A History of Mediaeval Jewish PhilosophyHusik, Isaac
ReligionJewish
A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy
Husik, Isaac
Philosophy, Jewish; Philosophy, Medieval
We see here a number of ideas foreign to Aristotle, which are found
first in Philo the Jew and appear later in mediæval philosophy. Thus God
as a Being absolutely unknowable, of whom negations alone are true just
because he is the acme of perfection and bears no analogy to the
imperfect things of our world; matter in our world as the origin of
evil, and the existence of matter in the intelligible world--all these
ideas will meet us again in Ibn Gabirol, in Ibn Daud, in Maimonides,
some in one, some in the other.
Alike in respect to Aristotle as in reference to Plotinus, the Jewish
philosophers found their models in Islamic writers. The "Theology of
Aristotle" which, as we have seen, is really Plotinian rather than
Aristotelian, was translated into Arabic in the ninth century and
exerted its influence on the _Brethren of Purity_, a Mohammedan secret
order of the tenth century. These men composed an encyclopædia of
fifty-one treatises in which is combined Aristotelian logic and physics
with Neo-Platonic metaphysics and theology. In turn such Jewish writers
as Ibn Gabirol, Bahya, Ibn Zaddik, Judah Halevi, Moses and Abraham Ibn
Ezra, were much indebted to the Brethren of Purity. This represents the
Neo-Platonic influence in Jewish philosophy. The Arab Aristotelians, Al
Kindi, Al Farabi, Avicenna and Averroes, while in the main disciples of
the Stagirite, were none the less unable to steer clear of Neo-Platonic
coloring of their master's doctrine, and they were the teachers of the
Jewish Aristotelians, Abraham Ibn Daud, Moses ben Maimon, Levi ben
Gerson.
One other phase must be mentioned to complete the parallelism of Islamic
and Jewish philosophy, and that is the anti-philosophic attitude adopted
by Judah Halevi and Hasdai Crescas. It was not a dogmatic and unreasoned
opposition based simply upon the un-Jewish source of the doctrines in
question and their incompatibility with Jewish belief and tradition,
such as exhibited itself in the controversies that raged around the
"Guide" of Maimonides. Here we have rather a fighting of the
philosophers with their own weapons. Especially do we find this to be
the case in Crescas who opposes Aristotle on philosophic grounds. In
Judah Halevi similarly, though with less rigor and little technical
discussion, we have nevertheless a man trained in philosophic
literature, who found the philosophic attitude unsympathetic and
unsatisfying because cold and impersonal, failing to do justice to the
warm yearning after God of the religious soul. He could not abide the
philosophic exclusion from their natural theology of all that was racial
and national and historic in religion, which was to him its very heart
and innermost essence.
In this attitude, too, we find an Arab prototype in the person of Al
Gazali, who similarly attacked the philosophers on their own ground and
found his consolation in the asceticism and mysticism of the Sufis.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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