Maimonides, answered from the texts and cited to the page.
The book has two purposes, and they are not of equal depth. The first purpose is the one I name openly: to explain terms in the books of the prophets that appear, on their surface, to attribute body and form to God. A man of learning who encounters such terms and takes them literally finds himself torn — either he follows his intellect and concludes that the Law's foundations have been abandoned, or he clings to the literal meaning and thereby contradicts what demonstration has established.1
This perplexity is real and it injures the best minds, not the worst. The ignorant man is not perplexed by the verse that speaks of God's hand or God's eye; he simply imagines a hand and an eye and is content. It is the man who has philosophized, who knows what demonstration requires, who is wounded by the apparent conflict. The second purpose is the explanation of the obscure parables in the prophetic books — parables that are not identified as parables, so that even a learned man who reads them according to their external meaning falls into great confusion.2
Once it is shown that these are parables, and their inner meaning is indicated, the right road opens. But beneath both purposes lies what I called the secret par excellence of the whole work: the identification of natural science and divine science — what the philosophers call physics and metaphysics — with what the Sages called the Account of the Beginning and the Account of the Chariot.3
That identification is the heart of the matter. It means that the highest reaches of the Torah and the highest reaches of philosophy are the same inquiry, seen from two directions. The book is addressed neither to the vulgar nor to the fully initiated elite. The vulgar do not need its secret teaching and cannot receive it; the elite do not need its public teaching.4
It is written for the man in between: learned in the Law, formed in character, trained in the sciences, and genuinely perplexed by the apparent conflict between what he has studied and what the sacred texts seem to say. I composed it for my disciple Joseph, and for those like him, however few they are.5 I do not promise that it removes every difficulty.
I promise that it removes most of the difficulties, and those of the greatest moment.6 The chapters on the deepest matters — the Account of the Chariot above all — are set down only as headings, scattered and entangled with other subjects, because the Mishnaic prohibition on teaching that account extends even to writing.7 I violated the letter of that prohibition and relied on two premises: It is time to do something for the Lord, and Let all thy acts be for the sake of Heaven.8
The knowledge would otherwise have died with me, and that silence would have been the greater cowardice. I am the man who, when pressed and finding no other way to teach a demonstrated truth, prefers to address one virtuous and perplexed soul — and does not heed the blame of ten thousand ignoramuses.9
Hence he would remain in a state of perplexity and confusion as to whether he should follow his intellect, renounce what he knew concerning the terms in question, and consequently consider that he has renounced the foundations of the Law.Guide of the Perplexed Vol 1, pp. 141–142
This Treatise also has a second purpose: namely, the explanation of very obscure parables occurring in the books of the prophets, but not explicitly identified there as such. Hence an ignorant or heedless individual might think that they possess only an external sense, but no internal one.Guide of the Perplexed Vol 1, pp. 141–142
What he means by identifying the core of philosophy (natural science and divine science) with the highest secrets of the Law (the Account of the Beginning and the Account of the Chariot) and therewith by somehow identifying the subject matter of speculation with the subject matter of exegesis may be said to be the secret par excellence of the Guide.Guide of the Perplexed Vol 1, p. 18
The Guide contains a public teaching and a secret teaching. The public teaching is addressed to every Jew including the vulgar; the secret teaching is addressed to the elite. The secret teaching is of no use to the vulgar and the elite does not need the Guide for being apprised of the public teaching.Guide of the Perplexed Vol 1, p. 18
Your absence moved me to compose this Treatise, which I have composed for you and for those like you, however few they are.Guide of the Perplexed Vol 1, pp. 139–140
I do not say that this Treatise will remove all difficulties for those who understand it. I do, however, say that it will remove most of the difficulties, and those of the greatest moment.Guide of the Perplexed Vol 1, pp. 141–142
Hence you should not ask of me here anything beyond the chapter headings. And even those are not set down in order or arranged in coherent fashion in this Treatise, but rather are scattered and entangled with other subjects that are to be clarified.Guide of the Perplexed Vol 1, pp. 141–142
I have relied on two premises, the one being [the Sages'] saying in a similar case, It is time to do something for the Lord, and so on; the second being their saying, Let all thy acts be for the sake of Heaven.Guide of the Perplexed Vol 1, pp. 151–152
I am the man who when the concern pressed him and his way was straitened and he could find no other device by which to teach a demonstrated truth other than by giving satisfaction to a single virtuous man while displeasing ten thousand ignoramuses—I am he who prefers to address that single man by himself, and I do not heed the blame of those many.Guide of the Perplexed Vol 1, pp. 151–152