Maimonides' 18th Premise

Maimonides and God’s Potentially

In his introduction to the second part of the Guide, Maimonides lists 25 premises that are required to establish the Aristotelian argument for the existence of God and His incorporeality. This collection is most interesting, and much thought was obviously invested into it. According to Pines, there is, in fact, no known example of these 25 premises prior to Maimonides’ collection, indicating that this is of Maimonides’ own creation. Thus, it behooves the careful reader to understand each premise, on its own terms as well as as it relates to the others. That is certainly true. But when Maimonides places a calling card that exhorts the reader to pay extra attention to just one of the premises, and none of the others, even the casual reader should wonder about it.

That premise is the 18th. In it, he states the premise that anything that passes from potentiality to actuality has something external to it that has it pass. But, if the cause of passage was really part of the thing itself, and there was some obstacle that was removed to allow it to pass from potentiality to actuality, it was that the cause of passage that necessarily removed the obstacle. After establishing this, Maimonides finishes the premise with the mysterious exhortation, “Understand this.” Or, in Freidlander’s translation, “Note this.” Whether between “Understand” and “Note”, we are immediately cast into doubt as to this premise and that it will be a main factor later into Maimonides’ proceedings.

So what is it? What are we looking well into? In Chapter 1, he explains the argument that relies on this premise. Since everything must have something external to it that causes it to pass from potentiality to actuality, this must necessarily go back in a chain that goes far back, seemingly infinitely. However, “this series of causes or factors cannot continue to infinity.” Therefore, something must exist that has no potentiality at all, and that is God. And other premises show that this god cannot have matter. and nothing in Him passes from possibility to actuality, and thus His unity is established as well.

However, he admits twice that he is granting one main premise that these premises are wrapped into. And that is the assumption of eternity of the world. In the beginning of the introduction he states, “There is one premise that we will grant them, for through it the objects of our quest will be demonstrated, as I shall make clear; this premise is the eternity of the world.” And later in Chapter 1, on page 249, Maimonides states immediately after our “potentiality to actuality argument”, that, “All these are demonstrative methods of proving the existence of one deity, who is neither a body nor a force in a body, while believing at the same time in the ternity of the world.” It would seem, then, that he wishes to emphasize this as well.

This all makes sense when we look at Chapter 18, which discusses premise 18 as being inapplicable to the Jewish conception of God! There, on page 299, he deals with the issue that establishing God without potential in his essence also seems to mean that God cannot act in time, as in to create the world primarily, for that would seem to take something from potential to actuality. He writes:

The way to destroy this doubt is most clear. For this conclusion necessarily follows only with regard to everything composed of matter… On the other hand, that which is not a body and is not endowed with matter, has in its essence no possibility in any respect whatever. Thus all that it has is always in actu.

Thus, since God has no body, he is an exception to the premise that something cannot be done in time which does not imply a change from potentiality to actuality. This is similar in nature to Maimonides’ response in his Mishneh Torah to the accusation that God cannot be all-knowledgable and for free will to remain. He writes there as well that God’s knowledge is His essence, and since we cannot know the nature of such existence, we cannot really talk about it in a coherent fashion that implies free will is lost.

His proof is that Aristotle's own concept of the “Active Intellect” also implies an unchanging force, yet this too acts in time and does not move from potentiality to actuality either. Thus, he writes, that he has solved a great dilemma about the creation of the world.

Even after several rereads, I still have trouble understanding the act being done in time as something that was in actuality at all times. Did the world exist or did it not at some point? Did it exist in time? Then how was it in actuality for God to have created the world? The problem Maimonides says is the easiest to respond to is actually the most difficult answer to understand. As I wrote above, this seems to be a move by Maimonides to simply place God as an exception, to not have to answer questions on religious/philosophical exceptions to God’s nature. As Raavad responds to Maimonides in Teshuva 5:5, wise people know how to start a topic that they can finish.

But I am still wondering why Maimonides called special attention to this 18th premise.