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[Transcriber's Note:
English transliterations have been provided for the Greek and Hebrew
words.
A few other substitutions have also been used in this version of the
text. They are as follows:
[= ] surrounding a vowel indicates that it is a long vowel with a macron
(dash) above it.
[h.] indicates that this is an h with a dot under it.
The use of tildes (~) around a word signifies that the original was
spaced out l i k e t h i s.
` indicates an inverted apostrophe, which in this book is used to
represent the gutteral ayin found in Hebrew and Arabic.]
A HISTORY OF
MEDIAEVAL JEWISH PHILOSOPHY
BY
ISAAC HUSIK, A.M., PH.D.
ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN THE UNIVERSITY
OF PENNSYLVANIA
New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1916
_All rights reserved_
COPYRIGHT, 1916
BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
Set up and electrotyped. Published October, 1916.
This book is issued by the Macmillan Company in conjunction with the
Jewish Publication Society of America.
TO
SOLOMON SOLIS COHEN, M.D.
AS A TOKEN
OF
GRATITUDE AND ESTEEM
PREFACE
No excuse is needed for presenting to the English reader a History of
Mediæval Jewish Philosophy. The English language, poor enough in books
on Jewish history and literature, can boast of scarcely anything at all
in the domain of Jewish Philosophy. The Jewish Encyclopedia has no
article on Jewish Philosophy, and neither has the eleventh edition of
the Encyclopedia Britannica. Hastings' Encyclopedia of Religion and
Ethics will have a brief article on the subject from the conscientious
and able pen of Dr. Henry Malter, but of books there is none. But while
this is due to several causes, chief among them perhaps being that
English speaking people in general and Americans in particular are more
interested in positive facts than in tentative speculations, in concrete
researches than in abstract theorizing--there are ample signs that here
too a change is coming, and in many spheres we are called upon to
examine our foundations with a view to making our superstructure deep
and secure as well as broad and comprehensive. And this is nothing else
than philosophy. Philosophical studies are happily on the increase in
this country and more than one branch of literary endeavor is beginning
to feel its influence. And with the increase of books and researches in
the history of the Jews is coming an awakening to the fact that the
philosophical and rationalistic movement among the Jews in the middle
ages is well worth study, influential as it was in forming Judaism as a
religion and as a theological and ethical system.
But it is not merely the English language that is still wanting in a
general history of Mediæval Jewish Philosophy, the German, French and
Italian languages are no better off in this regard. For while it is true
that outside of the Hebrew and Arabic sources, German books and
monographs are the _sine qua non_ of the student who wishes to
investigate the philosophical movement in mediæval Jewry, and the
present writer owes very much to the researches of such men as Joel,
Guttmann, Kaufmann and others, it nevertheless remains true that there
is as yet no complete history of the subject for the student or the
general reader. The German writers have done thorough and distinguished
work in expounding individual thinkers and problems, they have gathered
a complete and detailed bibliography of Jewish philosophical writings in
print and in manuscript, they have edited and translated and annotated
the most important philosophical texts. France has also had an important
share in these fundamental undertakings, but for some reason neither the
one nor the other has so far undertaken to present to the general
student and non-technical reader the results of their researches.
What was omitted by the German, French and English speaking writers was
accomplished by a scholar who wrote in Hebrew. Dr. S. Bernfeld has
written in Hebrew under the title "Daat Elohim" (The Knowledge of God) a
readable sketch of Jewish Religious philosophy from Biblical times down
to "Ahad Haam." A German scholar (now in America), Dr. David Neumark of
Cincinnati, has undertaken on a very large scale a History of Jewish
Philosophy in the Middle Ages, of which only a beginning has been made
in the two volumes so far issued.
The present writer at the suggestion of the Publication Committee of the
Jewish Publication Society of America has undertaken to write a history
of mediæval Jewish rationalistic philosophy in one volume--a history
that will appeal alike to the scholar and the intelligent non-technical
reader. Treating only of the rationalistic school, I did not include
anything that has to do with mysticism or Kabbala. In my attempt to
please the scholar and the layman, I fear I shall have succeeded in
satisfying neither. The professional student will miss learned notes and
quotations of original passages in the language of their authors. The
general reader will often be wearied by the scholastic tone of the
problems as well as of the manner of the discussion and argument. And
yet I cannot but feel that it will do both classes good--the one to get
less, the other more than he wants. The latter will find oases in the
desert where he can refresh himself and take a rest, and the former will
find in the notes and bibliography references to sources and technical
articles where more can be had after his own heart.
There is not much room for originality in a historical and expository
work of this kind, particularly as I believe in writing history
objectively. I have not attempted to read into the mediæval thinkers
modern ideas that were foreign to them. I endeavored to interpret their
ideas from their own point of view as determined by their history and
environment and the literary sources, religious and philosophical, under
the influence of which they came. I based my book on a study of the
original sources where they were available--and this applies to all the
authors treated with the exception of the two Karaites, Joseph al Basir
and Jeshua ben Judah, where I had to content myself with secondary
sources and a few fragments of the original texts. For the rest I tried
to tell my story as simply as I knew how, and I hope the reader will
accept the book in the spirit in which it is offered--as an objective
and not too critical exposition of Jewish rationalistic thought in the
middle ages.
My task would not be done were I not to express my obligations to the
Publication Committee of the Jewish Publication Society of America to
whose encouragement I owe the impulse but for which the book would not
have been written, and whose material assistance enabled the publishers
to bring out a book typographically so attractive.
ISAAC HUSIK.
PHILADELPHIA,
_July, 1916._
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PAGE
PREFACE vii
INTRODUCTION xiii
CHAPTER
I. ISAAC ISRAELI 1
II. DAVID BEN MERWAN AL MUKAMMAS 17
III. SAADIA BEN JOSEPH AL-FAYYUMI 23
IV. JOSEPH AL-BASIR AND JESHUA BEN JUDAH 48
V. SOLOMON IBN GABIROL 59
VI. BAHYA IBN PAKUDA 80
VII. PSEUDO-BAHYA 106
VIII. ABRAHAM BAR HIYYA 114
IX. JOSEPH IBN ZADDIK 125
X. JUDAH HALEVI 150
XI. MOSES AND ABRAHAM IBN EZRA 184
XII. ABRAHAM IBN DAUD 197
XIII. MOSES MAIMONIDES 236
XIV. HILLEL BEN SAMUEL 312
XV. LEVI BEN GERSON 328
XVI. AARON BEN ELIJAH OF NICOMEDIA 362
XVII. HASDAI BEN ABRAHAM CRESCAS 388
XVIII. JOSEPH ALBO 406
CONCLUSION 428
BIBLIOGRAPHY 433
NOTES 439
LIST OF BIBLICAL AND RABBINIC PASSAGES 449
INDEX 451
INTRODUCTION
The philosophical movement in mediæval Jewry was the result of the
desire and the necessity, felt by the leaders of Jewish thought, of
reconciling two apparently independent sources of truth. In the middle
ages, among Jews as well as among Christians and Mohammedans, the two
sources of knowledge or truth which were clearly present to the minds of
thinking people, each claiming recognition, were religious opinions as
embodied in revealed documents on the one hand, and philosophical and
scientific judgments and arguments, the results of independent rational
reflection, on the other. Revelation and reason, religion and
philosophy, faith and knowledge, authority and independent reflection
are the various expressions for the dualism in mediæval thought, which
the philosophers and theologians of the time endeavored to reduce to a
monism or a unity.
Let us examine more intimately the character and content of the two
elements in the intellectual horizon of mediæval Jewry. On the side of
revelation, religion, authority, we have the Bible, the Mishna, the
Talmud. The Bible was the written law, and represented literally the
word of God as revealed to lawgiver and prophet; the Talmud (including
the Mishna) was the oral law, embodying the unwritten commentary on the
words of the Law, equally authentic with the latter, contemporaneous
with it in revelation, though not committed to writing until many ages
subsequently and until then handed down by word of mouth; hence
depending upon tradition and faith in tradition for its validity and
acceptance. Authority therefore for the Rabbanites was two-fold, the
authority of the direct word of God which was written down as soon as
communicated, and about which there could therefore be no manner of
doubt; and the authority of the indirect word of God as transmitted
orally for many generations before it was written down, requiring belief
in tradition. By the Karaites tradition was rejected, and there remained
only belief in the words of the Bible.
On the side of reason was urged first the claim of the testimony of the
senses, and second the validity of logical inference as determined by
demonstration and syllogistic proof. This does not mean that the Jewish
thinkers of the middle ages developed unaided from without a system of
thought and a _Weltanschauung_, based solely upon their own observation
and ratiocination, and then found that the view of the world thus
acquired stood in opposition to the religion of the Bible and the
Talmud, the two thus requiring adjustment and reconciliation. No! The
so-called demands of the reason were not of their own making, and on the
other hand the relation between philosophy and religion was not
altogether one of opposition. To discuss the latter point first, the
teachings of the Bible and the Talmud were not altogether clear on a
great many questions. Passages could be cited from the religious
documents of Judaism in reference to a given problem both _pro_ and
_con_. Thus in the matter of freedom of the will one could argue on the
one hand that man must be free to determine his conduct since if he were
not there would have been no use in giving him commandments and
prohibitions. And one could quote besides in favor of freedom the direct
statement in Deuteronomy 30, 19, "I call heaven and earth to witness
against you this day, that I have set before thee life and death, the
blessing and the curse: therefore choose life, that thou mayest live,
thou and thy seed." But on the other hand it was just as possible to
find Biblical statements indicating clearly that God preordains how a
person shall behave in a given case. Thus Pharaoh's heart was hardened
that he should not let the children of Israel go out of Egypt, as we
read in Exodus 7, 3: "And I will harden Pharaoh's heart, and multiply my
signs and my wonders in the land of Egypt. But Pharaoh will not hearken
unto you, and I will lay my hand upon Egypt, and bring forth my hosts,
my people, the children of Israel, out of the land of Egypt by great
judgments." Similarly in the case of Sihon king of Heshbon we read in
Deuteronomy 2, 30: "But Sihon king of Heshbon would not let us pass by
him: for the Lord thy God hardened his spirit, and made his heart
obstinate, that he might deliver him into thy hand, as at this day." And
this is true not merely of heathen kings, Ahab king of Israel was
similarly enticed by a divine instigation according to I Kings 22, 20:
"And the Lord said, Who shall entice Ahab, that he may go up and fall at
Ramoth-Gilead?"
