Jewish philosophy
Jewish philosophy
Colette Sirat
INTRODUCTION
The history of medieval Jewish philosophy can be divided into two
consecutive periods. The first, beginning in the ninth century and ending
roughly with the death of Maimonides in 1204, occurred in Islamic
lands. The second, which lasted from the twelfth century until the end
of the Middle Ages, took place in Christian Europe.
Whether they lived among Muslims or Christians, Jews centred their
lives on the Torah, a word which was used beyond its strict meaning to
designate, not just the Pentateuch, but the whole scriptural tradition:
the twenty-four books of the Hebrew Bible, their commentaries and
also (except for the Karaites) the oral law: the Mishnah and Guemarah
which make up the Talmud.
In Jewish schools the Torah was studied in Hebrew and, for the
believer, the world was built around the revealed text. From the creation,
God has guided the course of universal history. The sun and the planets
are subject to his will. The God of the Bible is a moral agent who wills
and decrees. To man, whom he has created ‘in our image and likeness’,
he gives commandments and issues prohibitions. Humans can grumble
to God, plead with him, make him change his mind. Moses speaks to
God man to man: there is a dialogue between them. God is free to
reply or not, but he is visibly and audibly in the presence of the prophets,
appearing as a majestic king or sending his angels.
God has made a pact with the Jewish race. They are the chosen
people, especially close to God. Other peoples are God’s instruments,
whom he uses to punish the people of Israel and bring them back to
the right course. God has given his people, through Moses, his Law,
the Torah. Even for the later prophets, who considered that God was
king over all humanity, it was the Bible which enshrined divine will.
This text, revealed just once in human history contained all God’s
commands and all his prohibitions. For Jews the Torah, regarded as
eternal and complete truth, given once and for all, was the criterion
for all other truths. To turn against it would be to turn against God
himself.
Philosophy came from outside. It was enshrined in Greek texts,
translated into Arabic and, from the twelfth century onwards, into
Hebrew. It appears that, at the very start, the Jews made use of
doxographies; but the texts of Plato and Aristotle, along with Arabic
commentaries, very soon became available to them. Arabic was the
language which the Jews in Islamic lands spoke and wrote (sometimes,
using Hebrew characters). For the whole of the first period of Jewish
philosophy, philosophical texts were written in Arabic. Philosophy also
included science and was a requisite for many physicians, astronomers
and astrologers. It was not taught in the Jewish schools but by private
tutors, and so it was available only to the better off
Yet the majority of philosophers who had a significant influence on
Jewish thought in general were also rabbis, talmudic scholars and
leaders of their communities. Although they were sometimes attacked
for their opinions, the philosophers remained none the less within the
Jewish community. This was possible, perhaps, because there are no
articles of faith in Judaism. Orthodoxy is based, rather, on the Bible,
which is far from monolithic and contains various passages that can
be interpreted in more than one way. It is well known that, with regard
to the Law, from early times oral teaching gave room for variety, nuance
and innovation on the basis of the written text. The teaching was then
recorded in writing and itself expounded and glossed until it formed
an enormous (and even today still-expanding) body of material. Its
importance shows how new problems were resolved without going
against the old texts. And this use of allegory and symbolism as tools
for interpretation allowed different systems of thought—philosophical,
kabbalistic or ascetic—to remain within Judaism.
JEWISH PHILOSOPHY IN ISLAMIC LANDS
Jews in Islamic lands divided into the same philosophical schools as
the Muslims: the kalām, Neoplatonism and Aristotelianism. Similarly,
the questions which Jewish philosophers set themselves were, to a large
extent, the same as those discussed by their Muslim counterparts.
The kalām
The kalām or, to be precise, the Mu‘tazilite school, provided the context
for rabbinic thought for a number of generations, and it lasted even
longer among the Karaite Jews. Dāwūd ibn Marwān al-Muqammiṣ
(ninth century) is the first rationalist Jewish thinker whose work
survives. His ‘Ishrūn Maqāla (Twenty Chapters) expounds ideas inspired
by the kalām but strongly influenced by Christianity, to which—for
part of his life—he was a convert. His treatise is modelled on treatises
of the kalām, except for his vigorous defence of Judaism and his
arguments against other religions.
By contrast, other Jewish thinkers adopted only some ideas from
the kalām, in particular, the definition of reason as a universal moral
law transcending race and religion, which man finds within himself,
and which applies to God, assuring us that there exists a good God in
whom we can trust. Among the Karaites, Abū Yūsuf Ya‘qūb al-Kirkisānī
(Jacob al-Kirkisani) gave the fullest theoretical discussion of this
doctrine, whilst Japheth ben Ali made a translation of the Bible into
Arabic, accompanied by a commentary where these ideas emerge in
the reading of the text. Both thinkers lived in the tenth century. Their
great contemporary among rabbinic Jews was Saadiah ben Joseph Gaon
(882–942), who was born in Egypt and moved to Babylon; there, in
928, he became Gaon, the head of the Talmudic academies. He was
extremely prolific in every field: as a grammarian and lexicographer, a
translator of the Bible into Arabic and commentator on it, as a liturgical
poet and compiler of a prayer book, as a Talmudist and a jurist, as a
writer on the calendar and chronology. Saadiah philosophized and
engaged in polemic to prove the absolute truth of rabbinical Judaism
against the claims of the Karaites and dangers posed by other religions,
and by the various schools of philosophy and by scepticism in its
different forms.
Arguments based on reason are found in most of Saadiah’s works,
but it is in two of them that they receive a systematic exposition. They
are the Commentary on the Book of Creation (Tafsīr Kitāb al-Mabādī,
Peroush Sefer Yetzira), which was translated into Hebrew several times
and used especially in the eleventh and twelfth centuries; and the Book
of Doctrines and Beliefs (Al-Amānāt Wa-l‘I‘tiqādāt, Sefer Emunot
Wede‘ot), which still remains today one of the fundamental works of
Jewish theology.
Saadiah makes especial use of arguments taken from the kalām, as
the plan of the Amānāt shows. Its first two chapters discuss the unity
of God, the topic with which exponents of kalām usually begin their
treatises, whilst the seven following chapters consider God’s justice,
the second main theme of the kalām. None the less, Saadiah does not
adopt one of the central ideas of the kalām, that of atomism and the
renewal of creation by God at every instant (the corollary of which is
the denial that there are laws of nature). He chooses instead a somewhat
vague Aristotelian understanding of the physical world.
In the introduction to his Amānāt, Saadiah proposes a theory of
knowledge. Conviction (i‘tiqād) arises from three sources: external
reality, reason (that is to say, knowledge of good and evil) and what
reason deduces necessarily from the reality of things and from the
knowledge of good and evil. To these three Saadiah adds ‘the truthful
tradition’, that of the Torah (including the oral Torah, the Talmud).
The truthfulness of this tradition has been proved, Saadiah says, by
signs, prodigies and, in particular, by the miraculous feeding of the
Children of Israel with manna during their flight from Egypt. Whereas
miracles and prodigies might be illusory or simulated, the miracle of
the manna could not have been simulated, since it lasted for forty years
and was so public an event that any idea of a carefully contrived lie is
implausible. Nor could it have been a natural phenomenon which Moses
was able to produce, since the philosophers would also have known
about it and made use of the technique themselves. The ‘truthful
tradition’, the fourth source of knowledge, is therefore based on the
historical experience of the Jewish people. And Saadiah’s argument
gains added strength since none of the other religions questions the
historical reality of the exodus from Egypt and the Jews’ wanderings
in the desert.
The Torah itself asks us to seek to understand the teachings it
transmits. It does so for two reasons: first, so that the knowledge
transmitted by tradition becomes firmly fixed in the intellect; and,
second, so that we can reply to those who call the Law into question.
Now, the knowledge which rational, scientific investigation uncovers
turns out in fact to conform to traditional knowledge. Saadiah was
thus able to represent the Torah and scientific knowledge as two twigs
from the same branch. They can in no way contradict one another.
Any apparent contradictions are the result either of mistakes in our
reasoning, or of our failure to interpret Scripture correctly.
