Philosophy
Maimonides addresses those caught between philosophy and scripture through arguments about language, creation, law and divine attributes.
Maimonides argues that the commandments are not arbitrary. He seeks reasons for each class of law, first in general and then, where he can, in detail. He groups their purposes under three headings: material, moral, and intellectual well-being.
Maimonides accepts the philosophers' principle that in God the intellect, the thinker, and the thing thought are one notion with no multiplicity in it. This lets him call God a mind without dividing God into parts. The pure act of understanding becomes the model for a unity that has no components.
Maimonides argues that God's perfection is neither increased by worship nor diminished by its absence. So the purpose of religious practice cannot be to please or benefit God. Its point is to change the person who practices it, training the mind and purifying the soul toward knowledge.
Maimonides insists that the outward forms of a ceremony count for nothing if the person performing it is not thinking of God. What matters is the worshipper's state of mind, not the correctness of the actions. A ritual done without attention is, on his account, empty.
Maimonides explains sacrifices and rituals as concessions to a people still steeped in idolatrous habits. They would not have accepted the true teaching if it had stripped away every familiar custom at once. So the old forms were kept and redirected, rather than abolished.
Maimonides argues that much of the distress believers feel when they meet science and philosophy comes from reading scripture only at its literal level. Taken literally, many passages contradict reason and each other. Once a reader sees that a term is figurative, the contradiction dissolves and the perplexity goes with it.
Maimonides holds that words applied to God, like 'hand' or 'mighty', are homonyms. Such a word shares only its sound with the everyday word, not its meaning. So the clearest way to resolve confusion is to clarify what key terms actually mean in each use, rather than to argue about the claims built on them.
Maimonides argues that the essence of God cannot be described in any satisfactory way. On his view, positive descriptions smuggle in limits and plurality, and language and intellect simply fall short. The safer course is to state only what God is not: not a body, not bound by time, not subject to change.
Maimonides judges that a celebrated argument for God, based on the motion of the heavens, rests on premises beyond human reach and so does not prove its conclusion. He openly confesses his perplexity rather than defend a weak proof for a belief he holds. In his view, honest inquiry sometimes means accepting a conclusion while rejecting a bad argument offered for it.