To continue my thought in the Maimonides essay a few days ago I want to mention that there is good reason to see in him a kind of pre-Kantian Kant.
One reason is that even though he decides we do not go by Rabbi Shimon in using the reason for a verse to decide how the verse is applied (דורש טעמה דקרא);--still you can see in Bava Metzia that he does just that.
Take a look at the Magid Mishna and other commentaries on the Rambam and you will be disappointed.
Here is a case where the Rambam decides the law in two opposite ways in Mishna Torah and no one has a good reason for why.
But if you decide that the Rambam was looking at this like Kant then everything becomes crystal clear. The reason for the law is one ground of value and the actual statement of the verse in the Torah is another ground of value.
And the Rambam holds that the argument between R. Shimon and the first Tana is this: Rabbi Shimon goes only by the reason for the law. The first Tana goes by both the reason and the actual simple meaning of the verse. Now these can contradict. So what? Then we will have to decide between them. But the idea is not like others that thought you go only by what the verse says, not the reason.
The point in short is not just to point out how to understand the Rambam [Maimonides] but also the deeper reason that Maimonides makes sense.
I believe you can do this with most of what Maimonides writes even things that seem ridiculous. And example if the reason he gives for the laws of pollution. The reason given is so as to not come too often into the Holy Temple in Jerusalem. This sounds silly until you understand he means the reason G-d made the laws of pollution is for this reason. He is not suggesting that it is not a reality, but giving the reason for the reality. In a deep way this could be understood about pollution as a force of the Dark Side. We can understand that God made this in order for it to be hard to come into Holiness.
