105 119 147 171 177 197 - Interpretation: A Journal of Political ...

1 2 4 I n t e r p r e t a t i o n Volume 38 / Issue 2
its ground: a god of limitless power is impossible and miracles, or the contravening
of the principles of nature, are impossible, according to Maimonides
(see Addendum 3). Maimonides here connects images in the imagination to
“great, repulsive errors” and false belief. It is hardly necessary to observe that
the great multitude of men share the opinion of the dialectical theologians
that whatever can be imagined can be made actual by an omnipotent god.
The great majority of men live for the most part confined, not precisely to
their senses but to that faculty in which all the senses terminate and share,
the imagination. The great majority of men confuse the images within the
imagination with the possible beings in the world and, therefore, confuse
the composition of images in the imagination with cognition of what is (see
Addendum 4).
In his treatment of the appetitive part of the soul Maimonides
explains that this power originates the multitude of passions, for
example, rage and fear, and notes that “this power uses all the organs of the
body as its instruments.” The passions are the leading strings of the motions
of the body. It is to be inferred that not only may the immediate sensation of
a present object elicit such passions, but the images of things as they are preserved,
or of impossible “beings” as they are constructed, by the imagination
may do so as well. Fear, love, and anger are often elicited by images of wholly
fictitious beings, for example, in dreams or waking visions. The imagination
in conjunction with the passions of the appetitive power of the soul may be
the sole or primary source of the motions of the human body.
The rational power receives a complex articulation in Maimonides’s
description. This apparently single power “perceives intelligibles,
deliberates, acquires sciences, and distinguishes noble and base actions” (63).
Maimonides does not, as does, for example, Aristotle in book 6 of the Ethics,
divide the intellect in two, discriminating between a practical and theoretical
mind. Rather he attributes both the practical and the theoretical activities
of mind to one source. In his description of these theoretical and practical
activities he includes cognition of the “what they are” of the unchanging
beings and the sciences that uncover these under the theoretical, and both
“productive” activities (the arts) and reflective activities (deliberation about
the possible) under the practical. Distinguishing between the noble and the
base is silently dropped as an activity of mind. Such discriminations, it would
appear, are a matter of “common opinion” or mere belief. Maimonides suggests
that apart from all belief or imaginings or the strong pull of the passions
it is possible to come to know the truth of the good and the bad, deliberate