Moses Maimonides, a Jewish philosopher in the 12th century, discusses the relation between God's providence and man's freedom of the will in his several treatises as:
Mishneh Torah,
Madda, chapter 5;
Shemonah Peraqim, chapter 8; and the
Guide of the Perplexed in part two, chapter 48. In
Mishneh Torah and
Shemonah Peraqim, he emphasises man's freedom of the will by saying that human acts are not pre-determined by God's will, but man can choose his acts freely by using his own free will. However, as Pines points out, in the
Guide of the Perplexed, Maimonides emphasises God's providence rather than man's freedom of the will, and it seems that Maimonides recognises that God's providence precedes human free will. In the same way, Altman argues that although traditional Jewish view stresses man's freedom of the will, Maimonides ascribes a series of intermediate causes to God through prophetic expressions since his philosophical and speculative thought is independent of the traditional view. On the other hand, Gellman distinguishes human actions from consequences of them, and argues that ‘God determines only that we choose, not what we choose’ by indicating that the ascription of human actions to God is honorific, and Maimonides's true intention is to stress man's free will. Through above discussion, we come to wonder what true intention of Maimonides is concerning God's providence and man's freedom of the will.
In this essay, firstly, I will clarify how Maimonides recognises man's freedom of the will through
Mishneh Torah and
Shemonah Peraqim from Jewish legal point of view. Secondly, I will present a frame of discussion by outlining arguments of six discussants (Epicurus, Aristotle, Ash‘ariyya, Mu‘tazila, Jews, Maimonides) in the
Guide III:17, and Maimonides' commentary on Book of Job in the
Guide III:23. Thirdly, I will search how Maimonides, who abhorred astrology, recognises the relation between God' providence and man's freedom of the will by quoting passages referring to human free will in the
Guide II:48 and relevant chapters.
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