The structure of the Amānāt reflects this identity between tradition
and reason. Each chapter begins with an introduction to the problem.
Then follows an examination of biblical texts which confirm the thesis
and, finally, there is a rational analysis of the problem and a refutation
of opposing theses.
In his chapter on the creation, Saadiah begins by setting out the way
in which this enquiry should be pursued. Here the senses cannot be of
any help. Only rational arguments can be used. Whatever the
hypothesis—the eternity of the world, the eternity of matter, and so
on—an attempt must be made to establish it by reason.
Saadiah’s deep intuition is that the world is limited and changing.
Only the infinite action of God can sustain and explain this constant
change, the perceptual generation of a world both spatially and
temporally finite. The world and man, limited and imperfect, bear
witness to a perfect and infinite being and lead us to a rational
knowledge of the one God, creator of the world. In the introduction to
the chapter on the unity of God, Saadiah lists all the objections which
were made in his time to this rational way of thought and refutes them
all ([4.3] 78, 80):
Our Lord (be He exalted and glorified) has informed us
through the words of His prophets that He is One, Living,
Powerful and Wise, and that nothing can be compared unto
Him or unto His works. They established this by signs and
miracles, and we accepted it immediately. Later, speculation
led us to the same result. In regard to His Unity, it is said,
‘Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One’.
(Deut. 6:4)
God, the creator of the world, is therefore one; but who is he? And,
when we say of him that he is one, about what unity are we speaking?
What is the knowledge he possesses, on account of which we say he
is knowing, and what are the actions which are attributed to him, on
account of which we say that he acts? The rabbinical Jews replied to
these questions with verses from the Bible which often use in
connection with God not only such adjectives as ‘powerful’, ‘good
and merciful’, ‘jealous’, but also attribute to him bodily movements—
‘God rises’, ‘God comes down’ and even parts of the body—‘God’s
arm’, ‘God’s hand’. But Saadiah strongly opposes any notion of divine
corporeality. One of the central aims in his thought is to purify the
idea of God and demonstrate that God is incorporeal and
transcendent. Everything in our world can be defined according to
the Aristotelian categories. Even the soul and ‘divine Glory’ are
definable substances and so more or less corporeal, because for
Saadiah body and substance are one and the same thing. God,
however, cannot be defined by any of the Aristotelian categories. He
transcends them all; and there is nothing in common between finite,
composite bodies, which are subject to change, and God, who is
immaterial and always remains exactly what he is. Whilst his
attributes, power and knowledge, signify that God is not lacking in
power or knowledge, power and knowledge such as they are found in
man cannot be applied to God because, in God, attributes are identical
to essence. Men gain knowledge by learning over a period of time: it
comes to be where it was not previously, and in old age it decreases,
at death it disappears. But God has knowledge for all eternity. When
we talk about God using positive attributes, in reality we are talking
about ‘something other’, about which we can only form a vague
notion and of which we know only that it does not resemble what
exists here below. God’s attributes are identical to his essence (or
quiddity), and none is outside his essence. God is absolute unity.
Since we can arrive by reasoning at a refined and exact knowledge
of God, why was it necessary to send the prophets? According to
Saadiah, God, in his supreme knowledge, has acted ‘for the good’.
He does nothing in vain. The ‘justice of God’ (‘adl), as conceived in
the second of the Mu‘tazilites’ theses, shows why the very nature of
God makes prophecy legitimate. Saadiah then goes on to explain
why revelation was necessary for mankind. First, it sets out the
actions which allow the very general moral laws, dictated by reason,
best to be put into practice. Second, it includes other
commandments, which are of value and which reason does not
teach. Third, it allows people to act immediately, whereas reason,
although based on the same principles, takes time to arrive at its
conclusions. Moreover, some men never reach the level of rational
knowledge, because of their imperfection or their disinclination to
study, or because of the doubts which trouble them.
The Bible, however, is often written in anthropomorphic terms, which
contradict what reason teaches us: that God is one and incorporeal.
Yet tradition is drawn from the same source as rational knowledge
and so it cannot be contrary to reason. A rational explanation must
therefore be given for the whole of scriptural revelation, and especially
for the visions of the prophets. Three principles guide this explanation:
1 All the manifestations of the supernatural are the work of God and
God alone. Prophecy is a grace, a gift which God has put into a
human receptacle, who is then called a prophet. The prophet is mortal
like other men. He cannot do without food or drink. He leads a
normal married life. He cannot predict the future. Nor can he perform
miracles, except under exceptional conditions—otherwise it would
be necessary to suppose that he had superhuman capacities. The
prophet is merely an instrument of God’s will, the receiver of
supernatural visions.
2 God, who is unknowable and incorporeal, makes manifest his created
Glory, the first of his creations, an air which is finer and more subtle
than the visible air: the ‘Second Air’. This Second Air is audible and
visible, filled with light and colour, striking in its splendour. It is
through the Second Air that the created word was produced which
Moses heard, and the Ten Commandments heard in the visible air
by the whole people of Israel on Mount Sinai. It is the Second Air
which the prophets saw and called the Throne of Glory and
Cherubim, Angels, Seraphim…
3 God makes his glory visible in the manner of a teacher going from
the easier to the more difficult. He created man in such a way that
he was free to obey or disobey his commandments. His wish was
that man should merit the highest reward, the world to come, and it
is to this end that he made his orders and prohibitions. Among them
are some which reason would have shown us were necessary, and
others which revelation alone teaches us (though none of them is
contrary to reason). These purely religious laws allow the faithful to
prove their obedience and merit the reward which God wishes to
give them: immortality and resurrection at the time of the Messiah.
Saadiah Gaon’s thought remains very close to tradition, both in his
conception of God and his exegesis of texts. His charm and optimism
cannot fail to allure the modern reader. His simplicity ensures that he
will remain for ever young.
Jewish Neoplatonists
Isaac Israeli (born 850, died by 932, or perhaps c. 955) was a slightly
older contemporary of Saadiah’s. He was a famous doctor, and he has
the credit of having introduced into medieval Jewish thought texts and
ideas taken directly from the Greeks. Like al-Kindī, he also used Greek
texts which have not survived to modern times. His type of
Neoplatonism is based on emanation. Between the perfection of God
and the imperfection of the world below there are interposed more or
less perfect essences which link the incorporeal deity to the world of
matter. According to Isaac Israeli first matter and first form come from
God. Intellect is engendered from these. From Intellect emanates the
world of souls (that is, of the rational soul, the animal soul and the
vegetative soul). There follows the world of the spheres, then the
sublunary world with its four elements and what is made from them.
Our earth is a mixture of the four elements: earth, water, air and fire. It
is at the centre of the universe and without motion. The spheres, which
are made of a more perfect matter, the quintessence, revolve around
the earth and create by their movements the composite beings which
are bodies.
Other Neoplatonists held that first form and matter emanated from
God in a manner which was involuntary and outside time. But Isaac
Israeli lays great stress on the creation. God creates first matter and
first form. He makes them come to be from nothing, something which
God alone can do. Isaac is, however, in agreement with other
Neoplatonists in believing that first matter is intelligible, that is to say,
absolutely incorporeal. First form contains all other forms which come
into existence, but in a perfect way. Intellect, which is light and
splendour, comes from the conjunction of first form and first matter.
From Intellect emanates the rational soul, which is the human soul.
The Intellect holds a high rank in the scale of being, since its source is
a pure light, more elevated and brilliant than any body, even one as
perfect as the sphere of the heavens. The so-called ‘metaphysics of light’
play an important role in this description of the higher world, and it is
because the soul is part of this world that it is able to climb back up
again towards its former habitation. The start of this return is
knowledge of the higher world and certainty of the truth.