The fact of the matter is the Bible is not a systematic book, and
principles and problems are not clearly and strictly formulated even in
the domain of ethics which is its strong point. It was not therefore a
question here of opposition between the Bible and philosophy, or
authority and reason. What was required was rather a rational analysis
of the problem on its own merits and then an endeavor to show that the
conflicting passages in the Scriptures are capable of interpretation so
as to harmonize with each other and with the results of rational
speculation. To be sure, it was felt that the doctrine of freedom is
fundamental to the spirit of Judaism, and the philosophic analyses led
to the same result though in differing form, sometimes dangerously
approaching a thorough determinism, as in Hasdai Crescas.[1]
If such doubt was possible in an ethical problem where one would suppose
the Bible would be outspoken, the uncertainty was still greater in
purely metaphysical questions which as such were really foreign to its
purpose as a book of religion and ethics. While it was clear that the
Bible teaches the existence of God as the creator of the universe, and
of man as endowed with a soul, it is manifestly difficult to extract
from it a rigid and detailed theory as to the nature of God, the manner
in which the world was created, the nature of the soul and its relation
to man and to God. As long as the Jews were self-centered and did not
come in close contact with an alien civilization of a philosophic mould,
the need for a carefully thought out and consistent theory on all the
questions suggested was not felt. And thus we have in the Talmudic
literature quite a good deal of speculation concerning God and man. But
it can scarcely lay claim to being rationalistic or philosophic, much
less to being consistent. Nay, we have in the Bible itself at least two
books which attempt an anti-dogmatic treatment of ethical problems. In
Job is raised the question whether a man's fortunes on earth bear any
relation to his conduct moral and spiritual. Ecclesiastes cannot make up
his mind whether life is worth living, and how to make the best of it
once one finds himself alive, whether by seeking wisdom or by pursuing
pleasure. But here too Job is a long poem, and the argument does not
progress very rapidly or very far. Ecclesiastes is rambling rather than
analytic, and on the whole mostly negative. The Talmudists were visibly
puzzled in their attitude to both books, wondered whether Job really
existed or was only a fancy, and seriously thought of excluding
Ecclesiastes from the canon. But these attempts at questioning the
meaning of life had no further results. They did not lead, as in the
case of the Greek Sophists, to a Socrates, a Plato or an Aristotle.
Philo in Alexandria and Maimonides in Fostat were the products not of
the Bible and the Talmud alone, but of a combination of Hebraism and
Hellenism, pure in the case of Philo, mixed with the spirit of Islam in
Maimonides.
And this leads us to consider the second point mentioned above, the
nature and content of what was attributed in the middle ages to the
credit of reason. It was in reality once more a set of documents. The
Bible and Talmud were the documents of revelation, Aristotle was the
document of reason. Each was supreme in its sphere, and all efforts must
be bent to make them agree, for as revelation cannot be doubted, so
neither can the assured results of reason. But not all which pretends to
be the conclusion of reason is necessarily so in truth, as on the other
hand the documents of faith are subject to interpretation and may mean
something other than appears on the surface.
That the Bible has an esoteric meaning besides the literal has its
source in the Talmud itself. Reference is found there to a mystic
doctrine of creation known as "Maase Bereshit" and a doctrine of the
divine chariot called "Maase Merkaba."[2] The exact nature of these
teachings is not known since the Talmud itself prohibits the imparting
of this mystic lore to any but the initiated, i. e., to those showing
themselves worthy; and never to more than one or two at a time.[3] But
it is clear from the names of these doctrines that they centered about
the creation story in Genesis and the account of the divine chariot in
Ezekiel, chapters one and ten. Besides the Halaka and Agada are full of
interpretations of Biblical texts which are very far from the literal
and have little to do with the context. Moreover, the beliefs current
among the Jews in Alexandria in the first century B.C. found their way
into mediæval Jewry, that the philosophic literature of the Greeks was
originally borrowed or stolen from the Hebrews, who lost it in times of
storm and stress.[4] This being the case, it was believed that the Bible
itself cannot be without some allusions to philosophic doctrines. That
the Bible does not clearly teach philosophy is due to the fact that it
was intended for the salvation of all men, the simple as well as the
wise, women and children as well as male adults. For these it is
sufficient that they know certain religious truths within their grasp
and conduct themselves according to the laws of goodness and
righteousness. A strictly philosophic book would have been beyond their
ken and they would have been left without a guide in life. But the more
intellectual and the more ambitious are not merely permitted, nay they
are obligated to search the Scriptures for the deeper truths found
therein, truths akin to the philosophic doctrines found in Greek
literature; and the latter will help them in understanding the Bible
aright. It thus became a duty to study philosophy and the sciences
preparatory thereto, logic, mathematics and physics; and thus equipped
to approach the Scriptures and interpret them in a philosophical manner.
The study of mediæval Jewish rationalism has therefore two sides to it,
the analysis of metaphysical, ethical and psychological problems, and
the application of these studies to an interpretation of Scripture.
Now let us take a closer glance at the rationalistic or philosophic
literature to which the Jews in the middle ages fell heirs. In 529 A.D.
the Greek schools of philosophy in Athens were closed by order of
Emperor Justinian. This did not, however, lead to the extinction of
Greek thought as an influence in the world. For though the West was
gradually declining intellectually on account of the fall of Rome and
the barbarian invasions which followed in its train, there were signs of
progress in the East which, feeble at first, was destined in the course
of several centuries to illumine the whole of Europe with its
enlightening rays.
Long before 529, the date of the closing of the Greek schools, Greek
influence was introduced in the East in Asia and Africa.[5] The whole
movement goes back to the days of Alexander the Great and the victories
he gained in the Orient. From that time on Greeks settled in Asia and
Africa and brought along with them Greek manners, the Greek language,
and the Greek arts and sciences. Alexandria, the capital of the
Ptolemies in Egypt after the death of Alexander, and Antioch, the
capital of Syria under the empire of the Seleucidæ, were well-known
centres of Greek learning.
When Syria changed masters in 64 B.C. and became a Roman province, its
form of civilization did not change, and the introduction of
Christianity had the effect of spreading the influence of the Greeks and
their language into Mesopotamia beyond the Euphrates. The Christians in
Syria had to study Greek in order to understand the Scriptures of the
Old and the New Testaments, the decrees and canons of the ecclesiastical
councils, and the writings of the Church Fathers. Besides religion and
the Church, the liberal arts and sciences, for which the Greeks were so
famous, attracted the interests of the Syrian Christians, and schools
were established in the ecclesiastical centres where philosophy,
mathematics and medicine were studied. These branches of knowledge were
represented in Greek literature, and hence the works treating of these
subjects had to be translated into Syriac for the benefit of those who
did not know Greek. Aristotle was the authority in philosophy,
Hippocrates and Galen in medicine.
The oldest of these schools was in Edessa in Mesopotamia, founded in the
year 363 by St. Ephrem of Nisibis. It was closed in 489 and the teachers
migrated to Persia where two other schools became famous, one at Nisibis
and the other at Gandisapora. A third school of philosophy among the
Jacobite or Monophysite Christians was that connected with the convent
of Kinnesrin on the left bank of the Euphrates, which became famous as a
seat of Greek learning in the beginning of the seventh century.
Christianity was succeeded in the Orient by Mohammedanism, and this
change led to even greater cultivation of Greek studies on the part of
the Syrians. The Mohammedan Caliphs employed the Syrians as physicians.
This was especially true of the Abbasid dynasty, who came into power in
750. When they succeeded to the Caliphate they raised Nestorian Syrians
to offices of importance, and the latter under the patronage of their
masters continued their studies of Greek science and philosophy and
translated those writings into Syriac and Arabic. Among the authors
translated were, Hippocrates and Galen in medicine, Euclid, Archimedes
and Ptolemy in mathematics and astronomy, and Aristotle, Theophrastus
and Alexander of Aphrodisias in philosophy. In many cases the Greek
writings were not turned directly into Arabic but as the translators
were Syrians, the versions were made first into Syriac, and then from
the Syriac into Arabic. The Syrian Christians were thus the mediators
between the Greeks and the Arabs. The latter, however, in the course of
time far surpassed their Syrian teachers, developed important schools
of philosophy, became the teachers of the Jews, and with the help of the
latter introduced Greek philosophy as well as their own development
thereof into Christian Europe in the beginning of the thirteenth
century.
We see now that the impulse to philosophizing came from the Greeks,--and
not merely the impulse but the material, the matter as well as the
method and the terminology. In the Aristotelian writings we find
developed an entire system of thought. There is not a branch of
knowledge dealing with fundamental principles which is not there
represented. First of all Aristotle stands alone as the discoverer of
the organon of thought, the tool which we all employ in our reasoning
and reflection; he is the first formulator of the science and art of
logic. He treats besides of the principles of nature and natural
phenomena in the Physics and the treatise on the Heavens. He discusses
the nature of the soul, the senses and the intellect in his
"Psychology." In the "History of Animals" and other minor works we have
a treatment of biology. In the Nikomachean and Eudemian Ethics he
analyzes the meaning of virtue, gives a list and classification of the
virtues and discusses the _summum bonum_ or the aim of human life.
Finally in the Metaphysics we have an analysis of the fundamental
notions of being, of the nature of reality and of God.
The Jews did not get all this in its purity for various reasons. In the
first place it was only gradually that the Jews became acquainted with
the wealth of Aristotelian material. We are sure that Abraham Ibn Daud,
the forerunner of Maimonides, had a thorough familiarity with the ideas
of Aristotle; and those who came after him, for example Maimonides,
Gersonides, Hasdai Crescas, show clearly that they were deep students of
the ideas represented in the writings of the Stagirite. But there is not
the same evidence in the earlier writings of Isaac Israeli, Saadia,
Joseph Ibn Zaddik, Gabirol, Bahya Ibn Pakuda, Judah Halevi. They had
picked up Aristotelian ideas and principles, but they had also absorbed
ideas and concepts from other schools, Greek as well as Arabian, and
unconsciously combined the two.
Another explanation for the rarity of the complete and unadulterated
Aristotle among the Jewish thinkers of the middle ages is that people in
those days were very uncritical in the matter of historical facts and
relations. Historical and literary criticism was altogether unknown, and
a number of works were ascribed to Aristotle which did not belong to
him, and which were foreign in spirit to his mode of thinking. They
emanated from a different school of thought with different
presuppositions. I am referring to the treatise called the "Theology of
Aristotle,"[6] and that known as the "Liber de Causis."[7] Both were
attributed to Aristotle in the middle ages by Jews and Arabs alike, but
it has been shown recently[8] that the former represents extracts from
the works of Plotinus, the head of the Neo-Platonic school of
philosophy, while the latter is derived from a treatise of Proclus, a
Neo-Platonist of later date.
Finally a third reason for the phenomenon in question is that the Jews
were the pupils of the Arabs and followed their lead in adapting Greek
thought to their own intellectual and spiritual needs. It so happens
therefore that even in the case of Abraham Ibn Daud, Maimonides and
Gersonides, who were without doubt well versed in Aristotelian thought
and entertained not merely admiration but reverence for the philosopher
of Stagira, we notice that instead of reading the works of Aristotle
himself, they preferred, or were obliged as the case may be, to go to
the writings of Alfarabi, Avicenna and Averroes for their information on
the views of the philosopher. In the case of Gersonides this is easily
explained. It seems he could read neither Latin nor Arabic[9] and there
was no Hebrew translation of the text of Aristotle. Averroes had taken
in the fourteenth century the place of the Greek philosopher and instead
of reading Aristotle all students read the works of the Commentator, as
Averroes was called. Of course the very absence of a Hebrew translation
of Aristotle's text proves that even among those who read Arabic the
demand for the text of Aristotle was not great, and preference was shown
for the works of the interpreters, compendists and commentators, like
Alfarabi and Avicenna. And this helps us to understand why it is that
Ibn Daud and Maimonides who not only read Arabic but wrote their
philosophical works in Arabic showed the same preference for the
secondhand Aristotle. One reason may have been the lack of historical
and literary criticism spoken of above, and the other the difficulty of
the Arabic translations of Aristotle. Aristotle is hard to translate
into any language by reason of his peculiar technical terminology; and
the difficulty was considerably enhanced by the fact that the Syriac in
many cases stood between the original Greek and the Arabic, and in the
second place by the great dissimilarity between the Semitic language and
its Indo-European original. This may have made the copies of Aristotle's
text rare, and gradually led to their disuse. The great authority which
names like Alfarabi, Avicenna and Averroes acquired still further served
to stamp them as the approved expositors of the Aristotelian doctrine.
