The Highest Human Life: Jeremiah (9:22-23), Maimonides (Guide 3.54), and Plato (Euthyphro 13d-14c)

• In Event: The Prophets as Sources of Philosophic Inquiry

Abstract

Jeremiah (9:22-23) ranks the lives of men from high to low—the life of intellect (wisdom), the life of moral virtue (courage), the life of bodily pleasure (wealth)—and asserts that God prefers to all who lead these lives the person who knows God as a God who does kindness, justice, and righteousness in the earth. Maimonides offers his own ranking from low to high—perfection of possessions, bodily perfection, moral perfection, intellectual perfection. He then turns to the prophets—specifically to Jeremiah 9:22-23—for support. Maimonides at first quotes these verses only partially, pausing after “he who understands and knows Me,” observing that Jeremiah might well have either stopped there or continued: “that I am one” or “that I have no figure” or “that there is none like Me.” Instead, Maimonides notes, Jeremiah speaks of knowing God’s attributes, that is, God’s actions. Furthermore, in commenting on the conclusion of verse 23, “for in these things I delight, says the Lord,” Maimonides contends that what Jeremiah means is that it is God’s purpose “that there should come from you kindness, righteousness, and judgment in the earth”—which is precisely how Maimonides concludes his Guide, applauding the individual who always has in view kindness, righteousness, and judgment. I will argue in this paper that Maimonides uses the verses from Jeremiah to cast the ideal human being as one who, after apprehending about God the sorts of things that Jeremiah might have enumerated but didn’t, does acts of kindness, righteousness, and judgment in the earth. What such a one knows is that the only way God can accomplish these ends in the earth is through human beings who are devoted to His service. Similarly, Socrates in the Euthyphro, in seeking a definition of piety, needs Euthyphro to identify for him the one “altogether noble work that the gods produce, using human beings as servants.” Like Maimonides, as he interprets Jeremiah, Socrates thinks there is a certain noble product that God can produce only with human assistance.

Author

• Roslyn Weiss, Lehigh University