Moshe Halbertal radically interprets Maimonides to be a radical thinker. According to Halbertal, Maimonides thinks that philosophy (and the study of the sciences) is a religious obligation. Maimonides's view of the relationship of philosophy (reason) and religion (faith) is so radical it is virtually singular in the history of philosophy. The project of Halbertal's book is to explain how Maimonides came to this view.

Almost as puzzling as the singularity of Maimonides is the singularity of Halbertal's view of Maimonides. I think Halbertal recognizes his own singularity but does so without any fanfare. How Halbertal came to this singularity is by studying the entire corpus of Maimonides's work including Maimonides's religious work, and by studying the entire life of Maimonides including his early days and influences in Andalusian Spain. Customarily philosophers relegate their study of Maimonides to his famous Guide for the Perplexed and scholars of religion relegate their study of Maimonides to his famous Mishneh Torah. Both are mature works composed while Maimonides was in Egypt and so the time of his youth as a student or his formative years in Andalusian Spain is often overlooked by the two different tracks of expertise in Maimonidean scholarship. However, because Halbertal looks at the entire course of Maimonides's life and thought, he explores the deeply philosophical dimension of Maimonides's thought in his religious work and the deeply religious dimension of Maimonides's thought in his philosophical work.

Also, because Halbertal takes the wide focus, he is able to find a double-dimensional aspect in Maimonides' philosophical side that Halbertal concisely captures in the following paragraph and a bit:

So, given the above, I have a recommendation to the philosophical readers of Halbertal's book. If you don't want to miss the singularity of Halbertal's ascription of singularity to Maimonides' thought, don't skip to the chapters overtly discussing Maimonides' philosophical work. If you do skip, you will miss how Halbertal develops his singular thesis of Maimonides's singularity regarding the study of philosophy and leading the philosophical way of life as a religious requirement. Let me emphasize this point: it is incumbent upon the philosophical reader of the book to avoid the temptation to skip to the chapters discussing the Guide (Seven and Eight) and hence overlook Maimonides's philosophical development embedded in Maimonides's religious work as discussed by Halbertal in the preceding six chapters.

Despite what I have just said above, I will only cursorily comment on the first six chapters of Halbertal's book and exclusively discuss the philosophical dimension of Maimonides's religious thinking. According to Halbertal, Maimonides's ten year full time project of the Mishneh Torah proposes a new philosophy of law or theory of how halakhah or religious obligation is authoritative. Maimonides's philosophy of law is that the authority of law is based solely on the acceptance of the law by the community – or, specifically, in the case of Jewish law (Jewish religious obligation), on the acceptance of the law by the worldwide Jewish community. The traditional view, until today, as mentioned by Halbertal, is that the authoritative status of law is based on God's revelation. Maimonides in a radical move, based on his Aristotelian (filtered through various Arabic/Islamic philosophers) view of God (during the time Maimonides wrote the Mishneh Torah) thought that such a view of a personal God who literally talked to prophets was both philosophically unsound and religiously or theologically amounting to idolatry. Here we come to the crunch of Maimonides's philosophy of law where Halbertal is singular in his interpretation of Maimonides's own singularity regarding how law is authoritative including Jewish law: first the Mishneh Torah both as a codification of the Talmud (the debates concerning Jewish law that is derived from interpretation among rabbinical/juridical institutional authorities of the written law found in the Torah and oral law or common law handed down by rabbinical/juridical institutional authorities), and second as a replacement of the Talmud, takes over the authority of the Talmud: ‘...the Talmud is binding because it spread to and was accepted by all Israel lays the groundwork for the possibility of Mishneh Torah being transformed into a binding halakhic [Jewish law or Jewish religious obligations] book in the event it, too, is accepted by all Israel.’ (183)

Once Maimonides establishes the authoritative status of his own halakhic work, the Mishneh Torah, both as a codification of the Talmud, and as a replacement of the Talmud, Maimonides can establish as authoritative law his radical and singular thesis that philosophy (and the study of the sciences) or reason is a principle of halakhah (religious obligation): ‘[The] Mishneh Torah concludes by returning to its starting point, the commandment to know God, and the treatise as a whole suggests that the purpose of the halakhah is to promote knowledge and love of God...[therefore, Maimonides's Mishneh Torah performs]..the elevation of philosophy and science to religious obligations of the highest importance.’ (235)

