Evil and Providence in Maimonides's Guide of the Perplexed

Anyaegbu, Modestus

ISBN 10: 1503512452 / ISBN 13: 9781503512450

Published by XLIBRIS, 2014

About this Item

Seller Inventory # I-9781503512450

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Evil and Providence in Maimonides's Guide of the Perplexed
• Publisher: XLIBRIS
• Publication Date: 2014
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1503512452
• ISBN 13: 9781503512450
• Binding: Soft cover
• Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

"Maimonides’s rationalist rejection and interpretation of anthropomorphism play a major part in his reading of the problem of evil and providence in the guide of the perplexed. The debate has been on finding an explanation as to why the righteous suffer and the vicious prosper in a world under the providence of a divine Creator. The anthropomorphic bent given to the legendary case of the biblical Job has given us the concept of God as a personal agent. But confronted with the reality of his innocent suffering, this image of God leaves much to be desired. We shall argue that Maimonides’s theory of providence as consequent upon the intellect and evil as consequent upon the absence of intellectual perfection are based on the concept of God as existence. It is the absence of intellectual perfection that marks man qua animal and leaves him open to chance occurrences and evil.A Promotional “The present work places before us the strange position and –it must be said—a little bit shocking to us, of the great Jewish thinker on the question of providence. Only the intelligent, that is to say, the human beings who have effectively actualized their intellects and have come to an accomplished knowledge, are considered and personally protected by the Eternal. In other words, the traditional piety that is usually asked of the believers by religious authorities is not sufficient. This piety is still marked by illusion and does not procure for man the true knowledge of God which is worthy of him. The individual ought to overcome pietistic representations in order to open himself to divine truth which is accessible only through knowledge. This is what the Book of Job illustrates . . . At the time when the actuality does not cease to present before us the question of the status of religion and the religious within modernity, the attempt by Maimonides to articulate these two styles carries an indisputable force of conviction as shown with abundant evidence in the work presented by Modestus Anyaegbu.”—Jean-Michel Counet, president of the Institut Supérieur de Philosophie, Université Catholique de Louvain, Belgium."

About the Author

Modestus Anyaegbu is a priest of the Diocese of Awka, Nigeria. After obtaining his bachelor's degrees in both Philosophy (BPhil) and Theology (BTh) from Bigard Memorial Seminary, Enugu, Nigeria, he obtained both his licentiate and doctoral degree (PhD) in philosophy from the Université Catholique de Louvain, Belgium. He is interested in placing philosophy at the service of faith and making the ordinary believer come to a better understanding of the object of his belief. It is the special field of medieval philosophy that has provided him a springboard for that enriching interaction between faith and reason.