HISTORY OF ISRAEL LIBRARY

MEDIEVAL JEWISH PHILOSOPHY

CONTENTS

Introduction

I. Isaac Israeli

II. David ben Merwan Al Mukammas

III. Saadia ben Joseph Al-Fayyumi

IV. Joseph Al-Basir and Jeshua ben Judah

V. Solomon Ibn Gabirol

VI. Bahya Ibn Pakuda

VII. Pseudo-Bahya

VIII. Abraham Bar Hiyya

IX. Joseph Ibn Zaddik

X. Judah Halevi

XI. Moses and Abraham Ibn Ezra

XII. Abraham Ibn Daud

XIII. Moses Maimonides

XIV. Hillel ben Samuel

XV. Levi ben Gerson

XVI. Aaron ben Elijah of Nicomedia

XVII. Hasdai ben Abraham Crescas

XVIII. Joseph Albo

Conclusion

CONCLUSION

Our task is done. We have now reached the limit we have assigned ourselves. We have traced objectively and with greater or less detail the rationalistic movement in medieval Jewry from its beginnings in the ninth and tenth centuries in Babylon among the Karaites and Rabbanites to its decline in Spain and south France in the fifteenth century. We have followed its ascending curve from Saadia through Gabirol, Bahya and Ibn Daud to its highest point in Maimonides, and we likewise traced its descent through Gersonides, Crescas and Albo. We took account of its essential nature as being a serious and conscientious attempt to define a Jewish Weltanschauung in the midst of conflicting claims of religions and philosophies. The Jewish sacred writings had to be studied and made consistent with themselves in regard to certain ethical and metaphysical questions which forced themselves upon the minds of thinking men. In this endeavor it was necessary to have regard to the system of doctrine that was growing up among their Mohammedan neighbors and masters itself inherited from Greece and adjust its teachings to those of Judaism. The adjustment took various forms according to the temperament of the adjuster. It embraced the extremes of all but sacrificing one of the two systems of doctrine to the other, and it counted among its votaries those who honestly endeavored to give each claim its due. The system of Judaism was the same for all throughout the period of our investigation, excepting only the difference between Karaites and Rabbanites. This was not the case with the system of philosophic doctrine. There we can see a development from Kalam through Neo-Platonism to Aristotelianism, and we accordingly classified the Jewish thinkers as Mutakallimun, Neo-Platonists or Aristotelians, or combinations in varying proportions of any two of the three systems mentioned.

It was not our province to treat of the mystic movement in medieval Jewry as it developed in the Kabbalistic works and gained the ground yielded in the course of time by the healthier rationalism. To com plete the picture it will suffice to say that as the political and economic conditions of the Jews in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries deteriorated, and freedom and toleration were succeeded by persecution and expulsion, the Jews became more zealous for their own spiritual heritage as distinguished from foreign importations; philosophy and rationalism began to be regarded askance, particularly as experience showed that scientific training was not favorable to Jewish steadfastness and loyalty. In suffering and persecution those who stuck to their posts were as a rule not the so-called enlightened who played with foreign learning, but the simple folk who believed in Torah and tradition in the good old style. The philosophical and the scientific devotees were the first to yield, and many of them abandoned Judaism. Thus it was that mysticism and obscurantism took the place of enlightenment as a measure of self-defence. The material walls of the Ghetto and the spiritual walls of the Talmud and the Kabbala kept the remnant from being overwhelmed and absorbed by the hostile environment of Christian and Mohammedan. The second half of the fourteenth, and the fifteenth century were not favorable to philosophical studies among the Jews, and the few here and there who still show an interest in science and philosophy combine with it a belief in Kabbala and are not of any great influence on the development of Judaism.

Shemtob ben Joseph ibn Shemtob (ab. 1440) author of a work entitled "Emunot," is a strong opponent of Greek science and philosophy. He is not content with attacking the lesser lights and extremists like Albalag or Gersonides or Abraham ibn Ezra. He goes to the very fountain-head of Jewish Aristotelianism and holds Maimonides responsible for the heresies which invaded the Jewish camp. He takes up one doctrine after another of the great Jewish philosopher and points out how dangerous it is to the true Jewish faith. Judah Halevi and Nachmanides represent to him the true Jewish attitude. The mysteries of the Jewish faith are revealed not in philosophy but in the Kabbala, which Maimonides did not study, and which he would not have understood if he had studied it, for he had no Kabbalistic tradition.

