? What's the title?
Why do you write this book? What translation are we using all that? I mean, you know, okay, remind me if I leave anything else. Of course.
So my Muddies Moses has been mine on sometimes referred to as run bomb right for Rabbi Moses, my mom lived from 1137 to 12 of four. He is widely recognized as the most important thinker in the history of Judaism. And if you want to, you might want to say, well, Moses was more important, but of course, Moses was, you know, kind of transmitting. So, so if you're just talking about a single author, I think hands down, my Muddies is most important.
Important Jewish author. That was raises the key question for us, which is why should anyone other than you said? Yeah. So we'll get back to that.
And that's a great question. So you would contend he's wiser than Solomon, then. I would. And many people were actually.
So, so that's why when we studied the run bomb, why wouldn't study the guide of the complex because it is most important, most demanding work. It is really the culmination of everything else you wrote. So he wrote, first of all, a commentary on the Mishnah, the Mishnah is the core text of the Talmud. I mean, everyone has seen a page, most people will see the page from the Talmud.
And as this little text in the middle, and all sorts about a commentary around it with a little text in the middle is written in Hebrew. That is the Mishnah. The Mishnah was put together by Rabbi Judah the Prince, you know, first, first century of the common era, more or less. So my monies were the commentary on the Mishnah.
Now there were commentaries that we refer to. So we put the commentary together with the Mishnah and call that as a whole of the Talmud. And there are two Talmud's. There's a Babylonian, the bigger one, more a Floridaator, Talmud, and the Palestinian Talmud.
My monies and writings of the commentary on the Mishnah were the commentary on both. These are both truly massive works in which one can lose one self and spend one's entire love, as many Jews do. So with the commentary on Mishnah, he then wrote his mission of the wrong, which is a Hebrew version of the Latin deuteronomy. But it's the repetition of the law, the fifth book of the Torah.
So in effect, what he was saying is, here is my codification of the Talmud, which I will call the repetition of the law, sort of doing what Moses did with his fifth book in relation to the whole of the Torah. So when he's doing this all as a doctor too, right? What's he doing? He has these day jobs of ministering to the children of Saladin.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So he was a doctor.
He also wrote voluminously on medicine, the Brigham Young University Press has a big series of translations of his medical works. So when he went back to his non-medical stuff, he's got a counter-emission of the Mishnah Torah. So this is a reduction of the Talmud. Right?
I've already written this commentary about this great, very profound reduction of the Talmud, which is so vast down to working manageable volumes. I mean, it's a lot, but it's only 14. It's a lot less than we have 14 as opposed to 14 or 22 or 25 folio volumes, right? The truly massive things out of which the Talmud consists of.
So then he wrote the guy, he's got his medical writing. And he also wrote responses to the Bible. He wrote a few questions from Jews followed the world, rabbis followed the world because he established himself as a Jewish authority very early on. And really, it's very, very young.
So anyway, that's it for his writings. So to go back to why the guides. Oh, when was he alive? Did you choose to do?
Right up 1137 to 1204. So a contemporary of a bearish, a little more than a generation before Thomas Aquinas. So his mission of Torah was in effect the book that he wrote to serve all Jews, all educated Jews. The guide is what he wrote as he explains his introduction for that one extraordinary human being for whom he has written about the truth, even if 10,000 ignorancers have no access whatsoever to the truth being pervaded.
So he's quite open that it is an extremely disequed book. It's not the book that has been most studied by Jews. Mission of Torah certainly has been most studied by Jews. By intellectuals, the guide would be the more studied work.
I use intellectuals in a guarded way. I mean, there are a lot of people who read the guide. You know, we all take a stab. It doesn't involve philosophers and understand.
And the script is the script also was stumbling by Joshua. I remember, but I can't recall. Right. So the guide in everything that my monadies wrote other than the mission of Torah was written in Judeo Arabic.
So it's Arabic in Hebrew, Hebrew script. And it would have been the thing that only more educated Jews would have known in his part of the world. Since he's written in Arabic, it almost immediately was translated in Hebrew. But you mentioned a vera we as an Aquinas.
And stressing my monadies as sort of religious bonafide makes it sound to me like he is more like Aquinas in the Christian tradition than a vera we as in the Islamic meaning that my monadies seems to have a place amongst ordinary pious Jewish believers. I mean, he's really an established authority figure in the way that for Catholics, Aquinas, it sounds like. In many ways that's, in many ways that's true. Don't forget, I mean, it always does how to make it work.
So yeah, of course. Yeah. Okay. Very good.
So what's this book about? So the guide is about the true science of the law. Now, as my monadies explains almost from the beginning, what he means by the true science of the law needs to be distinguished from what is called the science of the law, which is also referred to as in Arabic as speak in the Jewish tradition as a Catholic. So he distinguishes between the true science of the law and jurisprudence, the Talmud is jurisprudence and his mission of the wrong is jurisprudence.
What the guide is engaged in is the study of the true science of the law. Now, exactly what that is is not, you know, immediately there. Great. Do we go into it?