Among the Arabs the earliest division based upon a theoretical question
was that of the parties known as the "Kadariya" and the "Jabariya."[10]
The problem which was the cause of the difference was that of free will
and determinism. Orthodox Islam favored the idea that man is completely
dependent upon the divine will, and that not only his destiny but also
his conduct is determined, and his own will does not count. This was the
popular feeling, though as far as the Koran is concerned the question
cannot be decided one way or the other, as it is not consistent in its
stand, and arguments can be drawn in plenty in favor of either opinion.
The idea of determinism, however, seemed repugnant to many minds, who
could not reconcile this with their idea of reward and punishment and
the justice of God. How is it possible that a righteous God would force
a man to act in a certain manner and then punish him for it? Hence the
sect of the "Kadariya," who were in favor of freedom of the will. The
Jabariya were the determinists.
This division goes back to a very early period before the introduction
of the Aristotelian philosophy among the Arabs, and hence owes its
inception not to reason as opposed to religious dogma, but to a pious
endeavor to understand clearly the religious view upon so important a
question.
From the Kadariya, and in opposition to the Aristotelian movement which
had in the meantime gained ground, developed the school of theologians
known as the "Mutakallimun." They were the first among the Arabs who
deliberately laid down the reason as a source of knowledge in addition
to the authority of the Koran and the "Sunna" or tradition. They were
not freethinkers, and their object was not to oppose orthodoxy as such.
On the contrary, their purpose was to purify the faith by freeing it
from such elements as obscured in their minds the purity of the
monotheistic tenet and the justice of God. They started where the
Kadariya left off and went further. As a school of opposition their
efforts were directed to prove the creation of the world, individual
providence, the reality of miracles, as against the "philosophers," _i.
e._, the Aristotelians, who held to the eternity of motion, denied God's
knowledge of particulars, and insisted on the unchanging character of
natural law.
For this purpose they placed at the basis of their speculations not the
Aristotelian concepts of matter and form, the former uncreated and
continuous, but adopted the atomistic theory of Democritus, denied the
necessity of cause and effect and the validity of natural law, and made
God directly responsible for everything that happened every moment in
life. God, they said, creates continually, and he is not hampered by any
such thing as natural law, which is merely our name for that which we
are accustomed to see. Whenever it rains we are accustomed to see the
ground wet, and we conclude that there is a necessary connection of
cause and effect between the rain and the wetness of the ground. Nothing
of the kind, say the Mutakallimun, or the Mu`tazila, the oldest sect of
the school. It rains because God willed that it should rain, and the
ground is wet because God wills it shall be wet. If God willed that the
ground should be dry following a rain, it would be dry; and the one is
no more and no less natural than the other. Miracles cease to be
miracles on this conception of natural processes. Similarly the dogma of
creation is easily vindicated on this theory as against the Aristotelian
doctrine of eternity of the world, which follows from his doctrine of
matter and form, as we shall have occasion to see later.
The Mu`tazila were, however, chiefly known not for their principles of
physics but for their doctrines of the unity of God and his justice. It
was this which gave them their name of the "Men of Unity and Justice,"
_i. e._, the men who vindicate against the unenlightened views of
popular orthodoxy the unity of God and his justice.
The discussion of the unity centered about the proper interpretation of
the anthropomorphic passages in the Koran and the doctrine of the divine
attributes. When the Koran speaks of God's eyes, ears, hands, feet; of
his seeing, hearing, sitting, standing, walking, being angry, smiling,
and so on, must those phrases be understood literally? If so God is
similar to man, corporeal like him, and swayed by passions. This seemed
to the Mu`tazila an unworthy conception of God. To vindicate his
spirituality the anthropomorphic passages in the Koran must be
understood metaphorically.
The other more difficult question was in what sense can attributes be
ascribed to God at all? It is not here a question of anthropomorphism.
If I say that God is omniscient, omnipotent and a living God, I
attribute to God life, power, knowledge. Are these attributes the same
with God's essence or are they different? If different (and they must be
eternal since God was never without them), then we have more than one
eternal being, and God is dependent upon others. If they are not
different from God's essence, then his essence is not a strict unity,
since it is composed of life, power, knowledge; for life is not power,
and power is not knowledge. The only way to defend the unity of God in
its absolute purity is to say that God has no attributes, _i. e._, God
is omniscient but not through knowledge as his attribute; God is
omnipotent but not through power as his attribute, and so on. God is
absolutely one, and there is no distinction between knowledge, power,
and life in him. They are all one, and are his essence.
This seemed in opposition to the words of the Koran, which frequently
speaks of God's knowledge, power, and so on, and was accordingly
condemned as heretical by the orthodox.
In the tenth century a new sect arose named the "Ashariya" after
Al-Ashari, its founder. This was a party of moderation, and tended to
conciliate orthodoxy by not going too far in the direction of
rationalistic thinking. They solved the problem by saying, "God knows
through a knowledge which is not different from his essence."
The other problem to which the Mu`tazila devoted their attention was
that of the justice of God. This was in line with the efforts of the
Kadariya before them. It concerned itself with the doctrine of free
will. They defended man's absolute freedom of action, and insisted on
justice as the only motive of God's dealings with men. God must be just
and cannot act otherwise than in accordance with justice.
In reference to the question of the nature of good and evil, the
orthodox position was that good is that which God commands, evil that
which God forbids. In other words, nothing is in itself good or evil,
the ethical character of an act is purely relative to God's attitude to
it. If God were to command cannibalism, it would be a good act. The
Mu`tazila were opposed to this. They believed in the absolute character
of good and evil. What makes an act good or bad is reason, and it is
because an act is good that God commands it, and not the reverse.
The foregoing account gives us an idea of the nature of the Mu`tazilite
discussions of the two problems of God's unity and God's justice. Their
works were all arranged in the same way. They were divided into two
parts, one dealing with the question of the unity, and the other with
that of justice. The proofs of the unity were preceded by the proofs of
God's existence, and the latter were based upon a demonstration that the
world is not eternal, but bears traces of having come to be in time.
These are the earmarks by which a Mu`tazilite book could be recognized,
and the respect for them on the part of the philosophers, _i. e._, the
Aristotelians, was not great. The latter did not consider them worthy
combatants in a philosophical fight, claiming that they came with
preconceived notions and arranged their conceptions of nature to suit
the religious beliefs which they desired to defend. Maimonides expresses
a similar judgment concerning their worthlessness as philosophical
thinkers.[11]
This school of the Mutakallimun, or of the more important part of it
known as the Mu`tazila, is of great interest for the history of Jewish
rationalism. In the first place their influence on the early Jewish
philosophers was great and unmistakable. It is no discovery of a late
day but is well known to Maimonides who is himself, as has just been
said and as will appear with greater detail later, a strong opponent of
these to him unphilosophical thinkers. In the seventy-first chapter of
his "Guide of the Perplexed," he says, "You will find that in the few
works composed by the Geonim and the Karaites on the unity of God and on
such matter as is connected with this doctrine, they followed the lead
of the Mohammedan Mutakallimun.... It also happened, that at the time
when the Mohammedans adopted this method of the Kalam, there arose among
them a certain sect, called Mu`tazila. In certain things our scholars
followed the theory and the method of these Mu`tazila."
Thanks to the researches of modern Jewish and non-Jewish scholars we
know now that the Rabbanite thinker Saadia and the Karaite writers, like
Joseph Al Basir and Jeshuah ben Judah, are indebted far more to the
Mohammedan Mu`tazilites than would appear from Maimonides's statement
just quoted. The Rabbanites being staunch adherents of the Talmud, to
the influence of which they owed a national and religious
self-consciousness much stronger than that of the Karaites, who rejected
the authority of tradition, did not allow themselves to be carried away
so far by the ideas of the Mohammedan rationalists as to become their
slavish followers. The Karaites are less scrupulous; and as they were
the first among the Jews to imitate the Mu`tazila in the endeavor to
rationalize Jewish doctrine, they adopted their views in all details,
and it is sometimes impossible to tell from the contents of a Karaite
Mu`tazilite work whether it was written by a Jew or a Mohammedan. The
arrangement of the work in the two divisions of "Unity" and "Justice,"
the discussion of substance and accident, of the creation of the world,
of the existence, unity and incorporeality of God, of his attributes, of
his justice, and of human free will, are so similar in the two that it
is external evidence alone to which we owe the knowledge of certain
Karaite works as Jewish. There are no mediæval Jewish works treating of
religious and theological problems in which there is so much aloofness,
such absence of theological prepossession and religious feeling as in
some Karaite writings of Mu`tazilite stamp. Cold and unredeemed logic
gives the tone to the entire composition.
Another reason for the importance of the Mu`tazilite school for the
history of Jewish thought is of recent discovery. Schreiner has
suggested[12] that the origin of the Mu`tazilite movement was due to the
influence of learned Jews with whom the Mohammedans came in contact,
particularly in the city of Basra, an important centre of the school.
The reader will recall that the two main doctrines of the Mu`tazila were
the unity of God and his justice. The latter really signified the
freedom of the will. That these are good Jewish views would of course
prove nothing for the origin of similar opinions among the Mohammedans.
For it is not here a question simply of the dogmatic belief in
Monotheism as opposed to polytheism. Mohammedanism is as a religion
Monotheistic and we know that Mohammed was indebted very much to Jews
and Judaism. We are here concerned with the origin of a rationalistic
movement which endeavors to defend a spiritual conception of God against
a crude anthropomorphism, to vindicate a conception of his absolute
unity against the threatened multiplication of his essence by the
assumption of eternal attributes, and which puts stress upon God's
justice rather than upon his omnipotence so as to save human freedom.
