Fraenkel - Maimonides and Spinoza As Sources For Maimon S Solution of The Problem Quid Juris in Kant S Theory of Knowledge

212 Carlos Fraenkel
Maimonides and Spinoza as sources for Maimon’s solution

*1of the “problem quid juris” in Kant’s theory of knowledge*1
by Carlos Fraenkel, McGill University, Montreal
Abstract: Maimon once described the philosophical project underlying his Essay on Transcen-
dental Philosophy as an attempt “to unify Kantian philosophy with Spinozism”. But in the
only reference to Spinoza in the Essay, he stresses that Spinoza was not the source of his argu-
ment. In this paper I will argue that, notwithstanding the disclaimer, Maimon’s solution for
the problems that in his view haunted Kant’s theory of knowledge was indeed significantly
influenced by Spinoza, as well as by the medieval Jewish Aristotelian Maimonides. Since the
key concept in the solution proposed by Maimon is the metaphysical doctrine of the “infinite
intellect”, my focus will be on clarifying how this doctrine is related to Maimonides’ doctrine
of the divine intellect and to Spinoza’s doctrine of Deus sive Natura. My main contention is
that important aspects of Maimon’s doctrine of the “infinite intellect” are based on a Spinoz-
istic interpretation of Maimonides’ doctrine of the divine intellect.
Key words: Maimon, Maimonides, Spinoza, Metaphysics, Infinite Intellect
In a note on an article of the German scholar Herr Obereit, Maimon describes the
philosophical project underlying his famous Essay on Transcendental Philosophy
(1790) as a “Salto mortale” consisting in the attempt “to unify Kantian philosophy
with Spinozism [die Vereinigung der Kantischen Philosophie mit dem Spinozismo]”
(III, 455, note).1 In light of this statement it is at first view surprising that in the
only reference to Spinoza in the Essay itself (II, 365), Maimon emphasizes that
Spinoza is not the source of his argument. The thesis for which I will argue in this
paper is that, notwithstanding the disclaimer, Maimon’s springboard for this
Salto mortale is to a considerable extent built on a Spinozist interpretation of the
medieval Jewish Aristotelian Maimonides. I suggest characterizing Maimon’s philo-
sophical project in the Essay as the completion of Kant’s “Copernican revolution”
in philosophy with the purpose of solving the problems that in his view haunted
Kant’s theory of knowledge.2 Maimon’s solution in nuce consists in positing cogni-
tive activity as the source of both form and matter of the object of cognition, unlike
*1 An earlier version of this paper was presented at a conference in Amsterdam in 2002 and in-
cluded in the conference proceedings: Sepharad in Ashkenaz: Medieval Knowledge and Eig-
teenth-Century Enlightened Jewish Discourse. Amsterdam 2007.
1 I quote Maimon according to Maimon, S.: Gesammelte Werke. Ed. by V. Verra, Reprogra-
phischer Nachdruck. Hildesheim 1965. The Roman numerals refer to the volume, the
Arabic numerals to the page of this edition.
2 For a good account of Maimon’s general philosophical project based on a careful study of
the primary texts, see Engstler, A.: Untersuchungen zum Idealismus Salomon Maimons.
Stuttgart – Bad Canstatt 1990 [henceforth: Engstler, Untersuchungen].
Kant-Studien 100. Jahrg., S. 212–240 DOI 10.1515/KANT.2009.013

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Maimonides and Spinoza as sources for Maimon’s solution of the “problem quid juris” 213
Kant, for whom cognitive activity is the source only of the object’s form. Since
the key concept in this solution is the metaphysical doctrine of the “infinite intel-
lect”3, my focus will be on clarifying how this doctrine is related to Maimonides’
doctrine of the divine intellect on the one hand, and to Spinoza’s doctrine of Deus
sive Natura on the other. My contention is that Maimonides’ doctrine of the divine
intellect, transformed on the basis of Spinoza’s doctrine of Deus sive Natura, is an
important source for Maimon’s doctrine of the infinite intellect. I would like to em-
phasize from the outset that my interest in this paper is primarily historical. I want
to understand the use Maimon makes of Maimonides and Spinoza in his critical re-
sponse to Kant and draw attention to the medieval and 17th century background to
what may be described as the first statement of an idealist position in German phil-
osophy.
The paper is subdivided into three parts. The first part provides a brief account of
Kant’s “Copernican revolution” in philosophy, then discusses Maimon’s critical as-
sessment of it, as well as his solution for what he believed to be its inherent problems.
The second part discusses how Maimon presents his relationship to Maimonides,
and then examines in detail how his doctrine of the infinite intellect is related to Mai-
monides’ doctrine of the divine intellect. The third part explains how Maimon used
Spinoza’s doctrine of Deus sive Natura in order to transform Maimonides’ doctrine
of the divine intellect, who is only the formal cause of the world, into his doctrine of
the infinite intellect, who is both the formal and the material cause of the world.
The impact of Maimonides and Spinoza on Maimon has been the object of a con-
siderable amount of scholarship.4 To the best of my knowledge, however, there is
3 In Maimon’s German writings: “unendlicher Verstand”, in his commentary on the Guide:

“tylkt lib ytlb lk> ”. For the central role of this doctrine in Maimon’s thought, see
Engstler, Untersuchungen, 143–165.
4 On Maimon and Maimonides, see: Rosenbaum, C.: Die Philosophie Salomon Maimons in
seinem hebräischen Kommentar gibath-hammoreh zum moreh-nebuchim des Maimonides.
Diss., Gießen 1928; Atlas, S.: “Solomon Maimon’s Treatment of the Problem of Antinomies
and its Relation to Maimonides”. In: Hebrew Union College Annual 21, 1948, 105–153;
Atlas, S.: “Maimon and Maimonides”. In: Hebrew Union College Annual 23, 1950–1951,
517–547; Bergman, S.: The Philosophy of Solomon Maimon, Jerusalem 1967, esp. ch. 10:
“Maimonides and Maimon”, 210–215 [henceforth: Bergman, Maimon]; Lachterman, D.:
“Mathematical Construction, Symbolic Cognition and the Infinite Intellect: Reflections on
Maimon and Maimonides”. In: Journal of the History of Philosophy 30, 1992, 497–522
[henceforth: Lachterman, “Mathematical Construction”]; Hayoun, M.-R.: “Introduction”.
In: Commentaires de Maïmonide. Ed. and trans. into French by M.-R. Hayoun. Paris 1999,
7–55 [henceforth: Hayoun, Commentaires. Note that the introduction is identical to
Hayoun’s following two articles: “Publications récentes sur Salomon Maïmon”. In: Revue
des études juives 156, 1997; “Salomon Maimon, Moise Maimonide et Kant”. In: La phi-
losophie allemande dans la pensée juive. Ed. by G. Bensussan. Paris 1997.] On Maimon and
Spinoza, see: Atlas, S.: “Solomon Maimon and Spinoza”. In: Hebrew Union College Annual
30, 1959, 233–285; Bergman, Maimon, esp. ch. 11: “Spinoza and Maimon”, 216–228;
Zac, S.: “Maimon, Spinoza et Kant”. In: Spinoza entre Lumières et Romantisme. Les Ca-
hiers de Fontenay 36, 1985, 65–75 [henceforth: Zac, “Maimon”]; Engstler, A.: “Salomon
Maimons Versuch einer ‘Vereinigung der Kantischen Philosophie mit dem Spinozismo’”. In:

214 Carlos Fraenkel
neither a plausible account of Maimon’s use of Maimonides’ doctrine of the divine

intellect5, nor any account of how Maimon transformed it in light of Spinoza’s con-
cept of Deus sive Natura.6 Though the pieces of the puzzle have been known for
some time, they have never been put together according to what I think is the cor-
rect solution.
1. Kant’s incomplete “Copernican revolution” in philosophy
In Kant’s view the task of metaphysics, to cognize the world from a priori con-
cepts, can only be carried out if we inverse our understanding of the process of cog-
nition. Through this inversion Kant thought to have accomplished a philosophical
revolution similar to Copernicus’ revolution in astronomy. In the Critique of Pure
Reason he writes:
Die Goldene Regel der Kritik. Festschrift für Hans Radermacher zum 60. Geburtstag. Bern/
Frankfurt a. M./New York/Paris 1990. Ed. by H. Holz, 39–54 [henceforth: Engstler, “Vere-
inigung”]; Engstler, A.: “Zwischen Kabbala und Kant. Salomon Maimons ‘streifende’ Spi-
noza-Rezeption”. In: Spinoza in der europäischen Geistesgeschichte. Ed. by H. Delf, J.
Schoeps, M. Walther. Berlin 1994, 162–192 [henceforth: Engstler, “Spinoza-Rezeption”].
See also S. Atlas’ book on Maimon: From Critical to Speculative Idealism – The Philosophy
of Solomon Maimon. The Hague 1964 [henceforth: Atlas, Maimon], considerable parts of
which are based on his studies, cited above, of the influence of both Maimonides and Spi-
noza on Maimon.
5 That Maimon’s doctrine of the infinite intellect is in some way related to Maimonides’ doc-
trine of the divine intellect is obvious since Maimon explicitely links the two in Giveât
ha-Moreh, his Hebrew commentary on Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed. The question,
therefore, is not if but how the two doctrines are related. In their attempt to answer this ques-
tion even scholars like S. Atlas, and H. Bergman, who emphasized the importance of Mai-
monides’ influence on Maimon, remained very vague. Characteristic for this vagueness is
S. Atlas’ remark about Maimon’s commentary on a passage in Guide I, 1 in an article sup-
posed to elucidate the “historical relations” of Maimon’s doctrine of the infinite intellect:
“The very fact that Maimon introduces the concept of infinite reason in his commentary on
that chapter in the Guide which deals with the relation of human and divine reason seems to
indicate that the original impulse behind the development of this concept in his thought came
to him through the influence of Maimonides. Although, in this instance, he read into Mai-
monides more than the passage actually warrants, he did so because of his recognition of the
general similarity between his own and Maimonides’ thought”. Having stated this “general
similarity” between Maimonides and Maimon, Atlas immediately turns to Leibniz: “In order
to understand Maimon’s point of view and the basis of his whole philosophy, we have to go
back to Leibniz”. Atlas, S. “Solomon Maimon’s Doctrine of Infinite Reason and its Historical
Relations”. In: Journal of the History of Ideas 13, 1952, 168–187. Cf. Atlas, Maimon, 76–77.
6 The only article dealing with all three thinkers is not relevant to the topic of the present
paper: Atlas, S.: “Moses in the Philosophy of Maimonides, Spinoza, and Solomon Mai-
mon”. In: Hebrew Union College Annual 25, 1954, 369–400. Bergman, when commenting
upon a cryptic remark of Maimon on Guide I, 68, which I will discuss in detail below,
briefly alluded to the possibility of Maimon’s Spinozist understanding of Maimonides. Cf.
Bergman, Maimon, 34. Bergman’s note, however, falls more than short of an explanation of
the connection.

