619 Red Cedar Rd
Okemos, MI 48864
USA
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 20th, 10:00am-11:30pm
JEWISH STUDIES FACULTY/STUDENT RESEARCH SEMINAR
MAIMONIDES’ DISCUSSION OF PROPHECY IN THE GUIDE TO THE PERPLEXED
Wells Hall B-342
Jewish Studies affiliate Dr. Benjamin Lorch will present on Maimonides’ political philosophy, which he argues is present in the part of the Guide of the Perplexed devoted to the subject of prophecy. “The central subject of this discussion is the divine law: why is the law revealed by the prophets superior to merely human legislation, and what is a good law? [Dr. Lorch] ascertains Maimonides’s answers to these questions by examining his presentation of the conflict between Judaism and philosophy concerning the truth of prophecy and the authority of the law: the prophetic teaching par excellence is the guidance that man cannot discover by means of reason and that he would not possess at all had God not revealed this guidance to His prophets. [He argues] that Maimonides identifies the special content of prophecy as the moral laws, the laws that Judaism designates ‘commandments between man and his fellow man.’” Co-sponsored by James Madison College, the Department of Religious Studies, and the College of Arts and Letters.