Another doctrine of the Mu`tazila was that the Koran was not eternal as
the orthodox believed, but that it was created. Now we can find
parallels for most of these doctrines. Anthropomorphism was avoided in
the Aramaic translations of the Pentateuch, also in certain changes in
the Hebrew text which are recorded in Rabbinical literature, and known
as "Tikkune Soferim," or corrections of the Scribes.[13] Concern for
maintaining the unity of God in its absolute purity is seen in the care
with which the men of the Agada forbid any prayer which may have a
semblance, however remote, of dualism.[14] The freedom of the will is
clearly stated in the Rabbinic expression, "All is in the hands of God
except the fear of Heaven."[15] And an apparently deterministic passage
in Job 23, 13, "But he is one and who can turn him, and what his soul
desireth, even that he doeth," is explained by Rabbi Akiba in the
following manner, "It is not possible to answer the words of him who
with his word created the world, for he rules all things with truth and
with righteousness."[16] And we find a parallel also for the creation of
the Koran in the Midrashic statement that the Torah is one of the six or
seven things created before the world.[17]
These parallels alone would not be of much weight, but they are
strengthened by other considerations. The Mu`tazilite movement seems to
have developed among the ascetic sects, with the leaders of whom its
founders were in close relation.[18] The ascetic literature bears
unmistakable traces of having been influenced by the Halaka and the
Agada.[19] Moreover, there is a Mohammedan tradition or two to the
effect that the doctrine of the creation of the Koran and also of the
rejection of anthropomorphism goes back to a Jew, Lebid-ibn
Al-A`sam.[20]
More recently still[A] C. H. Becker proved from a study of certain
Patristic writings that the polemical literature of the Christians
played an important rôle in the formation of Mohammedan dogma, and he
shows conclusively that the form in which the problem of freedom was
discussed among the Mohammedans was taken from Christianity. The
question of the creation or eternity of the Koran or word of Allah, is
similarly related to the Christian idea of the eternal Logos, who is on
the one hand the Word and the Wisdom, and is on the other identified
with Jesus Christ. And the same thing holds of the doctrine of
attributes. It played a greater rôle in Christian dogma than it ever did
in Judaism prior to the philosophic era in the middle ages. To be sure,
the Patristic writers were much indebted to Philo, in whose writings the
germ of the mediæval doctrine of attributes is plainly evident. But the
Mohammedan schools did not read Philo. It would seem, therefore, that
Schreiner's view must be considerably modified, if not entirely
rejected, in view of the later evidence adduced by Becker.
[A] Cf. Zeitschrift für Assyriologie, 1912, 175 ff.
The more extreme doctrines, however, of the more orthodox Ashariya, such
as the denial of natural law and the necessity of cause and effect,
likewise the denial of man's ability to determine his actions, none of
the Jews accepted. Here we have again the testimony of Maimonides, who,
however, is not inclined to credit this circumstance to the intelligence
and judgment of his predecessors, but to chance. His words are,
"Although another sect, the Ashariya, with their own peculiar views, was
subsequently established among the Mohammedans, you will not find any of
these views in the writings of our authors; not because these authors
preferred the opinions of the first named sect to those of the latter,
but because they chanced first to become acquainted with the theory of
the Mu`tazila, which they adopted and treated as demonstrated
truth."[21]
The influence of the Kalam is present in greater or less degree in the
philosophers up to Abraham Ibn Daud and Maimonides. The latter gave this
system its death blow in his thoroughgoing criticism,[22] and
thenceforth Aristotelianism was in possession of the field until that
too was attacked by Hasdai Crescas.
Another sect of the Mohammedans which had considerable influence on some
of the Jewish philosophical and ethical writers are the ascetics and the
Sufis who are related to them. The latter developed their mode of life
and their doctrines under the influence of the Christian monks, and are
likewise indebted to Indian and Persian ideas.[23] In their mode of
life they belong to the class of ascetics and preach abstinence,
indifference to human praise and blame, love of God and absolute trust
in him even to the extent of refraining from all effort in one's own
behalf, and in extreme cases going so far as to court danger. In
theoretical teaching they adopted the emanatistic doctrine of the
Neo-Platonic School. This has been called dynamic Pantheism. It is
Pantheism because in its last analysis it identifies God with the
universe. At the same time it does not bring God directly in contact
with the world, but only indirectly through the powers or [Greek:
dynameis], hence _dynamic_ Pantheism. These powers emanate successively
from the highest one, forming a chain of intermediate powers mediating
between God and the world of matter, the links of the chain growing
dimmer and less pure as they are further removed from their origin,
while the latter loses nothing in the process. This latter condition
saves the Neo-Platonic conception from being a pure system of emanation
like some Indian doctrines. In the latter the first cause actually gives
away something of itself and loses thereby from its fulness. The process
in both systems is explained by use of analogies, those of the radiation
of light from a luminous body, and of the overflowing of a fountain
being the most common.
The chief exponent of the ethics of the Sufis in mediæval Jewish
literature is Bahya Ibn Pakuda. In his ethical work "The Duties of the
Hearts," he lays the same stress on intention and inwardness in
religious life and practice as against outward performance with the
limbs on the one hand and dry scholasticism on the other, as do the
Sufis. In matters of detail too he is very much indebted to this Arab
sect from whose writings he quotes abundantly with as well as without
acknowledgment of his sources except in a general way as the wise men.
To be sure, he does not follow them slavishly and rejects the extremes
of asceticism and unworldly cynicism which a great many of the Sufis
preached and practiced. He is also not in sympathy with their mysticism.
He adopts their teachings only where he can support them with analogous
views as expressed in the Rabbinical writings, which indeed played an
important rôle in Mohammedan ascetic literature, being the source of
many of the sayings found in the latter.[24]
The systems of thought which had the greatest influence upon Jewish as
well as Mohammedan theology, were the great systems of Plato
(especially as developed in Neo-Platonism) and Aristotle. These two
philosophies not merely affected the thinking of Jew and Mohammedan but
really transformed it from religious and ethical discussions into
metaphysical systems. In the Bible and similarly in the Koran we have a
purely personal view of God and the world. God is a person, he creates
the world--out of nothing to be sure--but nevertheless he is thought of
doing it in the manner in which a person does such things with a will
and a purpose in time and place. He puts a soul into man and
communicates to him laws and prohibitions. Man must obey these laws
because they are the will of God and are good, and he will be rewarded
and punished according to his attitude in obedience and disobedience.
The character of the entire point of view is personal, human,
teleological, ethical. There is no attempt made at an impersonal and
objective analysis of the common aspects of all existing things, the
elements underlying all nature. Nor is there any conscious effort at a
critical classification of the various kinds of things existing in
nature beyond the ordinary and evident classification found in
Genesis--heaven and earth; in heaven, sun, moon and stars; on earth,
grass, fruit trees, insects, water animals, birds, quadrupeds, man. Then
light and darkness, the seasons of the year, dry land and water.
In Greek philosophy for the first time we find speculations concerning
the common element or elements out of which the world is made--the
material cause as Aristotle later called it. The Sophists and Socrates
gave the first impulse to a logical analysis of what is involved in
description or definition. The concept as denoting the essence of a
thing is the important contribution Socrates made to knowledge. Plato
objectified the concept, or rather he posited an object as the basis of
the concept, and raised it out of this world of shadows to an
intelligible world of realities on which the world of particulars
depends. But it was Aristotle who made a thoroughgoing analysis of thing
as well as thought, and he was the master of knowledge through the
middle ages alike for Jew, Christian and Mohammedan.
First of all he classified all objects of our experience and found that
they can be grouped in ten classes or categories as he called them.
Think of any thing you please and you will find that it is either an
object in the strict sense, _i. e._, some thing that exists
independently of anything else, and is the recipient of qualities, as
for example a man, a mountain, a chair. Or it is a quantity, like four,
or cubit; or a quality, like good, black, straight; or a relation like
long, double, master, slave; and so on throughout the ten categories.
This classification applies to words and thoughts as well as to things.
As an analysis of the first two it led him to more important
investigations of speech and thinking and arguing, and resulted in his
system of logic, which is the most momentous discovery of a single mind
recorded in history. As applied to things it was followed by a more
fundamental analysis of all real objects in our world into the two
elements of matter and form. He argued as follows: nothing in the
material world is permanent as an individual thing. It changes its state
from moment to moment and finally ceases to be the thing it was. An
acorn passes a number of stages before it is ripe, and when it is placed
in the ground it again changes its form continually and then comes out
as an oak. In artificial products man in a measure imitates nature. He
takes a block of marble and makes a statue out of it. He forms a log
into a bed. So an ignorant man becomes civilized and learned. All these
examples illustrate change. What then is change? Is there any similarity
in all the cases cited? Can we express the process of change in a
formula which will apply to all instances of change? If so, we shall
have gained an insight into a process of nature which is all-embracing
and universal in our experience. Yes, we can, says Aristotle. Change is
a play of two elements in the changing thing. When a thing affected with
one quality changes into a thing with the opposite quality, there must
be the thing itself without either of the opposite qualities, which is
changing. Thus when a white fence becomes black, the fence itself or
that which undergoes the change is something neither white nor black. It
is the uncolored matter which first had the form of white and now lost
that and took on the form of black. This is typical of all change. There
is in all change ultimately an unchanging substratum always the same,
which takes on one quality after another, or as Aristotle would say, one
_form_ after another. This substratum is _matter_, which in its purity
is not affected with any quality or form, of which it is the seat and
residence. The forms on the other hand come and go. Form does not change
any more than matter. The changing thing is the composite of matter and
form, and change means separation of the actual components of which
one, the form, disappears and makes room for its opposite. In a given
case, say, when a statue is made out of a block of marble, the matter is
the marble which lost its original form and assumed the form of a
statue. In this case the marble, if you take away both the previous form
and the present, will still have some form if it is still marble, for
marble must have certain qualities if it is to be marble. In that case
then the matter underlying the change in question is not pure matter, it
is already endowed with some primitive form and is composite. But marble
is ultimately reducible to the four elements, fire, air, water, earth,
which are simpler; and theoretically, though not in practice, we can
think away all form, and we have left only that which takes forms but is
itself not any form. This is matter.
Here the reader will ask, what kind of thing is it that has no form
whatsoever, is it not nothing at all? How can anything exist without
being a particular kind of thing, and the moment it is that it is no
longer pure matter. Aristotle's answer is that it is true that pure
matter is never found as an objective existence. Point to any real
object and it is composed of matter and form. And yet it is not true
that matter is a pure figment of the imagination; it has an existence of
its own, a potential existence. And this leads us to another important
conception in the Aristotelian philosophy.
Potentiality and actuality are correlative terms corresponding to matter
and form. Matter is the potential, form is the actual. Whatever
potentialities an object has it owes to its matter. Its actual essence
is due to its form. A thing free from matter would be all that it is at
once. It would not be liable to change of any kind, whether progress or
retrogression. All the objects of our experience in the sublunar world
are not of this kind. They realize themselves gradually, and are never
at any given moment all that they are capable of becoming. This is due
to their matter. On the other hand, pure matter is _actually_ nothing.
It is just capacity for being anything, and the moment it is anything it
is affected with form.
It is clear from this account that matter and form are the bases of
sublunar life and existence. No change, no motion without matter and
form. For motion is presupposed in all kinds of change. If then all
processes of life and death and change of all kinds presuppose matter
and form, the latter cannot themselves be liable to genesis and decay
and change, for that would mean that matter is composed of matter and
form, which is absurd. We thus see how Aristotle is led to believe in
the eternity of matter and motion, in other words, the eternity of the
world processes as we know them.