I was just wondering, I know that you and Alex had engaged in some conversation about who we just did an episode not too long ago on Al-Farabi and with Charles Burd and we were talking about this question of the priority of religion or philosophy in time. And I know that my monadies read Al-Farabi and was was a very influenced by Al-Farabi. And so I know that it seems like there was some parallels that we want to draw or talk about here in the in the Al-Farabi episode we did on the book of religion. We tried to press Charles a little bit on Al-Farabi's claim in one place, I guess the book of religion that virtuous religion is prior, excuse me, that philosophy is prior to virtuous religion in time.
And I know that that was something you want to address it. You want to take us through that? Is that something that is of interest to my monadies as well? Right.
So so I wait explicitly stating the opinion or happiness in the book of letters in the book of religion. It's implied in section five in the passage you already had discussed with letter words, which just took two line people. So there he argues philosophy is divided into theoretical and practical and religion is similarly divided into theoretical and practical. However, religion is the theoretical and practical determinant.
So from the very beginning of the book of religion, this word he uses is determined or determination because along with stipulations, it is particularization. That's the word that my monadies uses for what's being referred to here as determination. And when Al-Farabi opens the book of religion, he says religion is it is determination. Right.
It is. So what are we really getting out of this talk about determination? As I understand it, what Al-Farabi is suggesting is that what religion has over philosophy is that philosophy inquires into the nature of things, graphs, the universal universal character of things, various features of oil the light, for example, but philosophy in the strict sense taken by itself as science is incapable of determining or stipulating. Now, if you go back to what Al-Farabi says on the second page of what are words of translation about religion, he ends up talking about bridges for which and he talks about how determination occurs.
And determination is the result either of prudence, revelation or imagination. So to go back to the point about philosophy being incapable of determination, we all know that Plato wrote a dialogue called the laws and he included in it, laws. And there were laws for a particular people at a particular time and place. So this claim about religion is true only insofar as when treats philosophers for science, strictly speaking as philosophers and scientists, not taking into account that would also be a poet or a founder or someone who through prudence determines the law.
Anyway, that does take as the key distinction between philosophy and religion. So much of what you said and when I read my monadies for I'll be a very reminds me of Plato's statesman. To what extent do you think that text of the law is so huge in the republic as well. But I often when I want to hear the stuff about the relationship between philosophy and religion, I think about the statesman's artists articulated in Plato's states.
Do you think that's operative here? A notion of the statesman part for sure is operative, whether knowledge of that particular text, whether there was knowledge that I had my doubts. Yeah. I think not mentioned you would think you would because the digression on law and for people who are listening don't know this wonderful sort of account of laws relationship to prudence and to discerning practical and theoretical problems that occurs in that digression, it seems so applicable.
But sure. I think there's a kind of divination of the same problems. Yeah. So, wait, before we go forward, here's a connection to Heidegger.
What what is peculiar about the Heideggerian teaching, especially in being taught is that does I human being cannot be defined. The old the old song rational animal doesn't grasp human being. Why doesn't it grasp human being is human being is always particular, individual. One of the most important terms that Heidegger uses is the term, facticity.
It's a word that's intended to capture his understanding of the particularity of life. And it is his argument that this characterizes human being that no human being can be understood in light of a species character. That instead we are peculiar in being in a certain sense, each individuated and then our societies being radically individuated, not comprehensible through something like political science. Anyway, just like.
No, that's very good. I was trying to make sure I made the connection that you were you were drawing there David want to jump into. But so is the idea then that the particular what the particular religions are doing that as well in. What I'm trying to argue overall about my mind is why Strauss could say my monadies rationalism is the true natural model, the standard to be carefully protected from any distortion and thus the stumbling block on which modern rationalism falls.
It's just as playing the opening of philosophy law that this is an incomparable rationalism. I believe what makes my monadies an off-roading in comparable forms of rationalism is they combine and understand the universal was an appreciation for particularity of a kind that became a problem in early modern political rationalism. That's very good. Yeah.
Thank you. You know, one thing is can we if it's not too disruptive, I because I did want to hear more of an overview of the guide, especially this beginning. Is it possible to kind of backtrack Greg or. You're up.
Yeah. It's certainly this wonderful opening introduction. Let me just make a super quick digression on the trying to finish up this idea about philosophy, proceeding religion and time. We already got that in this claim that philosophy, Grestu universals and religion provides the determination of the universities that suggests the dependence of religion on philosophy.
So there's that notion of precedence. And then there is I think really what I'll probably is getting at is what Strauss captures in natural language history when he observes that nature proceeds and is the ground for convention that when we live in society and we look at our laws and our conventions and we try to judge them in light of what we judge the argument versus natural language history is the problem like which to judge our conventions is the extent to which they measure up in something which was standard called nature. We all know that's incredibly difficult to start out with that we've mean, but Strauss does make this argument. I know he's making this argument based on things that later on Aristotle argue and also is that we get in this claim about philosophy, proceeding religion, nature, proceeding convention from the same sources that Strauss is getting.
So really that's an excellent point. I think maybe maybe it gets us to the next thing we want to touch on and I think you can give the overview of the guide here as well, which is the question of the limits of knowledge, right? And in my monotony's Twix, we can know nature and how that relates to the law. Right.