Hitherto it has been assumed that all of our cognition must conform to the objects ; but on this
assumption all attempts to establish anything about them a priori by means of concepts,
through which our cognition would be extended, ended in failure. One ought to try, therefore,
whether we will not make more progress concerning the tasks of metaphysics, if we assume
that the objects have to conform to our cognition; this would already agree better with the
required possibility of their cognition a priori which should state something about objects,
before they are given to us. It is with this matter the same as with the idea of Copernicus who,
since he did not get very far in the explanation of the celestial motions on the assumption that
the host of stars revolved around the spectator, tried whether he would not succeed better, if he
let the spectator turn around, whereas the stars remained at rest.7
Bisher nahm man an, alle unsere Erkenntnis müsse sich nach den Gegenständen richten; aber
alle Versuche über sie a priori etwas durch Begriffe auszumachen, wodurch unsere Erkenntnis
erweitert würde, gingen unter dieser Voraussetzung zu nichte. Man versuche es daher einmal,
ob wir nicht in den Aufgaben der Metaphysik damit besser fortkommen, daß wir annehmen,
die Gegenstände müssen sich nach unserem Erkenntnis richten, welches so schon besser mit der
verlangten Möglichkeit einer Erkenntnis a priori zusammenstimmt, die über Gegenstände, ehe
sie uns gegeben werden, etwas festsetzen soll. Es ist hiermit eben so, als mit den ersten Gedan-
ken des Copernicus bewandt, der, nachdem es mit der Erklärung der Himmelsbewegungen
nicht gut fort wollte, wenn er annahm, das ganze Sternheer drehe sich um den Zuschauer, ver-
suchte, ob es nicht besser gelingen möchte, wenn er den Zuschauer sich drehen, und dagegen
die Sterne in Ruhe ließ.
Kant agrees with the empiricist thesis that we cannot derive certain knowledge
about the world – i. e., knowledge expressed in judgments characterized by “neces-
sity and strict universality”8 [Notwendigkeit und strenge Allgemeinheit] – from ex-
perience (in Kant’s technical terminology: from a posteriori synthetic judgments).
From the repeated observation that a stone is heated by fire9, we cannot infer that
this is a necessary causal relation (or that the physical laws governing the process
necessarily produce the observed effect). All we can say is that a stone is customarily
heated by fire.10 Certain knowledge, for Kant, must be a priori, i. e., derived from
concepts of pure cognition where “pure” means “independent of empirical experi-
ence” [in die sich überhaupt keine Erfahrung oder Empfindung einmischt].11 The
philosophical tradition, however, knew of only one kind of a priori knowledge:
knowledge derived from “analytic judgments”. But analytic judgments do not ex-
tend the scope of our knowledge; they only “clarify” [erläutern] the elements en-
tailed by a concept we already know.12 Through analysis we will never reach the
conclusion that a stone is necessarily heated by fire, for the concept “stone” does
not entail “to be heated by fire”, nor does the concept “fire” entail the concept “to
heat stones”. Thus the dilemma: a posteriori synthetic judgments extend the scope
7 Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft [henceforth: KrV] B XVI.

8 Krv, B 4.
9 This is one of Maimon’s examples to illustrate the category of causality. Cf. II, 72.
10 Cf. Kant’s account of David Hume’s skepticism in KrV, B 792–795. As an example for a
causal relation Kant uses in this passage a piece of wax being melted by the sun.
11 Cf. KrV, A 11.
12 Cf. Kant’s account of the “difference between analytic and synthetic judgments” in: KrV,
B 10 ff.

216 Carlos Fraenkel
of our knowledge but are not certain; a priori analytic judgments are certain but do
not extend the scope of our knowledge. If, then, we assume that all our knowledge
is determined through the objects of cognition, there simply would be no concepts
of pure cognition. This would lead to a skeptical position concerning the possibility
of certain knowledge, which Kant wishes to avoid. Now it is for Kant a fact that we
possess a priori cognitions that are not analytic but synthetic, and, therefore, extend
the scope of our knowledge.13 Thus the question for him is not if such cognitions are
possible, but how.14 Since they cannot be derived from experience, Kant suggests
inverting our assumption about the process of cognition. Our concepts are not de-
termined by the objects of cognition; rather, the objects of cognition are deter-
mined through our cognitive activity. The forms of “intuition” [Anschauung] and
of “understanding” [Verstand] constitute the structure of nature as we perceive it.15
Being a priori they are necessary and universal. It is this inversion which Kant
compares to Copernicus’ inversion of the position of the earth in relation to the
stars. If our cognitive activity constructs, as it were, the world that we experience,
the examination of the forms of our cognitive activity will provide us with certain
knowledge about the structure of the world. Transcendental philosophy, therefore,
deals not with objects but with our “mode of cognition of objects insofar as it is
possible a priori” [Erkenntnisart von Gegenständen, so fern diese a priori möglich
sein soll]16.
**
In Maimon’s view, however, Kant’s revolutionary elan was not sufficient for more
than halfway to the goal.17 “Between the forms and the matter” of the object of cog-
nition he identified a “gap” [Lücke] (II, 521) in his system: Our cognitive activity
(i. e., the forms of intuition and understanding) determines only the form but not
the matter of the object of cognition. Our senses receive its matter by being affected
through a reality existing independently of our cognition: Kant’s so-called “thing in
itself” [Ding an sich]18. This Ding an sich, for Kant, remains “completely unknown
13 Cf. KrV, B 14–18.

14 This is the central question of the KrV. Cf. B 19.
15 Cf. Kant’s interpretation of the method of natural science: “Reason only cognizes that [in
nature] which it itself produced according to its plan” (KrV, B XIII). For the forms of intu-
ition see the first part, for the forms of understanding, the second part of the “Transcenden-
tal Doctrine of Elements” [Transzendentale Elementarlehre].
16 KrV, B 25.
17 Maimon directly addresses Kant’s analogy between his revolution in philosophy and the
Copernican revolution in astronomy in his late work, Kritische Untersuchungen über den
menschlichen Geist (1797). His analysis of the difference between Ptolemaic and Coperni-
can astronomy and analogous epistemological distinctions is, however, not relevant for this
paper. On the passage in question, see Katzoff, C.: “Solomon Maimon’s Interpretation of
Kant’s Copernican Revolution”. In: Kant-Studien 66, 1975, 342–356.
18 Cf. KrV, B 29 where Kant speaks of “two sources, of human cognition, which perhaps
derive from a common root that is, however, unknown to us, namely sensibility and under-
standing, through the first of which the objects are given to us, whereas through the second

to us” [bleibt uns gänzlich unbekannt]19. According to Maimon, Kant’s dualistic ac-
count of cognition leads to a number of problems. The most prominent among them
is the “important problem […] quid juris?”, which Maimon considered to be the cru-
cial concern of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, and which prompted him to write his
exposition and critical examination of the Critique in the Essay on Transcendental
Philosophy. In the summary of the Essay’s genesis and content given in the Auto-
biography Maimon states that in it “the important problem [das wichtige Problem],
with the solution of which the Critique is concerned: quid juris? is elaborated in a
much wider sense than Mr. Kant takes it” (I, 558). According to the Essay itself, the
“question quid juris” is not only Kant’s concern; it is “the important question, which
all philosopers always [seit jeher] dealt with, namely the explanation of the commu-
nity [Gemeinschaft] of soul and body” (II, 62). In Kantian terms soul and body be-
come form and matter of the object of cognition: “the forms […] which must be in us
a priori”, and the “matter, or the representation [Vorstellung] of individual objects a
posteriori” (II, 62). As a consequence the question “of the unification [Vereinigung]
of soul and body” can be formulated as follows:
How is it conceivable that a priori forms should correspond [übereinstimmen] to a posteriori
given things [gegebenen Dingen]? (II, 63)
For a cognition to be true, “forms” and “things” must correpond to each other,
for truth is defined as “correspondence between ideas and objects” [Übereinstim-
mung der Gedanken mit den Objekten] (III, 182). The question quid juris, there-
fore, asks the philosopher to justify the application of a priori cognitive forms to
a posteriori empirical objects, and the justification consists in showing how this
application leads to a true cognition – that is, a cognition, in which Gedanke and
Objekt correspond to each other. According to Maimon it is not possible to provide
such a justification on the basis of Kant’s dualistic account of cognition. If form and
matter of the cognized object derive from “completely different sources” [ganz ver-
schiedene Quellen], the problem quid juris remains “unsolvable” [unauflöslich]
(II, 63) – all the more so because the source of the empirical component is Kant’s
mysterious Ding an sich, of which we can neither “demonstrate the existence” nor
“form any concept” [gar keinen Begriff]. It is, therefore, “an empty word without
any meaning” (III, 185).
To solve these problems, Maimon suggests assuming cognitive activity to be the
only source of our cognition. It determines not only the form, but both form and
they are apprehended” [daß es zwei Stämme der menschlichen Erkenntnis gebe, die viel-
leicht aus einer gemeinschaftlichen, aber uns unbekannten Wurzel entspringen, nämlich
Sinnlichkeit und Verstand, durch deren ersteren uns Gegenstände gegeben, durch den
zweiten aber gedacht werden]. Cf. KrV, B 33–34 and B 74–76. Cf. also Kant’s account of
Leibniz’ and Locke’s theories of knowledge, each of which recognized only one of the two
sources of cognition: KrV, B 327. It is interisting to note that Maimon nowhere discusses
Kant’s cryptic remark that the two sources of cognition “perhaps derive from a common
root that is, however, unknown to us”.
19 KrV, B 59–60.

218 Carlos Fraenkel
matter of the cognized object. The elements of the object’s empirical component
(i. e. its matter) are, he holds, “intellectual ideas” [Verstandesideen] (II, 192); ulti-
mately, these intellectual ideas are the Ding an sich.20 The obvious objection to this
solution is that we perceive empirical objects as given and not as produced through
our cognitive activity. Maimon’s reply to this objection is that empirical objects
are not produced through the cognitive activity of the finite human intellect, but
through the cognitive acitivity of God’s “infinte intellect” [unendlicher Verstand],
for which “the forms are at the same time the objects of cognition” [Objekte des
Denkens] (II, 64). We perceive the empirical objects as “given”, i. e., as existing in-
dependently of our cognition, because of the “finite” [eingeschränkt] (II, 65) char-
acter of our intellect. From the perspective of God’s infinite intellect, however, the
cognitive form is the cognized object. Since the infinite intellect “comprehends all
possible things” [alle möglichen Dinge] (IV, 58), the objects that we perceive as in-
dependent of our cognitive activity are ultimately God’s thoughts; and since the
human intellect is “precisely the same” [ebenderselbe] (II, 65) as the infinite intel-
lect, the problem quid juris is solved: form and matter of the object of cognition are
no longer heterogeneous. In the process of cognition the finite human intellect
applies cognitive forms to objects, which are themselves cognitive forms in God’s
infinite intellect. Given that both ideas and objects are cognitive forms, cognitions
are, therefore, true since the former correspond to the latter.
2. Maimon and Maimonides
At first view it will strike the reader of Maimon’s work as bizarre to find more
than a quarter of his autobiography dedicated to an exposition of Maimonides’
Guide of the Perplexed. As probably not less bizarre it will strike him to find in the
commentary on the Guide (1791), in which he would have expected an exposition
of Maimonides’ philosophy, mostly Maimon’s own philosophical reflections: exten-
sive discussions of Giordano Bruno, Leibniz and Mendelssohn, and, above all, the
results of his study, critique and transformation of Kant21, published in greater de-
tail a year earlier in the Essay on Transcendental Philosophy. In the autobiography,
therefore, the surprised reader finds Maimonides; for Maimon he has to look in the
commentary on the Guide.
There are several possible explanations for this curious quidproquo. One recently
suggested by Y. Schwartz points to the different audiences that Maimon addressed
20 Cf. III, 186: “The thing in itself is, therefore, an intellectual idea [Vernunftidee]”. These
“intellectual ideas” that underlie the phenomena are what Maimon elsewhere describes as
“differentials”. The latter again he identifies with Kant’s “noumena” (cf. II, 32).
21 In the preface to their edition of Giveât ha-Moreh (Jerusalem 1965) Bergman and Roten-
streich characterize the commentary as “the first Hebrew book, the subject matter of which
is a modern philosophical discussion, a discussion conducted using the concepts that were
introduced in the new philosophy, in particular in Kant’s” (5).

