Augustine and Maimonides

Posted: Mon, Sep 29, 2025

Maimonides’ description of reason vs. faith, exoteric vs. esoteric meanings, in the Introduction to Part I of the Guide.

The problem of evil

  1. An omnibenevolent, omnipotent, and omniscient God exists.
  2. If an omnibenevolent, omnipotent, and omniscient God exists, then evil should not exist.
  3. Evil exists.

Two broad defensive strategies:

  • Denial: Reject (3)—evil does not have its independent existence.
  • Theodicy: Reject (2)—the existence of evil is compatible with God.

Augustine on evil as the privation of good

Evil = privation of good ~ illness = privation of health ~ [Maimonides] darkness = privation of light.

  • God: Maximally good & incorruptibly good.
  • Things on earth: Less good & corruptively good but still good.
  • Things entirely deprived of good: Non-existent. Why??
    • Confessions: Things entirely deprived of good are immune from further corruption, but being incorruptible makes them good; contradiction.
    • Enchiridion: “Where there is no privation of the good, there is no evil.”

Maimonides on divine providence

Dualism: Matter/the body vs. form/the intellect.

  • Part III, chap. 8: Matter is like the “faithless wife” subject to corruption. Whereas our animal body—“food, drink, sex, anger”—corrupts us, “thought is distinctively human, reflecting our form.”
  • Part III, chap. 12: There are three kinds of evil.
    • Natural evils: “maladies and disabilities.”
      • Inevitable because we are limited by our material existence.
      • “Still, you’ll find them very much the exception.”
    • Moral evils: “violence.”
      • “Here, too, the weakness is human.”
      • “Still, there is no city in the world where such evils prevail.”
    • Personal evils: “intemperate eating, drinking, or sex.”
      • Blame yourself!

Parable in chap. 51:

  • The King is in his bedroom, which is in the palace, which is in the city.
  • Many are outside the city (atheists).
    • “They are all but dumb animals—to me, subhuman, although above the apes.”
  • Many are inside the city but face away from the palace (false religions).
    • “These folk are far worse than the first. It is they who must at times be slain and all trace of their beliefs effaced, lest they mislead others,”
  • Many approach and seek entry (followers).
    • They are “ignorant but observant.”
  • Some enter and circle the palace (jurists).
    • “They pore over the laws of pious practice but do not probe their foundations intellectually or seek reasons to confirm their faith.”
  • Some enter the antechambers (philosophers).
    • “The intellect God sheds on us is our link to Him.”
  • Three get a kiss from the King, one of whom is a woman (Miriam).
    • “[B]ut in her case, it does not say ‘by the mouth of the Lord,’ the figure being unseemly for a woman.”
    • Why??

God’s “providence is constant over an enlightened person whose focus on God is unbroken.”

  • “If one frees his mind from all distractions and joyfully focuses on God, no sort of ill can strike him. He is with God, and God with him. But when he turns away and loses sight of God, he is curtained from God and God from him, exposed to any ill that may strike. For what freed him from the sea of chance and protected him providentially is that intellectual emanation.”
  • How many people are under divine providence?
  • Do those under divine providence have free will?