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Mishneh Torah: Human Dispositions

Character as a matter of law: the middle way between extremes, with a doctor's rules for eating and sleeping written in.

by Maimonides40 passages held

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Original title
Mishneh Torah: Hilkhot De'ot
Original language
Hebrew

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Overview

In the middle of the laws on character, Maimonides tells his reader when to eat, how long to sleep, to tire the body with exercise every morning before eating, and, if he is old, to drink honey in warm water when the bowels are slow. The section, Hilkhot De'ot or "laws of dispositions", is part of the Mishneh Torah, the Hebrew code he completed around 1180, and its fourth chapter explains why medicine belongs in a book of commandments: nobody can understand or know anything of God while sick, so keeping the body healthy is one of God's ways. Maimonides practised medicine in Fustat, where al-Qadi al-Fadil, Saladin's chief counsellor, was among his patients. He promises that whoever keeps these rules will not fall ill until old age and will need no doctor, unless he was born with a weak body or plague or famine strikes. The rest of the section turns the ethics of his Eight Chapters, written about a decade earlier, into obligation. Every trait has two extremes, and the right way keeps an equal distance from both; he calls it the way of the Lord, which Abraham taught his children. Two traits are the exception: from pride and anger a person must go all the way to humility and calm. The later chapters require a rebuke to be given in private and gently, forbid gossip and tale-bearing, and say a scholar may not live in a town without ten things, among them a physician, a bathhouse and a charity collector. In 2020 two researchers writing in the Rambam Maimonides Medical Journal set twenty of his dietary rules, from this chapter and from his medical writings, beside modern guidelines; the guidelines fully agreed with five, contradicted three, and agreed at least in part with the other twelve.

Key concepts

What does “the way of the Lord” mean in these laws?

It is Maimonides' name for the middle path between the extremes of every trait, taken from the verse saying that Abraham would teach his household to keep the way of the Lord. A person on it grows angry only at something worth anger, wants only what the body needs, and gives within his means. Whoever lives this way is called wise, and the law commands it of everyone.

Who is the “disciple of the wise” these laws keep describing?

The learned person whose whole conduct shows what the Torah teaches, and whom others watch. These laws hold him to a higher standard in small things: clean, plain clothes, neither rich nor ragged, gentle speech, honest dealing in business, yes meaning yes and no meaning no. As he is set apart from others by his wisdom, he must be set apart by how he eats, dresses and speaks.

What is the “evil tongue”, and how is it worse than gossip?

Talebearing carries stories from one person to another, even true ones. The evil tongue is worse: speaking ill of someone, even truthfully, to damage him. Lying about him is a third and separate sin. Maimonides quotes the sages that the evil tongue kills three people, the speaker, the listener and the one spoken of. Even praising someone in front of his enemies counts, because it invites them to answer with his faults.

When may a wrongdoer be rebuked in public?

Only for sins against God, never for wrongs between people. If someone has hurt a neighbour, the neighbour rebukes him privately and gently, and shaming him in public is itself a grave sin. If someone sins against God and does not change after a private rebuke, he may be shamed in public and his sin named, until he turns back, as the prophets of Israel did with the people.

Themes of the book

What this book returns to, gathered into themes and ordered by how much of the text each one occupies.

The Middle Path as Commandment

Can good character be commanded, the way keeping the Sabbath is? Maimonides turns the philosophers' advice to seek the mean into a law binding on every Jew, with two striking exceptions.

The verse “you shall walk in his ways” becomes, in Maimonides' hands, a rule for every trait: as God is called gracious and merciful, be gracious and merciful, and keep to the middle between each pair of extremes. Habit makes it stick, the right act done once, twice, a third time. Pride and anger are the exceptions, to be fled all the way to their opposite. Because people take on the habits of those around them, a person should live among the good, and if every town is corrupt, in a cave or a desert.

  • virtue ethics
  • moderation
  • temperance
  • humility
  • anger
  • social influence
  • religious ethics
  • moral education
  • self-control
  • prudence

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A Physician's Rules in a Law Code

Why should a book of God's commandments say when to eat, how long to sleep and how to keep the bowels moving? For Maimonides the healthy body is part of the way to God.

