Return

This chapter focuses on the second phase of Neoplatonic cosmogony: the idea of return. In a Jewish context, ‘return’ evokes the idea of repentance. Redemption is represented as a natural process through an expanding pattern of loss and restoration built into the structure of Mishneh torah's main divisions. With the inclusion of this second phase of Neoplatonic emanation, the form of Mishneh torah rationalizes the commandments as flowing from a first cause, God's existence (the form of forms), and towards a final cause, the realized microcosmic form of man and of the state. This structural rationalization stands in contrast to the summative explanation of the commandments in The Guide of the Perplexed. It also provides a solution to the problem of the authority of the commandments, and a positive answer to the question of whether the commandments can be cognitive. The positioning of ‘Laws of Mourning’ as the work's penultimate section is both a tempering of messianic hopes, signalling that the reality of death will remain after the redemption, and an encouragement to hope, signalling, in alliance with the pattern of loss and restoration, that national mourning will be lifted.