Beschreibung:

MAIMONIDES (MOSES BEN MAIMON). 1138-1204. Dux seu director dubitantium aut perplexorum. [Paris]: Iodocus Badius Accensius, 1520.
Folio (304 x 188mm). Title within a four-part woodcut border (Renouard Badius border B), with Josse Bade's woodcut device (Renouard 22 J. Badius), metalcut white-on-black initials, Roman and Hebrew types (the latter a few lines at beginning). Remboîtage binding of early vellum, cloth folding case. Some rubbing to binding, title and a few other leaves remargined at inner margin, some light dampstaining.
Provenance: Venice, "Biblioteca del Convento dei Crociferi" (stamps).
THE FIRST PRINTING OF MAIMONIDES GUIDE FOR THE PERPLEXED IN A WESTERN LANGUAGE, AND THE SECOND OVERALL. Affirming the power of science, Maimonides' Guide for the Perplexed applies Aristotle's philosophy to an understanding of the Bible. A bold and original effort to guide the reader into the secret mysteries of the Bible, Maimonides' Guide respects the traditional dicta restricting the public dissemination of these secrets, and its literary style is at once allusive and elusive, pointing at, but not fully revealing, the deeper meaning of biblical teachings. According to Printing and the Mind of Man, Maimonides' Guide, from an Aristotelian base, "insists that reason is limited and must be supplemented by revelation" (see PMM 14). But perhaps the Guide is better viewed as a tour-de-force argument and demonstration of the necessity to study metaphysics (including its highest theological component) in the context of physics, as implied in the term "metaphysic."
A masterpiece of the Medieval period, Maimonides' Guide was hugely influential on Aquinas, and "almost every philosophic work for the remainder of the Middle Ages cited, commented on, or criticized Maimonides' view" (Encyclopedia Judaica, "Moses Ben Maimon"). Though Maimonides' influence on western thought is perhaps less visible during the Renaissance (due to the rediscovery of Plato, eclipsing the philosophy of Aristotle), his thought and Guide regained traction in the early Enlightenment period, not only influencing the rational free-thinking philosophy of Spinoza (most visibly in his Tractatus Theologico-Politicus), but also the theo-philosophical views of both Leibniz and Isaac Newton. Indeed, John Maynard Keynes called Newton "a Judaic monotheist of the school of Maimonides" (Essays in Biography, p 316). Though the translator of this 1520 Latin edition is unknown, the translation would appear to have been made in the first half of the 13th century, and it has been conjectured that the work evidences the contribution of two distinct men, one Jewish and one Christian.
Maimonides' Guide for the Perplexed was first printed in Hebrew at Rome in 1473-5, now virtually unobtainable, especially complete. This 1520 edition is both the second printing of the text overall and its first printing in a Western language. Though copies are located institutionally, this edition is exceedingly rare at auction and in private hands. This is a very handsome copy of Maimonides masterpiece, a work which played an outsized role in shaping modern thought. Adams M-158; MDZ bsb10140241; Renouard, Badius, iii, 84–85; Imprimeurs parisiens, ii, no. 456; see PMM 14 (first Hebrew edition).