and the corresponding different apologetic strategies that he pursued: The auto-
biography was written in German and aimed at a German readership. By presenting
a summary of the classic work of Jewish philosophy, it sought to convince its readers
that Jews had a long tradition of substantial contributions to philosophy. The com-
mentary on the Guide was written in Hebrew and aimed at a Jewish readership.
By presenting contemporary philosophy as well as his own views in the form of
a commentary on an authoritative work of Jewish thought, Maimon intended
to convey ideas to his readers that would not have reached them in their original
setting.22
I cannot discuss Schwartz’s suggestion here in detail. I believe, however, that Mai-
mon did not consider Maimonides’ work merely as a vehicle for either justifying
Jewish philosophy, or introducing contemporary ideas to a Jewish audience. As I
suggested above, in my view Maimon made substantial philosophical use of what
he learned from Maimonides, in particular with regard to the doctrine at the heart
of his metaphysics: the doctrine of the “infinite intellect”. In the next section, I will
substantiate this claim in detail. If Maimonides can indeed be shown to be of philo-
sophical importance to Maimon’s project, we should not dismiss lightly statements
in the Autobiography, according to which the Guide contains “teachings dictated
by divine wisdom” [göttliche Weisheit] (I, 307), presented through the “voice
of truth itself” (I, 320). The “cognition of the truth” was also the “main motive”
[Hauptbewegungsgrund] for Maimon’s own philosophical quest as he writes in the
preface to the Essay on Transcendental Philosophy (II, 10–11). Since for Maimon
the truth is immutable and eternal,23 we are led to conclude that the truth contained
in the teachings of the Guide must be the same that he pursued in his philosophical
quest. I see in any case no good reason why from the outset we should not take
seriously Maimon’s claim that Maimonides’ had a “most decisive influence”
[entscheidendster Einfluß] on his intellectual development (I, 306 f.; cf. I, 455).24
Elsewhere Maimon goes so far as to play with the medieval concept of an intellec-
22 Schwartz, Y: “Causa materialis: Solomon Maimon, Moses ben Maimon and the Possibility
of Philosophical Transmission”. In: Salomon Maimon: Rational Dogmatist, Empirical
Skeptic. Ed. by G. Freudenthal. Tel Aviv 2003, 125–143.
23 Cf. I, 489.
24 A precise assessment of the scope of this influence remains difficult, however. In his works
and essays written in German Maimon discusses Maimonides twice: in his “Probe Rabbini-
scher Philosophie” written in 1789 (I, 589–598), and in his “Über das Vorhersehungsvermö-
gen” written in 1791 (III, 276–298), the first being a comment on a passage in Maimonides’
Commentary on the Mishnah, and the second, a discussion of the concept of prophecy as set
forth in the Guide. His Hebrew works are for the most part either in manuscript or lost.
Of Giveât ha-Moreh only the part on Guide I was printed in Berlin in 1791. Unfortunately,
Maimon’s manuscript, which according to a remark in the Autobiography contained also
the commentary on Guide II and III (cf. I, 574), is not extant. In addition, Maimon appar-
ently had already written a commentary on the Guide before his first visit to Berlin in 1777
(cf. I, 268), and planned a new edition of the Guide together with his commentary (cf. I,
269–270).

220 Carlos Fraenkel
tual conjunction between teacher and student. Consider first his account of Mai-
monides’ doctrine of the immortality of the soul in his early Hebrew work Hesheq
Shlomo25:
You already know, from the opinion of Maimonides of blessed memory about the human soul,
that it is only potentiality and preparation [hnkhv xk ], as was the opinion of Alexander
[of Aphrodisias], and the acquired intellect [hnqnh lk>h ] comes from the emanation of the
active intellect [livph lk>h ], through which it became a substance, and it [the active intellect]
is what actualizes [the soul]. And immortality of the soul is the union of the acquired intellect
with the active intellect. As a consequence, all immortal souls will be one thing in itself
[vmjib dxX rbd ], and this is the substance of the active intellect, since no numbering can be
conceived regarding the separate [intellects] except if they are causes and effects. But what re-
mains of Ruben is neither cause nor effect in relation to what remains of Simon. This is what
can be derived from the words of [Maimonides] of blessed memory. (297)26
The immortality of the soul is the result of the process of perfection of the human
intellect in the course of which it becomes an “acquired intellect” until finally
achieving union with the “active intellect”27, in which all individual intellects be-
come one and the same. It is precisely this kind of immortality which according to
Maimon can be reached through the study of the Guide. In the preface to Giveât
ha-Moreh he writes:
When [Maimonides’] words are explained according to what agrees with his intention, and
when the passages which he of blessed memory presented in a summary fashion are elaborated,
and when what was lacking in the sciences of his time has been completed by means [of the
sciences] in our time – then this treatise will be found to be a treasure, containing valuable
sciences and esteemed knowledge [tvdbknh tviydyhv tvrqyh tvmkxh ] that guide man to
[intellectual] perfection [vtvmyl>l ,dXh tX ,ykyrdmh ]. And for this reason it is appropriate
for us to be grateful to the Master, the author of blessed memory, who left a blessing for our
life, as is now the case [cf. Deuteronomy 6:24]. (GM, 4).
The “life”, of which the Guide – after having been explained and scientifically
updated through Giveât ha-Moreh – becomes the source, is clearly the eternal
life of the intellect achieved through intellectual perfection.28 Now, if the study of
the Guide leads to intellectual perfection, and if Maimon was a student of the
Guide, then, sub specie intellectus, there is no real difference between teacher and
25 I quote from Ms. 806426 at the Jewish National and University Library [= HSh henceforth].
26 Cf. Giveât ha-Moreh [henceforth: GM], 169, on Guide I, 74, the seventh method.
27 Note that in the cosmology of medieval Aristotelians, the “active intellect” is the last in a
series of intellects separate from matter, of which the first is the divine intellect. For a gen-
eral account of this theory in Muslim Aristotelianism, see Davidson, H. A.: Alfarabi,
Avicenna, and Averroes, on Intellect. New York/Oxford 1992. For Maimonides’ version of
this theory, see ibid., 197–207.
28 Cf. Guide III, 27: intellectual perfection is “the only cause of the eternal life [,yyxh
,ydymtmh ]” (470). If not indicated otherwise, quotations from the Guide are based on S.
ibn Tibbon’s Hebrew trans. Ed. by J. Even Shmuel, Jerusalem 1987. Since Maimon read only
Ibn Tibbon’s Hebrew version of the Guide, the translation is more important for the pur-
pose of this paper than the Arabic original.

student.29 But let us leave aside these variations on an Averroistic theme and turn to
an examination of the evidence for the claim that Maimon had something import-
ant to learn from his medieval predecessor.
**
In this section I will present what I think is a plausible reconstruction of how
Maimonides’ concept of God is related to Maimon’s. The central chapter, in which
Maimonides describes God in terms of «, i. e., in terms of the divine intellect of
the Aristotelian tradition, is Guide I, 68. In this chapter Maimonides explains what
the “philosophers concerned with divine science […] have demonstrated” regarding
the nature of God. Only “ignoramuses”, according to Maimonides, “hold that the
knowledge of the necessary truth concerning this [hl bvyx ttmX tiydy ] is concealed
from the minds” (140):
You already know that this saying of the philosophers with regard to God, may He be praised,
is generally admitted: the saying that He is the intellect as well as the subject of intellection and
the object of intellection, and that these three notions form in Him, may He be praised, one no-
tion, in which there is no multiplicity [’ty vb ,ynyni h>l>h vlX>v lk>vmhv lyk>mhv lk>h Xvh
vb yvbyr ]yX ,dxX ]yni ,h ]
God’s unity thus consists in the identity of “the intellect, the subject and the ob-
ject of intellection [Arabic: lvqimlXv lqXilXv lqilX ]”30. In Giveât ha-Moreh
Maimon explains this formula first according to Kant, then according to Leibniz:
According to the opinion of the philosopher Kant, cognition (die Erkenntnis) requires two
things [,yrbd yn> hrkhh lX vkrujy ] that are different from one another, i. e., the intellect (der
Verstand) and the sensibility (die Sinnlichkeit) [>vxhv lk>h ]; the sensibility receives (from the
external object that is inaccessible to us) the matter [rmvx ] of cognition, and the intellect pro-
duces through itself the form [trvj ] of cognition; and the cognition is the relation of the intel-
lectual form to a particular matter. […] For this reason both are necessarily required and in this
way the intellect, the subject and the object of intellection will be one thing in itself [dxX
vmjib ] only with respect to the form of cognition, when it [the form] in itself is the object of
cognition (Objekt der Erkenntnis) – as I have explained. (GM, 107)
As we saw above, Kant, in Maimon’s view, assumes two “completely different

sources” to explain form and matter of the object of cognition. If Kant’s account is
applied to Maimonides’ notion of the intellect, it follows that the unity of intellect,
subject, and object of intellection is restricted to the form of the object produced
and known through our cognitive activity. It is this epistemological dualism that
I described above as Kant’s incomplete “Copernican revolution” in philosophy and
which, according to Maimon, leaves the problem quid juris “unsolvable” making it
29 It should be mentioned in this context that, as Bergman noted, the “first source” of Mai-
mon’s own doctrine of immortality was precisely “Maimonides’ teaching concerning ‘the
acquired intellect’ that man gains throughout his life on earth by the acquisition of truths”.
Bergman, Maimon, 199.
30 Quotations from the Arabic source: Dalalat al-Ha#irin. Ed. by S. Munk/I. Joel, Jerusalem
1931, 112.

222 Carlos Fraenkel
impossible to justify the application of the form to the matter of the cognized ob-
ject. The problem can be solved, however, if we assume that both form and matter
of the cognized object are the product of cognitive activity. This solution Maimon
presents as the Leibnizian interpretation of Maimonides’ divine intellect formula:
But according to the opinion of the philosopher Leibniz, the distinction between intellect and
sensibility is not real [yyX>vn ldbh ], but only formal [yyrvj ldbh ] (ihr Unterschied ist nicht reel,
sondern nur formell), and every sensible concept can be dissolved [rtvy ] into an intellectual con-
cept, since the sensible concept is the confused intellectual concept in itself. For this reason the
intellect, the subject of intellection, and the object of intellection are not only one in itself with
regard to the intellectual form when posited as the object of cognition, but also with regard to
the relation [cvxy ] of the intellectual form to the object of the intellect, or the sensibility. And be-
tween the Infinite Intellect [tylkt lib ytlbh lk>h ], exalted be He, and our intellect the dif-
ference is only formal – as I have explained. This is so because the Infinite Intellect, exalted be
He, produces by means of the intellectual forms the objects of these forms, which are the objects
of intellection [tvlk>vmh ,h> ,mji ,hyX>vn tvyylk>h tvrvjh tvijmXb livph lX Xyjvm ].
This possibility will become clear through the example of the objects of arithmetics, because the
numbers are nothing but intellectually cognized relations, i. e., forms of intellection and their
objects as a unity. But the cognition of the finite intellect necessarily distinguishes the form of
apprehension from the apprehended object itself not through a substantial [yymji ldbh ] but at
least through a formal distinction. This is so because the form of apprehension [hg>hh trvj ] is
an intellectual relation for [the finite intellect], and the apprehended object, although in itself
also an intellectual relation, is only the object of the relation for [the finite intellect], because it
does not apprehend the mentioned relation clearly. (GM, 107 f.)
In mathematics, therefore, “we are similar to God” [Gott ähnlich] (IV, 42) as
Maimon puts it in the famous phrase of his “On the Progress of Philosophy”
(1792). While our intellectual activity in a single act both produces and apprehends
the objects of mathematics (these objects being “nothing but intellectually cognized
relations”), the infinite intellect in a single act both produces and apprehends na-
ture as a whole. From the perspective of the finite human intellect, form and matter
of the objects of mathematics are determined through and are identical to its intel-
lectual activity. From the perspective of the infinite intellect, form and matter of all
objects in nature are determined through and are identical to its intellectual activity.
To quote again from “On the Progress of Philosophy”:
God produces the objects of nature [Objekte der Natur] in the same way as we [produce] the
objects of mathematics, namely through real thinking [durchs reelle Denken] that is through
construction [Konstrukzion]. (IV, 58)
Due to its finite nature the human intellect perceives the empirical objects as
“given”, i. e., as objects that exist independently of its cognitive activity. As a con-
sequence, cognition and empirical object appear to the finite intellect as distinct.
Since, however, the objects of cognition are God’s thoughts, and our intellectual ac-
tivity is only “formally” but not “substantially” different from God’s intellectual
activity, it follows that the intellectual activity which cognizes the empirical object
is the same as the intellectual activity which takes on the shape of the object. Since
intellectual activity is thus the source of both the object’s form and matter, the ap-
plication of the former to the latter is justified. For Maimon, this interpretation of