God, by his will and his power, has created and made manifest first
matter and first form from nothingness. But it is by emanation—a
necessary action—that Intellect, which is the source of souls and the
universe, comes from these two created beings. Intellect and souls act
in a different way from that found in the celestial sphere and the
sublunary world. It can be said to create, in that nothing is lost of the
essential light and lower beings are created from the shadow of this
light. But in the world of the spheres and below, natural action is by
generation and corruption, since the source of action is changed and
diminished by the action itself which it carries out on bodies with
qualities opposed to it. Below the celestial sphere all beings come into
being from the four simple elements: fire, air, water and earth. Whereas
in other bodies one or another of these elements predominates, in man
they are in harmonious equilibrium. Every creature made of the elements
is given a soul according to its capacity and each finds pleasure in
bringing itself closer to the principal element in it.
The three degrees of the soul—intellectual, animal and vegetative—
are not absolutely separate. For instance, certain animals have almost
as much intelligence and prudence as man. All this is due to the
inclination of one soul towards another. Sometimes, the rational soul
tends towards the animal soul and its actions tend towards those of
the animal soul which desires eating, drinking and pleasure. In the
same way, the animal soul has a tendency to assimilate its actions to
those of the rational soul when it is instructed and influenced by it.
The rational soul tends to draw itself near to the Intellect and reach
perfection, in which case it will be clear and pure, and it will seek good
and true things such as knowledge and understanding, purity and
saintliness, service of God and nearness to him. This all comes about
from the influence of the higher substance.
Since man of his own accord raises himself towards the Intellect,
and so towards God, what part does revelation play? Isaac Israeli divides
mankind into types according to which of each of the three souls is
dominant: the rational soul, the animal soul or the vegetative soul.
Only a small proportion of the human race is, therefore, truly close to
the light of the Intellect. These are the privileged individuals whom
God will use as intermediaries in order to bring the divine word to
humankind.
One of Isaac Israeli’s pupils, Dunash ben Tamin, brings out his train
of thought when he discusses Moses. Moses differs from the other
prophets because he heard the word of God in the way described in
Exodus 32:11: ‘the eternal one spoke to Moses face to face.’ Moses’
soul was superior to that of other men: it was subtle, light and, even
before it was separated from Moses’ body, it was united with the world
of the rational soul. For when souls are separated from their bodies,
they remain alive and are united with the world above: the soul becomes
intellect and, in an incorporeal, spiritual union, the intellect is united
with light.
Prophetic visions are no longer conceived as real, external
phenomena which are seen and heard, but as internal visions which
reflect spiritual rather than sensory reality. So far from being inferior
to sensory reality, spiritual reality is as much superior to it, as the
soul is superior to the body:
One whose rational soul has withdrawn itself [i.e. from the
lower souls] and upon whom intellect causes its light and
splendour to emanate becomes spiritual, god-like, and
longing exceedingly for the ways of the angels, as far as lies
within human power. The Creator, exalted and blessed be
He, therefore chose from among His creatures one qualified
in this manner to be His messenger, caused him to prophesy,
and showed through him His truthful signs and miracles. He
made him the messenger and intermediary between Himself
and His creatures, and caused His true Book to descend
through him.
([4.20] 139)
The Bible is not, however, a work of philosophy. It includes narratives
which have a sense which is far from intellectual (and some which can
hardly be understood at all!). The reason for this, Israeli explains, is
that God speaks the language of men so that all will understand him.
He bases his language on the capacities of his audience. Those among
them able to discern the pure sense will find it; because they are distant
from material things and their minds are detached and luminous, they
will see God’s words and his light. Those who are still incapable of
seeing the light will ask the sages to expound the Bible to them and,
little by little, thanks to their expositions, they will understand and will
come nearer to the source of purity until they are so close to the Intellect
that it will print its form in their soul. God himself provides the example
which the Intellect follows. God puts himself within reach of human
understanding: the Intellect imitates this divine way of teaching when it
wishes men to know future events, and the philosophers in their turn
take the same course when they explain viva voce what their pupils
cannot understand in their written work. The superior beings are like a
ray of light which penetrates through the entire breadth of a solid body.
The Intellect, the prophets and the philosophers all follow God’s own
footsteps as they incline themselves towards lower beings and help each
of them, so far as he is able, to climb the ladder of light.
It was not only philosophers who developed such themes: the quest
for purity, freedom from bodily desires, and the desire for union with
the Intellect. They were also taken up by scholars, rabbis, poets and
courtiers during the tenth to twelfth centuries: for instance, Haï Gaon
(938–1038, Babylon), president of the Talmudic academy; Baḥyā ibn
Paqudah (c. 1050–80, Andalusia), a judge on the rabbinical tribunal
and author of the famous devotional work, Guide to the Duties of the
Heart; the famous poet, Moses ibn Ezra (1055–c. 1135, Spain);
Abraham ibn Ezra (c. 1092–1167, Spain then Italy and France), also a
famous poet and biblical commentator; Joseph ben Jacob ibn Z. addik
(died 1149 at Cordoba), a judge on the rabbinical tribunal and a
philosopher; Abraham bar Ḥiyyah (died after 1136 at Barcelona), an
astronomer and mathematician who held an important post at the
court of Alphonsus I of Aragon and of the counts of Barcelona; and
Solomon ibn Gabirol and Judah Halevi.
Solomon ben Judah ibn Gabirol (c. 1022 to 1054/8, Spain) is wellknown
for his Hebrew poetry, both sacred and secular. His philosophy
is expounded in a treatise which has not survived in its Arabic original
but in the Latin translation, Fons Vitae (Source of Life) made by John
of Spain and Dominicus Gundissalinus in the mid-twelfth century. The
Fons Vitae was widely read by thirteenth-century Christian theologians,
who knew its author as ‘Avicebron’ or ‘Avencebrol’ and took him to
be an Arab—or even a Christian—thinker. In addition, there survive
some extracts from the work, translated into Hebrew, made in the
thirteenth century by Shem Tov ibn Falaqera. These do not preserve
the dialogue form found in the Fons Vitae. Gabirol’s treatise was known
to Neoplatonic Jewish philsophers and was fiercely criticized by the
first Jewish Aristotelian, Abraham ibn Daud. Then it was almost entirely
forgotten until 1846, when Solomon Munk showed that the extracts
made by Falaqera were from the work translated into Latin as the
Fons Vitae, and so that ‘Avicebron’ was none other than the famous
Hebrew poet, Solomon ibn Gabirol.
Gabirol’s system is Neoplatonic. Through knowing his own soul,
man can know nature, free himself from it and return to the spiritual
world, his place of origin. Knowledge is knowledge of being. There are
only three sorts of being: (1) primary substance, (2) primary matter
and form, (3) God and the Will, which is an intermediary between
God and matter-with-form. Man is able to grasp these types of being
because he finds within himself equivalents of them: his understanding
corresponds to primary substance, his soul to the Will and his matter
and form to primary matter and form. Man can know God’s actions
but not his essence apart from his acts, since it is infinite and above all
things. In the order of emanation, primary matter and form are the
nearest to the divine Will. From them together is engendered Intellect,
then Soul, and from Soul Nature, which is the last of the simple
substances. It is from Nature that bodily substance derives.
The path which will take the soul back to Intellect goes by the
knowledge of composite beings: spiritual beings which are called
‘simple’ although they are in fact composite. Indeed, ‘simple’ and
‘composite’ are relative terms: a being is simple with regard to that
which is lower than it, and composite with regard to that which is
above it. The entirety of things can thus be regarded as if it were
arranged in a line, beginning with universal matter and form. The
further it is from its source, the more composite a being is with regard
to that which goes before it, although it remains simple in relation to
that which follows it.
Matter, form and the Will are the true subject-matter of the Fons
Vitae. Gabirol describes at length the various types of matter and form,
universal and particular, which make up the universe. Beings are
individuated in the first place by forms, material or spiritual, whereas
matter is one and universal. But to the unity of form there corresponds
a unity of matter and, in another passage, Gabirol makes it clear that
the diversity of beings is not brought about because of form, since
form is one and entirely spiritual, but by matter which can be perfect
and subtle or thick and heavy.