Motion is the realization of the potential _qua_ potential. This is an
Aristotelian definition and applies not merely to motion in the strict
sense, _i. e._, movement in place, or motion of translation, but
embraces all kinds of change. Take as an example the warming of the air
in a cold room. The process of heating the room is a kind of motion; the
air passes from a state of being cold to a state of being warm. In its
original state as cold it is potentially warm, _i. e._, it is actually
not warm, but has the capacity of becoming warm. At the end of the
process it is actually warm. Hence the process itself is the
actualization of the potential. That which is potential cannot make
itself actual, for to make itself actual it must be actual, which is
contrary to the hypothesis of its being potential. Potentiality and
actuality are contradictory states and cannot exist side by side in the
same thing at the same time in the same relation. There must therefore
be an external agent, itself actual, to actualize a potential. Thus, in
the above illustration, a cold room cannot make itself warm. There must
be some agency itself actually warm to cause the air in the room to pass
from cold to warm. This is true also of motion in place, that a thing
cannot move itself and must be moved by something else. But that
something else if itself in motion must again be moved by something
else. This process would lead us to infinity. In order that a given
thing shall be in motion, it would be necessary for an infinite number
of things to be in motion. This is impossible, because there cannot be
an infinite number of things all here and now. It is a contradiction in
terms. Hence if anything is to move at all, there must be at the end of
the finite chain a link which while causing the next link to move, is
itself unmoved. Hence the motion existing in the world must be due
ultimately to the existence of an unmoved mover. If this being causes
motion without being itself in motion it does not act upon the bodies it
moves as one body acts upon another, for a body can move another body
only by being itself in motion. The manner in which the unmoved mover
moves the world is rather to be conceived on the analogy of a loved
object moving the loving object without itself being moved. The person
in love strives to approach and unite with the object of his love
without the latter necessarily being moved in turn. This is the way in
which Aristotle conceives of the cause of the world's motion. There is
no room here for the creation of the world. Matter is eternal, motion is
eternal, and there is an eternal mind for the love of which all motions
have been going on, eternally.
The unmoved mover, or God, is thus not body, for no body can move
another body without being itself in motion at the same time. Besides,
all body is finite, _i. e._, it has a finite magnitude. A body of
infinite magnitude is an impossibility, as the very essence of body is
that it must be bounded by surfaces. A finite body cannot have an
infinite power, as Aristotle proves, though we need not at present go
into the details of his proof. But a being which causes eternal motion
in the world must have an infinite power to do this. Hence another proof
that God is not corporeal.
If God is not subject to motion, he is not subject to change of any
kind, for change involves motion. As matter is at the basis of all
change God is without matter, hence he is pure form, _i. e._, pure
actuality without the least potentiality. This means that he is what he
is wholly all the time; he has no capacities of being what he is at any
time not. But if he is not corporeal, the nature of his actuality or
activity must be Thought, pure thinking. And the content of his thought
cannot vary from topic to topic, for this would be change, which is
foreign to him. He must be eternally thinking the same thought; and the
highest thought it must be. But the highest thought is himself; hence
God is pure thought thinking himself, thought thinking thought.
The universe is in the shape of a sphere with the earth stationary in
the centre and the heavens revolving around it exactly as appears to us.
The element earth is the heaviest, hence its place is below or, which is
the same thing, in the centre. This is its natural place; and its
natural motion when away from the centre is in a straight line toward
the centre. Water is the next heaviest element and its natural place is
just above earth; hence the water in the world occupies a position
spherical in shape round about the earth, _i. e._, it forms a hollow
sphere concentric with the earth. Next comes the hollow sphere of air
concentric with the other two. Its natural motion when away from its
place in the direction of the earth is in a straight line toward the
circumference of the world, not however going beyond the sphere of the
lightest element of all, namely, fire. This has its natural place
outside of the other elements, also in the form of a hollow sphere
concentric with the other three. Its natural motion is in a straight
line away from the centre of the world and in the direction of the
circumference. Our earth, water, air and fire are not really the
elements in their purity. Each one has in it also mixtures of the other
three elements, the one which gives it the name predominating.
All minerals, plants and animals are formed from these four elements by
various combinations, all together forming the sublunar world, or the
world of generation and decay. No individual thing in this world is
permanent. All are subject to change and to ultimate destruction, though
the destruction of one thing is the genesis of another. There is no
annihilation.
The causes of the various combinations of the elements and the
generation and destruction of mineral, plant and animal resulting
therefrom, are the motions of the heavenly bodies. These are made of a
purer substance than that of the four elements, the ether. This is
proven by the fact that the heavenly bodies are not subject to change or
destruction. They are all permanent and the only change visible in them
is change of place. But even their motions are different from those of
the four elements. The latter are in a straight line toward the centre
or away from it, whereas the heavenly bodies move in a circle eternally
around the centre. This is another proof that they are not composed of
the same material as sublunar bodies.
The heavens consist of transparent spheres, and the stars as well as the
planets are set in them and remain fixed. The motions of the heavenly
bodies are due to the revolutions of the spheres in which they are set.
These spheres are hollow and concentric. The outermost sphere forming
the outer limit of the universe (the world is finite according to
Aristotle) is studded with the fixed stars and moves from east to west,
making a complete revolution in twenty-four hours. This motion is
transmitted to the other spheres which carry the planets. Since,
however, we notice in the sun, moon and the other planetary bodies
motions in the contrary direction in addition to that from east to west,
there must be other spheres having the motions apparent to us in the
positions of the planets borne by them. Thus a given body like the sun
or moon is set in more than one sphere, each of which has its own proper
motion, and the star's apparent motion is the resultant of the several
motions of its spheres. Without entering into further details concerning
these motions, it will be sufficient for us to know that Aristotle
counted in all fifty-five spheres. First came the sphere of the fixed
stars, then in order the spheres of Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Mercury,
Venus, Sun, Moon.
God himself sets the outer sphere in motion, or rather is the eternal
cause of its motion, as the object of its desire; and in the same way
each of the other motions has also its proper mover, likewise a pure
form or spirit, which moves its sphere in the same incorporeal and
unmoved manner as God.
Thus we have in the supra-lunar world pure forms without matter in God
and the spirits of the spheres, whereas in the sublunar world matter and
form are inseparable. Neither is found separately without the other.
In man's soul, however, or rather in his intellect we find a form which
combines in itself the peculiarities of sublunar as well as celestial
forms. When in contact with the human body it partakes of the nature of
other sublunar forms exhibiting its activity through matter and being
inseparable from it. But it is not destroyed with the death of the body.
It continues as a separate form after death.
The soul, Aristotle defines as the first entelechy of the body. The term
entelechy which sounds outlandish to us may be replaced by the word
realization or actualization and is very close in meaning to the
Aristotelian use of the word form. The soul then, according to
Aristotle, is the realization or actualization or form of the body. The
body takes the place of matter in the human composite. It has the
composition and the structure which give it the capacity for performing
the functions of a human being, as in any other composite, say an axe,
the steel is the matter which has the potentiality or capacity of being
made into a cutting instrument. Its cutting function is the form of the
axe--we might almost say the soul of the axe, if it were not for the
circumstance that it cannot do its own cutting; it must be wielded by
someone else.
So far then the human soul forms an inseparable unit with the body which
it informs. As we do not think of the cutting function of an axe
existing apart from the axe, so neither can we conceive of sensation,
emotion or memory as existing without a body. In so far as the soul is
this it is a material form like the rest, and ceases with the
dissolution of the body. But the soul is more than this. It is also a
thinking faculty. As such it is not in its essence dependent upon the
body or any corporeal organ. It comes from without, having existed
before the body, and it will continue to exist after the body is no
more. That it is different from the sensitive soul is proven by the fact
that the latter is inherent in the physical organ through which it acts,
being the form of the body, as we have seen. And hence when an unusually
violent stimulus, say a very bright light or a very loud sound, impinges
upon the sense organ, the faculty of sight or hearing is injured to such
an extent that it cannot thereafter perceive an ordinary sight or sound.
But in the rational faculty this is not the case. The more intense the
thought occupying the thinking soul, the more capable it becomes of
thinking lesser thoughts. To be sure, the reason seems to weaken in old
age, but this is due to the weakening of the body with which the soul is
connected during life; the soul itself is just as active as ever.
We must, however, distinguish between two aspects of the rational soul,
to one of which alone the above statements apply. Thought differs from
sensation in that the latter perceives the particular form of the
individual thing, whereas the former apprehends the essential nature of
the object, that which constitutes it a member of a certain class. The
sense of sight perceives a given individual man; thought or reason
understands what it is to be a member of the human species. Reason
therefore deals with pure form. In man we observe the reason gradually
developing from a potential to an actual state. The objects of the sense
with the help of the faculties of sensation, memory and imagination act
upon the potential intellect of the child, which without them would
forever remain a mere capacity without ever being realized. This aspect
of the reason then in man, namely, the passive aspect which receives
ideas, grows and dies with the body. But there is another aspect of the
reason, the active reason which has nothing to do with the body, though
it is in some manner resident in it during the life of the latter. This
it is which enables the passive intellect to become realized. For the
external objects as such are insufficient to endow the rational capacity
of the individual with actual ideas, any more than a surface can endow
the sense of sight with the sensation of color when there is no light.
It is the active intellect which develops the human capacity for
thinking and makes it active thought. This alone, the active intellect,
is the immortal part of man.
This very imperfect sketch of Aristotle's mode of approach to the
ever-living problems of God, the universe and man shows us the wide
diversity of his method from that with which the Jews of Biblical and
Rabbinic tradition were identified. Greek philosophy must have seemed a
revelation to them, and we do not wonder that they became such
enthusiastic followers of the Stagirite, feeling as they must have done
that his method as well as his results were calculated to enrich their
intellectual and spiritual life. Hence the current belief of an original
Jewish philosophy borrowed or stolen by the Greeks, and still betraying
its traces in the Bible and Talmud was more than welcome to the
enlightened spirits of the time. And they worked this unhistorical
belief to its breaking point in their Biblical exegesis.
Aristotle, however, was not their only master, though they did not know
it. Plotinus in Aristotelian disguise contributed not a little to their
conception of God and his relation to the universe. The so-called
"Theology of Aristotle"[25] is a Plotinian work, and its Pantheistic
point of view is in reality foreign to Aristotle's dualism. But the
middle ages were not aware of the origin of this treatise, and so they
attributed it to the Stagirite philosopher and proceeded to harmonize it
with the rest of his system as they knew it.
Aristotle's system may be called theistic and dualistic; Plotinus's is
pantheistic and monistic. In Aristotle matter is not created by or
derived from God, who is external to the universe. Plotinus derives
everything from God, who through his powers or activities pervades all.