Maimonides’ divine intellect formula thus solves the problem posed by its Kantian
interpretation. But since it is presented in the name of Leibniz, it is at first not clear
whether it has anything to do with Maimonides himself. When describing the dif-
ference between the human and the divine intellect as “formal”, Maimon refers
back to an explanation he has given previously in Giveât ha-Moreh. In the passage,
which occurs in his commentary on Guide I, 1, we not only learn what “formal” in
this context means; Maimon also explicitly presents his concepts of finite and infi-
nite intellect as an interpretation of Maimonides’ explanation of the relationship
between human and divine intellect. Maimonides again presents his explanation as
an exegesis of the verse Genesis 1: 26, in which God declares his intention to “make
man in our image [,lj ], after our likeness”. The Hebrew word “image” [,lj ], ac-
cording to Maimonides, refers to the “natural form, I mean to the notion in virtue
of which a thing is constituted as a substance and becomes what it is”. With regard
to human beings the natural form is “intellectual apprehension”: It is “because of
the divine intellect conjoined with man that it is said of the latter that he is ‘in the
image of God and in His likeness’”. Human beings, therefore, are said to have been
created in God’s image because, in their substance, both are intellect. Maimon in his
turn explains Maimoides’ exegesis as follows:
This distinction between the way of apprehending from the prior to the posterior [,dvqhm
rxvXmh lX ] or from the posterior to the prior is appropriate only for the apprehension of a
finite intellect, because the being of the things does not follow upon [the finite intellect’s] ap-
prehension [vtg>h rxX tk>mn ytlb ], but on the contrary; that is, its apprehension follows
upon the actual being of the things. But with regard to the apprehension by an infinite intellect,
the two become one, because the being of things always follows upon [the infinite intellect’s]
apprehension. […] The infinite intellect can conceive an actually existing intellect outside itself,
if it conceives itself in a limited way [lbgvm „rdb ]; in the same way the finite intellect can con-
ceive the existence of an infinite intellect if it conceives itself by negation of the limitation. But
because quantity does not enter into the definition of the substance [,jih rdgb ], the substance
of the infinite intellect and of the finite intellect is one in itself, and they will only be distin-
guished in degree [hgrdmb ]. This is the explanation of the meaning ‘in the image of God he
made the human being’ according to the opinion of Maimonides, may his memory be blessed.
(GM, 33 f.)
Whereas for Kant a cognition results from the conjunction of a posteriori objects
that affect our cognitive faculty, with a priori forms that our cognitive faculty
applies to them, for Maimon this distinction is valid only with regard to the finite
human intellect, which does not produce the empirical objects but finds them as
existing independently of itself. With regard to God’s infinite intellect, on the other
hand, the cognitive forms are the cognized objects: cognition and production are
the same act. Divine intellect and human intellect are, according to Maimon, of the
same substance, differing only “in degree” or quantitatively: the former is unlimited,
i. e., infinite in scope, whereas the latter is limited, i. e., finite in scope. It is this
quantitative difference, which Maimon describes as “formal” in his commentary on
Guide I, 68. The last sentence of the quotation shows clearly that Maimon intends
his account of the infinite intellect, the finite intellect and the relation between them

224 Carlos Fraenkel
to be understood as an explication of Maimonides’ account of the divine intellect,

the human intellect, and the relation between them in his exegesis of Genesis 1: 26.
The more important question, however, is whether he is entitled to present it in this
way. Let me explain why I think he is.
In the commentary on Guide I, 68 Maimon introduced the notion of the infinite
intellect in the context of his Leibnizian interpretation of Maimonides’ divine intel-
lect formula. The description of God’s intellect as “infinite” only tells us that its
scope has no limits. It does not provide a positive account of its content. In the essay
“On the Progress of Philosophy” Maimon gives such an account:
In the way I conceive the system of Leibniz (and if a disciple of Leibniz does not approve it, it
may be called the system of Spinoza), God’s infinite intellect comprehends all possible things
[beziehet sich der unendliche Verstand Gottes auf alle möglichen Dinge] […], which are at the
same time real with regard to it. (IV, 58)
The scope of the infinite intellect, therefore, extends to “all possible things”.
Keeping this in mind, let us return to Maimonides’ account of the structure of the
divine intellect in Guide I, 68. We saw that, according to Maimonides, God’s unity
consists in the identity of “the intellect, the subject and the object of intellection”.
As an example for this unity Maimonides describes the intellectual cognition of a
“tree”31 by a human intellect. When “a man […] has stripped” the form of the tree
“from its matter, and has represented to himself the pure form – this being the act of
the intellect [lk>h livp ] – at that time the man would become one who is intellec-
tually cognizing in actu [livpb lyk>m ]”. In an intellect in actu there is no distinc-
tion between intellect and apprehension for “the true being and essence of the
intellect is apprehension [hg>h ]”. Maimonides contrasts this unity of an intellect
in actu with the threefold nature of an intellectual cognition in potentia: “The
man […] who is the intellectually cognizing subject in potentia, the potentiality that
is the intellect in potentia; and the thing apt to be intellectually cognized, which
is the potentially cognizable object”. In the above given example these three “would
be […]: man, hylic intellect, and the form of the tree” (141). Maimonides describes
“apprehension” further as “the act of the intellect [Arabic: lqilX lip ]”32, and
thus concludes that the act of the intellect is “its true reality and its substance”
(141). This “act of the intellect”, therefore, constitutes the unity of the intellect,
the subject and the object of intellection. At first view Maimonides does not seem
to go beyond what Aristotle says in Met. XII, 7 and 933: God is intellectual cogni-
31 Hebrew: ]lyX , Arabic: ’hb> ’k , which means “piece of wood”.

32 Dalalat, 113.
33 I cannot follow Lachterman, “Mathematical Construction”, 511 ff., in his attempt to show
that a Neoplatonic rather than the Aristotelian version of the formula underlies Maimon-
ides’ notion of the unity of the divine intellect. The former in his view is the “ancestor of the
theme of self-knowing as self-consciousness” (522). I see no evidence for this thesis in Mai-
monides’ claim that in the divine intellect « [lqi ], « [lqXi ], and [lvqim ]
are identical. On the other hand, Lachterman misses the point, on which Maimonides
indeed differs from Aristotle and which is of paramount importance for Maimon’s interpre-

tion34, which cognizes itself. Aristotle explicitely rules out that God can cognize
an object other than himself, or pass from cognizing himself to an object other than
himself.35 God only “thinks … himself [
µ … ]”36. Since God is pure “think-
ing” [«]37 his “thinking is thinking of thinking” [« « «]38. To
convince us that there is a way leading from Maimonides’ account of God’s knowl-
edge to his own account of the content of the infinite intellect, Maimon would have
to show that Maimonides’ God, unlike Aristotle’s, is not absorbed in eternal self-
contemplation but also produces, apprehends and is identical to the tree as well as
all other objects that the human intellect perceives as “given”, i. e., as existing in-
dependently from its cognitive activity. The example of the apprehension of a tree
by a human intellect shows that, for Maimonides, the doctrine of the unity of the in-
tellect in principle characterizes the “true reality of every intellect” [lk> lk qvxb ]
(142). The distinctive feature of God’s intellect, according to Maimonides, is that in
God’s intellect “there is absolutely no potentiality” [llk xvk vb ]yX ] (142), whereas
the human intellect acquires knowledge by successively passing from potentiality
to actuality. Before knowing the tree it is intellect in potentia with regard to the tree;
if it acquires knowledge of the tree it becomes intellect in actu with regard to the
tree, but remains intellect in potentia with regard to the table, and so forth. The
claim that in God’s intellect “there is absolutely no potentiality”, therefore, could
be understood as implying that God is intellect in actu with regard to all objects
of intellectual cognition. This is precisely how Maimon understood it, as we learn
from the summary of Guide I, 68 in the Lebensgeschichte:
Since in God there is no potentiality but everything thinkable (possible) is actually thought by
him [alles Vorstellbare (Mögliche) von ihm wirklich vorgestellt wird]; it follows from this, that
God as thinking subject, his thought and the object of thought […] are one and the same thing.
The thinking reader can easily see where this leads.
Here Maimon describes the content of the divine intellect in Guide I, 68 in almost
the same words he used in the passage from “The Progress” quoted above to de-
scribe “God’s infinite intellect” according to “the system of Leibniz” (or, if you
prefer, “the system of Spinoza”): “God’s infinite intellect comprehends all possible
things [beziehet sich der unendliche Verstand Gottes auf alle möglichen Dinge]”.
Incidentally, Leibniz himself understood Maimonides in this way. In a note on
Guide I, 68 he writes:
tation: the object of God’s thought (see below). In light of Maimonides’ thesis that the intel-
lect’s “true reality and its substance” is “the act of the intellect” Lachterman’s contention that
Maimon’s “modern reading of thinking as essentially making or even self-making” reflects
his “‘productive’ modification of Maimonides” (522) also requires reexamination. In my
view, Maimon’s reading of Maimonides is on the whole quite close to the latter’s intention.
34 Or: “intellectual activity” – Greek: «, the nomen actionis of .
35 1074b 23 ff.
36 XII, 9, 1074b 15–34.
37 As already established in XII, 7, 1072b 15–30.
38 XII, 9, 1074b 34–35.

