Gold from the Guide for Us Perplexed Folk
What is God? Do Rambam’s Neoaristotelian premises and arguments still hold water in light of the subsequent scientific revolutions?
Background: After dispensing with the theologians’ arguments for and about God at the end of part one, Rambam begins part two with 25/6 premises of the philosophers that support the traditional ideas about God without violating reason.
🧭 Overview
Rambam’s goal — to demonstrate that God exists, is One, and is incorporeal — remains philosophically viable. His reasoning, though couched in Aristotelian physics and metaphysics, can be reformulated with modern concepts while preserving the structure and force of his arguments.
Here’s a breakdown:
✅ What Still Holds Up
1. Metaphysical Contingency
Propositions XIX–XXIV (about necessary vs possible existence, dependence on causes, and matter as the substrate of possibility) are still sound in modern metaphysical terms.
Rambam’s conclusion that a non-contingent, necessary being must exist still holds.
2. Simplicity and Unity
Propositions XXI–XXII, arguing that a being composed of parts cannot be self-sufficient, remain persuasive.
Modern physics supports that unity and simplicity increase explanatory power (e.g. unification of forces).
3. Incorporeality of the First Cause
If the necessary being is not composed, not contingent, and not subject to time or space, then it must be immaterial.
Rambam’s arguments for God’s incorporeality are reinforced by the insight that all physical things are causally and ontologically dependent.
⚠️ What Requires Reformulation
1. Aristotelian Motion and the Celestial Spheres
Propositions I–IV, XIII–XIV, and XXV–XXVI depend on:
Circular celestial motion
The fifth element (aether)
No inertia without constant movers
These are outdated. But their purpose—to establish that motion must ultimately come from an unmoved, immaterial source—can still be re-expressed in terms of:
The fine-tuning and initial conditions of the universe,
The non-self-explanatory nature of dynamic systems and laws,
The non-sufficiency of brute physical facts.
2. Actuality and Potentiality
Propositions V, VI, XVIII assume an Aristotelian metaphysics of change (potential → actual) that’s not how modern physics models causation.
However, modal language (possible vs necessary, dependent vs independent) remains meaningful, especially in cosmology and metaphysics of explanation.
❌ What Can Be Rejected
1. Prohibition of Actual Infinities (Propositions I–III)
Modern mathematics and cosmology do allow actual infinities (in space, time, or cardinality).
Still, causal infinite regress remains a philosophically weak explanatory model. The infinite regress can be mathematically consistent, but epistemologically and ontologically empty.
So these propositions can be replaced with:
> “A chain of contingent causes cannot explain itself; there must be a non-contingent source of being.”
🧠 Reformulated Core Argument (Rambam 2.0)
Let’s rebuild Rambam’s argument in modern terms, drawing on his metaphysical structure:
1. Contingent beings exist.
(They begin, change, and depend on conditions.)
2. The existence of contingent beings requires a cause.
(Contingency is not self-explanatory.)
3. There cannot be an infinite regress of contingent causes.
(An infinite chain of dependencies never grounds itself.)
4. Therefore, there must be a necessary being—one that exists by its own essence.
5. This being must be:
Immaterial (not dependent on matter or form),
Simple (not composed of parts or aspects),
Unchanging (not dependent on time or undergoing transitions),
Unique (no plurality among necessary beings),
The cause of all else (without itself being caused).
6. This being is what we mean by God.
✨ Final Verdict
Rambam’s propositions, though grounded in medieval science, retain their logical structure. When we swap Aristotelian physics for modern cosmology and metaphysics, we find:
His proofs remain conceptually valid, though the terms must be updated.
His goal is met: to rationally demonstrate that existence implies a necessary, non-corporeal, unified cause of all being.
> His brilliance lies not in the physics he inherited but in the logical architecture he built on top of it — an architecture that still stands, if we renovate its foundations.