The Will is the ultimate goal of man’s quest. This Will is identical
to the Wisdom of God and his logos. Conceived apart from its acts,
the Will is indeed identical to the divine essence, but it is distinguished
from it when its acts are considered. In the former case, it is infinite,
but finite in the second. It is an intermediary between the divine
essence and form and matter. It penetrates all things and is their
efficient cause; itself without motion, it is the cause of spiritual and
bodily movement.
In Gabirol’s philosophy, as in other Jewish Neoplatonic (and later
Aristotelian) philosophies, God can be approached only through
rational knowledge. Prophets and philosophers imitate God by their
intellect, in thought, and prophetic visions are no longer considered to
be dialogues with God or his angels but rather internal illuminations.
Bodily acts have no value in themselves: they prepare the soul to separate
from the body, since only then will it be able to fulfil its destiny.
It is this very approach to philosophy which Judah Halevi (born
before 1075, died 1140) wishes to supersede in his Kuzari. Written in
Arabic, the Book of Refutation and Proof, in Defence of the Despised
Faith is a dialogue between the king of the Khazars and the defenders
of philosophy, of Islam, Christianity and Judaism. From the beginning,
Judah Halevi insists that good intentions are not sufficient to please
God, who also cares about which rites and observances are used.
Above the natural manner of action, there is the supernatural way
of acting of the Amr Ilahi (God’s word and action): God has revealed
himself in history, in his choice of a people, a land and a language.
This choice is the only real proof of God’s existence, and it is part of
the order of the world. On to the mineral, vegetable, animal and rational
kingdoms, there is added, in the hierarchical order, the prophetic order,
that of Adam and his sons, of Noah and then of the whole people of
Israel.
Man is able, by his own strength, to rise as far as the level of the
Intellect. To do so, he must follow the discursive path, that of
philosophy. But, in order to be marked out by the Amr Ilahi, he needs
to follow the supernatural path, that of the Torah. God has reserved
this path for his elect. In every generation since Adam there was one
pure man, worthy of the Amr Ilahi; but then the whole people of Israel
and it alone was chosen by God.
Along with the choice of the people of Israel goes the choice of the
land of Israel and of its holy language, Hebrew. The land of Israel has
a special place in Judah Halevi’s work, and his Hebrew poems about
Jerusalem are among the most beautiful of all Jewish literature. They
are still recited today, and Judah Halevi’s thought, with its particularist
view of Judaism, remains as popular among modern Jewry as the
thought of Maimonides.
The most original writing of the twelfth century, however, steps aside
from debates between religion and philosophy. It is that of Abu’l-
Barakāt al-Baghdādī, who lived in Iraq and died, at a very old age,
after 1164. Towards the end of his life he converted to Islam. His Kitāb
al-Mu‘tabar, a sort of reply to Avicenna’s philosophy, is based on his
own personal reflections. He upholds the unity of the soul, denying
that there is a distinction between it and the intellect. In his view, there
is just one time, which measures esse and is similar for all beings,
including God. Space is three-dimensional and infinite. Abu’l-Barakāt
had a deep influence on Arab philosophy but none on Jewish thought,
and his works were not translated into Hebrew.
Maimonides
Moses ben Maimon was born in 1138 at Cordoba, where his father
was a rabbinical judge. In 1148 Maimon and his family fled from the
religious persecution which took place after the town fell to the
Almohades. After wandering from town to town in Spain, and perhaps
also in Provence, in 1160 they arrived at Fez in Morocco, In about
1165 the whole family fled from Fez and set off to Acre. For five months,
Maimon and his children lived in the land of Israel, then they went to
Cairo and settled at Fostat. Maimon’s son Moses rose rapidly in
Egyptian Jewish society, helped perhaps by family ties with some of
the important people there. For about five years from 1171 he was
‘Leader of the Jews’. He was subsequently deprived of this post, but
twenty years later he regained it and kept it until his death.
Maimonides earned his living by practising and teaching medicine,
which he had studied in north Africa. His fame reached its peak in
1185 when he was chosen as one of the official doctors of Al Fadil,
Saladin’s vizier. At the same time as he followed his profession and
composed his medical treatises, Maimonides completed two great
works, the Mishneh Torah in 1180 and the Guide of the Perplexed in
1190, as well as conducting a lengthy correspondence with the many
Jewish communities of Egypt and in other countries. His death in 1204
was the occasion for public mourning among Jews everywhere.
With the exception of the Mishneh Torah, all Maimonides’ works
were written in Arabic. They were almost immediately translated into
Hebrew. The Guide of the Perplexed was translated by Samuel ibn Tibbon
in 1204, and a second, less precise, more literary translation was made a
few years later by Judah al-Harizi. It formed the basis for the Latin
translation used by Christian scholastics such as Thomas Aquinas.
Maimonides’ reputation rests, in the first place, on his contribution
to law. It was as a legal authority that he was first known to the Jews
of the diaspora and still today many eastern Jewish communities follow
his juridical and religious rulings.
The comparison between Maimonides and Averroes is inescapable,
and one difference between the two thinkers is striking. By contrast
with Averroes, who held that philosophy should be carefully hidden
from the ignorant, Maimonides is a philosopher in all his works, legal
as well as philosophical, in the texts intended for the general public as
much as in those written for students of philosophy. After Aristotle, al-
Fārābī was Maimonides’ real master. His influence is visible in a youthful
work, the Milot-ha-Higayon, ‘A Logical Vocabulary’, written at the
age of 16, and it remains in Maimonides’ last work, the Guide. In a
letter written to Samuel ibn Tibbon a year or two before he died,
Maimonides told him:
Aristotle’s intellect [represents] the extreme of human
intellect, if we except those who have received divine
inspiration. The works of Aristotle are the roots and
foundations of all works on the sciences. But they cannot be
understood except with the help of commentaries, those of
Alexander of Aphrodisias, those of Themistius, and those of
Averroes, I tell you: as for works on logic, one should only
study the writings of Abū Naṣr al-Fārābī. All his writings are
faultlessly excellent. One ought to study and understand
them. For he is a great man.
On Avicenna, his view is more qualified:
Though the work of Avicenna may give rise to objections
and are not as [good] as those of Abu Nasr [al-Fārābī], Abu
Bakr al-Sāigh [Ibn Bajjah] was also a great philosopher, and
all his writings are of a high standard.
([4.13] lix-lx)
And to read the other Jewish and Arab philosophers was, he thought,
a waste of time.
The philosophical school to which Maimonides says he belongs, and
which he recommends to Samuel ibn Tibbon, is that of the Andalusian
philosophers, who strictly separated scientific knowledge from religion.
Maimonides, however, did introduce philosophical principles into all
his works, including those intended for the simple believer, such as Book
I, part one of his Mishneh Torah, the Book of Precepts and the
commentary on the Mishnah. These principles, thirteen in all, which are
discussed afresh in the Guide, are presented by Maimonides as truths
which everyone should accept by authority because they are the beliefs
of the Jewish people, the necessary condition for belonging to it:
When a man has accepted these principles and truly believes
in them, he forms part of the community of Israel; and it is
incumbent upon us to love him, to care for him and behave
towards him as God has ordered us to do: to love and
comfort him; if he sins because of his corporeal desires or his
bad instincts, he will receive the punishment proportioned to
his crime, and he may [afterwards] have the part [that
belongs to him in the world to come], he is a sinner within
the community of Israel. But if someone casts doubt on one
of these principles, he has foresworn his faith, he is a
renegade, a heretic, an unbeliever, he has rebelled against
God and it is a duty to hate him and to cause him to perish.
([4.7] 148–9)
The ‘Thirteen Principles’ are divided into three groups. The first five are
concerned with God, who is one and incorporeal; the following four
with prophecy and the Law; the last four with reward and punishment,
the coming of the Messiah and the resurrection of the dead.
The principles include certain articles of faith which were far from
being unanimously accepted by the Jewish community, especially in
these two respects:
(1) Divine incorporeality implies the rejection or allegorization of
many biblical passages and of a certain number of texts which
are an integral part of the oral Law. Maimonides was not the first
to declare that God is not corporeal, but he was the first to exclude
from the people of Israel those Jews who took the
anthropomorphic comments in the Bible in their literal sense.