226 Carlos Fraenkel
God is intellect, subject and object of intellection, and these three in him are one. An intellect
that exists in actu is the same as the object of intellection: for example the abstracted form of
the tree. But an intellect in potentia and the tree intellectually cognized in potentia are different
things. But since God is always cognizing intellectually in actu without any potentiality with
regard to all objects of intellection [Cum autem Deus sit semper actu intelligens sine ulla
potentia respectu omnium intelligibilium], in him the subject and the object of intellection are
always the same.39
If Maimon’s interpretation of Maimonides is correct, the structural similarity be-

tween their respective concepts of God’s intellect and the human intellect is indeed
striking. For both, the divine and the human intellect are of the same substance, and
differ only quantitatively: The scope of God’s knowledge extends to all intelligibles
and in this sense is unlimited. The scope of the human intellect in actu extends only
to a segment of all intelligibles and in this sense is limited. What is the implication of
this interpretation of Maimonides, to which according to Maimon the “thinking
reader” will be led?40 If God thinks all possible things, and if subject and object of
intellection are identical in God, it follows that God is all possible things. In other
words: God produces, cognizes and is identical to the intelligible structure of reality
as a whole.41 If this interpretation is correct, Maimonides’ God is indeed very close
to Spinoza’s. As we will see later, Maimon was aware of the fact that Spinoza him-
self hinted at this similarity. It follows that when the human intellect cognizes a pos-
teriori an element of this structre – such as the form of a tree – the object of its cog-
nition is ultimately one of God’s thoughts: our intellectual activity apprehends
God’s intellectual activity that took on the form of a tree. Let us now see whether
we find support in Maimonides himself for Maimon’s interpretation of the content
of the divine intellect in Guide I, 68. In Guide III, 21 Maimonides indeed provides a
detailed explanation of the genesis and structure of God’s knowledge of the uni-
verse, with which Maimon’s interpretation is wholly consistent:
There is a great disparity […] with regard to that which exists taken as a whole in its relation to
our knowledge, and [in relation to] His knowledge, may He be exalted. For we know all that
we know only by looking at the existents [tvXjmnb tvlktchh ynpm ]; therefore, we can neither
know future events, nor the infinite. Our cognitions are renewed and multiplied according
to the things from which we acquire their knowledge. He, may He be exalted, is not like that.
I mean that His knowledge of things is not derived from them, so that there is multiplicity and
renewal, but the things in question follow upon His knowledge, which preceded and estab-
39 Leibniz, G. W. F.: “Observationes ad Rabbi Mosis Maimonidis librum qui inscribitur Doctor
Perplexorum”. Published in: A. Foucher de Careil, La philosophie juive et la cabale. Paris
1861. Reprinted as appendix to: Maimonides, Doctor Perplexorum, Latin trans. by J. Bux-
torf. Basel 1629 (Reprint 1969) 2–46. The quotation is from the gloss on Guide I, 68, 10
(emphasis added).
40 By “thinking reader” Maimon means a reader who, in contrast to the dull reader, is able to
grasp the conclusions hinted at – but not explicitely stated – by the author.
41 M. Hayoun, in a note to his French translation of the autobiography, interprets Maimon’s
reference to the “thinking reader” as implying that, for him, “l’auteur du Guide professait
secrètement l’éternité du monde”. Commentaires, 100, no. 1. In my view this is clearly not
the case.

lished them as they are [hm ypk ,tvX tb>ymh tmdvqh vtiydy yrxX ,yk>mn ,hh ,yrbdh lbX
vyli ,h> ] – either as a separate existence, or as the existence of an individual endowed with
permanent matter, or as the existence of what is endowed with matter and has changing indi-
viduals, [but] follows in an incorruptible and immutable order. Hence, with regard to Him,
may He be exalted, there is no multiplicity of cognitions and renewal and change of knowl-
edge. For through knowing the true reality of His own immutable essence, He knows the to-
tality of what necessarily derives from all His acts [lk idy hnt>t Xl r>X vmji ttmX vtidb
,lvk vytvlvipl byyxty> hm ]. (441 f.)
From this passage it is clear that Maimonides’ God, in contrast to Aristotle’s,
knows not only himself but also his creation, which for Maimonides means the en-
tire Aristotelian universe with its threefold structure: the separate intellects (the
“separate existence”); the celestial spheres, (“the existence of an individual endowed
with permanent matter”); the objects of the sublunar world, (“the existence of what
is endowed with matter that has changing individuals, [but] follows in an incorrupt-
ible and immutable order”). God’s knowledge of the existents is presented as the
consequence of God’s self-intellection and the causal dependence of the universe on
God. The argument is simple: By knowing himself God knows the first cause of na-
ture. Knowledge of the cause entails knowledge of the effect. Therefore God knows
what follows from his causal activity, i. e., his creation. Maimonides thus combines
two characterics of the divine intellect according to Aristotle’s account in the Meta-
physics: (i) the characterization of the essence of the divine intellect as self-intellec-
tion42; (ii) the functional characterization of the divine intellect as the first cause in
the order of nature43. From these two Aristotelian characterizations, Maimonides
draws the un-Aristotelian inference that the object of God’s knowledge is not only
God himself, but his creation as well. Since according to Maimonides nothing exists
“besides God, may He be exalted, and the totality of things He has made” (Guide I,
34, 63), and since God knows himself and his creation, it follows that his knowl-
edge indeed comprehends everything “thinkable” or “possible” as Maimon has
claimed. Although Maimonides does not explicitly affirm the identity of God with
the intelligible form of his creation, it clearly follows from his account of the divine
intellect in Guide I, 68, and his account of God’s knowledge in Guide III, 21. An
early “thinking reader”, Profiat Duran, one of Maimonides’ medieval commen-
tators, had already pointed out this obvious conclusion:
In this chapter [Maimonides] solved a certain doubt without mentioning this doubt, viz., how
God, exalted be He, knows all existents without being subject to change and multiplicity, and
he solved the problem as follows: All existents are inscribed in His essence [vmjib tvibuvm ],
blessed be He, and His essence, exalted be He, is one form which comprises all existents ac-
cording to their subdivisions [,hynyml tvXjmnh ynym lk tllvk txX hrvj ]: intellectual exist-
ents, spherical existents, and terrestrial existents.44
42 Cf. the references given above to Metaphysics XII, 9.

43 Metaphysics, XII, 7; cf. Physics, VIII.
44 Profiat Duran’s (Efodi) commentary is printed in the 1872 Warsaw edition of Ibn Tibbon’s
Hebrew translation of the Guide. The passage quoted is from the commentary on Guide III,
21, 31b.

228 Carlos Fraenkel
Profiat Duran thus spells out what is implied in Maimonides’ account of God’s
knowledge: that the divine intellect is identical to the order of nature. Maimon him-
self was clearly aware of this consequence. In his commentary on Guide I, 74 he
refers back to what has “already been explained in chapter 68 of this treatise”:
And since, as we all agree, everything possible [r>pXh lk ] in God, exalted be He, is always
in actuality, since there is absolutely no potentiality in Him [llk xk vb ]yX ] and since what
is intellectually cognized by God, exalted be He [hlity ,>h lX lk>vmh ], is necessarily true;
that is, corresponds to its object, or45 the intellectual cognition is the object itself. Now, what
is intellectually cognized by God is the notion of the world, i. e., the notion of all possible
things, their order and their relation to one another. It clearly follows from this that the
world is in Him, exalted be He, as the intellectual cognition is in the intellect [tvyh hlm rXvbm
lk>b lk>vmh tvXyjmk hlity vb Xjmn ,lvih ] […] (GM, 165)
Note how Maimon again bases his interpretation on the key phrase in Guide I,
68: that “there is absolutely no potentiality in God”. In sum, for both Maimonides
and Maimon God’s intellect produces, cognizes and is identical to the order of
all things. Moreover, it seems to me very likely that Maimonides’ distinction be-
tween divine and human cognition in Guide III, 21 is the basis for Maimon’s dis-
tinction between the cognition of the infinite intellect and the cognition of the finite
intellect in his commentary on Guide I, 1. Both claim that, in the case of God’s
intellect, objects follow upon and are determined by his knowledge, whereas in the
case of the human intellect, knowledge follows upon and is determined by objects
that appear to exist independently of its intellectual activity. The thesis of Maimon’s
dependence on Maimonides on this point becomes yet more plausible if we consider
his explicit reference to Guide III, 21 in his account of God’s knowledge in Hesheq
Shlomo:
The Eyn-Sof apprehends always in actuality the totality of things [lkh ] because from Him
come all things, and He actualizes and determines them [,lybgmhv livph lX ,Xyjvmh Xvh ]
with regard to their disposition, their time and their place. […] The Eyn-Sof apprehends the
future as He apprehends the present because through the knowledge of Himself He knows all
things [vytvlvipl byyxtmh lk idy vmji vtiydyb yk ] that necessarily follow from his actions as
Maimonides of blessed memory has said. (126 f.)
3. Maimon’s Spinozist Transformation of Maimonides
The major difference between Maimonides’ and Maimon’s concepts of God is

that for the former God’s intellect only produces, cognizes and is identical to the
form of all things, whereas for the latter God’s intellect produces, cognizes and is
identical to both form and matter of all things. This difference is due to what in
Maimon’s view is the main problem that remained unsolved in Maimonides’ sys-
tem: the problem of the origin of matter. In a sense, therefore, Maimonides’ cosmol-
45 In my view, “or” [vX ] here is clearly not disjunctive but introduces an explanation of the
meaning of the preceding “corresponds” [,ykcm ].

ogy is haunted by the same problem as Kant’s theory of knowledge. In fact, in the
Essay on Transcendental Philosophy, Maimon explicitly presents the problem of
the origin of matter as a second version of the problem quid juris. As we saw above,
according to Maimon, all philosophers were concerned with the problem quid juris
when they tried to explain “the community between soul and body” (II, 62). Then
he adds: “or […] the genesis [Entstehung] of the world (with regard to its matter)
from an Intelligence [Intelligenz]”. Thus the epistemological and the cosmological
problem are two versions of the same fundamental philosophical concern. With re-
gard to the former the question is how “a priori forms” could “correspond to a pos-
teriori given things”. With regard to the latter Maimon formulates the question as
follows: “How is the genesis of matter as something only given [bloß gegebenes]
conceivable through the assumption of an Intelligence since they are so heterogen-
eous?” (II, 63)
As a thinker within the framework of Aristotelianism, Maimonides was com-
mitted to God’s incorporeality. To give up this doctrine would have meant to aban-
don the entire system of Aristotelian physics and metaphysics, on the premises of
which his proofs for God’s existence, unity and incorporeality in Guide II, 1 are
based. As pure, incorporeal intelligence, however, the God of a medieval Aristote-
lian could only be the efficient, formal and final cause of the world, but not its ma-
terial cause. In Guide I, 69, which discusses God’s relation to the world, Maimon-
ides writes accordingly:
In natural science, it has been made clear that there are causes for everything that has a cause;
that they are four, namely: matter, form, the efficient, and the final cause [hrvjhv rmxh
tylkthv livphv ] […]. Now one of the opinions of the philosophers, an opinion with which I
do not disagree, is that God, may He be precious and exalted, is the efficient cause, that He is
the form, and that He is the final cause. (144)
On the assumption that God is incorporeal, Maimon contends, one cannot ex-
plain how the material component of the corporeal world could have originated
from God.
In his commentary on Guide I, 69, Maimon criticizes Maimonides’ exclusion of
matter from God, and presents his own concept of God as not only the world’s ef-
ficient, formal, and final cause but its material cause as well:
That God, may He be exalted, is the efficient cause, that He is the form, and that He is the final
cause etc. The author says: One has to wonder about the philosophers why they did not
say that God, may He be exalted, is also the matter [rmvxh ], I mean to say the ultimate subject
for all things [,yrbdh lkl ]vrxXh X>vnh ], which in itself is not a predicate [Xv>n ] of anything
else. If this were the case He, may He be exalted, would be the ultimate cause with regard to
all kinds of causes that we mentioned. Because if we assume Him, may He be exalted, to be
only the efficient cause, the form and the final cause without being also the material cause,
we must necessarily posit the existence of eternal matter []vmdq rmvx ], I mean to say [matter]
that does not have a cause. And this contradicts the concept of God, may He be exalted,
i. e., the all-comprehensive cause of every existent [Xjmn lkl tllvkh hbch ]. But in truth it
is as I have mentioned, i. e., that God, exalted be He, is the ultimate cause in every respect.
(GM, 109)