It's the points about collage. So so let me I am going to get to the limits of nature. I'm going to take a step back to the true signs of the law. So the true signs of the law, then it's not jurisprudence, but it's instead what probably is most succinctly referred to as the defense of the law.
In other words, the guide of the perplex is my monotony's defense of Judaism. Now most people when they read the guide, most contemporaries read the guide as a work of Jewish philosophy. When they do that, they lose track of this essential apologetic purpose of the God. They think they're going to pick it up and they say, well, this is really big stuff.
The deeper stuff, what is it? Well, it's all that really challenging stuff about creation and eternity of that prophecy. Oh, no, especially about providence. So providence and creation.
Those are things that scholars get really high of course. And this is the exciting thing. The problem with calling it Jewish philosophy is that it immediately assumes that one can see on the surface what my monotony thinks and what my monotony's is actually arguing from the beginning and referring to his inquiry as the true signs of the law is he is seeking what Al-Sarabi refers to in the very next section of the book of religion. A dialectic or rhetoric that defends the religion that derives from philosophy.
So Leo Strauss has put this in the following way. The true signs of the law is what Strauss refers to as enlightened kalam. So kalam is traditionally translated as dialectic or theology. Traditional kalam was all about defending Judaism or Islam using whatever tools available brute force if you need this.
This real quick. Al-Sarabi is really hard on the dialectal theologians and the enumeration of sciences. Yeah. So that's unenlightened kalam.
I suppose that is unenlightened kalam and Al-Sarabi is so intent on displacing traditional kalam. They don't even use the name for it. He instead just refers to dialectic and rhetoric and how they're useful for defending. So notice what he did was he takes over.
He says philosophy gives us the lead. Religion is subordinate to it derives from it. And now dialectic is in the service of this new virtuous religion. This then goes back to a question that Alex brought up in a previous session, which is this claim about religion of sort of philosophy, which seemed religion in time.
There's a certain way in which that is most true, perhaps in a way only true of virtuous religion. Because that's just what I just thought. That's what you're being given the book of religion. Philosophy yielding religion and defended with dialectic and rhetoric.
That dialectic and rhetoric is in effect what my monadies is doing for Judaism. He's giving an enlightened kalam defense of Judaism. Now what makes it different I think comes out, especially in part one chapter 71 where my monadies talks about how what he referred to in the opening pages of the introduction. The secrets of the Torah, the secrets of the Torah, which are remember the accounts of the beginning and the accounts of the chariot, the account of the beginning being a phrase used for creation, but also to mystical understandings of creation.
The secret teaching of Judaism and the operation is presumably typically thought to be some kind of mystical feature about creation. And then the account of the chariot, that is the account of God and angels, but more specifically certain passages from Ezekiel and Isaiah that describe God and God is enthroned. Now these secrets my monadies identifies on the second page of the introduction with natural science and divine science. Now there's some debate among scholars about what he means and I got identifying the account of the beginning with physics or natural science and the account of the chariot with divine science for metaphysics.
Some people think that must mean some kind of weird Jewish version of those. But I just read a really incredibly useful introduction to the medieval commentaries on the guy a book called rewriting my monadies. It's a book by a guy called Igor just who's up. You can find it easily through J store easily access all of it.
It gives you real snippets of the commentaries by the people like in Fauquera Moses, my pony. Oh really important commentators. What do you observe some passing is everyone all of these commentators agree that what my monadies is referring to by natural science and divine science is Aristotle's teacher. So he says in the opening pages, the secret of Judaism is Aristotle's physics and metaphysics.
So when he goes on to argument in part one chapter 71 is the secret teaching of Judaism was possessed by Jews before anyone else had. We had before everybody noticed what we're getting once again. It's the same bargain. It's we've always had the wisdom.
The truest teaching is the most ancient teaching. Our law we say is old, but the oldest true is the natural true. This argument, by the way, that appears in my monadies, it appeared in Alfa Robbie, not just in section 55, anything that happened happening. So it's a very talks about how the Caldians had this teaching before the Greeks had it.
Right. So if this all goes back to Aristotle who argued the same thing in book 12 chapter eight of the metaphysics, all the things I just taught you about the heavenly bodies. This is what our tradition has always taught. Oh, plus all of that anthropomorphic teach all those anthropomorphic teachings about the gods.
Right. That anthropomorphic layer. So now notice in a way now we've actually got two things that work here. We've got a defense of Judaism, but notice that he's stuck into the back door philosophy and almost immediately what one has been compelled to do is to engage in a defensive philosophy.
And that then is the great magic of the guide of the perplex that he is capable of engaging in a defensive Judaism and a defensive philosophy in the same work in spite of the fact that the traditional command was told out by doing against philosophy. As my monadies explains in chapter 71, part one. So why do you think the insistence on writing this down rather than preserving it through an oral truism just because the community is spread throughout the world? It's just this is the easiest mode.
Well, so this brings us back in a way to the limits of knowledge. That is it brings us to the problem. Why is it that the Talmud seemed to be to set up all sorts of barriers around the study of the account of beginning the account of the cherry? Oh, you know, you cannot study this until you're four years old.