The different gradations of being are static in Aristotle, dynamic in
Plotinus. Plotinus assumes an absolute cause, which he calls the One and
the Good. This is the highest and is at the top of the scale of
existence. It is superior to Being as well as to Thought, for the latter
imply a duality whereas unity is prior to and above all plurality. Hence
we can know nothing as to the nature of the Highest. We can know only
_that_ He is, not _what_ he is. From this highest Being proceeds by a
physical necessity, as light from a luminous body or water from an
overflowing spring, a second _hypostasis_ or substance, the _nous_ or
Reason. This is a duality, constituting Being and Knowledge. Thus
Thought and Being hold a second place in the universe. In a similar way
from Reason proceeds the third hypostasis or the _World-Soul_. This
stands midway between the intelligible world, of which it is the last,
and the phenomenal world, of which it is the first. The Soul has a dual
aspect, the one spiritual and pertaining to the intelligible world, the
other, called _Nature_, residing in the lower world. This is the
material world of change and decay. Matter is responsible for all change
and evil, and yet matter, too, is a product of the powers above it, and
is ultimately a derivative of the Absolute Cause, though indirectly.
Matter is two-fold, intelligible and sensible. The matter of the lower
world is the non-existent and the cause of evil. Matter in a more
general sense is the indeterminate, the indefinite and the potential.
Matter of this nature is found also in the intelligible world. The
Reason as the second hypostasis, being an activity, passes from
potentiality to actuality, its indeterminateness being made determinate
by the One or the Good. This potentiality and indeterminateness is
matter, but it is not to be confused with the other matter of the
phenomenal world.
Man partakes of the intelligible, as well as of the sensible world. His
body is material, and in so far forth partakes of the evil of matter.
But his soul is derived from the universal soul, and if it conducts
itself properly in this world, whither it came from without, and holds
itself aloof from bodily contamination, it will return to the
intelligible world where is its home.
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.
We have now spoken in a general way of the principal motives of mediæval
Jewish philosophy, of the chief sources, philosophical and dogmatic, and
have classified the Jewish thinkers accordingly as Mutakallimun,
Neo-Platonists and Aristotelians. We also sketched briefly the schools
of philosophy which influenced the Jewish writers and determined their
point of view as Kalamistic, Neo-Platonic or Aristotelian. There still
remains as the concluding part of the introductory chapter, and before
we take up the detailed exposition of the individual philosophers, to
give a brief and compendious characterization of the content of mediæval
Jewish philosophy. We shall start with the theory of knowledge.
We have already referred to the attitude generally adopted by the
mediæval Jewish thinkers on the relation between religion and
philosophy. With the exception of Judah Halevi and Hasdai Crescas the
commonly accepted view was that philosophy and religion were at bottom
identical in content, though their methods were different; philosophy
taught by means of rational demonstration, religion by dogmatic
assertion based upon divine revelation. So far as the actual
philosophical views of an Aristotle were concerned, they might be
erroneous in some of their details, as was indeed the case in respect to
the origin of the world and the question of Providence. But apart from
his errors he was an important guide, and philosophy generally is an
indispensable adjunct to religious belief because it makes the latter
intelligent. It explains the why's and the wherefore's of religious
traditions and dogmas. Into detailed discussions concerning the origin
of our knowledge they did not as a rule go. These strictly scientific
questions did not concern, except in a very general way, the main object
of their philosophizing, which was to gain true knowledge of God and his
attributes and his relation to man. Accordingly we find for the most
part a simple classification of the sources of knowledge or truth as
consisting of the senses and the reason. The latter contains some truths
which may be called innate or immediate, such as require no experience
for their recognition, like the logical laws of thought, and truths
which are the result of inference from a fact of sensation or an
immediate truth of the mind. To these human sources was added tradition
or the testimony of the revealed word of God in the written and oral
law.
When Aristotle began to be studied in his larger treatises and the
details of the psychology and the metaphysics became known especially
through Averroes, we find among the Jews also an interest in the finer
points of the problem of knowledge. The motives of Plato's idealism and
Aristotle's conceptualism (if this inexact description may be allowed
for want of a more precise term) are discussed with fulness and detail
by Levi ben Gerson. He realizes the difficulty involved in the problem.
Knowledge must be of the real and the permanent. But the particular is
not permanent, and the universal, which is permanent, is not real. Hence
either there is no knowledge or there is a reality corresponding to the
universal concept. This latter was the view adopted by Plato. Gersonides
finds the reality in the thoughts of the Active Intellect, agreeing in
this with the views of Philo and Augustine, substituting only the Active
Intellect for their Logos. Maimonides does not discuss the question, but
it is clear from a casual statement that like Aristotle he does not
believe in the independent reality of the universal (Guide III, 18).
In theoretical physics the Arabian Mutakallimun, we have seen (p. xxii),
laid great stress on the theory of atom and accident as opposed to the
concepts of matter and form by which Aristotle was led to believe in the
eternity of the world. Accordingly every Mutakallim laid down his
physical theory and based on it his proof of creation. This method was
followed also by the early Jewish thinkers. The Karaites before
Maimonides adopted the atomic theory without question. And Aaron ben
Elijah, who had Maimonides's "Guide" before him, was nevertheless
sufficiently loyal to his Karaite predecessors to discuss their views
side by side with those of the Aristotelians and to defend them against
the strictures of Maimonides. Saadia, the first Rabbanite philosopher,
discusses no less than thirteen erroneous views concerning the origin
and nature of the world, but he does not lay down any principles of
theoretical physics explicitly. He does not seem to favor the atomic
theory, but he devotes no special treatment to the subject, and in his
arguments for creation as opposed to eternity he makes use of the
Kalamistic concepts of substance and accident and composition and
division. The same is true of Bahya Ibn Pakuda. Joseph Ibn Zaddik is
the first who finds it necessary to give an independent treatment of the
sciences before proceeding to construct his religious philosophy, and in
so doing he expounds the concepts of matter and form, substance and
accident, genesis and destruction, the four elements and their natures
and so on--all these Aristotelian concepts. Ibn Daud follows in the path
of Ibn Zaddik and discusses the relevant concepts of potentiality and
actuality and the nature of motion and infinity, upon which his proof is
based of the existence of God. Maimonides clears the ground first by a
thorough criticism and refutation of the Kalamistic physics, but he does
not think it necessary to expound the Aristotelian views which he
adopts. He refers the reader to the original sources in the Physics and
Metaphysics of Aristotle, and contents himself with giving a list of
principles which he regards as established. Aristotle is now the master
of all those who know. And he reigns supreme for over a century until
the appearance of the "Or Adonai" of Hasdai Crescas, who ventured to
deny some of the propositions upon which Maimonides based his proof of
the existence of God--such, for example, as the impossibility of an
infinite magnitude, the non-existence of an infinite fulness or vacuum
outside of the limits of our world, the finiteness of our world and its
unity, and so on.
These discussions of the fundamental principles of physics were applied
ultimately to prove the existence of God. But there was a difference in
the manner of the application. During the earlier period before the
"Emunah Ramah" of Abraham Ibn Daud was written, the method employed was
that of the Arabian Mutakallimun. That is, the principles of physics
were used to prove the creation of the world in time, and from creation
inference was made to the existence of a Creator, since nothing can
create itself. The creation itself in time as opposed to eternity was
proved from the fact of the composite character of the world.
Composition, it was said, implies the prior existence of the constituent
elements, and the elements cannot be eternal, for an infinite past time
is unthinkable. This method is common to Saadia, Bahya, Joseph Ibn
Zaddik, and others.
With the appearance of Ibn Daud's masterpiece, which exhibits a more
direct familiarity with the fundamental ideas of Aristotle, the method
changed. The existence of God is proved directly from physics without
the mediation of the doctrine of creation. Motion proves a mover, and to
avoid an infinite regress we must posit an unmoved mover, that is, a
first mover who is not himself moved at the same time. An unmoved mover
cannot be corporeal, hence he is the spiritual being whom we call God.
Ibn Daud does not make use of creation to prove the existence of God,
but neither does he posit eternal motion as Aristotle does. And the
result is that he has no valid proof that this unmoved mover is a pure
spirit not in any way related to body. This defect was made good by
Maimonides. Let us frankly adopt tentatively, he says, the Aristotelian
idea of the eternity of the world, _i. e._, the eternity of matter and
motion. We can then prove the existence of an unmoved mover who is pure
spirit, for none but a pure spirit can have an infinite force such as is
manifested in the eternal motion of the world. Creation cannot be
demonstrated with scientific rigor, hence it is not safe to build so
important a structure as the existence of God upon an insecure
foundation. Show that eternity of the world leads to God, and you are
safe no matter what the ultimate truth turns out to be concerning the
origin of the world. For if the world originated in time there is no
doubt that God made it.
Thus Maimonides accepted provisionally the eternity of matter and
motion, but provisionally only. No sooner did he prove his point, than
he takes up the question of the world's origin and argues that while
strict demonstration there is as yet none either for or against
creation, the better reasons are on the side of creation.
Gersonides, on the other hand, was a truer Aristotelian than Maimonides
and he decided in favor of the eternity of matter, though not of this
our world.
The Jewish Mutakallimun, as we have seen, proved the existence of God
from the fact that a created world implies a creator. The next step was
to show that there is only one God, and that this one God is simple and
not composite, and that he is incorporeal. The unity in the sense of
uniqueness was shown by pointing out that dualism or pluralism is
incompatible with omnipotence and perfection--attributes the possession
of which by God was not considered to require proof. Maimonides, indeed,
pointed out, in his opposition to the Mutakallimun, that if there is a
plurality of worlds, a plurality of Gods would not necessarily be in
conflict with the omnipotence and perfection of each God in his own
sphere (Guide I, 75), and he inferred the unity of God from his
spirituality.
The simplicity of God was proved by arguing that if he is composite, his
parts are prior to him, and he is neither the first, nor is he eternal,
and hence not God; and the incorporeality followed from his simplicity,
for all body is composite. Maimonides proved with one stroke God's
existence, unity and incorporeality. For his argument from motion leads
him to conceive of the first mover as a "separate" form or intellect.
This clearly denotes incorporeality, for body is composed of matter and
form. But it also denotes unity, for the immaterial is not subject to
numerical distinction unless the one be the cause and the other the
effect. But in that case the cause alone is God.
Next in importance to the proof of God's existence, unity and
incorporeality, is the doctrine of attributes. We have seen (p. xxiii)
how much emphasis the Arabian Mutakallimun placed upon the problem of
attributes. It was important to Jew, Christian and Mohammedan alike for
a number of reasons. The crude anthropomorphism of many expressions in
the Bible as well as the Koran offended the more sophisticated thinkers
ever since Alexandrian days. Hence it was necessary to deal with this
question, and the unanimous view was that the Biblical expressions in
question are to be understood as figures of speech. The more difficult
problem was how any predicates at all can be applied to God without
endangering his unity. If God is the possessor of many qualities, even
though they be purely spiritual, such as justice, wisdom, power, he is
composite and not simple. The Christian theologians found indeed in this
problem of attributes a philosophical support for the doctrine of the
Trinity. Since God cannot be devoid of power, reason and life, he is
trinitarian, though he is one. The difficulty was of course that the
moment you admit distinctions within the Godhead, there is no reason for
stopping at three. And the Jewish critics were not slow to recognize
this weakness in the system of their opponents. At the same time they
found it necessary to take up a positive attitude toward the question of
attributes so as to harmonize the latter with God's absolute unity. And
the essence of the solution of the problem was to explain away the
attributes. Saadia says that the ascription of life, power and
knowledge to God does not involve plurality in his essence. The
distinction of three attributes is due to our limited mind and
inadequate powers of expression. In reality the essence of which we
predicate these attributes is one and simple. This solution did not seem
thoroughgoing enough to Saadia's successors, and every one of the Jewish
philosophers tried his hand at the problem. All agreed that the
attributes cannot apply to God in the same signification as they have
when we use them in our own experience. The meaning of the term
attribute was investigated and the attributes were divided into classes,
until finally in the system of Maimonides this question too received its
classical solution. God is conceived as absolutely transcendent and
unknowable. No positive predicate can apply to him so as to indicate his
essence. We can say only what he is not, we cannot say what he is. There
is not the faintest resemblance between him and his creatures. And yet
he is the cause of the world and of all its happenings. Positive
attributes signify only that God is the cause of the experiences denoted
by the attributes in question. When we say God is just we mean that he
is not unjust, and that he is the cause of all justice in the world.
