R. Soloveitchik's causal critique of Maimonides as a religious philosopher

This essay challenges the anachronistic and distortive aspects of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik's influential finding that, as he put it in The Halakhic Mind , 'the causal method of the philosophical Guide ... leads to a religious techné '. While other commentators have questioned the cogency of R. Soloveitchik's causal critique (which he prosecutes in terms of efficient and final cause), none has directly addressed it in terms of the thought-determination that Maimonides himself might have employed: formal cause. The discussion is divided into seven sections: (1) the principal lines of R. Soloveitchik's criticism; (2) Maimonides the halakhic scholar versus Maimonides the speculative philosopher?; (3) questioning R. Soloveitchik's methodological critique; (4) hermeneutic methodology and religious inference in Guide , ch. 1; (5) a Maimonidean reading of 'image' ( tzelem ) and 'likeness' ( demut ) in Genesis 1:26 and 27; (6) formal cause in Maimonides' analysis; (7) limits of the Rav's post-medieval causal critique

Epistemology · Biblical Studies and Interpretation · Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies · Medieval and Classical Philosophy · Philosophy