You can only study it with one or two people. It can only be transmitted early. That's how it's owned by the way. I don't know if you notice, but in part one chapter 31, I believe.
Sorry, I may actually have a long chapter. He he quotes that passage from the Talmud and he stops short of what isn't right. He says anyone who inquires into what is in front, what is in back, what is above, and what is below. Really bad guy.
No, actually he leaves out. It would have been better for him not to have lived at all. Gently required into those things. It's almost the Talmud has almost verbatim.
What appears in Aristotle's clouds with respect to Socrates. Obviously, it's not quoting Aristotle's. But anyway, we're sorry. Jesus is a apology.
The examined life is not worth living. There's a there's that one really interesting exchange where the teacher goes to he says, come here and I'll teach you the account of the chariot. And he goes, I'm not old enough, which I thought was funny because then I guess he's got to go find any teacher who's not so reckless with the teacher. Right.
So if I let me put it this way, as I understand it, the defense of Judaism is the service of the God and the defense of philosophy is well, the depth of the died or at least the service of the death of the God. Doesn't you know your Strauss know that Strauss argues in what is political philosophy in his recent months on Zephon's hero. He talks about the defense of philosophy as philosophic politics and he suggests that what Plato did for the Greeks, Al-Farabi did for the Muslims and my monadies did for the Jews. Now, what's surprising about that is what he's suggesting there is that my monadies defense philosophy there.
He's adding something to what Strauss observed back in literary character because in the literary character of the guy for the plex, what he emphasizes is that the guy is devoted to the defense of Judaism. That's what enlightened Islam is. When people interpret the guy, ignore that, they ignore it at their peril. So one has these layers, defense of Judaism, defense of philosophy.
So what's that? Oh, sorry. Go on. No, no, no, please.
What's that is today in Judaism? Is it depends who you ask? So my monadies, my monadies guy will no surprise not be studied by the Orthodox, but will be studied by the modern Orthodox and everybody else. And in the state of Israel, you probably have more intense study of my monadies guide than has existed for 600 years or so.
My monadies, the guy was studied with insane intensity after he died, commented on despite the fact that he says no one should ever write anything about it. Yeah. Oh, so you're saying today, thanks to Strauss. There's been a revival.
So it's not just fancy Strauss, but Strauss was really, he was very, very, very important for re-discovering without really, I mean, I don't know that he knew the commentary tradition all that well, but what he discovered about it having a secret teaching, that's something that the translators, Daniel, giving to go like translator to Hebrew and all of these commentators, they are all taking different cuts. That's the idea that there's a secret teaching. I mean, he just he just lays it out so clearly an introduction to me. Whenever I find people who are skeptical of this idea of sort of esoteric, esoteric writing, I point them to my monadies as introduction, right?
Yeah, ours and mails are kind of just written it on his book. What I find most beautiful about the way that my monadies frames is that a lot of times when people talk about esoteric writing, they're sort of just the superficial. It's not very important. And the real meaning is deeper, whereas in the case of my monadies, at least my monadies is the count of himself is his external is actually even very beautiful and salutary, political, salutary and sort of will benefit people.
He says it's what it's the he's quoting Proverbs is that right? It's an apple of gold and some kind of external silver casing, which Lincoln then cribs later. But right. So it's silver, which is still very, very valuable.
And so the external teaching, I don't want to ask you to distinguish what they are, but there is this the heart of it, though, is somehow superior still to even this very beautiful exterior. But you know, isn't there? I wonder about the danger. If you do get to the gold, is there a danger of turning away from Judaism to from Jerusalem toward Athens?
You know, the good stuff or so if one can judge by the recession among Jews and among well educated Jews, it does not seem to have had much in the way of that effect, by which I mean, there were other important thinkers after my monies, but he's so towers over the tradition that a lot of other thinkers commented on him. Others are disputed with him about various points, but there was nothing like a racing away from Judaism to get to that one would need to get to a thinker like Spinoza, really. And let me just mention what's pretty striking is that in the 19th and 20th century, among scholars in the West, they're developed a very different reading of the God, mainly because they started to read the died in light of Christian research on Christian scholasticism and so they started to interpret the guide as Jewish philosophy, much as we would interpret Thomas Christian. So should we move on to the question of the limits of knowledge because that seems to be a right because one of the things just rereading at this time that really stuck out to me is that as much as he seems to be defending the law, he seems to be on the way to that carving out a sort of prior more fundamental perplexity or difficulty, right?
To which the various positions that have come down, Aristotle's letters, that of the law, right, seem to be variations on this deeper problem and that strikes me as a maybe more fundamental philosophic or I don't know what word you want to use because you want to equate with dogmatic philosophy, but some kind of sort of speculative or contemplative mode in which he tries to understand the limits of knowledge in relation to this issue of the eternity of the world and to see nothing about other questions. So I'll just say this. I'm enjoying this conversation. I enjoyed your comments.
You said this before. I think you've earned ending your points with understand this and know this well. But maybe you can just talk a little bit about the short sense of the limits of knowledge. Right.
The limits of knowledge. So starting in chapters 31 through 34 for the first part of the guide, my mind starts talking about the limits of knowledge. He talks about how limits of knowledge should be obvious to anyone because we're all familiar with ways in which our senses can't grasp things, especially in our senses are overwhelmed. And similarly, our mind tends to become overwhelmed by things that are too difficult, too challenging.
