The Virtuous Life

According to Maimonides, there are two models of the virtuous life. He calls them the way of the saint (Hassid) and the sage (Hakham).

The saint is a person of extremes. Maimonides defines hessed as extreme behaviour – conduct in excess of what strict justice requires (Guide for the Perplexed III, 52). For example, “If one avoids haughtiness to the utmost extent and becomes exceedingly humble, he is termed a saint (hassid)” (Hilkhot Deot 1: 5). The sage is different. He follows the “middle way” of moderation and balance. He or she avoids the extremes of cowardice on the one hand, recklessness on the other, and thus acquires the virtue of courage. The sage avoids both miserliness and renunciation of wealth, hoarding or giving away all he has, and thus becomes neither stingy nor foolhardy but generous. He or she knows the danger of too much and too little – excess and deficiency. The sage weighs conflicting pressures and avoids extremes.

These are not just two types of people but two different ways of understanding the moral life. Is the aim of morality to achieve personal perfection? Or is it to create gracious relationships and a decent, just, compassionate society?

The intuitive answer of most people would be to say: both. That is what makes Maimonides so acute a thinker. He realizes that you can’t have both – that they are in fact different enterprises.

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks