Maimonides’ Poetic Fable — Stern
Article on Poetics, Fiction, and Theory
Issue 01 — Fall 2019 — Session 02 —
Microliteratures: In the Margins of the Law
By Jesús R. Velasco | Published on September 11, 2019
By Jesús R. Velasco | Published on September 11, 2019
One of the most complex concepts in Maimonides' work in the "Guide for the Perplexed" is the Arabic noun "mashal" (Hebrew "mathal") with which he refers to "parables", "allegories", tropes", etc. The semantic field of "mashal" is that of the expressions of tropology, but Maimonides uses it in a rather particular way. Stern analyzes the theoretical and philosophical value of this concept within the tradition of commentaries of Aristotle's "Poetics" as part of the logical "organon" --which is the way in which Arabic thinkers, and thinkers who used the Arabic language for many of their intellectual and scholarly endeavors, received the poetical treatise, and the way in which some Latin thinkers who were conversant in Arabic philosophy read and commented Aristotle's "Poetics."
Along with the works of Averroes and Maimonides, we will be reading this article by one of the most important scholars in the field of Maimonidean studies:
- Stern, Josef. “The Maimonidean Parable, the Arabic Poetics, and the Garden of Eden.” Midwest Studies in Philosophy 33 (2009): 209–247.
Please focus in particular on conceptual distinctions, and the specific question of how Arabic and Muslim thought received and commented the corpus of Aristotle’s works, in what order, and the specific role played by logic and dialectic. You can also refer to my short article about the Aristoteles Latinus.