(2) By ‘the world to come’ Maimonides understands the immortality
of the soul, and he does not make clear whether this is a matter of
individual immortality. Traditional texts use two other expressions
to talk about man after death: ‘the days of the Messiah’ and ‘the
resurrection of the dead’. For Maimonides, ‘the days of the Messiah’
means political independence of the Jews and their return to the
land of Israel. The Messiah will easily be recognized, since his coming
will coincide with a new period of history, totally different from
the time of the diaspora. As for the corporeal resurrection of the
dead, Maimonides holds that it is neither necessary from a scientific
point of view, nor theoretically impossible. If one believes in divine
omnipotence, it is a possibility. Clearly, this bodily resurrection is
not of great importance to Maimonides, especially since it would
be followed by a bodily death. Samuel ben Eli, Gaon of Baghdad,
attacked Maimonides sharply for failing to insist on the resurrection
of the dead and the survival of the individual human soul. In his
final work, The Letter on the Resurrection of the Dead, Maimonides
repeats his earlier view, unchanged, often with fierce irony.
A fourteenth-century versification of the Thirteen Principles became
part of the daily prayers of almost every Jewish community, except for
the Ashkenazim, thus impressing themselves on the great majority of
Jews and definitively shaping the Jewish notion of God.
The Guide of the Perplexed is the Jewish philosophical work most
known outside Judaism. By contrast with Maimonides’ other works,
which are models of clarity and order, the Guide is avowedly difficult
to understand. Like the Torah, the prophetic books and the Aggadot
of the Talmud, it is constructed in such a way as simultaneously to
hide and reveal its inner sense. The difficulties of its plan and the
ambiguities in its expressions can be traced back to the obscurities of
the texts it discusses.
Maimonides suggests, moreover, that his book should not be studied
chapter by chapter, but rather problem by problem. He asks that it
should not be read in the light of preconceptions, but that the reader
should first have studied all that ought to be studied, and that he should
not explain it to others.
The book is intended neither for the ignorant, nor for philosophers—
neither of these are in difficulties—but for those who, like Maimonides’
follower, Joseph ben Judah, have studied science, mathematics,
astronomy and then logic, and who pose themselves questions about
the Bible and its interpretation. Take the example of God’s
incorporeality. From the conceptual point of view, belief in the existence
of God is inseparable from his absolute unity and his absolute unity is
inseparable from his incorporeality. But it is quite otherwise when seen
from the pedagogical or historical angle. The Law of Moses, a political
law like every other religious law, was given to the Jewish people at a
certain point in its history. For it to be accepted, it had to take into
consideration the beliefs to which the people were accustomed. If it
had not done this, the political and intellectual good it brought would
have been lost. Before insisting on the existence of an incorporeal God
it was necessary to bring about acceptance of the existence of God
himself. When they fled from Egypt, the only type of existence which
the Jews could conceive was that of a corporeal being: ‘The minds of
the multitude were accordingly guided to the belief that He exists by
imagining that he is corporeal and to the belief that he is living by
imagining that He is capable of motion’ (I, 46; [4.13] 98). ‘God, may
He be exalted above every deficiency, has had bodily organs figuratively
ascribed to Him in order that His acts should be indicated by this
means’ ([4.13] 99). What was a gain in understanding at the time of
Moses had become an inexcusable fault by the time of Maimonides:
those who believe that God is corporeal were, as we have seen, to be
excluded from the Jewish community. The Sages themselves had never
committed this fault: ‘the doctrine of the corporeality of God did not
occur even for a single day to the Sages, may their memory be blessed
and…this was not according to them a matter lending itself to
imagination or confusion’ ([4.13] 102).
The problem which the Guide is intended to resolve is, therefore,
that of the Law’s double character. Sometimes its external sense, which
results from the historical situation at the time when it was granted,
serves to introduce and helps to discover the internal sense, which alone
is true. Sometimes the external sense prevents the reader from reaching
‘the knowledge of the Law in its reality’ and is contrary to reason. The
object of the Guide is to bring to light the two senses of the Bible:
through this duality alone can knowledge from science and revelation
be reconciled.
In the Guide there can be found the elements of the method which
allows the cloak of divine, scriptural allegory to be removed:
Know that the key to the understanding of all that the
prophets, peace be on them, have said, and to the knowledge
of its truth, is an understanding of the parables, of their
import, and of the meaning of the words occurring in them.
You know what God, may He be exalted, has said: And by
the ministry of the prophets have I used similitudes (Hos.
12:11). And you know that He has said: Put forth a riddle
and speak a parable (Ezek. 18:2).
([4.13] 10–11)
The first half of Book I treats in general the expressions in the Bible and
the Talmud which cannot be taken in their literal sense. In the second
half, God’s attributes are described and the Mu‘takalimun, among them
Saadiah, are attacked. Book II discusses philosophical doctrines, then
prophecy. Book III begins with an allegorical explanation of the ‘Account
of the Chariot’ and then considers providence and the fact that the
world will end and not continue eternally. Maimonides gives a
psychological explanation of the book of Job, a history of religions and
types of worship, and he goes on to talk about religious commands.
Clearly, it is beyond the scope of this survey to examine the great
variety of interpretations of the Guide. Our discussion must be limited
to mentioning a few of the especially important points in its doctrine.
(1) God and his attributes According to Maimonides, only negative
attributes can be applied to God. Any relation between two terms
implies something they have in common. But there can be nothing
in common between a being which is totally separate and another
being which depends on every other being. Even existence is not
common to them both, because ‘existence’ does not describe the
same thing when one speaks of God and when one speaks of a
created being, because God is a necessary existence and a created
being a possible existence.
For Moses, the prince among the prophets, as for man in general,
to know God means, not to know anything of his essence but to
know his actions. Through the speculative method which God
showed to Moses, it is possible to make progress in knowing the
unknowability of God’s essence. As we deny attributes of God, we
understand better his supereminence and the lack of relation
between his perfection and ours. To deny that God has emotions is
already to be closer to the truth about him than just to deny that he
has a body. To deny not only that he has emotions but that there is
any relation between him and other beings is to take another step
on the path of negative theology, a step which brings us closer to
the idea that God is above all our categories of thought. We should,
therefore, say nothing about God, and true prayer—the only prayer
which is befitting to God—is silence, since every positive praise in
fact consists of attributing to him what, to us, is perfection and, for
him, a defect. Maimonides quotes with great praise a Talmudic
story (Babylonian Talmud Berakhot 33b) where a worshipper adds
eulogistic adjective to eulogistic adjective in his prayers. Rabbi
Haninah tells him that these praises are as unfitting as if one were
to praise a king for all the silver coins he possessed, when his treasury
was full of gold. Indeed, Maimonides says, were we left to follow
reason alone, we would use none of these adjectives. We do so
because men have need for images in order to understand and also
just because the Torah used them. Since they were written in the
Torah, we are allowed to read them as part of the biblical text. But
we use them in our prayers only on the authority of the men of the
Grand Synod, since they have taken the responsibility for this
decision. Verbal prayer is, in fact, a concession to human weakness.
‘Knowing God’s actions’ is the second aspect of knowledge of
God. By knowing his creation, we learn what we should deny of
God. Every branch of knowledge can teach us something about
this. Arithmetic and geometry teach us that God’s unity is not
like the unity to which we add, or which can be multiplied. Physics
and astronomy teach us how God puts the world into motion
through the intermediary of separated intellects, in a perfect and
absolute manner. It is only because we have a tendency to describe
God in anthropomorphic terms that certain of God’s, or nature’s,
actions seem beneficent and certain others seem destructive. In
reality, God’s action is intended to maintain the immutable order
of nature, which includes the preservation of the human race as
of other species of living things.
(2) God’s understanding In Part I, Chapter 68 of the Guide,
Maimonides proposes a theory of understanding which seems to
contradict his negative theology.
Now when it is demonstrated that God, may He be
held precious and magnified, is an intellect in actu… It
is accordingly also clear that the numerical unity of the
intellect, the intellectually cognizing subject, and the
intellectually cognized object, does not hold good with
reference to the Creator only, but also with reference to
every intellect. Thus in us too, the intellectually
cognizing subject, the intellect and the intellectually
cognized object, are one and the same thing wherever
we have an intellect in actu.