230 Carlos Fraenkel
According to this passage, the extension of God’s causality to include the world’s
material cause is required if we are to defend a pure and unadulterated monotheism.
Denying that God is the world’s material cause leads to a dualistic view, for eternal,
uncaused matter would become a second cause of the world alongside, and inde-
pendent of, God. Maimon’s account of God as the “material cause” is complex, and I
cannot discuss it exhaustively here. Y. Melamed has convincingly argued that the de-
scription of the material cause as “the ultimate subject of all things, which in itself is
not a predicate of anything else” ultimately goes back to Aristotle’s definition of the
“underlying” [
] in Metaphysics VII, 3 as that, of which “the other
things [ Ν ] are predicated, whereas it itself is not predicated of another”
(1028b 36 f.).46 But since for Maimon the material cause is the subject of “all things”,
no entity corresponds to it in Aristotle’s cosmology; in fact, for Aristotle even the
sublunar and the supralunar realm do not share the same material substrate. Here it
seems to me more fruitful to look for Neoplatonic sources such as Pseudo-Empe-
docles’ Book on the Five Substances, which was probably the source for Solomon ibn
Gabirol’s concept of matter set forth in the Fons Vitae.47 Ibn Gabirol is quoted by
Giordano Bruno in his De la causa, principio et uno, and Maimon translates Bruno’s
account of matter and form in his commentary on Guide I, 69, including the refer-
ence to Ibn Gabirol. Since he was unaware that the “Arab Avicebron” quoted by
Bruno was Ibn Gabirol, he refers to him as “the Arab Sage” who claimed “matter to
be the God containing all existence [tvXyjmh lk llvkh hvlXh rmvxh tvyh ]” (112).
Moreover, it is important to note that Maimon’s account of the material cause
quoted above corresponds to only one of three notions of matter that he introduces
in the commentary on Guide I, 69, in part translating Bruno literally, and in part
summarizing his views.
Following Bruno, he first distinguishes between two kinds of matter, of which
the second kind reflects the Aristotelian concept of prime matter that underlies
the physical world below the sphere of the moon: “matter of the second kind” is the
“subject for the natural things that change” [,ynt>mh ,yyibuh ,yrbdl X>vn ] (114).
Matter of the first kind, on the other hand, is contrasted with form whereby both
terms, in view to their ontological scope, are used in a clearly un-Aristotelian sense:
God’s matter and God’s form are the totality of being, both intellectual and physi-
cal, both cogitatio and extensio. They are distinct only in that matter is undeter-
mined while form is determined. To describe God as the formal cause of the world
Maimon uses Bruno’s concept of the “worldsoul” [,lvih xvr ], which “is the form
of the world as a whole” [vllkb ,lvih trvj Xyh ] (110). In his philosophical
dictionary he describes the worldsoul as “the formal and final cause of all objects”
46 Melamed, Y.: “Salomon Maimon and the Rise of Spinozism in German Idealism” [hence-
forth: Melamed, “Maimon and the Rise of Spinozism”]. In: Journal of the History of Phil-
osophy 42, 2004, 67–96, 80 and note 48.
47 Cf. Kaufman, D.: “Pseudo-Empedocles as a Source of Solomon ibn Gabirol”. In his Studies
in Medieval Hebrew Literature. Jerusalem 1962, 78–165 [Heb.].

[die causa formalis und finalis aller Objekte] (III, 194), where “final cause” simply
means the realization or actuality of the form. As for the concept of matter, he
quotes Bruno:
In the same way as sensible things [,y>grvmh ,yrbdh ] with regard to their sensible nature par-
ticipate in one corporeal subject [ym>g dxX X>vnb ], also intelligible things [,ylk>vmh ,yrbdh ]
necessarily participate in one intelligible subject. And the two mentioned kinds necessarily par-
ticipate in one subject as well, which comprises both of them. […] The mentioned comprehen-
sive matter [llvkh rmvxh ] is on the one hand multiple, i. e., with regard to its comprising in
itself all possible forms; on the other hand it is one, i. e., with regard to itself. And it truly is
everything that can exist as a unity [dxXk tvyhl r>pX> hm lk ]. And for this reason it is not a
determined thing at all, and (as has been made clear) matter is not only disposition [hnkh ], as
some of the philosophers think – to which all activity and perfection is denied – but in truth it is
a power striving towards actuality [liph lX hXyjyh li ldt>m xk ], similar to a woman sit-
ting on a travailing chair in relation to birth. (114)
Matter, therefore, is the totality of things as undifferentiated unity, and at the

same time is activity: the power striving towards actuality. Thus while the “world-
soul” is the formal and final cause, matter covers the two remaining of the four
causes: the material cause and the agent (or efficient cause).
Let us now turn to Maimon’s third notion of matter, which he presents as a sum-
mary of Bruno’s discussion of matter and form (or “worldsoul”). According to this
third notion, which Maimon unfortunately does not clearly define as an indepen-
dent concept, all the distinctions relating to matter versus form that we saw above
are not real distinctions, but merely describe different aspects of one active subject:
a monistic totality, which determines itself and in the act of self-determination,
unites the undetermined and the determined, or “matter of the first kind” and form.
In this sense Maimon can speak of the ultimate unity of the four causes and reduce
them to this third and most comprehensive notion of matter:
The conclusion of this account is that the four kinds of causes […], i. e., the material, the for-
mal, the active and the final cause, are one thing in itself with regard to being as a whole
[vmjib dxX rbd tvyXjmh llk tnyxbb ]. Matter is the absolute subject [ulxvmh X>vnh ] for all
existents, the corporeal and the intellectual, and it is also the form, because it contains in itself
all possible forms in a way concealed from us; and it [matter] in itself is the agent, i. e., that
which differentiates the forms and reveals them to the outside [/vxh lX ]tvX hlgm ], and it
is also the end [tylkt ], which is the existence of everything that can exist. But I dealt with this
in detail because it is a very subtle investigation, difficult to understand when one begins to
reflect. Nonetheless this investigation is very important and useful for apprehending the true
essence of nature and its actions and [for apprehending] that the whole of reality [tvXyjmh lk ]
is one thing in itself and nothing except that. (GM, 114–115)
This transformation of Maimonides’ God, which I will argue below is best char-
acterized as Spinozist, solves the second version of the problem quid juris: the ex-
planation of “the genesis of the world (with regard to its matter) from an Intelli-
gence” (II, 62). The act of intellectual self-cognition of Maimonides’ God, in which
subject, object, and act of intellectual cognition are one, becomes the act of self-de-
termination of Maimon’s God, in which the undetermined, the determined and the
act of determination are one. In contrast to Maimonides’ God, Maimon’s God is no

232 Carlos Fraenkel
longer pure intelligence. For Maimon, the undetermined (identified with “matter of
the first kind”), and the determined (identified with form) comprehend both the
intelligible and the material dimension of reality. In this sense, ideas and things are
indeed identical in God; or, as Maimon puts it: “the forms are at the same time the
objects of cognition” (II, 64). The fact that Maimon in other passages refers to his
God as “infinite intellect” is, therefore, somewhat misleading, since his God has
only the structure with Maimonides’ divine intellect in common. This terminologi-
cal ambiguity was probably deliberate since a straightforward presentation of his
Spinozist God would not have been received with much sympathy by his readers, as
we will see below.
Let us now turn to the role that in my view should be assigned to Spinoza in the
transition from Maimonides’ monotheism to Maimon’s monism. My general sug-
gestion is that God’s matter and God’s form, as described in Maimon’s commentary
on Guide I, 69, are best understood in terms of Spinoza’s Substance or Natura natu-
rans and Spinoza’s order of modes or Natura naturata48 (if we limit the ontological
scope of Spinoza’s God to the two attributes known to us, namely, thought and ex-
tension). Moreover, Maimon’s third notion of matter, which unites the four causes,
and makes it possible to understand “the whole of reality” as “one thing in itself”,
corresponds in my opinion to Spinozas’s Deus sive Natura as the unity of Natura
naturans and Natura naturata. Let me explain what I think supports this sugges-
tion. In the Autobiography, Maimon explicitly notes that the “complete solution”
of the problem quid juris “necessarily [leads] to a Spinozist or Leibnizian type of
dogmatism” (I, 558). Kant himself remarked in a letter to Markus Herz that Mai-
mon’s “aproach [Vorstellungsart]” is “the same as […] Spinoza’s [mit dem Spinoz-
ism [. . .] einerlei]”.49 In addition, in the note on the article of the German scholar
Obereit referred to above, Maimon writes that in his Essay on Transcendental Phil-
osophy “he attempted to unify Kantian philosophy with Spinozism [die Vereinigung
der Kantischen Philosophie mit dem Spinozismo]” (III, 455, note).
On the other hand, in the Essay itself he presents his solution for the problem
quid juris as based on the “system of Leibniz and Wolf” (II, 63) and openly rejects
its association with the philosophy of Spinoza (cf. II, 365). In Giveât ha-Moreh as
well, Spinoza is not mentioned in the context of the discussion of God as the ma-
terial cause of the world; instead, Maimon here uses Giordano Bruno. To under-
stand this seemingly curious absence of Spinoza it is in my view helpful to recall the
48 Cf. E I, Prop. 29, Scholium. I quote Spinoza according to C. Gebhardt’s edition: Opera, 4
vol., Heidelberg 1925 (henceforth: G. [= Gebhardt] vol. no., page no.). Here: G. II, 71. In
Spinoza the terms Natura naturans and Natura naturata describe the causal relationship be-
tween God (or Substance) and his modes: “[…] by Natura naturans we mean […] God, in-
sofar he is considered as a free cause [causa libera]. But by [Natura naturata] I mean all that
follows from the necessity [ex necessitate] of God’s nature […], i. e., all the modes of God’s
attributes”. Cf. Korte Verhandeling van God, de Mensch, en des zelfs Welstand I, chapter 8
and 9, G. I, 47–48.
49 Letter dated 26 May 1789. In: Br, AA 11: 50.

audiences for which Maimon was writing. The substitution of the “system of Leib-
niz and Wolf” to Spinoza can be understood, I believe, in light of the following pas-
sage from the Autobiography:
I read Spinoza; I very much liked the deep thought of this philosopher and his love of the truth,
and since I was led to his system [auf das System desselben gerathen war] already in Poland on
occasion of [my study of] kabbalistic writings, I began again to reflect about it. I became so
convinced of its truth that all efforts of Mendelssohn to dissuade me from it were fruitless. I re-
sponded to all objections made against it by the disciples of Wolf [and] made myself objections
against their system. […] I could also not explain to myself the insistence of Mendelssohn and
the disciples of Wolf in general that their system is something other than political tricks and hy-
pocrisy [politische Kniffe und Heuchelei], through which they diligently tried to approach the
way of thinking of the vulgar [Denkungsart des gemeinen Mannes], and I expressed this pub-
licly and without any restraint. (I, 469 f.)
We learn from this passage that Maimon became familiar with “the system” of
Spinoza even before he read Spinoza himself, namely in the context of his study of
kabbalah in Poland. As we will see below, the concept of God in Lurianic kabbalah,
according to Maimon, is essentially the same as Spinoza’s concept of God.50 More-
over, we learn that Maimon was convinced of the truth of Spinoza’s philosophy51,
that Mendelssohn and his circle did not receive his enthusiasm for Spinoza with
sympathy, that he rejected the system of Leibniz and Wolf, on which the official
position of Mendelssohn and his circle was based, and, finally, that he assumed
them to be adopting this position for political reasons only, i. e., in order to speak ad
captum vulgi, to quote Spinoza’s famous “rule of living”52. In this context it may be
noted that Maimon described Mendelssohn’s critique of Spinoza, and his emphasis
on the differences between Leibniz and Spinoza as part of Mendelssohn’s “exoteric
exposition” [exoterischen Vortrage] (IV, 59). In light of the passage from the
Autobiography, I would suggest that the motive for Maimon’s seemingly inconsist-
ent attitude towards Spinoza was that exoterically he found it more convenient to
present himself as a disciple of Leibniz. In addition, several remarks of Maimon
50 This passage in the autobiography has frequently been misunderstood as implying that Mai-
mon actually studied Spinoza in Poland. See, e. g., Zac, “Maimon”, 67; Engstler “Vereini-
gung”, 40. It seems very unlikely, however, that Maimon could have had access to Spinoza’s
writings in that period. As Melamed remarks (“Maimon and the Rise of Spinozism”), “the
Ethics was translated into Hebrew and Yiddish only in the second half of the 19th century”.
Although it is not inconceivable that Maimon got hold of a German translation, and studied
it with the little German he already knew, it seems to me much simpler to read Maimon here
as suggesting that he realized retrospectively he had already encountered Spinoza’s “sys-
tem” when studying kabbalah. This interpretation of the passage is compatible with its
wording and much more plausible than the traditional interpretation. It is also supported by
the fact that Spinoza is not mentioned in Maimon’s early Hebrew work Hesheq Shlomo,
which would be surprising had Maimon already been familiar with his philosophy when he
composed the treatise.
51 Cf. also I, 488, where Maimon states that “no independent thinker [kein Selbstdenker] can
find fault” with the “inclination [Neigung] to Spinozism”.
52 Cf. Spinoza’s Tractactus de intellectus emendatione, G. II, 9.

