I'd suggest reading Charles Taylor "The Language Animal". It helped me rethink a lot about metaphor and language.
I agree that the Tao and Maimonides's Esoteric G-d are very similar in some ways, G its important to note that he's not pushing that explicit message hard on everyone. He understands that for most people, a personal, more human G-d is good.
Heschel, in his book "God in Search of Man" does a good job expressing many profound emotional feelings with regard to a solid, yet very non-anthropomorphic G-d. You might enjoy that.
Try this out: It’s not God who is the metaphor, it’s US
who are the metaphor. When we say, “The hand of God,” God’s hand (whatever that means) is the REAL hand. Our hand is a metaphor of this thing that God has, which He calls (in His Torah) a hand. Don’t you get it? The real world is the spiritual world. What we have down here is just a rough equivalent of the real thing which is up there.
Here is a metaphor of a metaphor for you. The hand of a child’s doll: is that a real hand? No, it is a facsimile of a real hand, in this case, the child’s hand. Get it?
The eyes of Hashem, the finger of Hashem, Hashem laughs, Hashem is angry (actually, God never changes), these are the real thing which have different effects on our world. We can gain a vague sense of what these concepts are by looking at the metaphor: OUR eyes, fingers, laughter, anger. But His are the thing itself. The real thing (not coke…)
This is a very interesting read. I believe you are correct to pose the situation this way. An interesting note is that as far as I understand, Maimonides understood this way leads to a Spinozian outlook. Spinoza's famous triangle analogy (a triangle cannot think of a God of another shape) is the flipside of the Maimonidean coin in my view. The main difference, as I understand it, is that through the Maimonidean perspective, the negation of corporeality leads to increasing the magnificence of God (Like St. Alsem's Onltological Argument - God is that of which greater than cannot be thought). Spinoza's outlook however, is that the negation of corporeality leads to the negation of God. For what is undescribable is not (according to Spinoza).
Ok I love this post so much, and not only because I have an entire novel that alludes to some of these points. It always struck me that Rambam was a doctor, and by association I assume, a man of science who lived in the real world and took a critical view of esoteric thought, like Kabbalah. However, this reaction to the anthropomorphic of God's attributes kinda lends itself to well....Kabbalah, no? I haven't read the Guide (but maybe I should.) I do, however, love the mental gymnastics.
I'd suggest reading Charles Taylor "The Language Animal". It helped me rethink a lot about metaphor and language.
I agree that the Tao and Maimonides's Esoteric G-d are very similar in some ways, G its important to note that he's not pushing that explicit message hard on everyone. He understands that for most people, a personal, more human G-d is good.
Heschel, in his book "God in Search of Man" does a good job expressing many profound emotional feelings with regard to a solid, yet very non-anthropomorphic G-d. You might enjoy that.
Try this out: It’s not God who is the metaphor, it’s US
who are the metaphor. When we say, “The hand of God,” God’s hand (whatever that means) is the REAL hand. Our hand is a metaphor of this thing that God has, which He calls (in His Torah) a hand. Don’t you get it? The real world is the spiritual world. What we have down here is just a rough equivalent of the real thing which is up there.
Here is a metaphor of a metaphor for you. The hand of a child’s doll: is that a real hand? No, it is a facsimile of a real hand, in this case, the child’s hand. Get it?
The eyes of Hashem, the finger of Hashem, Hashem laughs, Hashem is angry (actually, God never changes), these are the real thing which have different effects on our world. We can gain a vague sense of what these concepts are by looking at the metaphor: OUR eyes, fingers, laughter, anger. But His are the thing itself. The real thing (not coke…)
This is a very interesting read. I believe you are correct to pose the situation this way. An interesting note is that as far as I understand, Maimonides understood this way leads to a Spinozian outlook. Spinoza's famous triangle analogy (a triangle cannot think of a God of another shape) is the flipside of the Maimonidean coin in my view. The main difference, as I understand it, is that through the Maimonidean perspective, the negation of corporeality leads to increasing the magnificence of God (Like St. Alsem's Onltological Argument - God is that of which greater than cannot be thought). Spinoza's outlook however, is that the negation of corporeality leads to the negation of God. For what is undescribable is not (according to Spinoza).
Ok I love this post so much, and not only because I have an entire novel that alludes to some of these points. It always struck me that Rambam was a doctor, and by association I assume, a man of science who lived in the real world and took a critical view of esoteric thought, like Kabbalah. However, this reaction to the anthropomorphic of God's attributes kinda lends itself to well....Kabbalah, no? I haven't read the Guide (but maybe I should.) I do, however, love the mental gymnastics.