ABSTRACT
The impact of the The Guide of the Perplexed is limited in contemporary philosophical and religious studies since Maimonides lived over 800 years ago. The most significant challenges to The Guide came from the religious philosophers of subsequent centuries. The Jewish philosopher Gersonides argued that humans could speak meaningfully about God provided that the language used is understood equivocally rather than absolutely. The Christian theologian and philosopher Thomas Aquinas agreed with Maimonides that it is impossible to know the essence of god’s being, but he did believe that our language about god is meaningful. Maimonides, however, claimed that god’s word was given to those who had achieved a level of intellectual perfection, which did not discriminate between Jew and non-Jew.
