Adamo, Abramo, Mosè e Rabbi Akiba: quattro livelli di perfezione umana nella lettura di Maimonide

The article focuses on Maimonides’ models of human perfection, in the light of the scholarship of the last fifty years (Joseph Soloveitchik, David Hartman, Aviezer Ravitzky, Kenneth Seeskin, and Menachem Kellner). In the Guide of the Perplexed and, especially, in the Mišneh Torah, Maimonides sketches four models of human excellence: Adam, Abraham, Moses and Rabbi Akiba. These models reveal tension between opposing poles: the prophetic perfection, out of the reach of man, and the sense of finitude and fallibility; the silence of contemplation and the sense of responsibility towards one’s community. The result is an anthropology of human finitude and a communal philosophy, in which Maimonides attempted to portray the post-Edenic man, forced to live in a peculiar “exile”, different from the historical one of Israel.