On Elitist Philosophy

Prior to class last Tuesday, I never considered Plato to be a supporter of a repressionist regime. Honestly, Plato was in my mind just one of those philosophers who was in the canon of western philosophy.

Reading Maimonides, however, I can see the trend toward the idea of an understanding, knowledgeable elite. Moses Maimonides (aka Rabbi Moses Ben Maimon) was a Jewish Spanish philosopher and theologian. What's interesting about his work, is that he appears to believe in an elitist philosophy, similar to that of Plato, with a different emphasis. While Plato strongly believed in the written word as a negative thing, Maimonides bases his entire philosophy in an understanding of the written word. Furthermore, he makes the distinction between the ignorant and the intelligent. His The Guide of the Perplexed is not a guide to the (as he terms them) ignoramuses, but to those intelligent scholars and theologians who, upon close analysis of biblical text, find that they are in a state of perplexity. Maimonides strives to present to these scholars clarity regarding this perplexity.

What is really interesting, however, is that Maimonides does not desire to completely explicate the meaning of biblical texts. Instead, his "purpose is that the truths be glimpsed and then again be concealed, so as not to oppose that divine purpose which one cannot possibly oppose and which has concealed from the vulgar among the people those truths especially requisite for His apprehension" (167). Maimonides is not one to support individual interpretation, or the even exposure of interpretation to the masses. Instead, he believes the text was originally written in parables and equivocal terms, so he can only expose the meaning in such a way that those scholars who seek deeply and are perplexed can relieve their perplexity.

Basically, I find it interesting that, along with Plato, Maimonides ascribes to an elitist viewpoint. While their elite is different (although similar, with Plato upholding philosophers, and Maimonides upholding religion alongside philosophers), they both write for a specific group of people, who they believe is correct. In addition, Maimonides presents himself as this philosopher who, in some ways, must be right. In the middle of his 'instruction,' he says "if anything in it, according to his way of thinking, appears to be in some way harmful, he should interpret it, even if in a far-fetched way, in order to pass a favorable judgement" (174). Because, of course, Maimonides must be right.