Читать книгу The Essential Agus - Steven T. Katz - Страница 45

M. was a rationalist, but not in the flat sense of this term. Speculative reason, directed toward the ultimate mysteries of life, is far more than the sheer process of intellection. In fact, one must guard against the temptation to plunge prematurely into reflection on God and creation, before one has properly prepared himself for this arduous and perilous task. The preparatory disciplines are not only logic and mathematics, but ethics and esthetics. Also, one must be endowed from birth with a balanced disposition, which shuns all tendencies to excess and exaggeration. The prophet must be gifted in all the disciplines that are needed for the perfection and balance of the human personality. His imaginative and intuitive talents must be as excellently attuned to the reception of the Divine Influence as his intellectual faculties. The prophet shares in the talents of the statesman, whose spiritual antennae relate him to the needs of the community as a whole, so that he senses “the general will” of the nation, to use a Rousseauist phrase. The prophet is also a gifted poet, creating myths and metaphors that reverberate with powerful resonance all through the ages. So, while the man of intellect can only gain from the Divine Influence some philosophical reflections, and the man of intuition and imagination can only be inspired by the same divine source to devise some ordinances and works of literary art, the one who is gifted in all faculties of outreach can hope to attain moments of prophetic inspiration, that lead him to channel divine energy into the community of Israel and the society of mankind.⁶

It follows that man’s pathway to God consists in the attainment of balanced perfection, or to put it differently, the quest of God is dependent on the attainment of wholeness and harmony, since God is the builder of wholes. This emphasis might be termed classical. It resists any endeavor to fragmentize the human personality and to set the ideals of the spirit over against the hungers of the flesh. To be sure, M. tended to downgrade sex as a “shameful” activity. (II, 36.) He described the Hebrew language as “holy,” because it contained no words for the genital organs and employed “pure” euphemisms for the sexual act. In this respect, he was probably influenced as much by the feverish overindulgence of the Moslem princes as he was by the teaching of Aristotle. But, his essential teaching was in keeping with the aims of the classicist. He regarded the health of the soul as paralleling the health of the body, rejecting the Augustinian claim that the love of self opposes and contradicts the love of God.⁷

Neo-Maimonist ethics is also a blend of the quest for balance of the classicist and the lyrical temper of the religionist. Along with M., we affirm the ancient principle of the Golden Mean. All virtues are happy syntheses of opposing tendencies. But, man’s perennial quest for wholeness leads him again and again toward the brink of self-transcendence. M. supplements the classical ideal by the principle of imitatio dei, though in his view this principle could be asserted only in a metaphorical sense. To us, the urge for self-transcendence is a fact of human nature, for we cannot attain self-fulfillment without surrendering to a high ideal. The consequences of this hunger to be part of a greater whole are not always salutary. People are driven on occasion to serve idols and to reject the tensions of freedom. Here, again, is an illustration of the dangers inherent in the polar tension within the human soul. Self-surrender to a partial good may be socially destructive as much as the anarchical drive for self-assertion. In the childhood of the human race, the limited whole which becomes the surrogate of God, is the clan, the tribe or the city-state. It is rare individuals, philosophers, statesmen and above all prophets, who have opened up wider horizons for the psychic need of self-transcendence. Plato, Aristotle and Xenophon shattered the naive idolatry of the Greeks. Isocrates expanded the meaning of the term, “Hellene,” to embrace those who acquire the culture of the Greeks. And, it was the long line of Hebrew prophets that most effectively contrasted the adoration of the One God with the sterile folly of worshipping any and all idols. The pathos of the prophets set its seal upon the deepest layers of the Jewish heritage. “Leave the Israelites alone—if they are not prophets, they are surely the sons of prophets.” (Pesahim 66a.)

The rejection of idolatry is an ethical as well as a theological principle. It means that no ideal is more than a fragment of our total goal, more than a way-station on the road to personal and universal perfection. In every generation, the classical procedure of harmonizing conflicting interests and ideals issues in a consensus of what is reasonable and morally obligatory—a Way, which is then structured into laws and ordinances (halachah). But, along with this legal pattern, there is also the beckoning ideal of greater perfection—a Vision of the sublime, which is only dimly reflected in articulate ideals. Beyond these ideals is the Nameless One, to whom alone our worship is directed. The concrete ideals of the age are all too readily transformed into idols, and the resounding No of prophetic monotheism, impels humanity to go beyond the “idols of the market-place” in quest of the receding horizon of perfection. “Without vision, a people is undone.”

The religious Liberal, by virtue of his dynamic Vision, will be keenly conscious of the failures of the age and the limits of the regnant ideals. To him, the worship of the One God will result in an awareness of our human sinfulness. We ask forgiveness, not alone for the sins we have committed, but even more so for permitting some ideals to preempt our total loyalty, shutting all else from our view. Sin is the failure to heed the call of the whole—the whole of our self, the whole of society, the whole of the spectrum of ideals, that is the light of God.

There is an old pietistic comment on the claim of the Sages that in time to come, God will slaughter Satan. Why should Satan be punished? it is asked. Was it not his duty to mislead and seduce people?—The answer is—Satan will be punished for the mizvot he urged, not for the sins that he commended. How beautiful!—The perfect world will be attained only when the demonic is totally separated from the divine—a consummation which can hardly be reached in our mundane existence.