The Guide for the Perplexed (1904)

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The Guide for the Perplexed by Maimonides , translated by Michael Friedländer

The Guide for the Perplexed is Maimonides' major philosophical work, and is widely considered to be the most influential book of medieval Jewish philosophy. Originally written in Judeo-Arabic, its Hebrew translation by Samuel ibn Tibbon became the book's standard edition, and it has also been translated into several European languages. This edition is that of the 1904 translation into English by M. Friedländer. Author's Introduction · Part I · Part II (Propositions / Chapters) · Part III (Introduction / Chapters) Full Table of Contents

[edit] Contents:

• Introductory Material by the Translator
  • Preface (to the second revised edition of 1904)
  • Preface to Volume One of the First Edition (1881)
  • The Life of Moses Maimonides
  • The Moreh Nebuchim Literature
• Author's Introduction
  • Dedicatory Letter
  • The Object of the Guide
  • Directions for the Study of this Work
  • Introductory Remarks on Method
• Part I (76 chapters)
• Part II: Propositions · Chapters (26 propositions and 48 chapters)
• Part III: Introduction · Chapters (Introduction and 54 chapters)

[edit] Other versions and translations

[edit] Arabic Original

• For the full original text in Judeo-Arabic, see Seforim Online (#217). This is the critical edition (Jerusalem, 1931) of the original text by Munk and Joel (public domain, free download in PDF).

[edit] English

• The Guide of the Perplexed, translated by Shlomo Pines (introductory essay by Leo Strauss). University of Chicago Press, 1963 (2 volumes).

[edit] Hebrew

• Translated by Samuel ibn Tibbon (#48-50). Vienna, 1828 edition in three volumes with commentaries (PDF).
• Translated by Joseph Kafih (Mosad Harav Kook, 1977).
• Translated by Michael Schwarz (Tel-Aviv University Press, 2002).

[edit] The digital text

The Friedlander translation is also available at Sacred Texts. The same OCR text is available in PDF form here. The 1904 translation, reproduced in these digital versions, is in the public domain.

The following information about the OCR digital text is provided at Sacred Texts:

Note: This book was scanned and ocr'ed by Andrew Meit and David Reed. Hyperlinks to chapters were added by Richard Hartzman, who inserted a few missing pages and did minor typographical editing. We would like to encourage the posting and release of Jewish religious books. They must be in the public domain which mean they were printing prior to 1923.

Even a casual glance at the text shows that there are hundreds of blatant errors in the OCR text that need to be fixed. It mostly still a raw scan, not a proofread text. Especially note that all formatting has been lost in the scan, such as italics, centering, etc. These need to be added back to the text.

Those who worked on the OCR also noted (following the "DETAILED TABLE OF CONTENTS" at Sacred Texts):

[Note: The indexes have not been done, perhaps later]

The indices could theoretically be added with hyperlinks to the text itself.

Wikisource contributors are urged to correct this digital text based upon the printed version.