In this chapter, Maimonides sets up the background for eventually telling us his theory about one of the standard problems of classical Islamic philosophy: God’s Knowledge of Particulars. This is a subset of the more general problem knows as ‘The Problem of Evil’, and boils down to the question: If God is good, capable of disposing of all the world’s affairs, and knows all things, how does evil exist in the world? Maimonides captures this way of thinking in the rather derisive formulation that

[some people] imagine that God takes no notice of earthly affairs … simply because human affairs are not arranged as every person would think it desirable. Seeing that these are not in accordance with their wish, they say, “The Lord does not see us”.

One of the classical answers to this problem, held by some of the esteemed Islamicate philosophers of the time, went as follows: ‘God knows universals, not particulars.’ This answer to the question is anathema for Maimonides. “Some thinkers assume, …, haughtily and exultingly, that God knows certain things and is ignorant of certain other things. They did so because they imagined that they discovered a certain absence of order in man’s affairs”.

The language used here, “they imagined that they discovered …” suggests that Maimonides rejects the very premise of this line of argument; he does not believe that there is truly ‘an absence of order in man’s affairs’. He cites the Books of the Prophets to show that these objections against the Omnipotence and Omniscience of God are not new, and that the Tanakh offers what — at least for Maimonides — is a satisfactory answer to this problem.

A typical example that he cites from the Prophets goes like this:

David likewise shows how general this view [i.e., the fact that wicked people are seen in happiness, ease, and peace; thus it is of no use to do good and suffer for it] was in his time, and how it led and caused people to sin and to oppress one another. At first he argues against this theory, and then he declares that God is omniscient. He says as follows: ‘‘They slay the widow and the stranger, and murder the fatherless. Yet they say, The Lord shall not see, neither shall the God of Jacob regard it. Understand, ye brutish among the people, and ye fools, when will you be wise? He that planted the ear, shall he not hear? He that formed the eye, shall he not see? He that chastiseth nations, shall not he correct? or he that teacheth man knowledge?’’

Essentially, he argues that if God created the organ of sight (and perhaps we can add, the very possibility of sight), then he, as the maker of the organ, must have had the idea of sight in his Mind (such as it is) — the tissues of the eye cannot simply have come together by chance unless they were being directed to the purpose of sight, and this could only have been done by a being who knew what sight is. This argument doesn’t seem too convincing, because possessing the idea of sight seems quite distinct from literally ‘seeing all things’.

For Maimonides, the reason why we fall into such traps is “that God endowed us with the intellect which is the means of our comprehension, and which on account of its insufficiency to form a true idea of God has become the source of great doubts: that He therefore knows what our defects are, and how worthless the doubts are which originate in our faulty reasoning.” (emphasis added)

Commentary: The usual Islamic (and perhaps also Christian) answer to the problem of evil relies crucially on bodily resurrection, and the idea that the scores are settled in the end, even if ‘this life’ may seem unfair. It remains to be seen whether Maimonides is able to solve the problem without recourse to an afterlife. Also, the language of ‘true idea of God’ seems quite reminiscent of Spinoza …