Unlike Shemtob, his son Joseph ben Shemtob (d. 1480) shows great admiration for Aristotle and Maimonides. But he is enabled to do so by lending credence to a legend that Aristotle in his old age recanted his heretical doctrines, in particular that of the eternity of the world. Joseph ben Shemtob made a special study of Aristotle's Ethics, to which he wrote a commentary, and endeavored to show that the Stagirite's ethical doctrines had been misunderstood; that the highest good of man and his ultimate happiness are to be sought according to Aristotle not in this world but in the next. It was likewise a misunderstanding, he thinks, when Maimonides and others make Aristotle deny special Providence. True science is not really opposed to Judaism. At the same time he too like his father realizes the danger of too much scientific study, and hence agrees with Solomon ben Adret that the study of philosophy should be postponed to the age of maturity when the student is already imbued with Jewish learning and religious faith.

The son of Joseph, bearing the name of his grandfather, Shemtob ben Joseph (fl. ab. 1461-89), followed in his father's footsteps, and wrote a commentary on the "Guide of the Perplexed" of Maimonides, whom he defends against the attacks of Crescas.

Isaac ben Moses Arama (1420-1494) is the author of a philosophico-homiletical commentary on the Pentateuch entitled, "Akedat Yizhak," and a small treatise on the relations of philosophy and theology. He was also interested in Kabbala and placed Jewish revelation above philosophy.

Don Isaac Abarbanel (1437-1508), the distinguished Jewish statesman who went with his brethren into exile at the time of the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492, was a prolific writer on Biblical exegesis and religious philosophy. Though a great admirer of Maimonides, on whose "Guide" he wrote a commentary, and whose thirteen articles of the creed he defended against the strictures of Crescas and Albo, he was nevertheless an outspoken opponent of the rationalistic attitude and has no phrases strong enough for such men as Albalag, Gersonides, Moses of Narbonne and others, whom he denounces as heretics and teachers of dangerous doctrines. He does not even spare Maimonides himself when the latter attempts to identify the traditional "Maase Bereshit" and "Maase Merkaba" with the Aristotelian Physics and Metaphysics, and adopts Kabbalistic views along with philosophic doctrines. He is neither original nor thoroughly consistent.

His son Judah Leo Abarbanel (1470-1530) is the author of a philosophical work in Italian, "Dialoghi di Amore," (Dialogues of Love), which breathes the spirit of the Renaissance of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries in Italy. It is under the influence of Plato and Plotinus and identifies God with love, which is regarded as the essential principle of all life and activity in the world, including even the inorganic natural processes. There is no attempt made to construct a Jewish philosophy, and though all evidence is against it, some have made it out that Judah Abarbanel was a convert to Christianity.

In the same country, in Italy, Judah ben Yechiel Messer Leon of Mantua (1450-1490) made a name for himself as a student of Cicero and of medieval Latin scholasticism. He wrote a rhetoric in Hebrew based upon Cicero and Lactantius, and composed logical works based upon Aristotle's Latin text and Averroes. As an original student of philosophy he is of no importance.

Two members of the Delmedigo family of Crete, Elijah (1460-1498) and Joseph Solomon, are well known as students of philosophy and writers on philosophical and scientific subjects.

Thus the stream of philosophical thought which rose among the Jews in Babylonia and flowed on through the ages, ever widening and deepening its channel, passing into Spain and reaching its high water mark in the latter half of the twelfth century in Maimonides, began to narrow and thin out while spreading into France and Italy, until at last it dried up entirely in that very land which opened up a new world of thought, beauty and feeling in the fifteenth century, the land of the Renaissance. Jewish philosophy never passed beyond the scholastic stage, and the freedom and light which came to the rest of the world in the revival of ancient learning and the inventions and discoveries of the modern era found the Jews incapable of benefiting by the blessings they afforded. Oppression and gloom caused the Jews to retire within their shell and they sought consolation for the freedom denied them without in concentrating their interests, ideals and hopes upon the Rabbinic writings, legal as well as mystical. There have appeared philosophers among the Jews in succeeding centuries, but they either philosophized without regard to Judaism and in opposition to its fundamental dogmas, thus incurring the wrath and exclusion of the synagogue, or they sought to dissociate Judaism from theoretical speculation on the ground that the Jewish religion is not a philosophy but a rule of conduct. In more recent times Jewry has divided itself into sects and under the influence of modern individualism has lost its central authority making every group the arbiter of its own belief and practice and narrowing the religious influence to matters of ceremony and communal activity of a practical character. There are Jews now and there are philosophers, but there are no Jewish philosophers and there is no Jewish philosophy.

THE END.

HISTORY OF THE JEWS