Hence Maimonides says there are no essential attributes, meaning
attributes expressive of God's essence, and the only predicates having
application are negative and such as designate effects of God's causal
activity in the world. Gersonides was opposed to Maimonides's radical
agnosticism in respect of the nature of God, and defended a more human
view. If God is pure thought, he is of the nature of our thought, though
of course infinitely greater and perfect, but to deny any relation
whatsoever between God's thought and ours, as Maimonides does, is
absurd.
From God we pass to man. And the important part of man is his soul. It
is proved that man has a soul, that the soul is not material or
corporeal, that it is a substantial entity and not a mere quality or
accident of the body. Both Plato and Aristotle are laid under
contribution in the various classifications of the soul that are found
in Saadia, in Joseph Ibn Zaddik, in Judah Halevi, in Abraham Ibn Daud,
in Maimonides. The commonest is the three-fold division into vegetative,
animal and rational. We also find the Platonic division into appetitive,
spirited and rational. Further psychological details and descriptions of
the senses, external and internal, the latter embracing the common
sense, memory, imagination and judgment, are ultimately based upon
Aristotle and are found in Judah Halevi, Abraham Ibn Daud and
Maimonides, who derived them from Avicenna and Alfarabi. In the
Neo-Platonic writers, such as Isaac Israeli, Solomon Ibn Gabirol, Joseph
Ibn Zaddik, Moses Ibn Ezra, Pseudo-Bahya, Abraham Bar Hiyya, and so on,
we also find reference to the World Soul and its emanation from
Intelligence. In the conception of the human soul the Jewish
philosophers vary from the Platonic view, related to the Biblical, that
the soul is a distinct entity coming into the body from a spiritual
world, and acting in the body by using the latter as its instrument, to
the Aristotelian view that at least so far as the lower faculties of
sense, memory and imagination are concerned, the soul is the form of the
body, and disappears with the death of the latter. The human unit,
according to this opinion, is body-and-mind, and the human activities
are psycho-physical and not purely psychical as they are according to
Plato. Some writers occupying intermediate positions combine unwittingly
the Platonic and Aristotelian views, or rather they use Aristotelian
expressions and interpret them Platonically (Saadia, Joseph Ibn Zaddik,
Hillel ben Samuel).
As the influence of the Arab Aristotelians, Alfarabi, Avicenna and
especially Averroes, began to make itself felt, the discussions about
the Active Intellect and its relation to the higher Intelligences on the
one hand and to the human intellect on the other found their way also
among the Jews and had their effect on the conception of prophecy.
Aristotle's distinction of an active and a passive intellect in man, and
his ideas about the spheral spirits as pure Intelligences endowing the
heavenly spheres with their motions, were combined by the Arabian
Aristotelians with the Neo-Platonic theory of emanation. The result was
that they adopted as Aristotelian the view that from God emanated in
succession ten Intelligences and their spheres. Thus the first emanation
was the first Intelligence. From this emanated the sphere of the fixed
stars moved by it and the second Intelligence. From this emanated in
turn the sphere of Saturn and the third Intelligence, and so on through
the seven planets to the moon. From the Intelligence of the lunar sphere
emanated the Active Intellect and the sublunar spheres of the four
elements. These Intelligences were identified with the angels of
Scripture. With some modifications this theory was adopted by the
Jewish Aristotelians, Abraham Ibn Daud, Maimonides, Levi ben Gerson.
The Active Intellect was thus placed among the universal Intelligences
whose function it is to control the motions of the sublunar world, and
in particular to develop the human faculty of reason which is in the
infant a mere capacity--a material intellect. Sensation and experience
alone are not sufficient to develop the theoretical reason in man, for
they present concrete, individual material objects, whereas the reason
is concerned with universal truth. The conversion of sense experience
into immaterial concepts is accomplished through the aid of the Active
Intellect. And at the end of the process a new intellect is produced in
man, the Acquired Intellect. This alone is the immortal part of man and
theoretical study creates it. Averroes believed that this Acquired
Intellect exists separately in every individual so long only as the
individual is alive. As soon as the individual man dies, his acquired
intellect loses its individuality (there being no material body to
individuate it) and there is only one acquired intellect for the entire
human species, which in turn is absorbed into the Active Intellect.
There is thus no individual immortality. Maimonides, it would seem,
though he does not discuss the question in his "Guide," shared the same
view. Gersonides devotes an entire book of his "Milhamot Adonai" to this
problem, but he defends individuation of the acquired intellect as such
and thus saves personal immortality.
The practical part of philosophy, ethics, the Mutakallimun among the
Arabians discussed in connection with the justice of God. In opposition
to the Jabariya and the Ashariya who advocated a fatalistic determinism
denying man's ability to determine his own actions, some going so far as
to say that right and wrong, good and evil, are entirely relative to
God's will, the Mu`tazila insisted that man is free, that good and evil
are absolute and that God is just because justice is inherently right,
injustice inherently wrong. Hence reward and punishment would be unjust
if man had not the freedom to will and to act. The Karaites Joseph Al
Basir and Jeshua ben Judah discuss the problem of the nature of good and
evil and vindicate their absolute character. God desires the good
because it is good, and it is not true that a thing is good because God
has commanded it. Freedom of man is a corollary of the goodness of God.
The Rabbanites take it for granted that good is good inherently, and
God desires and commands it because it is identical with his wisdom and
his will. Freedom of man does follow as a corollary from the justice of
God and it is also taught in the Bible and the Talmud. The very fact of
the existence of a divine law and commandments shows that man has
freedom. And those passages in Scripture which seem to suggest that God
sometimes interferes with man's freedom are explained away by
interpretations _ad hoc_. Our own consciousness of power to determine
our acts also is a strong argument in favor of freedom. Nevertheless the
subject is felt to have its difficulties and the arguments against free
will taken from the causal sequences of natural events and the influence
of heredity, environment and motive on the individual will are not
ignored. Judah Halevi as well as Abraham Ibn Daud discuss these
arguments in detail. But freedom comes out triumphant. It is even sought
to reconcile the antinomy of freedom vs. God's foreknowledge. God knows
beforehand from all eternity how a given man will act at a given moment,
but his knowledge is merely a mirror of man's actual decision and not
the determining cause thereof. This is Judah Halevi's view. Abraham Ibn
Daud with better insight realizes that the contingent, which has no
cause, and the free act, which is undetermined, are as such
unpredictable. He therefore sacrifices God's knowledge of the contingent
and the free so as to save man's freedom. It is no defect, he argues,
not to be able to predict what is in the nature of the case
unpredictable. Maimonides cannot admit any ignorance in God, and takes
refuge in the transcendent character of God's knowledge. What is
unpredictable for us is not necessarily so for God. As he is the cause
of everything, he must know everything. Gersonides who, as we have seen,
is unwilling to admit Maimonides's agnosticism and transcendentalism,
solves the problem in the same way as Ibn Daud. God knows events in so
far as they are determined, he does not know them in so far as they are
contingent. There is still another possibility and that is that God
knows in advance every man's acts because no act is absolutely free. And
there is an advocate of this opinion also. Hasdai Crescas frankly adopts
the determinist position on the basis of God's knowledge, which cannot
be denied, as well as of reason and experience, which recognizes the
determining character of temperament and motive. But reward and
punishment are natural and necessary consequences, and are no more
unjust than is the burning of the finger when put into the fire.
In respect to the details of ethical doctrine and the classification of
the virtues, we find at first the Platonic virtues and their relation to
the parts of the soul, in Saadia, Pseudo-Bahya, Joseph Ibn Zaddik and
even Abraham Ibn Daud. In combination with this Platonic basis
expression is given also to the Aristotelian doctrine of the mean.
Maimonides, as in other things, so here also, adopts the Aristotelian
views almost in their entirety, both in the definition of virtue, in the
division of practical and intellectual virtues, and the list of the
virtues and vices in connection with the doctrine of the mean. As is to
be expected, the ultimate sanction of ethics is theistic and Biblical,
and the ceremonial laws also are brought into relation with ethical
motives. In this rationalization of the ceremonial prescriptions of
Scripture Maimonides, as in other things, surpasses all his predecessors
in his boldness, scientific method and completeness. He goes so far as
to suggest that the institution of sacrifice has no inherent value, but
was in the nature of a concession to the crude notions of the people
who, in agreement with their environment, imagined that God's favor is
obtained by the slaughter of animals.
Among the peculiar phenomena of religion, and in particular of Judaism,
the one that occupies a fundamental position is the revelation of God's
will to man and his announcement of the future through prophetic
visions. Dreams and divination had already been investigated by
Aristotle and explained psychologically. The Arabs made use of this
suggestion and endeavored to bring the phenomenon of prophecy under the
same head. The Jewish philosophers, with the exception of Judah Halevi
and Hasdai Crescas, followed suit. The suggestion that prophecy is a
psychological phenomenon related to true dreams is found as early as
Isaac Israeli. Judah Halevi mentions it with protest. Abraham Ibn Daud
adopts it, and Maimonides gives it its final form in Jewish
rationalistic philosophy. Levi ben Gerson discusses the finer details of
the process, origin and nature of prophetic visions. In short the
generally accepted view is that the Active Intellect is the chief agent
in communicating true visions of future events to those worthy of the
gift. And to become worthy a combination of innate and acquired powers
is necessary together with the grace of God. The faculties chiefly
concerned are reason and imagination. Moral excellence is also an
indispensable prerequisite in aiding the development of the theoretical
powers.
Proceeding to the more dogmatic elements of Judaism, Maimonides was the
first to reduce the 613 commandments of Rabbinic Judaism to thirteen
articles of faith. Hasdai Crescas criticised Maimonides's principle of
selection as well as the list of dogmas, which he reduced to six. And
Joseph Albo went still further and laid down three fundamental dogmas
from which the rest are derived. They are the existence of God,
revelation of the Torah and future reward and punishment.
The law of Moses is unanimously accepted as divinely revealed. And in
opposition to the claims of Christianity and Mohammedanism an endeavor
is made to prove by reason as well as the explicit statement of
Scripture that a divine law once given is not subject to repeal. The
laws are divided into two classes, _rational_ and _traditional_; the
former comprising those that the reason approves on purely rational and
ethical grounds, while the latter consist of such ceremonial laws as
without specific commandment would not be dictated by man's own reason.
