Maimonides on Metaphysical Knowledge

This chapter explores Maimonides' views on metaphysics. Maimonides considered apodictic demonstration (burhān) to be the surest tool the human intellect has for acquiring knowledge, since no one but the ignorant would think of rejecting a demonstration. At the same time, he acknowledges that some issues are not amenable to demonstration and consequently remain in dispute; issues of the sort, in his view, are absent from mathematics, present to a small extent in physics, and numerous in metaphysics. The chapter thus examines what is known about Alfarabi's lost commentary on the Nicomachean Ethics, Ibn Bājja's views on metaphysical knowledge, and the passages cited from the Moreh nevukhim. Then it offers evidence for Maimonides' assertion that the human intellect can have the active intellect as a direct object of thought and conjoin with it. To conclude, the chapter attempts to reconstruct the process whereby man can, in Maimonides' view, acquire knowledge of incorporeal substances.