(I, 68, [4.13] 165–6)
Contrary, then, to the views of Aristotle and al-Fārābī, Maimonides
holds that God does not merely know his own essence but also
every intelligible thing and the laws of nature: ‘for through
knowing the true reality of His own immutable essence, He also
knows the totality of what necessarily derives from all His acts’
(Guide, III, 21, [4.13], 485) The commentators have not found a
convincing explanation for this contradiction.
(3) The origin of the world In the Mishneh Torah, the proof of God’s
incorporeal existence is based on the perpetual movement of the
sphere and so on the eternity of the world. In the Guide,
Maimonides shows the extent to which the philosophical point
of view contradicts the religious one:
[T]he belief in eternity the way Aristotle sees it—that is,
the belief according to which the world exists in virtue
of necessity, that no nature changes at all, and that the
customary course of events cannot be modified with
regard to anything—destroys the Law in its principle,
necessarily gives the lie to every miracle, and reduces to
inanity all the hopes and threats that the Law has held out…
If, however, one believed in eternity according to the
second opinion we have explained—which is the opinion
of Plato—…this opinion would not destroy the
foundations of the Law and would be followed not by
the lie being given to miracles, but by their becoming
admissible. It would also be possible to interpret
figuratively the texts in accordance with this opinion.
And many obscure passages can be found in the texts of
the Torah and others with which this opinion could be
connected or rather by means of which it could be
proved. However, no necessity could impel us to do this
unless this opinion were demonstrated. In view of the
fact that it has not been demonstrated, we shall not favor
this opinion, nor shall we at all heed that other opinion.
(II, 25, [4.13] 328–9)
Commentators have interpreted these passages in opposing fashions.
Some take them to be a clear statement in favour of creation, whereas
for others they seem rather to disguise Maimonides’ view, which he
proposes clearly elsewhere, in favour of the eternity of the world.
Shlomo Pines, in the most recent discussion of the problem, suggests
that problems of method came to occupy Maimonides increasingly as
his thought matured, which can be summarized as follows:
1 Aristotle’s physics are true so far as the sublunary world is concerned,
but dubious with regard to the heavens and the order of intelligences.
2 Man cannot reach the level of intellectual understanding except
through the imagination, through the phantasmata of bodily things
which, according to a quotation he makes from al-Fārābī’s
Commentary on the Nicomachean Ethics, implies the denial of
the immortality of the soul. (The only happiness would be a
political one.)
Maimonides’ extreme intellectualism was not an easy doctrine to live
with: his son, Abraham, who followed as head of the Jewish community
in Egypt adopted a sufi-like mysticism and gathered around him a
group of spiritually intense pietists. The descendants of Maimonides
continued to practise this mystical approach to religion for two hundred
years.
Ibn Kammūnah (thirteenth century) may be considered the last Jewish
philosopher living in Islamic lands. In the fifteenth century, however,
there was a sort of renaissance of Jewish philosophy, accompanied by
mysticism, in the Yemen.
JEWISH PHILOSOPHY IN CHRISTIAN LANDS
From the twelfth century onwards, Christians and Jews discovered a
whole body of Greek texts and their Arabic commentaries. They were
translated into Hebrew for the use of Jews, just as they were put into
Latin for Christian readers.
Jewish philosophy in Christian lands was based on Greek and Arabic
sources, but also on the works of Jews who had written in Arabic.
Maimonides had seen no need to use texts written by other Jews, since
Greek and Islamic works provided what was essential in disciplined
knowledge. But his successors, who lived among Christians, wanted
to know this Jewish philosophy, and there were translators—often
dynasties of translators—who worked to make these texts available to
them. The first of them was Judah ben Saul ibn Tibbon. He translated
works by Baḥyā ibn Paqudah, Judah Halevi and Saadiah. In 1204
Samuel ibn Tibbon put Maimonides’ Guide into Hebrew. The work
came as a revelation to educated Jews. All of a sudden, the passages of
the Bible which offended reason became clear and rational.
Maimonides, as the spiritual leader of Judaism, was already celebrated
for his religious learning. Now, with the Guide, he showed that he was
also a consummate philosopher, who accepted the true path of scientific
knowledge—that of Aristotle—and showed that true Judaism was the
religion which fostered this knowledge. The Guide became a manual
of philosophy.
Aristotle could not be studied without a commentary, and Maimonides
himself had recommended those of Averroes. From the beginning of
the thirteenth century, Averroes’ commentaries were translated into
Hebrew but also, in the middle of the century, popularized through
encyclopaedias: the Midrash ha-Hokhma of Judah ben Solomon ha-
Cohen, the Sha‘ar ha Shamayim of Gerson ben Solomon of Arles and
the De‘ot ha-philosophim of Shem Tov ibn Falaqera. Besides Averroes,
there are frequent references to Aristotle, Plato, Alexander of Aphrodisias,
Themistius, al-Fārābī, Avicenna, Ibn Bājjah, and Greek and Arabic
mathematical, astronomical and medical texts. The Jewish philosophers
were deeply affected by their reading of Averroes and this coloured
their interpretation of Maimonides. Very often, Averroist ideas were
preferred to those of Maimonides, thereby sharpening the opposition
between philosophy and religion. Except in Italy, no Christian author
is named and the influence of Christian scholasticism is not explicitly
acknowledged. Indeed, the universities were Christian institutions to
which the Jews had no access. Jews spoke the vernacular (French,
Provençal, Italian or Catalan), but these spoken languages did not give
them knowledge of Latin. Whereas Jewish philosophers in Islamic
countries benefited from all the sources of inspiration open to their
Muslim colleagues, those in Christian lands were limited to Hebrew
texts. This gave a certain homogeneity to Jewish philosophy, but also
limited it. In contrast with what had happened in Islamic lands, Jewish
philosophy developed in parallel, but separately, from Christian thought,
and the connections between the two are not easy to discern. Often
they share common problems; their answers are usually different.
During the thirteenth century, many philosophical works were
written. Along with pursuing the sciences, authors engaged in the
philosophical explanation of traditional texts, as Maimonides had
shown, and of their anthropomorphic expressions. Philosophy was no
longer the preserve of a learned or rich minority, but became available
to a large section of society. An enlightened middle class had grown up
in the south of France and Provence, in Catalonia, Spain and Italy. The
existence of towns, material prosperity and the extensive links between
the various Jewish communities encouraged the growth of a milieu
where science and philosophy were keenly studied, and where scholars
were numerous and influential within the community. Philosophy
became the subject of public sermons. True, Jacob Anatolio was forced,
by the opposition of some of his community, to abandon the set of
philosophical sermons he had been giving on Saturdays in the
synagogue. But the very fact that he had begun to give them, with the
agreement of a certain number of the community, shows well how
public philosophical teaching had become.
Both the upholders of traditional Judaism and the exponents of the
kabbalah, which was developing in this period in Catalonia and
Provence, were violently opposed to this surge of interest in philosophy.
There was fierce anti-philosophical polemic in the Jewish communities
during the whole of the thirteenth century, which reached its climax at
several points: in 1202, about the resurrection of the dead (even before
the Guide of the Perplexed had been translated), in 1240–2 and then
at the very end of the century. This controversy about studying
philosophy itself came to an end when the Jews were expelled from
France in 1305, but the underlying differences of view continued until
the end of the Middle Ages.
In the fourteenth century, Maimonides remained the fixed point of
reference and provided the framework for Jewish thought. The central
problems, however, and the way of tackling them began to be affected
by the scholastic philosophy of the Christian universities: for instance,
the question of individual forms in Yedaya ha-Penini, at the very
beginning of the century; that of future contingents in the 1320s and
1330s; that of non-Aristotelian (Parisian) physics at the end of the
century. In the second half of the fourteenth century, translations from
Latin into Hebrew were more often of medical than philosophical texts,
but they began to include works of logic. There was also a resurgence
of interest in astrology, with a Neoplatonic emphasis.
