Maimonides
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Moses Maimonides, also known as Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon or the acronym the Rambam was a preeminent medieval Spanish, Sephardic Jewish philosopher and astronomer born in Cordoba, Spain on March 30, 1135, and died in Egypt on December 13, 1204.
Philosophy
Through the Guide for the Perplexed (which was initially written in Arabic as Dalālat al-ḥāʾirīn) and the philosophical introductions to sections of his commentaries on the Mishna, Maimonides exerted an important influence on the Scholastic philosophers, especially on Albert the Great, Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus. He was a Jewish Scholastic. Educated more by reading the works of Arab Muslim philosophers than by personal contact with Arabian teachers, he acquired an intimate acquaintance not only with Arab Muslim philosophy, but with the doctrines of Aristotle. Maimonides strove to reconcile Aristotelian philosophy and science with the teachings of the Torah. In his Guide for the Perplexed, he often explains the function and purpose of the statutory provisions contained in the Torah against the backdrop of the historical conditions. Maimonides is said to have been influenced by Asaph ha-Jehoudi, who was the first Hebrew medical writer.
See also
- Al-Farabi
- Thomas Aquinas
- Averroes
- Golden age of Jewish culture in Spain
- Maimonides Foundation
- Mishne Torah
