Work Classification Layer
Compare Works
Pick two or more works to set their attribute fingerprints, dimension-by-dimension passages, and shared school embodiments side by side. Especially useful for author-stage comparisons (Wittgenstein early vs late) and for setting a single tradition's foundational texts against each other.
The Guide of the Perplexed
Reason and revelation in concord — God is purely incorporeal, the Torah's anthropomorphisms are figurative, and the perplexed reader can be guided
Attribute Fingerprint
Rows where works disagree are highlighted in gold. The full ontology grid is shown.
| Attribute | The Guide of the Perplexed |
|---|---|
| Time · Extent | Both |
| Time · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Time · Grain | Continuous |
| Time · Freedom | Both |
| Time · Traversability | Linear |
| Time · Dimensionality | One |
| Time · Direction | Uni-directional |
| Space · Extent | Finite |
| Space · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Space · Curvature | Flat |
| Space · Dimensionality | Three |
| Space · Locality | Local |
| Matter · Extent | Finite |
| Matter · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Matter · Conservation | Conserved |
| Matter · Dimensionality | Three |
| Matter · Locality | Local |
| Observer · Time Instance | Multiple |
| Observer · Space Instance | Single |
| Observer · Knowledge Extent | Total |
| Observer · Knowledge Retainment | Total |
| Observer · Physicality | Both |
| Observer · Agency | Active |
| Observer · Number | Plural |
| Observer · Metaphysical Agency | Personal |
| Observer · Moral Authority | Scripture |
| Observer · Theological Method | — |
| Energy · Extent | Finite |
| Energy · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Energy · Conservation | Conserved |
| Energy · Dispersibility | Irreversible |
| Information · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Information · Cosmic Conservation | Conserved |
| Information · Personal Conservation | Conserved |
| Information · Granularity | Continuous |
Dimension-by-Dimension Evidence
What each work's passages reveal about its stance on each of the six dimensions.
Time
The Guide of the Perplexed
Part II.13–31 contains the most extensive medieval discussion of the eternity of the world — whether the cosmos has a beginning (the Mosaic view, which Maimonides ultimately defends) or is eternal (the Aristotelian view). God's eternity is non-temporal in a sense close to the Boethian; created time is real, linear, and uni-directional.
Space
The Guide of the Perplexed
Standard medieval Aristotelian-Ptolemaic cosmology. God is incorporeal and non-spatial; creatures are spatially finite. The Guide's long discussion of angels (II.6) treats them as separate intellects, not spatial beings.
Matter
The Guide of the Perplexed
Created, real, substantival; matter and form are analysed in Aristotelian hylomorphic terms. The cosmos is finite in extent.
Observer
The Guide of the Perplexed
The Maimonidean observer is the rational human person — embodied, plural, active in intellectual pursuit. Knowledge is total in principle through the philosophical-prophetic life that culminates in apprehension of God (III.51's parable of the palace). Moral authority is scripture, interpreted in concord with reason. Metaphysical agency is personal, but the via negativa (I.50–60) sharply limits what can be predicated of God positively.
Energy
The Guide of the Perplexed
Not theorised separately; the medieval doctrine of continuous divine sustenance is presupposed.
Information
The Guide of the Perplexed
God's knowledge of particulars is one of the Guide's major topics (III.16–21). Personal information is conserved — Maimonides retains a robust commitment to personal immortality and the world to come (olam ha-ba), though his treatment is intellectualised (the world to come is intellectual perfection, not bodily reward).
Internal Tensions
Where each work's argument pulls against itself.
The Guide is famously esoteric. Maimonides explicitly warns in the introduction that he writes with deliberate contradictions in order to conceal certain truths from the philosophically unprepared (Introduction, "the seventh cause"). Modern scholarship divides sharply: Leo Strauss and his school read Maimonides as a covert Aristotelian-rationalist for whom the orthodox commitments are largely exoteric; Pines, Davidson, and others read him as a serious religious philosopher whose orthodoxy is genuine. The Guide's text supports both readings.