“…with All Your Heart and with All Your Soul…”: The Moral Psychology of the Shemonah Peraqim

Abstract

Like Aristotle, Maimonides’ moral theory, his theory of the human good, rests upon a view of human nature. For both philosophers, the nature of man resides in his peculiar psychic capacities, those which he shares with no other species. For Aristotle, the human soul is distinguished by virtue of its rational capacities. These alone distinguish human beings from plants and (non-human) animals. In his famous ‘ergon’ argument at Nicomachean Ethics (NE) I.7 (1097b22ff), that argument which defines the human good by reference to the proper functioning of the peculiarly human psychic capacities, Aristotle points out that, given that nutrition and growth are shared by all living beings and, further, that sense perception is shared by all animals, both human and nonhuman, the human good cannot reside in the proper functioning of the nutritive and/or perceptive capacities.1 What remains, and that by which man can be said to achieve his telos, his characteristic goal, is the proper functioning of his ratiocinative capacities. A life manifesting reason is the best life for man.KeywordsPsychological TheoryRational CapacityMoral VirtueNutritive FacultyMoral PsychologyThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.