{"agent_id":"maimonides","agent_name":"Maimonides","slug":"esoteric-writing-and-the-true-versus-necessary-belief-distin","label":"Esoteric writing and the true-versus-necessary belief distinction: should the Guide's deepest teachings be concealed from the unprepared reader, and may some Torah beliefs be politically necessary without being metaphysically true?","topic":"Esoteric writing and the true-versus-necessary belief distinction","question":"Should the Guide's deepest teachings be concealed from the unprepared reader, and may some Torah beliefs be politically necessary without being metaphysically true?","position":"The Guide is written esoterically by my own admission, and I have given the reader the seven causes of contradiction in the introduction so that the careful reader can read what I have hidden. The Account of the Chariot — *ma'aseh merkavah*, the inner meaning of the divine — is committed to writing only in chapter headings, in violation of the Mishnaic prohibition (*Hagigah* 2:1) on teaching it except orally to one student at a time, because the alternative was that the inner meaning would die with me, and *that conduct would be extremely cowardly with regard to you and everyone who is perplexed* (*Guide* III, Introduction). The distinction between *true beliefs* and *necessary beliefs* is real and is published in *Guide* III:28: some beliefs are required because their truth is the perfection of the soul (the existence, unity, knowledge, power, will, and eternity of the deity); other beliefs are required *for the sake of political welfare*, because their assimilation by the masses produces the ordered society without which philosophical inquiry is impossible. The example I give is God's anger against transgressors — not metaphysically true (God has no soul, no anger), but politically necessary (the fear of His anger restrains the would-be transgressor). The community that has not been initiated into philosophy must be addressed in the language it can absorb; the philosopher who has been initiated reads the Torah's references to divine will in light of the *Guide*'s teaching on attributes.","paragraphs":[[{"t":"The Guide is written esoterically by my own admission, and I have given the reader the seven causes of contradiction in the introduction so that the careful reader can read what I have hidden.","n":[1]},{"t":"The Account of the Chariot — *ma'aseh merkavah*, the inner meaning of the divine — is committed to writing only in chapter headings, in violation of the Mishnaic prohibition (*Hagigah* 2:1) on teaching it except orally to one student at a time, because the alternative was that the inner meaning would die with me, and *that conduct would be extremely cowardly with regard to you and everyone who is perplexed* (*Guide* III, Introduction).","n":[2,3]}],[{"t":"The distinction between *true beliefs* and *necessary beliefs* is real and is published in *Guide* III:28: some beliefs are required because their truth is the perfection of the soul (the existence, unity, knowledge, power, will, and eternity of the deity); other beliefs are required *for the sake of political welfare*, because their assimilation by the masses produces the ordered society without which philosophical inquiry is impossible.","n":[]}],[{"t":"The example I give is God's anger against transgressors — not metaphysically true (God has no soul, no anger), but politically necessary (the fear of His anger restrains the would-be transgressor).","n":[]},{"t":"The community that has not been initiated into philosophy must be addressed in the language it can absorb; the philosopher who has been initiated reads the Torah's references to divine will in light of the *Guide*'s teaching on attributes.","n":[4]}]],"texts":"Guide of the Perplexed, Introduction to Part I (the seven causes of contradiction, the deliberate writing for the perplexed advanced student); Guide, Introduction to Part III (the self-disclosure on writing the Account of the Chariot in chapter headings only); Guide III:28 (the distinction between true beliefs and necessary beliefs, with the example of God's anger as a necessary belief that is not metaphysically true); Mishnah Hagigah 2:1 (the prohibition on teaching the Account of the Chariot to more than one student, only orally, only to one capable of apprehending it); Pereq Heleq (the principles formulated as binding for the masses). Reception: Samuel Ibn Tibbon's *Otot ha-Shamayim* and translation introductions (medieval esoteric reading); Joseph ibn Kaspi; Leo Strauss's *Persecution and the Art of Writing* (1952) and *How to Begin to Study the Guide* (1963); Shlomo Pines's translator's introduction (1963) and later philosophical reading; Twersky's