Creation and Intention: Maimonides' Argument Revisited

Abstract

Maimonides devoted particular attention to demonstrating what he termed the "possibility of the Torah." In a world governed by necessary and universal laws, how can one account for the election of a specific prophet, place, time, or nation? By posing this question, Maimonides identified a fundamental issue in Jewish thought, one that also challenges any philosophical framework that affirms divine wisdom while seeking to accommodate distinctions between the sacred and the profane. He ties the very possibility of such distinctions to the metaphysical question of whether the world necessarily emanates from God or is instead the product of divine will. In a world devoid of intentionality, meaningful differentiation cannot be sustained. Several chapters in the second part of The Guide of the Perplexed are devoted to establishing that the world is not a necessary emanation from God. In this article, I argue that Maimonides' position acquires renewed significance in light of the discovery of symmetry violation in physics during the 1950s - a finding that profoundly unsettled the scientific community.