But there is this one thing:
As Achad Ha'am puts it in his article Shilton HaSechel (Hey! That's the name of the blog!):
Both of them see the purpose of the existence of the human species in the creation of the most complete epitome of humanity and both of them make the majority the tool of the minority in whom the highest human epitome takes form. (My Imperfect Translation)
Say what? The Rambam an elitist? The Rambam believing that the purpose of most men is to serve the better people?
Basically the Rambam believed that the ultimate purpose of man was to engage in philosophical speculation about God. Doing this is a way of turning "potential intellect" into "active intellect" and thus obtaining immortality of a sort. So the Rambam has a really good question:
תכלית היות האדם לצייר לנפשו המושכלות. ואם כן, מדוע המציא הקדוש ברוך הוא כל האנשים אשר לא יציירו מושכל לנפשם? ואנו רואים שרוב בני אדם ערומים מן העורמה וריקים מן החכמה, מבקשים התאווה, ושהאיש החכם המואס בעולם הוא יחיד בין רבים, לא ימצא אלא אחד בדור מהדורות?!
The purpose of man is to create for himself the "Active Intellect" If so why did God make people who will never create for themselves Active Intellect? We see that most people are empty of wisdom and seek desire and the smart man is one among many and may only be found in one generation out of many.
The Rambam answers that these people (most people) serve two purposes:
1. To do work for the one smart man
2. To give the smart man company
This is somewhat similar to how Nietszche envisions humanity in relation to his ubermensch or the super man. Nietzsche believed that those who cannot become supermen can find solace in the fact that they serve the superman. He glorified those thousands who died for the ubermensch - Napoleon for they had helped him in his goal.
"Ye lonely ones of today, ye who stand apart, ye shall one day be a people; from you who have chosen yourselves, a chosen people will arise; and from it the superman."
"Not mankind but the superman is the goal"
Needless to say the Rambam and Nietzsche had completely different views on who the superman was but still the shared elitism is extremely interesting. Try teaching this in the yeshiva world which learns the Rambam's works religiously and claims to revere him but would probably brand this idea of the Rambam as heresy. Don't believe me? The Rambam says all of this in his Introduction to the Mishna over here
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