And that fact indicates that there are limits of knowledge. Now, I want to just go back to this little bit about the Talmud and what is forbidden because really what ends up happening is the ends up substituting this argument about their being limits of knowledge. He puts it in place of the Talmudic prohibitions on inquiry. So he says, well, Talmud looks like it's saying you shouldn't inquire, but it isn't really saying you shouldn't be quiet.
It's merely saying there are limits to what you can know. And so notice what he's done is he's actually now made it permissible to inquire. And notice by the way, he's also in a certain way justified. He's writing this down.
Right. This point about writing things down or not writing them down goes back to the suggestion back to Talmud is thought of as the oral law. It was a law passed down from Moses. But eventually it had to be written down less than it had to be forgotten.
So then there's talking about secrets and these secrets would all the more need to be written down if there are such secrets, because the more secretive you are about secrets, the more readily you forget them. So now to take a step back. So we've got this writs of knowledge which actually defend philosophy and defend Judaism at the same time. Let me give you an example of the way in which the limits of knowledge defend Judaism in part two chapters 13 and 25.
25 in particular encapsulates the point. Here he's making the argument, well, no one can demonstrate that the world has been created or it is eternal. Now people could object. So people would argue that Aristotle actually proved that the world is eternal.
I think ultimately probably my modities is correct that in fact, rather than proving the world is eternal, Aristotle presupposes the eternal of the world. Why? Because that fits with the conception of nature. Nature only makes sense if what is has an enduring character.
To claim the world's eternal is merely to affirm things such as nothing comes out of nothing as Aristotle affirms repeatedly, pretty early on in its works, like the physics and the metaphysics. Just to support what you're saying, there is, I think, a pretty clear recognition in the metaphysics that he sees claim, I mean, has to be addressed right in that at first there was chaos. So I mean, I think this idea in my modities is there is out in science. I think that's not as dogmatic on this question that the people think.
Can I just, so let me just finish just one key point though without this opposition. He says we can't prove eternity. We can't prove creation. Therefore we must side with the law.
Now that's a, why must we side with the law? We must side with the law because we side with the law. It's not an argument. So please, Alex, you were.
Yeah. And Greg brings up is really interesting because when he does go on to discuss he see it in relation to his issue of metaphysics beta, he talks about the theologians and those around he see it. And so the issue there is whether imperishable or eternal things can be the source of perishable things. And he comes up with all these problems based on the text there.
But when he resolves it eventually in the metaphysics, it's by invoking this claim from the physics that the 26 claim that my monodies sort of rejects, right? And this notion that there must always exist matter in time or something, right? Is that the one? And that that claim ends up being, it's interesting that I think aerosol recognized it was somewhat questionable yet advanced it anyways.
And it's because so much controversy. If you offer dialectical arguments and defense, but not demonstrative arguments. That's right. So, so this ends up being, so this is the key example of defense arguments, right?
Using the limits of knowledge. Okay. So we cannot demonstrate the eternal equation of the world. Therefore, we must side with the law.
If you follow out the arguments that he makes in chapter 25, he makes the argument that the law falls if one takes the position from Arizona. Now, what he means by that is far from immediately obvious. What I think ultimately he means comes to be called apparent as t-pivots to Plato, and he says, well, however, if we see things as Plato do, eternal matter and then bring things into being out of that eternal matter, a demiure to anything or whatever. My monodies observe some miracles or preserved by this.
But then he goes on to note what we need in the way of miracles. He doesn't state this explicitly, but he makes it pretty clear that what we need in the way of miracles are not just any miracles. What we need is a God who could give the law to a particular people at a particular time and place. And notice, by the way, the return of particularity.
That is to say, Judaism, the teaching of creation upholds the notion of a God who is a creator of the world, who is omnipotent, and who is omnipotence, must necessarily also be omniscient, and therefore must also know every particular end of tail and therefore is capable of providing for every particular. Plato can't defend that, nor can Aristotle defend that. Only religion can do that. Only poetry.
Only poetry can do that. Only dialectic and rhetoric and poetry can do that. And how do you, I think, is when you're implying as well? Well, so what I really was meant to imply about Heidegger is that Heidegger, in effect, lobst of the universal, leaving us only with particularity, the kind of unrooted particularity around which human beings then are expected to constitute political works.
And it should not be any surprise that on that basis they're not going to generate desirable political works. So where, then, is their dispense of philosophy in relation to the limits of knowledge? Well, just going back to 1313. So you say the limits of knowledge are, well, you know, they're somewhere over here.
He gives examples. They're really bad examples. They're things like knowing the number of heavily bodies in the heavens, like the number of animal and plant species in the world that is not or even right? So what I would like to suggest is that most scholars in interpreting the guy think that my mind is as clear about where the limits are.