234 Carlos Fraenkel
imply that he distinguished between an exoteric and an esoteric content of Leibniz’

doctrine53, and that in his view Leibniz’ esoteric position was ultimately the same as
that of Spinoza.54 If, therefore, Leibniz himself could be read as a disguised Spinoz-
ist, Maimon could remain loyal to Spinoza even while pretending to be following
Leibniz.
Political reasons may also account for the replacement of Spinoza through
Giordano Bruno in Maimon’s commentary on the Guide as has been suggested by
Y. Melamed. The commentary was commissioned by members of the Berlin Has-
kala with the aim of diffusing their ideas among Jewish readers. Since Maimonides’
authority was accepted in traditional circles, the Guide provided an appropriate ve-
hicle to carry out this program. The explanation of Maimonides’ doctrines in light
of the reviled heretic Spinoza would, however, obviously have defeated the pur-
pose. Giordano Bruno, on the other hand, was unknown to this audience.55 That
Maimon was indeed thinking of Spinoza when he used Bruno is in my view con-
clusively proven by the fact that he used F. H. Jacobi’s German translation of
Bruno’s De la causa, principio et uno. Jacobi had published this translation as an
appendix to the second edition of his On the Teachings of Spinoza, in Letters to Mr.
Moses Mendelssohn, and stated explicitly in the preface: “It is my main aim […] to
demontrate [darzulegen] in my book the Summa of the philosophy of the E
P through the juxtaposition [Zusammenstellung] of Bruno with Spinoza”.56 It
may be noted in this context that in 1793 – two years after the publication of
Giveât ha-Moreh – Maimon wrote a short commentary on Jacobi’s German trans-
lation of Bruno.57
53 Cf. IV, 52, where Maimon refers to Leibniz’ “exoteric way of teaching [exoterische
Lehrart].” Cf. also IV, 42.
54 Cf. the passage quoted above (IV, 58), in which Maimon refers to “the way I understand
Leibniz’ system”, which “may be called Spinoza’s system” in case Leibniz’ disciples disap-
prove of his understanding. Maimon was not the only representative of a Spinozist reading
of Leibniz. See, e. g., Lessing as quoted by Jacobi, in: Jacobi, F. H.: Über die Lehre des Spi-
noza in Briefen an den Herrn Moses Mendelssohn. Auf der Grundlage der Ausgabe v.
K. Hammacher und I.-M. Piske bearbeitet v. M. Lauschke. Hamburg 2000, 29 ff. [hence-
forth: Jacobi, Lehre des Spinoza]. Later, J. G. Fichte mentions Maimon as having demon-
strated that “the system of Leibniz, if thought through to its conclusion [in seiner Vollendung
gedacht] is nothing but Spinozism”. Fichte, J. G.: Grundlage der gesamten Wissenschafts-
lehre. § 1, Einl. und Reg. by W. G. Jacobs. Hamburg 1988 (4th edition), 21. In Maimon’s
view, Leibniz’ esoteric doctrine agreed with Spinoza on two crucial issues: First, that in God
all possible worlds are real, and that the distinction between real world and possible worlds
is a result of the finite nature of the human intellect. Second, that the doctrine of the mon-
ades does not imply a plurality of substances; rather, the monades are different degrees of
limitation of one substance. On Maimon’s interpretation of Leibniz see: Schrader, W. H.:
“Leibniz versus Kant – Die Leibniz-Rezeption Salomon Maimons”. In: Leibniz, Werk und
Wirkung. 4. Internationaler Leibniz-Kongress. Hannover 1983, 697–707.
55 Cf. Melamed, “Maimon and the Rise of Spinozism”, 83–85.
56 Jacobi, Lehre des Spinoza, 159.
57 “Auszug aus Jordan Bruno von Nola. Von der Ursache, dem Prinzip und dem Einem”, IV,
617–652.

But aside from these somewhat speculative arguments for Maimon’s esoteric Spi-
nozism, there is also textual evidence that he considered the material and formal
cause in Bruno’s account of God to correspond to the two basic constituents of Spi-
noza’s ontology: the notion of substance (or Natura naturans) and the notion of
modes (or Natura naturata). To make this link visible, let us consider a passage from
Hesheq Shlomo in which Maimon gives an account of the relation of God and the
world that is clearly related to the account we saw in his commentary on Guide I, 69:
My intention in this chapter is to clarify the relationship of God, may He be praised, to the
world. It is already known that every existent has four causes; they are the material and the for-
mal cause, the efficient and the final cause. […] Also the world as a whole [vllkb ,lvih ] has
the four mentioned causes: the one is the material cause, i. e., the subject [X>vnh ] which re-
ceived the form of the world, and this is the substance [,jih ] of the Eyn-Sof, may He be
praised […]. The world as a whole received a form after not having had a form at all, and this is
the meaning of creation ex nihilo. Understand this! And the second cause is the form, i. e., the
form of the world as a whole and of its parts, and [this form] is appropriate to make visible His
glory, may He be praised, in the same way as the form of the body as a whole and of its parts is
appropriate to make visible the actions of the soul […]. And the third cause is the agent, and it
also is He Himself, may He be praised, Who acts in the world. And the fourth cause is the end,
and it is also He Himself, may He be praised […]. You should know that the material and the
acting [or: efficient tyyliph ] causes are attributed to Him with regard to the Eyn-Sof, but the
formal and the final [causes] with regard to the Sefirot. Understand this! I have shown now
that He, may He be praised – His relation to the world [,lvih lX vcvxy ] is the relation of the
four mentioned causes, and from now on it shall be impossible to conceive a being other than
Him, may He be praised, […] and this is the secret of unity [tvdxXh dvc ]. (138 f.)
Several elements in this passage recall Maimon’s commentary on Guide I, 69.58

But what is crucial for our context is the association of the four Aristotelian causes
with the two basic constituents of kabbalistic ontology: the Eyn-Sof and the Sefirot.
From this association it is clear that the Sefirot, to which the formal and final causes
are attributed, have the function assigned to the form or “worldsoul” in the com-
mentary on the Guide, while the Eyn-Sof, to which the material and efficient causes
are attributed, has the function assigned there to “matter of the first kind”. Now,
Maimon’s identification of Kabbalah with Spinoza’s system in the Autobiography is
based precisely on the identification of the basic constituents of kabbalistic ontol-
ogy, the Eyn-Sof and Sefirot, with the basic constituents of Spinoza’s ontology, sub-
stance and modes:59
58 E. g., the description of the actualization of the form of the world as creation ex nihilo re-
calls the determination of the undetermined in the translation of Bruno in the commentary;
the comparison of the form of the world as expressing God’s activity with the form of the
body as expressing the soul’s activity recalls the role assigned to the “worldsoul”.
59 For a recent study of Kabbalah in Maimon’s Autobiography, see Schulte, C.: “Kabbala in
Salomon Maimons Lebensgeschichte”. In: Kabbala und die Literatur der Romantik. Ed. by
E. Goodman-Thau, G. Mattenklott, C. Schulte. Tübingen 1999, 33–67. For the history of
the kabbalistic interpretation of Spinoza, see: Kilcher, A.: “Kabbala in der Maske der Phi-
losophie – Zu einer Interpretationsfigur in der Spinoza-Literatur”. In: Spinoza in der euro-
päischen Geistesgeschichte. Ed. by H. Delf, J. Schoeps, M. Walther. Berlin 1994, 193–242.

236 Carlos Fraenkel
Indeed, Kabbalah is nothing but extended Spinozism [erweiterter Spinozismus], in which not
only the genesis of the world is explained from the limitation [Einschränkung] of the divine
being in general, but also the genesis of each kind of being [Wesen] and their relation to all
other [kinds of being] is derived from a specific property [Eigenschaft] of God. God as the ul-
timate subject and as the ultimate cause of all beings is called Eyn-Sof (the infinite, of which,
considered in itself, nothing can be predicated.) In relation to the infinite beings, however, posi-
tive properties are attributed to Him; these are reduced by the Kabbalists to ten, which are
called the ten Sefirot. (I, 141)
What Maimon means when describing Kabbalah as “extended” Spinozism is

simply that the Kabbalists develop in detail the generation of individual things from
the Sefirot, whereas Spinoza only provides a general account of the generation of fi-
nite modes from infinite modes. Note already here the similarity between the de-
scription of God as Eyn-Sof and the description of God as the material cause in the
commentary on Guide I, 69: the former characterized as “the ultimate subject and
as the ultimate cause of all beings”, the latter as “the ultimate subject of all things”.
That the identification of Spinoza and Kabbalah is indeed based on what Maimon
takes to be the analogous structure of the ontology of the Kabbalists and that of Spi-
noza becomes clear from the following short summary of Spinoza’s “system” in the
Autobiography:
The system of Spinoza […] assumes one and the same substance as immediate cause [unmittel-
bare Ursache] of all the different effects, which have to be considered as predicates of one and
the same subject. Matter and mind [Materie und Geist] are in Spinoza one and the same sub-
stance, which appears once under this, once under that attribute. This unique [einzige] sub-
stance is, according to him, not only the only possible self-sufficient [selbständige] (from an ex-
ternal cause independent) [being], but also the only being subsisting by itself [für sich
bestehende Wesen], the kinds (modes) of which (these attributes limited in a particular way)
are all the so-called beings outside itself. (I, 153)
Both the Eyn-Sof and Spinoza’s substance are the cause of all things (for the Kab-
balists of the Sefirot and everything that derives from them; for Spinoza of the order
of infinite and finite modes) and both are related to their effects as a subject is re-
lated to its predicates. The passage in Hesheq Shlomoh, therefore, provides the link
that makes the Spinozist background of the account of God as matter and form in
the commentary on the Guide visible: “matter of the first kind”, Eyn-Sof, and Sub-
stance (or Natura naturans) on the one hand, form (or “worldsoul”), Sefirot, and
order of modes (or Natura naturata) on the other hand are synonymous concepts
derived from Giordano Bruno, Kabbalah, and Spinoza. Matter and Eyn-Sof and
form and Sefirot are associated respectively with the same two of the four Aristote-
lian causes (material and efficient causes the former, formal and final causes the
latter); Eyn-Sof and Sefirot, in their turn, are identified with substance and modes
in “the system of Spinoza”. The two series of concepts refer, therefore to the same
entities in Maimon’s ontology. Ultimately they describe the structure of his God or
infinite intellect. That Spinoza is the most important of the three mentioned sources
becomes clear, I think, if we take the following points into account: first, Maimon’s
statements about his study of Spinoza in the Autobiography; second, his view that