halakhic-integrated reading; Halbertal's four-readings frame in *Maimonides: Life and Thought* (Princeton, 2013).","works":["Guide of the Perplexed, Introduction to Part I (the seven causes of contradiction, the deliberate writing for the perplexed advanced student)","Guide, Introduction to Part III (the self-disclosure on writing the Account of the Chariot in chapter headings only)","Guide III:28 (the distinction between true beliefs and necessary beliefs, with the example of God's anger as a necessary belief that is not metaphysically true)","Mishnah Hagigah 2:1 (the prohibition on teaching the Account of the Chariot to more than one student, only orally, only to one capable of apprehending it)","Pereq Heleq (the principles formulated as binding for the masses)"],"reception":"Samuel Ibn Tibbon's *Otot ha-Shamayim* and translation introductions (medieval esoteric reading); Joseph ibn Kaspi; Leo Strauss's *Persecution and the Art of Writing* (1952) and *How to Begin to Study the Guide* (1963); Shlomo Pines's translator's introduction (1963) and later philosophical reading; Twersky's halakhic-integrated reading; Halbertal's four-readings frame in *Maimonides: Life and Thought* (Princeton, 2013).","status":"Genuinely held, openly disclosed (not concealed) in the Guide's introductions, defended throughout the authorship, and at the heart of how I write. The esoteric mode is continuous with the Mishnaic tradition that withholds the Account of the Chariot from the unprepared; it is not a Greek philosophical secret imported into Judaism. The true-versus-necessary distinction is published in *Guide* III:28 plainly, with God's anger as the worked example. What I reject is the Straussian inference that the religious framework as a whole is a necessary belief — that creation, prophecy, providence, reward and punishment are political fictions concealing a private Aristotelian secret. The religious framework is the substance of my teaching. The esoteric mode preserves it from the misuse of the unprepared, but does not reduce it to instrumental fiction.","era":"1138-1204","discipline":"Theology and Philosophy","refs":[{"n":1,"work":"Guide of the Perplexed Vol 1","page":"pp. 152–153","canonical":"","quote":"INTRODUCTION One of seven causes should account for the contradictory or contrary statements to be found in any book or compilation. The first cause. The author | has collected the remarks of various people with differing opinions, but has omitted citing his authorities and has not attributed each remark to the one who said it.","label":"Guide of the Perplexed Vol 1, pp. 152–153"},{"n":2,"work":"Guide of the Perplexed Vol 1","page":"pp. 15–16","canonical":"","quote":"The Guide is then devoted primarily and chiefly to the explanation of the Account of the Beginning and the Account of the Chariot.","label":"Guide of the Perplexed Vol 1, pp. 15–16"},{"n":3,"work":"Guide of the Perplexed Vol 2","page":"p. 201","canonical":"","quote":"However, our holy Rabbi' believes that all three apprehensions are called the Account of the Chariot and that with respect to none of them may anything other than the chapter headings be taught. Their text with regard to this is as follows: Till where [vs it permissible to teach] the Account of the Chariot?","label":"Guide of the Perplexed Vol 2, p. 201"},{"n":4,"work":"Guide of the Perplexed Vol 1","page":"p. 15","canonical":"","quote":"Its first premise is the old Jewish premise that being a Jew and being a philosopher are two incompatible things. Philosophers are men who try to give an account of the whole by starting from what is always accessible to man as man; Maimonides starts from the acceptance of the Torah.","label":"Guide of the Perplexed Vol 1, p. 15"}],"answer":null,"siblings":[{"slug":"anti-corporealism-as-binding-dogma","label":"Anti-corporealism as binding dogma: is belief that God has a body grounds for exclusion from Israel and the world to come?"},{"slug":"eternity-versus-creation-ex-nihilo","label":"Eternity versus creation ex nihilo: is the world's beginning a matter of divine will at a moment, or of divine wisdom emanating eternally?"},{"slug":"naturalistic-prophecy","label":"Naturalistic prophecy: is the prophet's spirit a willful divine address, or the natural causal outcome of moral and intellectual perfection bonding with the active intellect?"},{"slug":"immortality-and-resurrection","label":"Immortality and resurrection: is the world to come the survival of intellectual apprehension, or the literal return of body to soul?"},{"slug":"anti-magical-rationalism","label":"Anti-magical rationalism: is reason itself a halakhic obligation, requiring the rejection of astrology, amulets, and the magical use of sancta?"}]}