Nobody, Maimonides writes, can understand anything of the knowledge of God while sick or hungry, so keeping the body sound is itself a way God chose. The rules that follow are a physician's: eat only when hungry and stop before the stomach is full, tire the body with work or exercise every morning before eating, sleep about a third of the day, change the diet with the seasons. Whoever keeps them, he promises, will not fall ill until old age, barring a weak constitution or plague.

  • health
  • diet
  • exercise
  • self-care
  • seasonality
  • self-control

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Rebuke, Gossip and Grudges

What do we owe someone who has wronged us, and what may we say about people who are not in the room? Maimonides answers with laws that reach into speech and memory.

Hatred must not be kept silent in the heart: the wronged person should say so, privately and gently, for the wrongdoer's own good, and in quarrels between people never shame anyone in public. Talebearing is forbidden even when every word is true. Vengeance and the grudge are defined by a pair of cases: refusing to lend an axe to a neighbour who once refused you, and lending it while reminding him that you, unlike him, do lend. Both are forbidden, because remembering the slight already keeps vengeance alive.

  • speech ethics
  • gossip
  • slander
  • admonition
  • vengeance
  • forgiveness
  • honesty
  • harm
  • compassion

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Within this work

passages held
40
distinct concepts
97
by passages held, corpus-wide
#681

What this book thinks together

The wheel takes this book’s leading concepts and shows how often they come up together. The wider the band between two, the more of its passages speak of both. Among them, most often together: “diet” and “health”.
Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 4 concepts, joined by 4 pairings. 21 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
ConceptPaired conceptShared passages
diethealth5
healthmoderation5
moderationvirtue ethics4
dietmoderation3

Works held

The author's work in order, this book marked in place. Your-language title first, the original beneath it where the two differ; side chips show which full texts are held.

  1. Commentary on the Mishnah: Tractate Sanhedrin (Kitāb al-Sirāj: Sanhedrin)

    One tractate of Maimonides' first great book, the Commentary on the Mishnah, including the introduction to Perek Helek in which the Thirteen Principles first appear; held in the medieval Hebrew translation printed in the Vilna Talmud.

     HE
  2. Eight Chapters on Ethics (Shemonah Perakim)

    Maimonides' ethics set out in eight chapters, opening his commentary on the tractate Avot in 1168; the Mishneh Torah's laws of character later restate its doctrine of the mean as law. Held in Joseph Gorfinkle's English of 1912.

     EN
  3. Mishneh Torah: Foundations of the Torah (Mishneh Torah: Hilkhot Yesodei ha-Torah)

    Where the Mishneh Torah begins: Hilkhot Yesodei ha-Torah, the opening section of its first book, the Book of Knowledge (Sefer ha-Madda); held alone, its ten chapters in Simon Glazer's English of 1927.

     EN
  4. Mishneh Torah: Human Dispositions (Mishneh Torah: Hilkhot De'ot) you are here EN
  5. Mishneh Torah: Repentance (Mishneh Torah: Hilkhot Teshuvah)

    Closing the Mishneh Torah's first book, the Book of Knowledge, Hilkhot Teshuvah is the last of its five sections; held alone, its ten chapters in Simon Glazer's English of 1927.

     EN
  6. The Commentary to Mishnah Aboth (Kitāb al-Sirāj: Avot)

    Maimonides' commentary on the five chapters of Avot, written within the Commentary on the Mishnah and opened by the Eight Chapters, which have their own page here; held in Samuel ibn Tibbon's medieval Hebrew.

     HE
  7. The Guide for the Perplexed (Dalālat al-Ḥāʾirīn)

    Maimonides' last major book, addressed to a single reader and completed in Fustat around 1190, a decade after the Mishneh Torah had made his name. Held here in Michael Friedländer's English of 1904, with the letter to Joseph.

     EN
  8. Treatise on Logic (Maqāla fī ṣināʿat al-manṭiq)

    Traditionally the earliest of Maimonides' writings; held in Moses ibn Tibbon's Hebrew, all fourteen chapters, from a Warsaw printing of 1928.

     HE
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