the philosophical value of the kabbalistic system consisted in its being “nothing but
extended Spinozism”; and third, that Bruno’s text replaces Spinoza in the commen-
tary on the Guide primarily for political reasons.
**
Maimon’s Spinozistic transformation of Maimonides’ notion of the divine intellect
thus provides a solution for the cosmological version of the problem quid juris: “the
genesis of the world (with regard to its matter) from an Intelligence” (II, 62). It fol-
lows that, if God is the world’s formal and material cause, an infinite intellect can be
conceived that not only produces and is identical to the intelligble form of the objects
of cognition (as was the case of Maimonides’ God) but produces and is identical to
both their form and matter. Thus the “gap” (II, 521) in Kant’s system, stemming
from the assumption of two “completely different sources” (II, 63) for the compo-
nents of the cognized object is closed – at least with regard to the infinite intellect.
What are the implications of this Spinozist bridge over the “gap” in Kant’s system
for Maimon’s concept of the apprehension of the human intellect, in particular with
regard to the question which Kant proved unable to answer: how “a priori forms
should correspond to a posteriori given things” (II, 63). Now, correspondence, in
the strong sense of unity of ideas and objects, is precisely what characterizes Spino-
za’s order of modes. In the last passage from the Autobiography quoted above, Mai-
mon paraphrased, by and large accurately, a passage in the Ethics (“matter and
mind are in Spinoza one and the same substance, which appears once under this,
once under that attribute”) which is immediately followed by a passage (not para-
phrased by Maimon), in which Spinoza makes the same claim about the order of
modes. Using Maimon’s terminology one could paraphrase this claim as follows:
there is only one order of modes, which under the attribute of “matter” appears as
the “order of things”, and under the attribute of “mind” as the “order of ideas”.
Given this context it is not particularly surprising that Maimon’s answer to the cor-
respondence question is clearly inspired by Spinoza.60 In the entry “truth” of his
Philosophical Dictionary he writes:
According to Mr. Kant, the thing in itself is that outside our cognitive faculty [Erkenntnißver-
mögen], to which the concept [Begriff] or the representation [Vorstellung] refers. I claim, in
contrast, that the thing in itself, so understood, is an empty word without any meaning, inas-
much as one is not only unable to demonstrate the existence of this thing, but one also cannot
form a concept of it; according to me, on the other hand, the thing in itself, and the concept and
representation of a thing are objectively one and the same thing and distinguished from one an-
other [voneinander unterschieden] only subjectively, that is with regard to the completeness
[Vollständigkeit] of our cognition. (III, 185)
The incompleteness of human cognition, which in this passage explains why, sub-
jectively, ideas and objects are distinct, refers to Maimon’s by now familiar claim
about the limitation of the human intellect, which is finite in contrast to the divine
60 See also Engstler, “Spinoza-Rezeption”, 176.

238 Carlos Fraenkel
intellect, which is infinite. The passage that Maimon paraphrases in his account of
the unity of “matter and mind” as characteristic of Spinoza’s notion of substance,
is the scholium to Ethics II, proposition 7, and it is apparently the description of
modes in this same scholium, which Maimon had in mind when he speaks of the
objective unity and subjective distinctness of ideas and objects with regard to the
human intellect. Let us, therefore, examine this passage more closely. The pro-
postion states the identity of the order of things and the order of ideas, and the
scholium explains this identity in light of Spinoza’s ontology:
Prop. 7: The order and connection of ideas [ordo et connexio idearum] is the same as the order
and connection of things [ordo et connexio rerum]
Schol.: Here […] we must recall what we showed above, viz. that whatever can be perceived by
an infinite intellect as constituting the essence of substance [substantiae essentiam constituens]
pertains to only one [unicam] substance, and consequently that the thinking substance and the
extended substance are one and the same substance, which is now comprehended under this
attribute [sub illo attributo comprehenditur], now under that. So also a mode of extension and
the idea of that mode are one and the same thing, but expressed in two ways [duobis modis
expressa]; which some of the Hebrews appear to have seen, as if through a cloud [quidam
Hebraeorum quasi per nebulam vidisse videntur], who maintain that God, God’s intellect, and
the things by him intellectually cognized [res ab ipso intellectas] are one and the same thing.
For example, a circle, and the idea of the existing circle, which is also in God, are one and the
same thing, which is explained through different attributes. […]61
In my view, this scholium is not only a crucial passage in the Ethics for Maimon’s
understanding of Spinoza and for his Spinozist transformation of Maimonides’
notion of the divine and human intellect; it also seems to imply, if we pursue the
reference to the God of “some of the Hebrews”, that Spinoza himself considered
his notion of God to be no more than an unclouded version of Maimonides’ notion
of God, and, moreover, that Maimon was aware of this. The reference to the God of
“some of the Hebrews” is, to be sure, not devoid of travesty. Looked at more closely
the God of the Hebrews turns out to be none other than the God of the Greeks –
more precisely the divine «, ultimately derived from Aristotle’s Metaphysics XII,
7 and 9. From this we must infer that the alleged “Hebrews” were not the Hebrews
of Biblical times, but medieval Jewish Aristotelians, in particular Maimonides,62
who had transformed the God of Aristotle into the God of the Bible. They had pro-
vided the divine « with a Hebrew garb, and, draped in this costume, Spinoza
made his acquaintance. Spinoza’s claim that in order to reach his monism from
the monotheism of the Hebrews all he had to do was dissipate a “cloud” seems to be
61 G. II, 89–90.
62 Most commentators take “Hebrews” to be a reference to Maimonides. Cf. H. A. Wolfson:
The Philosophy of Spinoza: Unfolding the Latent Process of His Reasoning. 2 vol. Cam-
bridge, Mass. 1934, II, 24–27; W. Z. Harvey: “A Portrait of Spinoza as a Maimoni-
dean”. In: Journal of the History of Philosophy 19, 1981, 165. For a general account of
Spinoza’s medieval Jewish sources, see M. Joel: Spinozas theologisch-politischer Traktat
auf seine Quellen geprüft. Breslau 1870; Idem, Zur Genesis der Lehre Spinozas, Breslau
1871.

justified if we recall the structure of God’s intellectual activity in Maimonides: The

unity of substance reflects the unity of God as the subject and object of the act of
self-intellection. The unity of the order of modes reflects the unity of the intelligible
order of nature and its intellectual cognition in God’s apprehension of everything
that follows from his causal activity. Elsewhere I have reconstructed in detail the
path that in my view leads from Maimonides’ monotheism to Spinoza’s monism,
and I have presented the textual evidence from Spinoza’s early works as well as the
Ethics, which supports my reconstruction.63 Briefly summarized my thesis is that,
on the one hand, Spinoza applied the structure of the intellectual activity of Mai-
monides’ God to the relation of substance and modes (or Natura naturans and
Natura naturata) of his Deus sive Natura; on the other hand he extended God’s on-
tological scope by integrating the attribute of extension into his being. The intellec-
tual activity that for Maimonides constitutes God’s essence recurs in what Spinoza
describes as God’s “essentia actuosa” in the Scholium to Ethics II, 3. This “active
essence”, however, is no longer limited to intellectual activity but becomes exten-
sion (or, if you wish, extensive activity) as well.64 The “cloud”, therefore, which Spi-
noza had to dissipate in order to reach his monism from the monotheism of “some
of the Hebrews”, refers to the same problem that Maimon addressed in his com-
mentary on Guide I, 69: the exclusion of matter (or extension) from God, i. e., the
cosmological version of the problem quid juris.
**
To sum up the argument of this paper: In his Essay on Transcendental Philos-
ophy, Maimon claims that “the greatest difficulty” that in his view haunts Kant’s
theory of knowledge can be solved if we assume first, an “infinte intellect in which
the forms are at the same time the objects of cognition”, and second, that our
human intellect is in substance “the same” as the infinite intellect differing from it
only in degree, because of its finitude (II, 64–65). In Give’at ha-Moreh we saw that
Maimon presents his account of the infinite intellect, the finite intellect, and the re-
lation between them as an explication of Maimonides’ account of the divine intel-
lect, the human intellect, and the relation between them, and I argued in detail why
in my view he is justified to do so. Maimon, I suggested, found in Maimonides a key
for the solution of the first version of the problem quid juris: how “a priori forms
should correspond to a posteriori given things” (II, 63). Following Maimonides, he
could argue that the things given to the human intellect a posteriori are not hetero-
geneous to it, but are themselves intellectual forms produced and cognized by the
divine intellect as a consequence of the act of self-intellection.
63 See Fraenkel, C.: “Maimonides’ God and Spinoza’s Deus sive Natura”. In: Journal of the
History of Philosophy 44, 2006, 169–215.
64 Note that in his early work Cogitata Metaphysica Spinoza uses the peculiar term “essentia
actuosa” to describe the activity of God conceived as pure cognition (CM II, 11 / G. I, 275).
This passage is in my view crucial for an understanding of the development of the concept in
Spinoza’s thought.

240 Carlos Fraenkel
Maimonides’ account, however, leaves the cosmological version of the problem

quid juris unsolved, for in the worldview of the medieval Aristotelian there is no
place for the material component of objects in either the divine or the human intel-
lect. This second version of the problem can be solved only through the Spinozist
transformation of Maimonides’ God: from a God who is only the formal cause of
the world into a God who is both the formal and the material cause of the world.
Thus the “gap” (II, 521) in Kant’s system, due to the twofold source of the cognized
object, is closed. The infinite intellect now secures the unity of ideas and objects.
This unity, according to Spinoza, also characterizes the order of modes; whence in
my view Maimon derived his thesis that for the human intellect ideas and objects
are “objectively one and the same” (III, 185), and that the distinction between them
is only “subjective”, a consequence of the incompleteness, i. e., finite nature of
human cognition. Finally, Maimon’s paraphrase of the Scholium to Ethics II, prop-
osition 7, in which Spinoza himself acknowledges his debt to the God of Maimon-
ides, leaves no doubt that he was aware that his attempt to complete Kant’s “Co-
pernican revolution” in philosophy is based on the metaphysical line of thought
leading from Maimonides to Spinoza, and from Spinoza to himself.65
65 Bergman, Maimon, 34, overlooked the connection described above and thus claimed that
Maimon was not aware of Spinoza’s implicit reference to Maimonides in the scholium to
Ethics II, proposition 7.


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212 Carlos Fraenkel

Maimonides and Spinoza as sources for Maimon’s solution

by Carlos Fraenkel, McGill University, Montreal

Kant-Studien 100. Jahrg., S. 212–240 DOI 10.1515/KANT.2009.013

3 In Maimon’s German writings: “unendlicher Verstand”, in his commentary on the Guide:

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neither a plausible account of Maimon’s use of Maimonides’ doctrine of the divine

1. Kant’s incomplete “Copernican revolution” in philosophy

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7 Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft [henceforth: KrV] B XVI.

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13 Cf. KrV, B 14–18.

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2. Maimon and Maimonides

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As we saw above, Kant, in Maimon’s view, assumes two “completely different

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to be understood as an explication of Maimonides’ account of the divine intellect,

31 Hebrew: ]lyX , Arabic: ’hb> ’k , which means “piece of wood”.

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If Maimon’s interpretation of Maimonides is correct, the structural similarity be-

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42 Cf. the references given above to Metaphysics XII, 9.

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3. Maimon’s Spinozist Transformation of Maimonides

The major difference between Maimonides’ and Maimon’s concepts of God is

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Matter, therefore, is the totality of things as undifferentiated unity, and at the

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imply that he distinguished between an exoteric and an esoteric content of Leibniz’

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Several elements in this passage recall Maimon’s commentary on Guide I, 69.58

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What Maimon means when describing Kabbalah as “extended” Spinozism is

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60 See also Engstler, “Spinoza-Rezeption”, 176.

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justified if we recall the structure of God’s intellectual activity in Maimonides: The

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Maimonides’ account, however, leaves the cosmological version of the problem

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