The main lesson that I learned from this lecture was to formulate your opinion and your ideas in the simplest way possible. Some people unnecessarily use difficult vocabulary to seem sophisticated, a practice that is applaused for today by some audiences. However, your task should be, and this is more difficult than seeming intelligent, to deconstruct difficult concept and ideas and to explain them in a understandable and simple manner.
Something new that I have encountered on this class is the strategy that Maimonides adopts in order to uphold the consistency of God’s unity. Just like in Islam, the Abrahamian conception of God consists of attributes. God is powerful, he is compassionate and so forth. But this is conflicting with Maimonides’ radical theory of monotheism, in which he argues that no predication of God should be possible, because he is one and only. The similarity with Islamic philosophy is that Maimonides also adopts a strategy of via Negativa. Instead of assuming that God is possible he argues that God is not powerless for example.
However, he adopts a new strategy by applying his main line of defence, that is that God is silence. Anything that humans assume about God will result in a larger distance between Him and and the human. Humans should not speak about their projection of God.
Mohammad's blog 