Gersonides and Crescas
The dominant Jewish philosopher of the fourteenth century was
Gersonides. Gersonides (Levi ben Gerson, Leo of Bagnols) (1288–1344)
seems never to have left the south of France, where he lived at Bagnolsur-
Cèze, in Languedoc, in Avignon and in Orange. He is often considered
the greatest Jewish philosopher after Maimonides. Like Maimonides,
he was a philosopher and a Talmudist, as well as being learned in the
sciences.
Besides works on astronomy (where he attacks some of the
fundamental principles used by Ptolemy and proposes his own
solutions) and biblical commentaries, Gersonides wrote (still mostly
unpublished) commentaries on the epitomes and Middle Commentaries
of Averroes. They were composed between 1319 and 1324 and cover
the greater part of Aristotle’s oeuvre. These are purely philosophical
works and do not deal with questions linked to religion. In the excursus,
where Gersonides expresses his own ideas, he refers readers to his Wars
of the Lord. This work, divided into six books, took ten years to write
and was finished in January 1329. Its introduction shows how much it
differs from Maimonides’ writings both in method and in its thoughts:
I would like to examine in this book several important yet
difficult questions on which many crucial doctrines relevant to
man’s intellectual happiness are based. First, is the rational
soul immortal when it has achieved [only] some perfection?
Second, when a man is informed by dreams or divination or
prophecy of future events, is he informed of them essentially
or accidentally?… Third, does God know existent things?…
Fourth, is there divine providence over existent things?…
Fifth, how do the movers of the heavenly bodies move these
bodies, and how many movers are there, as far as we can
know?… Sixth, is the universe eternal or created?…
Now it is without doubt essential that the reader of this
book be familiar with the mathematical science, the natural
sciences, and metaphysics. Of the questions mentioned so far,
some belong to the sciences, others to metaphysics, and
others require a knowledge of mathematics [including astronomy].
([4.14] 91–4)
Gersonides has therefore written a work about science, and he deals
with mathematical, physical and metaphysical—that is to say,
philosophical—questions. His intended audience are those who are
plunged into perplexity by scientific questions to which previous
philosophers have found no solution. It is not the letter of the biblical
text which causes problems:
The reader should not think it is the Torah that has
stimulated us to verify what shall be verified in this book,
[whereas in reality] the truth itself is something different. It is
evident, as Maimonides (may his name be blessed) has said,
that we must believe what reasoning has proved to be true. If
the literal sense of the Torah differs from it, it is necessary to
interpret those passages and accord them with reasoning.
Accordingly, Maimonides (may his name be blessed) explains
the words of the Torah that suggest that God (may He be
blessed) is corporeal in such a way that reason is not
violated. He, therefore, maintains that if the eternity of the
universe is demonstrated, it would be necessary to believe in
it and to interpret the passages of the Torah that seem to be
incompatible with it in such a way that they agree with
reason. It is, therefore, evident that if the course of
speculation causes us to affirm doctrines that are different
from what appears to be the literal sense of Scripture, we are
not prohibited by the Torah to pronounce the truth on these
matters, for this is not incompatible with the true
understanding of the Torah. The Torah is not a political law
that forces us to believe false ideas; rather it leads us to the
truth to the extent that is possible…
([4.14] 98)
In Gersonides’ view, most of the prophets did not have revelations about
things to do with the intelligible world. So Abraham did not know how
many stars there are, because this number was not known in his day.
Ezekiel thought that he had heard the voice of the celestial spheres,
because this is how people thought of it in his times. Nor did the prophets
have a political role (and here Gersonides rejected the whole Arab and
Jewish political tradition); the purpose of dreams, divination and
prophecy is to reveal the future, especially future contingents which
will happen to individual human beings. These future events seem
accidental. In fact, they can be known in advance, by dream, divination
or prophecy, because they have been determined and arranged. The
fact that accidental events are part of an order is proved by the existence
of men who are said to have been born under a good star. They are
granted every success whilst for other men misfortune is heaped on
misfortune. But, if good or bad fortune were accidental, they would be
distributed in fairly equal measure. Another argument is that, as the
most eminent of creatures, man is taken care of by the celestial substances
to such an extent that his actions and thoughts come from them. So
astrologers know what people think and their predictions are often
correct. When they predict wrongly, this is because of the distance of
the stars from us and the limitations of the astrologers’ knowledge.
Since that which, for man, is an accident, is ordered and determined for
the stars, these human events are in fact ordered and determined.
There are, however, acts which cannot be foreseen in the ordering
of the stars: those which are freely chosen by men. But such acts are
few. Indeed, almost all the thoughts of men and their movements are
determined by the stars. Men are the most noble creatures and the
order of the stars is intended for the good, and so men benefit more
than other animals from the beneficent influence of the stars. It is rare
that men set themselves against this order and, in fact, the great majority
of events which we call accidental are determined and knowable. They
are therefore the objects of scientific knowledge: of God’s knowledge,
eminently perfect; of the more partial knowledge of the Agent Intellect;
and of the very limited and incomplete knowledge of man—a degree
of knowledge which, none the less, gives him immortality.
God’s thought is directed not merely toward himself but also to the
law, order and organization of beings, which he considers in a single,
unified concept. All the attributes which he has disseminated to the
pure forms are perfect within him. To him then can be attributed those
attributes which are the reflection of the perfection of the divine being
in us: essence, existence, unity, substantiality, understanding, the joy
which accompanies doing good and so on.
Gersonides discusses the creation of the world from an astronomer’s
point of view. God created the world by beginning with a first body
lacking in form and therefore not being. This first body, entirely in
potency, neutral and lifeless, has an existence which is known to the
senses. It is the fluid body between the spheres and sometimes it is
opposed to form. It can be seen in the spheres, where God has given it
a geometrical form along with the ability to keep this form; whilst, in
the sublunary world, it has the form of the elements and the ability to
receive every form.
God created the world in time. Gersonides rejects the definition of
the present instant as that which separates the past from the future. An
instant can be the beginning or the end of an interval of time. In order
to support the idea that the world was created in time, Gersonides also
brings in the argument that history is still going on and is far from
having reached its conclusion; consider the history of the branches of
knowledge, or of the dissemination of God’s law, or the history of
languages.
Although he was deeply convinced of the truth of astrology,
Gersonides upholds the existence of human free will, as all the other
Jewish philosophers had done. The problems of determinism and future
contingents which, in Christian scholastic philosophy, had taken a clear
form in the work of Peter Aureoli, were raised in Jewish circles by
Abner of Burgos. Abner’s unqualified determinism was the justification
for his conversion to Catholicism in the 1320s.
It is all the more astonishing to find an equally complete
determinism in the thought of Hasdaï Crescas. Hasdaï Crescas was
the leader of the Jewish community in Barcelona, already well known
in 1367. His only son was killed in the anti-Jewish uprisings of 1391,
though he himself survived. The wave of conversions to Catholicism
which would go on through the whole of the fifteenth century had
already begun, and Crescas dedicated himself to combating it and to
reconstructing the Jewish communities which had been destroyed.
His two polemical works were written in Catalan and his
philosophical book in Hebrew.
Aristotelian philosophy was accused of having disturbed people’s
minds and of having driven the heads of communities—rich men who
were often interested in philosophy—to convert and take with them
other Jews. The Light of God (Or Adonaï) was planned by Crescas as
just the first part of a more extensive project, intended to replace the
whole of Maimonides’ work, both in philosophy and rabbinical
jurisprudence. But the second part of it was never written. According
to Crescas, the very root of Maimonides’ philosophy, like that of any
thinker basing himself on Aristotle, was false. The route to God is not
intellectual understanding, but fear and love.
The final purpose of human existence is the fulfilment of the divine
commands given by God himself to the children of Israel, in order that
they should love and fear him. Scientific knowledge, a preliminary to
the knowledge and understanding of the commandments, must be based
on a physics different from Aristotle’s, because his physics is false.