Though I only cursorily discussed Halbertal's extensive discussion of Maimonides's religious works, I hope I have shown how Halbertal reveals the way that Maimonides embeds his developing philosophy within his religious works. Without following Halbertal's critically selective exegesis of Maimonides's religious works that ultimately subverts the traditional understanding of Jewish law or halakhah, one would miss out on why Halbertal's discussion of Maimonides presents a radical and singular view of the supposedly concealed nature of Maimonides's philosophical work, The Guide. The traditional view then and today separates philosophy (reason) and religion (faith). However, Maimonides's view of reason as a religious obligation could unintentionally undermine religion and faith. For Maimonides, according to the way I understand Halbertal, this could only occur if one had the strictly Aristotelian view of philosophy or reason and science as providing conclusive and final answers that Maimonides held in his earlier religious works. However, Maimonides in his later works, especially in The Guide, had a different view of philosophy as an ongoing and recursive process of critically examining all answers where one ultimately ends in silence. Moreover, according to the way I understand Halbertal, that view of philosophy as the skeptical/critical way of life, is only one of the four possible readings of Maimonides in The Guide: ‘...the skeptical; the mystical; the conservative; the philosophical.’ (279)

Halbertal sees Maimonides as anticipating Wittgenstein's early philosophy of language. Halbertal quotes Wittgenstein's proposition 7 of the Tractatus and goes on to say: ‘Because language is the medium through which we shape our knowledge of the world, recognizing the limits on language is tantamount, in effect, to recognizing the limits to our cognition of the world.... The skeptical view, of course, cuts squarely against the traditional position of the believer, who supposes he is able to formulate certain principles of faith with respect to God and the world. Moreover, it profoundly challenges the philosophical certainties of which Maimonides's own world would seem to be based.’ (302) According to Halbertal, Maimonides's development of the ‘skeptical’ approach to language and knowledge, leads to a change in Maimonides's own view of philosophy: ‘The return to engagement in the affairs of the world follows the ascent through the rungs of knowledge. The skeptical reading of the Guide teaches us that this return does not obligate one to give up the rewarding delights of cognition, nor does it come from any overflowing excess of bounty that the philosopher dispatches downward, as Maimonides himself suggests at some points. It follows, rather, from the nature of knowledge itself and its critical role. At the top of the heavenward ladder, a person realizes that the only thing he is able to apprehend is God's movement within reality, and in the wake of that realization, he returns to reality as an active participant.’ (311)

I am not going to review in depth the other three readings, apart from the skeptical, that Halbertal sees in the Guide: mystical, conservative, and philosophical. Instead, here is a very brief outline of the other three readings: the mystical reading is a corollary of the skeptical reading, and asserts silence in the face of the limits of knowledge; the conservative reading is another corollary of the skeptical reading, and asserts restricting the traditional views to their practical or functional value for social cohesion as opposed to ascribing to them any truth-value or epistemic-value given the limits of knowledge; and, the philosophical reading is yet another corollary to the skeptical reading and asserts wisdom as the result of philosophical reflection on the limits of knowledge where one is ‘...freed from life's hustle and bustle and worldly cravings, and his consciousness is directed totally toward the object of his desire – God.’ (356)

However, all these readings result in three revolutionary commonalities: first, recognizing that any form of representation of God including ‘internal mental representation’ (358) is idolatry; two, the study of ‘..the causal order and the wisdom inherent in it... [is] the most substantive revelation of the divinity’ (358); three, what today we term as secular studies – philosophy, the social and natural sciences, and the humanities – are integral to religion in general, and specifically integral to Jewish law: ‘...the pinnacle of religious experience is realized through knowledge.’ (359)

The big question between the lines of Halbertal's book is: given the power of Maimonides's thinking, why is it singular? Maimonides's Mishneh Torah is widely studied by scholars in secular institutions and by traditional religious scholars in religious institutions. But the Guide is not studied in traditional religious institutions, and though the Guide is studied in secular academic institutions, it is studied mostly by specialists. So, we don't see general philosophers asking: how is philosophy and reason part of the religious life? Maimonides's radical view of reason and faith as integral has not filtered into general discussion (except for another singular philosopher of Judaism, the recently deceased, David Hartman). I would like to see Halbertal addressing this question of singularity: why his singular view of Maimonides's view of philosophy and intellectual life as religiously obligated as singular, are both singular? To be fair, Halbertal concludes his book with a discussion of how and to what degree Maimonides's Mishneh Torah has been treated by the various streams of Judaism that developed after Maimonides died (1204). According to Halbertal, we, who are perplexed, can no longer, due to Maimonides's Guide, shut off the questioning part of our minds and accept anything as just a matter of tradition, authority, or faith.