Polemics on Perfection: Maimonides’ Last Law on Slaves Resolves the Debate

Abstract

“What is the summum bonum?” This question is, without exaggeration, the ultimate existential question. Of no less import is its corollary: how is one to achieve this summum bonum? Maimonides’ Guide for the Perplexed endeavors to provide the answers. That said, the precise intent of Maimonides answers has generated no less perplexity than the original questions. Indeed, modern Jewish philosophers have spared no ink in trying to ascertain Maimonides’ intentions on human perfection. In this essay, I seek not to add yet another perspective on Maimonides’ intentions but to provide compelling support for existing positions; support found – worlds apart from the ivory towers where philosophers spill their ink – in the private quarters of a Canaanite slave. It is my thesis that Maimonides, in his last Law on Slaves, provides us with the answers to the ultimate existential questions and, accordingly, with a resolution to the perennial polemics on perfection.