And I think, in fact, he's not clear at all. And that even if he argues that we cannot demonstrate the eternal or the creation of the world, I think he does actually believe that through studying the human things, one can get purchased on why one should side with nature. In other words, it is through the study of law and political philosophy that one has the keyhole into knowing at least some basic truths about what my mind is refers to as, quote, the nature of existence or of being. And by the way, so that phrase in the Arabic is tabiabu jud, which is sort of a nature of, if you try to find the look at a glossary of the nature of being or existence, I believe that what my mind is ultimately arguing is that through the study of the law and political philosophy, he can enable you to understand things about nature which show the validity of the philosophical point of view.
So the defense of philosophy is the surface over that, the limits of knowledge providing that surface. And so the political philosophy, I think is certainly more than just the defense of philosophy. So I don't know if you guys want to jump in. And one small point there.
So on the question of the creation universe, since we can't demonstrate that it's eternal or created, we'll side with the law and say that it was created. This seems like a pretty clear victory for the law or that he's citing the law. But in a way, I thought it was sort of a, I don't know if he's in the phrase right, a pure victory because to get there, one of the other things that he does is he seems to be going with sort of Alvarabi and then the Varro is here in other places where there is demonstration, we do have to let the law, we have to let the law in some way, such as it's in a court with demonstration. So what's interesting here is this seems like, okay, I'm different to law in the area where we don't have demonstration.
And I imagine that satisfies a lot of people, but then the corollary seems to be where there is demonstration. We're siding with the philosophers. And what makes it all of them were troubling is that he argues that Aristotle is simply correct about everything about the sphere of the law. Right.
Right. And then, but then argues, but then argues, okay, but so he's wrong about everything the public sphere of the law, which is the state of order of having bodies, right, the motion of the planets right here is just leaning on all the problems connecting with Tommy and all of that. But notice what would it mean to say that Aristotle is correct about everything under this. So everything about natural science, he is correct.
Except for the part of natural science that concerns the body's. And of course, that's this strange area in Aristotelian plots where the argument that my modities amounts is, well, we can call it with arguments that satisfy mathematicians, but we can't get a good causal account of the motion of the how to be bodies. Yes, that's true. But do you think that my modities believe there's no order there?
I really don't believe he could believe that. If you believe that he would not appeal to quote the nature of being, because what he means in part one chapter 71 by the nature of being is an account of nature in which there are some things that are necessary, some things that are possible and some things that are impossible. You don't necessarily have to buy everything that Aristotle argued about the heavenly bodies. You don't have to buy everything that Tommy made about the heavenly bodies to agree with the rough, the rough outlines of what Aristotle argued.
I'll give you the clearest, what I take to be one of the clearest statements of what my modities might be, mean by the nature of existence. It's captured in book 12, chapter six of the metaphysics. It's the simple claim that actuality is prior to potentiality. That argument that actuality is prior to potentiality boils down to the simple claim that beings have some orientation toward some fulfillment or actuality.
You do not have to believe that Aristotle gave an adequate account of the heavenly bodies of a perfect hierarchical order of beings in order to accept that simple argument. It seems to me all philosophers who are two philosophers accepted one way or another, that basic argument, by the way, notice what Aristotle says, even democracy said look at us accepted that claim. Actuality is prior to potentiality. Even materials, even atoms accepted that argument.
One of my favorite parts of the guide was when my modities sort of interprets Job and in a risk-attelian manner. That's sort of, it's almost one of which comic points to me. I know we want to talk about a few more things. We want to talk about sort of three of the main topics that people often mistake when they're reading the guide, creation, prophecy and providence.
I think we've spoken a bit about creation and providence, but we didn't speak much about prophecy. Do you want to tell us a little about my modities as take on prophecy? If we miss something on creation or providence, we'll free that circle back to that too. So, proselytology, in part two, chapter 32, my modities makes the argument that there are three positive positions on prophecy.
They are, that anything in Remus, as long as he's moral, can be made of profit. The second position, even a David Barr, potentially? Oh, sorry, it's actually the only thing in mind. The spinos is a count of profits with David with the simpler kinds of things.
It's actually an Aristotle's divination in dreams is and dreams, is that where he also makes a similar kind of comment by the way, but moving on, sorry, that's one, any agreement, provided is moral. So David Duralts, sorry, provided is my heart. And the second position is that of the philosophers, and it is that if one has the proper nature and the proper training, one will become a philosopher. The third position is the one he states is the true position, and it is the same as that of the philosophers, except that God can withhold the prophecy.
Now, this is one of the marvelous mysteries of the God, I'm actually writing a writing book about withholding, because withholding is a key trope throughout the entire God, and it's his way of trying to convince us that there is some vestige of God's will left in the arguments. Two small points. Number one, well, you have to come back when you write the book. Number two, this reminds me of the passage in eight chapters, which seems so problematic where he talks about God hardening Pharaoh's heart, just the way that God intervenes and he's a fair.
So yeah, I was struck by this. I was also the second opinion of the philosophers is that people have the right nature, provided they also read from the text you're actually provided an obstacle due to temperament, or some external cause doesn't hinder them. I was wondering, like, so certain characteristics of soul like anger or something like this, so that those might inhibit your capacity to be. And then I was, of course, reminded of different prophets and whether or not they were angry.
