Wednesday, August 6, 2014

Gulliver and Maimonides

Gulliver ends up hating all of humanity (spoilers). He writes:

"When I thought of my family, my friends, my countrymen, or the human race in general, I considered them, as they really were, Yahoos in shape and disposition, perhaps a little more civilized, and qualified with the gift of speech; but making no other use of reason, than to improve and multiply those vices..."

Is it just me or does this sound like Maimonides' description of unlearned peoples (Guide 3:51, Pines trans.):

"Those... are all human individuals who have no doctrinal belief, neither one based on speculation nor one that accepts the authority of tradition: such individuals as the furthermost Turks found in the remote North, the Negroes found in the remote South, and those who resemble them from among them that are with us in these climes. The status of those is like that of irrational animals. To my mind they do not have the rank of men, but have among the beings a rank lower than the rank of man but higher than the ram or the apes. For they have the external shape and lineaments of a man and a faculty of discernment that is superior to that of the apes."

No comments:

Post a Comment