The Eight Chapters - Chapter Three (Part 3)

Posted by Aryeh

"The Eight Chapters"

Shmoneh Perakim

Chapter Three (Part 3)

Now, many otherwise fine and unimpeachable people are fools, the truth be known. They suspect that something about them is in disrepair and doesn't square with who they want to be, but they do nothing about it. They even rationalize how actually *right* they are not to change, and they're satisfied with that. For as Solomon the wise put it, "The fool’s ways are blameless in his own eyes" (Proverbs 12:15).

"But ...", Solomon then offers, no matter how true that is, it's nonetheless also true that, " ... one who takes counsel is a sage" (ibid.). That's to say that there's indeed a way a headstrong person like that can change -- by taking any advice the sort of Spirit-healer we'd cited before would offer him.

Impartial, learned, and caring only for your well-being, such a person would set you straight if you're in that situation. He or she would point out where and how you had in fact come to "imagine bad ... to be good, and good ... to be bad", and would offer what you'd need to do to get back on course.

And that's just the sort of advice Rambam himself will provide us with in the next pivotal chapter.

By Rabbi Yaakov Feldman

For any comments, questions or topic requests, please contact Rabbi Yaakov Feldman.

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About this blog

We’re presented here with a beguiling statement of purpose:
These eight chapters serve as an introduction to a work so full of meaning and so challenging for most that we could hardly plumb its depths without these introductory chapters. It’s as if Rambam were promising to take us through a room so dark and even so daunting, that we’d have to use a very powerful and precise light to see our way through it. Thus, he must first teach us the workings of the special lamp itself before we could even attempt to traverse.

As we’ll see, though, it isn’t clear from the outset just who can be considered pious. In fact, the ideas we might have of what piety is all about are going to be challenged. What makes a person a prophet will also be confronted. Because while we might have our impressions, we really don’t know, and we either under- or overestimate the prophet’s “otherworldliness.”

We’ll notice, too, that Rambam mentions two concepts here that are very foreign to the modern mind: “perfection” and “true good fortune.” How can a person ever be “perfect”? Can one ever be partly perfect and otherwise imperfect? And what is “true good fortune”?

Finally, Rambam humbly refuses to take credit for what he will be saying, for one reason or another, and claims only to be a conduit of others’ wisdom. What we have here, then, is the promise of guidance through layer upon layer of revelation into the human heart, soul, and mind, and a look beyond the ordinary into self-perfection, piety, and prophecy.