And then the turn the Paul, for example, talks about people not being able to be accepted, they have some turn or something like this, right? They have to have a turn. Some people can be sort of turned immediately, like the road to Damascus is what I thought of. They have to be more like they can be more than they have to have some weird turning moment.
Anyway, I was more interested in the their temperament can't hinder them in some way. Yes, the issue about temperament ends up becoming incredibly important, both in the guy and in eight chapters, because perhaps most notoriously Moses was subject to anger. And anger is said by my monodies to interrupt, prevent, prophesy. And in fact, if you follow out the passage in part two chapter 32, where I was going to slowly, if you just follow out, he actually goes on to give examples of how exile prevented prophesy.
And he also makes it quite clear that exile need Jews despondent and unhappy. And so it's, he in effect, even within the same passage, is giving a naturalistic explanation of how impediments to prophesy occur. So anyway, throughout the guy, this is the country's going to play about this withholding impediments, prevention, whether God can ever be prevented, who God can ever be prevented from anything. Does it make sense to speak about God as having a will that would at some moment decide or choose to withhold?
I think ultimately, it doesn't square with the way he argues about God and God's character in nature. So, prophatology, though, to add to all of this, you have that this sort of play about what it asks for the philosopher, King Teacher. And the point about prophatology, what he's arguing about, if you have the right nature and the right training, he makes a clear it's if you receive proper education, a theoretical and practical sites, then you will be capable of being a prophet. He's making exactly the argument that also Robbie makes about what makes for someone possessed of political science.
So, in effect, he's made the process into the philosophy of the kid. This then is an essential part of the political philosophy of the guy. And in part two, chapter 40, which is all part of this prophatology section that runs from 32 to 48, in 40, which is as it so happens in middle of 17 chapters, right? 32 through 48 as 17 chapters.
The problem section similarly as 17 chapters are three chapter B through 24. They have 17 chapters, what is 17? It's nature, right? The natural number.
Well, anyway, right there in the middle, what does he argue in part two, chapter 40? He gives us thumbnail sketches from Aristotle's tactics and his politics. He makes the argument that the law does not take away from but in a way complete the natural. He most surprisingly, I mean, perhaps the most important observation he makes in part two, chapter 40, is that what makes the law divine is that it aims at the perfection of the intellect.
That is the philosopher's argument, that cities, laws, to be truly divine doesn't mean that he received some kind of a message from the beginning. To be a divine law is to have as its highest thing the perfection of the intellect. That argument, by the way, so it's he's taking it straight out of the philosophers. It's political philosophy one on one.
It's the argument of the economics. Anyway, political philosophy and political science are not on the surface of the God, but let me try to give you an example of ways in which I think there is more than merely the defense of philosophy going on in the God. I think actually the argument that I gave you earlier about creation and eternity in a way was appealing to an essential part of the political philosophic teaching. And that is what we already saw from the book of religion.
The teachings about creation and particular providence and prophatology, what they all do is show that what creation provides of us is an argument to believe that God should have given the law to our community at a particular time and place. But it's only political philosophy that it could explain to you why it is so important to communities that they receive such a thing. It's only political philosophy that in effect can explain to you why these heights of metaphysical inquiry, particular providence, why they have the significance for human life they have. And I would also, of course, to say it's only political philosophy that really gets you to a convincing argument that there is such a thing as the nature of existence.
You will never get there only and directly to the physics and meta-visits. Why? Because they don't actually give you lots of your arguments about the highest and most debated issues. Anyway, so this is what Aristotle had in mind when he speaks of politics as the architect science.
One of the ways in which he's speaking of this potentially, it's political philosophy provides us with access to useful talking language to the second sailor. This is the way this is the way to actually figure things out. You're nodding, but I suspect you there's disagreement there, Josh. No, no, no.
The only way to get to the good is by way of the agreements. To approach the good directly is to be blinded by it. Whether physics and meta-visits as Aristotle practice them did at moments in a certain way attempt to approach which is upper-side of these as a good, of course, Aristotle rejects the universe. Whether Aristotle really approached these matters in a way that blinds us is debatable.
But also very brilliant people. Harvey Mansfield, what did he say about Aristotle's meta-visits? He said it's his most political book. Come on.
He does. He says this from the author of Metaphysics as a Meta-Respirator. Very good. But before we get to the lightning room question, I think that so many students and frankly people that are not young anymore but who take political philosophies, lifelong interests, find this book massively intimidating.
I was wondering if you could give some advice on taking a class with Dr. Perrin's? No, no, seriously. I opened the guide and I was like, I don't know the Babylonian Talmud.
I'm not going to access this. And I have flipped through it. It's a lot of it's in Hebrew. It's all this is so difficult.
So what's advice for first-time readers? And not simply commentaries, but what would you do just approaching this as a wisdom-seeking person? So actually I'm a little bit tempted to point people to a commentary. Yeah.
Not a commentary. It's not a it doesn't presuppose knowledge but the guide. It's Ralph Lerner's Empire of Light. It's one of the most accessible things anyone has ever written about my monadies.
Ralph Lerner, so he was my mentor. There is no stylist of the English language I know who is superior to Ralph Lerner. And that is not merely a stylistic issue. That is, he has a kind of clarity of thought as read so widely, especially in English, English history, politics, literature.
