Maimonides Following Ecclesiastes: How the Guide of the Perplexed Directs its Reader toward the Relief of Perplexity

Abstract

An intertextual encounter between Maimonides’ educational philosophy and Ecclesiastes surrounding the reasoned internalisation of metaphysics in the Guide of the Perplexed. Part III of the Guide instructs readers to refrain from a random perception of reality by internalising deterministic messages that attenuate doubt and non-belief. According to Maimonides, this random perception is the mother of all the negative emotions he seeks to prevent. Ecclesiastes’ ostensible vagueness and scepticism, in turn, conveys a mostly determinist message. Both works therefore seek to correct their perplexed readers’ thinking via the internalisation of a determinist message leading to a reasoned acceptance of reality.