WE HAVE FOUND THE FOLLOWING.

Maimonides expresses his commitment to the intellectual ideal in rabbinic and philosophical writings that span more than three decades. In the Commentary on the Mishnah, which he completed at the age of 30, he characterizes the sciences of physics and metaphysics as the roots—or principles (aṣl)—on which the legal and ritual part of the Jewish religion rests. Prophets and philosophers, he assures us, agree that everything in the lower world exists for the single purpose of bringing forth men who excel in ‘knowledge and practice’ (‘ilm and ’amal), and knowledge in the present context means the ‘conceiving of the true essences [of things] … and the cognition of everything a man can know’; ’ilm, in other words, has its technical sense of science. ‘The goal of the human species is to conceive intelligible thoughts’ and it is attained by those who are ‘students of science and philosophize’. In a remark that some may find disquieting,Maimonides writes that human beings who are incapable of attaining the intellectual goal exist in order to supply the needs of those who have the capability.

TheMishneh torah,Maimonides’ code of Jewish law, goes further. It teaches that the first two positive commandments of the divine Law are fulfilled by mastering rational demonstrations of the existence and unity of God. Love of God is predicated on knowledge, and ‘a man should, as far as humanly possible, devote himself to exercising his intellect in mastery of the sciences … that lead to knowledge of God’.