He's read out to me everything. And so he's a master stylist and he has developed a way of expressing himself that is so extraordinarily clear and accessible. That work, the Empire of Light is a wonderful introduction to my monadies and has the bonus of having some texts at the end that you will otherwise have difficulty getting hold of, including text by my monadies, but also by others. So it's a fantastic book.
As for a way in, I would actually start with Ashutabi. I would start with the enumeration of the sciences and the bulk of religion. Now don't get me wrong. I understand that Alforabi is well, as my monadies describe him, like the finest flower.
So as it slips through your hands, Alforabi is extremely elusive, but he's also quite straightforward. One can read and reread him with great benefits. The enumeration of the sciences here, I'm just talking about chapter five and this material that appear in medieval political philosophy, source book, but also appear in Butterworth's Alforabi political writings, the selected aphorisms and other writings. But that it has both of those, right?
It has the enumeration of the sciences, the book of religion. I just, I don't think you're going to get, people are really going to get anywhere with my monadies without working on Alforabi. Let me give you a quick explanation as to why I think that's kids. Alforabi is just doesn't really match this division of the sciences.
That is, we have a certain understanding of relationship between theology and philosophy in the West. And due to Christian teaching, we tend to think of theology as likely possibly the crown of the sciences. Excuse me, I mean, Muslim setting. It's an important way the opposite.
Theology was not particularly respected. Even though the task of the theologian was to defend religion, jurisprudence was by for the queen of the science. And so in order to be in kind of purchase at all, well, what is jurisprudence and what is the true science of the law, right? What is Calab?
All these things, you cannot even begin to understand them without a child. So that is what I would start by the way, those 19th and 20th century, but I'm trying to remember, did I mention the 19th and 20th century interpreters of my monadies and think he is Jewish philosophy. Think you should have nothing to do with Alforabi, Muslim philosophy, and any of that. It's all, it has nothing to do with my monadies.
Just like the letters we have, proving he had the utmost respect for Alforabi. Crazy. Yeah. Yeah.
Thank you. Okay, Greg, let's do it. We're out. Blinding around.
I think you know what's first off, I want to say we didn't mention that we're all using, I think Josh is using the original, but the rest of us, he'll be able to use translation, right? Yeah, the University of Chicago, two volume schlemapiness translation. So with Strauss's introductory essay. And now Alex, is you serving my, I'm the lightning round guy, you've done nothing but tell me how awful an idea it is.
I'm going to show you how it's done. He's going to be respectful for our esteemed colleague. I will. Dean, Professor, Josh, parents, please don't you dare.
These are good questions. So Josh, this is not, this comment is not directed at you, but it's in light of past guests we've had who have them. Don't understand what the word lightning means. Lightning means.
Yeah. So I can, these, wait, just answer them, need your answer. Okay. Oh no.
All right. First car. No, that's actually, that is something that banks. No, I can answer your question.
Second car. No, no. Okay. Favorite work of literature.
Favorite work of literature and how nearly you're constrained. However you understand it, let us follow. First about is the beginning of wisdom, wonder or obedience to the law? It's wonder.
Is my monodies a believer? Oh, come on. What's the matter with you? I've already given it off.
Yeah. Favorite biblical verse? Oh, in the beginning. I know Alex, I know Alex, what's yours, Alex?
He said Alex, but Jesus was citation. That's my favorite. My favorite medical treatise by my monodies. Is it the hemorrhoids one?
Is that what you're trying to say, Alex? Yes. And then the last question, this is my grandfather always asked me this. He's, Josh, listeners won't see Josh shaking his head and disappointment at you, Alex.
So I'm going to have to tell them that Josh is shaking his head and disappointment. Here, by the way, Alex, I don't know if you know, the rattle. Now that Alex was angling, he was like, please help me get a job at the university. I was like, now you've shot, it's done.
You have no chance now. You've done, you did this. So the last question, which is a question my grandfather, who's the son of his Islamic jurist, always poses me. And he says, Alex, you are a professor, as he speaks far, so it's broken English.
Alex, you are a professor. Where is God? I think he'd like to know that from an esteemed scholar of medieval Islamic and Jewish political blood. God is nowhere.
I don't think he's going to be happy with that. But I think it's nowhere. I mean, it's good. Yeah.
It's good lightning. He can't say he's everywhere. We say that to little children. Yeah.
Yeah. Josh, I can speak for everybody on the new thing. But I really enjoyed it. I thought this was a masterclass.
This is the first one. Yeah. You and Charles is wonderful. It's a real treat to be able to share your thoughts on the monies with the world and to be a small part of that.
So I learned a lot and I think that listeners will as well. So it's been a treat. I do what we come back and talk about withholding whenever that book comes to fruition, unless you withhold it from us. Yeah.
I've got a feeling he's going to keep kicking the can down the road with a subject like that. Well, thank you so much. And if you want to read it, translations by Shlomo Pines from the University of Chicago Press, right? That's not quite right.
Like listeners should follow us on Twitter at the new Thinkery. You can email us at the new Thinkery at Gmail. Josh, before I forget, there are a couple other things you want to make sure we mention today. Yeah.