Maimonides - Between Philosophy and Halakhah ─ Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik's Lectures on the Guide of the Perplexed at the Bernard Revel Graduate School (1950-51)

This is the first and only comprehensive study of the philosophy of Maimonides by the noted 20th-century rabbinic scholar and thinker, Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik. Based on a complete set of notes, taken by Rabbi Gerald (Yaakov) Homnick, on R. Soloveitchik’s lectures on Maimonides' Guide of the Perplexed at the Bernard Revel Graduate School, and edited by the noted scholar Lawrence Kaplan, this work constitutes a major contribution to our knowledge of both Maimonides and Soloveitchik. In these lectures Soloveitchik emerges as a major commentator on the Guide. In a wide-ranging analysis he eloquently and incisively explores such diverse topics in Maimonides’ philosophy as his views on prophecy, the knowledge of and approach to God—normative, intellectual, and experiential; divine knowledge; human ethics and moral excellence; the divine creative act; imitation of God; and the love and fear of God. He also undertakes an extensive and penetrating comparison and contrast of Maimonides’ and Aristotle’s philosophical views. Over the course of these lectures develops a very profound and challenging overall approach to and interpretation of the Guide’s central and critical issue: the relationship between philosophy and divine law. This work sheds a bright light on the thought of both Maimonides and Soloveitchik—two great philosophers and rabbinic scholars.

Lawrence J. Kaplan is professor of rabbinics and Jewish philosophy in the department of Jewish studies of McGill University in Montreal. He coedited both The Thought of Moses Maimonides and Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook and Jewish Spirituality. He lives in Montreal. Dov Schwartz is a professor of Jewish thought at Bar-Ilan University in Israel, where he has served as dean of the faculty of humanities, chair of the department of philosophy, chair of the department of music, and head of the Interdisciplinary Program on Contemporary Jewry. He is currently The Natali and Isidor Friedman Chair for “Teaching the Writings of Joseph Dov Soloveitchik.” He is an award-winning author of some two dozen books and scores of articles.