Maimonides: Seven causes of contradiction

Maimonides/Rambam in the Introduction to his "Guide for the Perplexed' gives a noticeably in-your-face immodestly humble disclaimer for the possible confusions that might follow from his text, a list of seven possible causes of contradiction that you may find in his text. (GftP is mostly a collection of short exegeses of word ambiguities and distinctions in the Talmud (among a handful of earth shaking heresies/orthodoxies (and Aristotle))).

What I am particularly impressed with in the list, even beyond the existence of the usefulness of the list, is the attempt at self-judgment. That is, here are the possible problems that you the reader may find (I, the author, have found them in other people's writings) and here is the explanation of why you may misunderstand in my own. Maybe not so humble, rather a pre-justification. Sort of a prepared feint and parry. Or a couple levels deep of Rock Paper Scissors.

Here is my interlinear commenting based on the translation by Friedlander. Maimonides describes a condition where an inconsistency may arise, and an explanation of why it is actually not an inconsistency, just a misunderstanding. I follow with the moral I take to be drawn in order to avoid the inconsistency, even though that doesn't seem to be the intention of Maimonides. It seems he is just trying to say "it's your fault for thinking there's a contradiction, and here's why". Is he talking about his own Talmudic commentaries, or those of others? I don't know.

THERE are seven causes of inconsistencies and contradictions to be met with in a literary work. The first cause arises from the fact that the author collects the opinions of various men, each differing from the other, but neglects to mention the name of the author of any particular opinion. In such a work contradictions or inconsistencies must occur, since any two statements may belong to two different authors.

The reader should distinguish among the multiple sources, that are not the author's own words. This is somewhat difficult if the author doesn't make it obvious. So my advice then should be to the author which would then be: don't plagiarize, make your references obvious, say who said what.

Second cause: The author holds at first one opinion which he subsequently rejects: in his work, however, both his original and altered views are retained.

Again this is more advice to the author. Make your pattern obvious. That is, if you plan on using a reductio ad absurdum, say so, so that it is obvious what your exposition strategy is (this one is possible 'set up something to fail. follow conclusions till a contradiction'). To the reader, don't take things out of context. Maybe the author is saying one thing to then establish its falsehood. Or maybe the author is saying that 'things are complicated', there are two sides from different perspectives and they are both true in their own context.

Third cause: The passages in question are not all to be taken literally: some only are to be understood in their literal sense, while in others figurative language is employed, which includes another meaning besides the literal one: or, in the apparently inconsistent passages, figurative language is employed which, if taken literally, would seem to be contradictories or contraries.

The author should make the metaphors explicit (or watch out for multiple meanings). The reader should not take things so literally.

Fourth cause: The premises are not identical in both statements, but for certain reasons they are not fully stated in these passages: or two propositions with different subjects which are expressed by the same term without having the difference in meaning pointed out, occur in two passages. The contradiction is therefore only apparent, but there is no contradiction in reality.

Make your assumptions explicit. Also, words have more than one meaning. To the reader, don't be so literal or assume that a word must have exactly one meaning.

The fifth cause is traceable to the use of a certain method adopted in teaching and expounding profound problems. Namely, a difficult and obscure theorem must sometimes be mentioned and assumed as known, for the illustration of some elementary and intelligible subject which must be taught beforehand the commencement being always made with the easier thing. The teacher must therefore facilitate, in any manner which he can devise, the explanation of those theorems, which have to be assumed as known, and he must content himself with giving a general though somewhat inaccurate notion on the subject. It is, for the present, explained according to the capacity of the students, that they may comprehend it as far as they are required to understand the subject. Later on, the same subject is thoroughly treated and fully developed in its right place.

This is equivalent to 'lying to children', 'Wittgenstein's ladder' or teaching by approximations, first giving the oversimplified version that is mostly inaccurate but then allowing refinements and nuance later to become more and more accurate. Hey, Einstein didn't show that Newton was wrong just that newtonian mechanics didn't work as well in large scales.

Sixth cause: The contradiction is not apparent, and only becomes evident through a series of premises. The larger the number of premises necessary to prove the contradiction between the two conclusions, the greater is the chance that it will escape detection, and that the author will not perceive his own inconsistency. Only when from each conclusion, by means of suitable premises, an inference is made, and from the enunciation thus inferred, by means of proper arguments, other conclusions are formed, and after that process has been repeated many times, then it becomes clear that the original conclusions are contradictories or contraries. Even able writers are liable to overlook such inconsistencies. If, however, the contradiction between the original statements can at once be discovered, and the author, while writing the second, does not think of the first, he evinces a greater deficiency, and his words deserve no notice whatever.

Some contradictions are actual and not apparent (all the others are about apparent contradictions that really aren't). A long sequence of inferences is problematic: is the moral to shorten it (that seems to be the cause of a true contradiction not appearing) or to fully explicate all the premises and inferences? Is he saying that we find a faulty derivation, then 'his words deserve no notice whatsoever'? That's a bit extreme. Sure it's annoying but there must be something there even if there's a contradiction.

Seventh cause: It is sometimes necessary to introduce such metaphysical matter as may partly be disclosed, but must partly be concealed: while, therefore, on one occasion the object which the author has in view may demand that the metaphysical problem be treated as solved in one way, it may be convenient on another occasion to treat it as solved in the opposite way. The author must endeavour, by concealing the fact as much as possible, to prevent the uneducated reader from perceiving the contradiction.

Things are complex. The moral here is...well sometime to make things understood you have to choose where to stop, at the simple version or after explaining a lot of complexity. Wow, M is really giving a justification for obscurantism, hide the truth from the kids, babies come from storks, gold equals money.


The special thing about these causes is that it is the first place I've ever seen any acknowledgment of other minds. Most entirely, philosophy is narcissistic and autocratic, there is only one voice, there is never even a conception of anything else, there is just voice. These causes allow that there are other minds, other ideas inspired by the text. But, aside from that great perception, these causes are all attempts to lay the blame on the reader for getting it wrong, but at least M is allowing the possibility that the reader has other ideas.