Maimonides' Political Thought: Studies in Ethics, Law, and the Human IdealIn recent years, Howard Kreisel has established himself as one of the leading interpreters of Maimonides' political and ethical philosophy. The present volume brings together some of Kreisel's most important studies that have been published on this topic. However, it is no mere rehash of earlier material. Kreisel has extensively revised the essays to include more examples to support his points than in the earlier versions. Kreisel has also added a deal of material regarding Maimonides' Islamic sources. Moreover, Kreisel has added a previously unpublished chapter introducing the volume.In the introductory chapter, Kreisel begins his discussion with definitions and concepts upon which his whole approach toward Maimonides is based. He argues that the common thread tying together Maimonides' entire corpus is its interest in politics, a thesis that echoes Leo Strauss's renowned scholarship on Maimonides. Maimonides, following Aristotle, understands political philosophy as a discipline concerned with true happiness and the means to attain it, both in the training of one's moral qualities and in the implementation of just laws for the ordering of society as a whole. However, Maimonides' interest is not in political philosophy per se, but in understanding the Torah as the ideal expression of political philosophy, which for Maimonides means understanding the Torah's directives as leading to Aristotle's version of happiness. Kreisel goes on to survey a series of topics in Maimonides' political thought by analyzing the political element that underlies his approach to such topics as prophecy, the Oral Law, and idolatry.In Chapter Two Kreisel analyzes Maimonides' conception of the practical intellect which is the faculty responsible for the knowledge of ethics and politics. Maimonides never explicitly discusses the practical intellect and tends to subsume it under the more general rubric of the rational faculty. But Kreisel shows that Maimonides nonetheless has a position regarding this faculty that emerges from clues in his writings, that his position is key to understanding the ethical and political concerns that underlie his thinking, and that Maimonides had reason not to deal with this faculty explicitly.Chapter Three discusses Maimonides' use of the term good. Kreisel argues against previous scholars who construe Maimonides' conception of good in subjective and utilitarian terms and offers an alternative interpretation according to which Maimonides understands the notion of good as having a more objective meaning. Good for Maimonides is that which aims at a noble end.Chapter Four takes up the concept of imitatio Dei and attempts to tease out the metaphysical foundations of Maimonides' understanding of this issue. Kreisel shows that for Maimonides imitating God means that just as God and the Separate Intellects can emanate perfection on other beings without diminishing from themselves, so the perfected individual can be involved in the governance of other human beings while constantly engaged in a life of intellectual contemplation.In Chapter Five Kreisel grapples with a series of contradictions in Maimonides' ethics with special attention paid to the contradiction between ethics as perfection within society and ethics as perfection of the individual qua individual. Kreisel's conclusion is that Maimonides saw no necessary contradiction between the two, but nonetheless constructed his presentation in the way he did so that the unsophisticated reader would find the perspective most suitable to him. …