Book I of the Light of God is devoted to a critique of Aristotelian
physics as it is expounded by Maimonides in the twenty-five
propositions which precede Book II of his Guide.
Crescas argues that Aristotle gives to the infinite the characteristics
of finite bodies, and conceives the infinite only in relation to the finite.
If it exists, the infinite is not contained within bounds. It has neither
weight nor lightness, neither form nor shape. If it has a circular
movement, it is not around a centre and, although it moves itself
voluntarily, it has no need of any external object to bring about its
movement. It can just as well be a simple being as a composite one.
Similarly, place in the Aristotelian definition is the place of the elements,
not the place of the world as a whole. Crescas holds that it is necessary
to dissociate body and space. Space can be empty of bodies. In this
case, the definition of the place of the world as being its external
boundary no longer applies, and we can conceive an infinite space.
Space is no longer the relation between bodies, but, as pure extension,
it exists before bodies. The finite corporeal world is situated within an
infinite void. Crescas does not deny the possibility of an infinite number
of worlds and this hypothesis, although not explicitly adopted, is
perhaps implied by his citation of a passage from the Talmud. In the
same way, Crescas refuses to define time as the measure of movement:
time is also a measure of rest.
If we can conceive an infinity of time and an infinite numerical series,
we can no longer accept the proof of God’s existence based on showing
that he is the Prime Mover because this proof is based on the assertion
that a series of causes cannot be infinite and so must end in a first
cause.
Crescas’ central intuition, then, is that, because God is infinite, space
and time are infinite, and a numerical series can be extended infinitely.
The human mind cannot reach the essence of an infinite God either
through philosophy or through revelation. God is unknowable in his
essence. But, like Gersonides, Crescas asserts the existence of positive
divine attributes. Yet, for him, there is no possible relation or
comparison between God and his creatures. We gain our idea of God’s
attributes in the way in which we gain our idea of the infinite from the
finite. Equally, the number of divine attributes is itself infinite. Just as
the final aim of human existence is not understanding, so our joy in
God cannot be the contemplation or understanding of his essence: it is
the joy of a gift, of the Good which gives of itself. God is the true agent
of all creatures. He makes them act through will and intention, and
maintains them always in being through the emanation of his goodness.
God likes to spread goodness and perfection and his joy is that of
always giving the being which he spreads over the whole of creation,
in the most perfect way that can be.
The joy which God experiences in an infinite and essential way is a
giving; it is also love and desire. God has loved and desired the
patriarchs, and he loves and desires the love of Israel. God’s power is
infinite. If it has given rise to a finite world, that is a result of will and
choice. It is not merely infinite in potentiality but also in act. God’s
omnipotence, which reason shows to be infinitely strong in act, is
revealed in the biblical miracles, when substances are created or
destroyed, as when Moses’ rod was changed into a snake.
As a result of God’s omnipotence, there is no place for free will.
Only the feeling of freedom differentiates freedom from compulsion.
All human acts are made necessary by their causes. The will of the
agent who causes an act is itself determined by causes which might be
external or internal or both. Divine commands and the rewards or
punishments which follow obedience to them or their disregard are
themselves links in the causal chain which leads to a human act. A
man is said to act ‘voluntarily’ when a cause is internal and not perceived
by him, and ‘involuntarily’ only when an external cause is perceived as
forcing him, despite his internal dissent, to such and such an action.
Joy accompanies the fulfilment of God’s commandments as an effect
accompanies a cause, but only when the soul has acted voluntarily,
without any external obligation which it regards as contrary to it.
Beliefs, especially true beliefs, are obligations on the soul, not results
of its will, since their reality constrains the soul to accept them. Beliefs,
then, give rise neither to reward nor punishment, and they are
unrelated to the knowledge of intelligible things. Nor are the
intelligibles what one calls ‘the survival of the soul’. Reward—joy—
is brought by the effort towards knowledge, the desire to know, the
wish to understand.
The goal of the Torah is to enable men to acquire perfection in
behaviour and belief, material happiness and happiness of the soul.
Most important is the happiness of the soul. This is the ultimate aim of
God’s law. The soul’s eternal happiness is the love and fear of God.
Love and fear of God are the final stage, not only of the Torah, but
also of true philosophy.
EPILOGUE
In Crescas’ thought, we can see the influence not only of Christian
scholasticism, but also of the kabbalah, which became more and more
important in Jewish thought, the worse became the political situation
of Jews in Spain and the more eagerly they returned to the sources of
their religion. It became necessary to define precisely what were the
principles of Judaism. It is not correct to speak of ‘dogma’ in Judaism.
Jewish tradition, the Bible and the Talmud, was considered as a whole,
over a long period. It had to be accepted in its entirety, since belief was
involved in each of the commandments. It was in confrontation with
other religions that Judaism found itself obliged to clarify and
systematize the principles of the faith. This problem was marginal up
until the end of the fourteenth century, but it became a burning issue in
the fifteenth century, culminating with Albo (c. 1366–1444?). Albo
places his assertion of the superiority of the Torah within the context
of a consideration of the different types of law: natural, conventional
and divine. The Torah alone, he believes, is divine law, because it guides
men towards the true good: the immortality of the soul.
Traditionally, the fifteenth century is taken to mark the end of
medieval Jewish philosophy. Yet as many philosophical works were
written as they had been during the previous two hundred years.
Here—as in the history of medieval Jewish philosophy in general—
history has been distorted in favour of the ‘great philosophers’, whose
works were printed in the sixteenth century and so widely diffused.
Here in this chapter an anachronistically disproportionate weight has
been given to the better known philosophers, in order to avoid too
thin a treatment of too many figures. More obscure philosophers,
whose works are still unprinted, deserve to have a more important
place. We would then see that the fifteenth century, far from being a
barren period, witnessed a real renewal of all the types of philosophy
which had previously flourished: the Aristotelian current with Joseph
ben Shem Tov ibn Shemtob and his son Shem Tov, Abraham ben
Yomtob Bibago, Isaac Abraham and, in the area of Padua, Elias del
Medigo and his circle. In Italy, the Neoplatonic current was
represented especially by Judah Abraham. In Provence, Africa and
Turkey, as well as the Yemen, medieval philosophical texts were still
read and taught to a wide audience. True, kabbalistic ideas came little
by little to figure in the work of most philosophers. No longer did
intellectual understanding play the only important part in the
philosophers’ systems—too many political and religious events had
shaken the philosophers’ ivory tower. But philosophical ideas (the
most important of which is that of God’s incorporeality) had taken
root in the Jewish community, and to this day they remain an integral
part of Judaism.
(translated by John Marenbon)
BIBLIOGRAPHY
English translations of the most important texts are given here, followed by some
English studies.
Translations
Karaite thinkers
4.1 Karaite Anthology, ed. L.Nemoy, New Haven, Conn., 1952; repr. 1980.
Saadiah Gaon
4.2 The Book of Beliefs and Opinions, a translation of the Amanat by S.Rosenblatt,
New Haven, Conn., 1948.
4.3 The Book of Doctrines and Beliefs, an abridged translation of the Amanat by
A.Altmann, in I.Heinemann (ed.) Three Jewish Philosophers, New York, 1969.
Solomon ben Judah ibn Gabirol
4.4 The Fountain of Life, Book III, trans. H.E.Wedeck, London, 1963.
Judah Halevi
4.5 Book of Kuzari, trans. by H.Hirschfeld, New York, 1946; also in I.Heinemann
(ed.) Three Jewish Philosophers, New York, 1969.
Maimonides
4.6 Mishneh Torah: The Book of Knowledge, trans. M.Hyamson, Jerusalem, 1962.
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trans. R.L.Weiss and C.E.Butterworth, New York, 1975.
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Gersonides
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Joseph Albo
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Isaac Abrabanel
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and the Art of writing, Glencoe, Ill., 1976.
4.33 Reines, A.J. Maimonides and Abrabanel on Prophecy, Cincinnati, Oh., 1970.
Isaac Abrabanel
4.34 Natanyahu, B. Don Isaac Abravanel, Statesman and Philosopher, Philadelphia,
Pa., 1953.
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