“Silence Is Praise to Thee”: Via Negativa as Spiritual Practice in Maimonides

Abstract: This study explores the motifs of silence and ignorance in Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed against the background of the use of these motifs in his Islamicate intellectual milieu. On the one hand, Maimonides’ views with regard to silence and unknowing are formulated in the context of radical negative theology as presented by such Neoplatonists as Damascius and Pseudo-Dionysius Areopagita. On the other hand, Maimonides’ doctrine of silence goes beyond the negative discourse alone and seems to forge a mode of religious practice. Elucidating the notion of silence as the most appropriate praise of God, Maimonides places it within the context of the rites of normative prayer, assigning to it the highest rank of sublime worship. This would be in line with the prominent place that silence as spiritual practice had in the mystical and ascetic discourse of late antique Eastern Syriac Christianity.