And in many of these commandments no reason is assigned. Nevertheless an
endeavor is made to rationalize these also. Bahya introduced another
distinction, viz., the "duties of the heart," as he calls them, in
contradistinction to the "duties of the limbs." He lays stress on
intention and motive as distinguished from the mere external observance
of a duty or commandment.
Finally, some consideration is given in the works of the majority of the
writers to eschatological matters, such as the destiny of the soul after
death, the nature of future reward and punishment, the resurrection of
the body and the Messianic period, and its relation to the other world.
This brief sketch will suffice as an introduction to the detailed
treatment of the individual philosophers in the following chapters.
A HISTORY OF MEDIÆVAL JEWISH PHILOSOPHY
MEDIÆVAL JEWISH PHILOSOPHY
CHAPTER I
ISAAC ISRAELI
We know next to nothing about the condition of the Jews in Mohammedan
Egypt in the ninth and tenth centuries. But the fact that the two first
Jewish writers who busied themselves with philosophical problems came
from Egypt would indicate that the general level of intellectual culture
among the Jews at that time was not so low as the absence of literary
monuments would lead us to believe. Every one knows of Saadia, the first
Hebrew grammarian, the first Hebrew lexicographer, the first Bible
translator and exegete, the first Jewish philosopher of mediæval Jewry.
He was born in Egypt and from there was called to the Gaonate of Sura in
Babylonia. But not so well known is his earlier contemporary, Isaac ben
Solomon Israeli, who also was born in Egypt and from there went later to
Kairuan, where he was court physician to several of the Fatimide Califs.
The dates of his birth and death are not known with certainty, but he is
said to have lived to the age of one hundred years, and to have survived
the third Fatimide Calif Al-Mansur, who died in 953. Accordingly we may
assume the years of his birth and death as 855 and 955 respectively.
His fame rests on his work in theory and practice as a physician; and as
such he is mentioned by the Arab annalists and historians of
medicine.[26] To the Christian scholastics of mediæval Europe he is
known as the Jewish physician and philosopher next in importance to
Maimonides.[27] This is due to the accident of his works having been
translated into Latin by Constantinus Afer,[28] and thus made accessible
to men like Albertus Magnus, Vincent of Beauvais, Thomas Aquinas and
others. For his intrinsic merits as a philosopher, and particularly as a
Jewish philosopher, do not by any means entitle him to be coupled with
Maimonides. The latter, indeed, in a letter which he wrote to Samuel
Ibn Tibbon, the translator of the "Guide of the Perplexed," expresses
himself in terms little flattering concerning Israeli's worth as a
philosopher.[29] He is a mere physician, Maimonides says, and his
treatises on the _Elements_, and on _Definitions_ consist of windy
imaginings and empty talk. We need not be quite as severe in our
judgment, but the fact remains that Israeli is little more than a
compiler and, what is more to the purpose, he takes no attitude in his
philosophical writings to Judaism as a theological doctrine or to the
Bible as its source. The main problem, therefore, of Jewish philosophy
is not touched upon in Israeli's works, and no wonder Maimonides had no
use for them. For the purely scientific questions treated by Israeli
could in Maimonides's day be studied to much better advantage in the
works of the great Arabian Aristotelians, Al Farabi and Avicenna,
compared to whom Israeli was mediocre. We are not to judge him, however,
from Maimonides's point of view. In his own day and generation he was
surpassed by none as a physician; and Saadia alone far outstrips him as
a Jewish writer, and perhaps also David Al Mukammas, of whom we shall
speak later. Whatever may be said of the intrinsic value of the content
of his philosophical work, none can take away from him the merit of
having been the first Jew, so far as we know, to devote himself to
philosophical and scientific discussions, though not with the avowed aim
of serving Judaism. The rest was bound to come later as a result of the
impulse first given by him.
The two works of Israeli which come in consideration for our purpose are
those mentioned by Maimonides in his letter to Samuel Ibn Tibbon spoken
of above, namely, the "Book of the Elements,"[30] and the "Book of
Definitions."[31] Like all scientific and philosophic works by Jews
between the ninth and thirteenth centuries with few exceptions, these
were written in Arabic. Unfortunately, with the exception of a fragment
recently discovered of the "Book of Definitions," the originals are
lost, and we owe our knowledge of their contents to Hebrew and Latin
translations, which are extant and have been published.[32] We see from
these that Israeli was a compiler from various sources, and that he had
a special predilection for Galen and Hippocrates, with whose writings he
shows great familiarity. He makes use besides of Aristotelian notions,
and is influenced by the Neo-Platonic treatise, known as the "Liber de
Causis," and derived from a work of Proclus. It is for this reason
difficult to characterize his standpoint, but we shall not go far wrong
if we call him a Neo-Platonist, for reasons which will appear in the
sequel.
It would be useless for us here to reproduce the contents of Israeli's
two treatises, which would be more appropriate for a history of mediæval
science. A brief _résumé_ will show the correctness of this view. In his
"Book of the Elements" Israeli is primarily concerned with a definite
physical problem, the definition of an element, and the number and
character of the elements out of which the sublunar world is made. He
begins with an Aristotelian definition of element, analyzes it into its
parts and comes to the conclusion that the elements are the four
well-known ones, fire, air, water, earth. Incidentally he seizes
opportunities now and then, sometimes by force, to discuss points in
logic, physics, physiology and psychology. Thus the composition of the
human body, the various modes in which a thing may come into being, that
the yellow and black galls and the phlegm are resident in the blood, the
purpose of phlebotomy, the substantial character of prime form, that the
soul is not an accident, the two kinds of blood in the body, the various
kinds of "accident," the nature of a "property" and the manner in which
it is caused--all these topics are discussed in the course of proof that
the four elements are fire, air, water, earth, and not seed or the
qualities of heat, cold, dryness and moisture. He then quotes the
definitions of Galen and Hippocrates and insists that though the wording
is different the meaning is the same as that of Aristotle, and hence
they all agree about the identity of the elements. Here again he takes
occasion to combat the atomic theory of the _Mu`tazila_ and Democritus,
and proves that a line is not composed of points. In the last part of
the treatise he refutes contrary opinions concerning the number and
identity of the elements, such as that there is only one element which
is movable or immovable, finite or infinite, namely, the power of God,
or species, or fire, or air, or water, or earth; or that the number is
two, matter and God; or three, matter, form and motion; or six, viz.,
the four which he himself adopts, and composition and separation; or the
number ten, which is the end and completion of number. In the course of
this discussion he takes occasion to define pain and pleasure, the
nature of species, the difference between element and principle. And
thus the book draws to a close. Not very promising material this, it
would seem, for the ideas of which we are in search.
The other book, that dealing with definitions of things, is more
promising. For while there too we do not find any connected account of
God, of the world and of man, Israeli's general attitude can be gathered
from the manner in which he explains some important concepts. The book,
as its title indicates, consists of a series of definitions or
descriptions of certain terms and ideas made use of by philosophers in
their construction of their scheme of the world--such ideas and terms as
Intelligence, science, philosophy, soul, sphere, spirit, nature, and so
on. From these we may glean some information of the school to which
Israeli belongs. And in the "Book of the Elements," too, some of the
episodic discussions are of value for our purpose.
Philosophy, Israeli tells us, is self-knowledge and keeping far from
evil. When a man knows himself truly--his spiritual as well as his
corporeal aspects--he knows everything. For in man are combined the
corporeal and the spiritual. Spiritual is the soul and the reason,
corporeal is the body with its three dimensions. In his qualities and
attributes--"accidents" in the terminology of Israeli--we similarly find
the spiritual as well as the corporeal. Humility, wisdom and other
similar qualities borne by the soul are spiritual; complexion, stature,
and so on are corporeal. Seeing that man thus forms an epitome, as it
were, of the universe (for spiritual and corporeal substance and
accident exhausts the classes of existence in the world), a knowledge of
self means a knowledge of everything, and a man who knows all this is
worthy of being called a philosopher.
But philosophy is more than knowledge; it involves also action. The
formula which reveals the nature and aim of philosophy is to become like
unto God as far as is possible for man. This means to imitate the
activities of God in knowing the realities of things and doing what the
truth requires. To know the realities of things one must study science
so as to know the various causes and purposes existing in the world. The
most important of these is the purpose of the union in man of body and
soul. This is in order that man may know reality and truth, and
distinguish between good and evil, so as to do what is true and just and
upright, to sanctify and praise the Creator and to keep from impure
deeds of the animal nature. A man who does this will receive reward
from the Creator, which consists in cleaving to the upper soul, in
receiving light from the light of knowledge, and the beauty of splendor
and wisdom. When a man reaches this degree, he becomes spiritual by
cleaving to the created light which comes directly from God, and
praising the Creator. This is his paradise and his reward and
perfection. Hence Plato said that philosophy is the strengthening and
the help of death. He meant by this that philosophy helps to deaden all
animal desires and pleasures. For by being thus delivered from them, a
man will reach excellence and the higher splendor, and will enter the
house of truth. But if he indulges his animal pleasures and desires and
they become strengthened, he will become subject to agencies which will
lead him astray from the duties he owes to God, from fear of him and
from prayer at the prescribed time.
We look in vain in Israeli's two treatises for a discussion of the
existence and nature of God. Concerning creation he tells us that when
God wanted to show his wisdom and bring everything from potentiality to
actuality, he created the world out of nothing, not after a model (this
in opposition to Plato and Philo), nor for the purpose of deriving any
benefit from it or to obviate harm, but solely on account of his
goodness.
But how did the creation proceed? A fragment from the treatise of
Israeli entitled "The Book of Spirit and Soul"[33] will give us in
summary fashion an idea of the manner in which Israeli conceived of the
order and connection of things in the world.
In the name of the ancients he gives the following account. God created
a splendor. This having come to a standstill and real permanence, a
spark of light proceeded from it, from which arose the power of the
rational soul. This is less bright than the splendor of the Intelligence
and is affected with shadow and darkness by reason of its greater
distance from its origin, and the intervening Intelligence. The rational
soul again becoming permanent and fixed, there issued from it likewise a
spark, giving rise to the animal soul. This latter is endowed with a
cogitative and imaginative faculty, but is not permanent in its
existence, because of the two intervening natures between it and the
pure light of God. From the animal soul there likewise issued a
splendor, which produced the vegetative soul. This soul, being so far
removed from the original light, and separated from it by the
Intelligence and the other two souls, has its splendor dimmed and made
coarse, and is endowed only with the motions of growth and nourishment,
but is not capable of change of place. From the vegetative soul proceeds
again a splendor, from which is made the sphere (the heaven). This
becomes thickened and materialized so that it is accessible to the
sight. Motion being the nature of the sphere, one part of it pushes the
other, and from this motion results fire. From fire proceeds air; from
air, water; from water, earth. And from these elements arise minerals,
plants and animals.
Here we recognize the Neo-Platonic scheme of emanation as we saw it in
Plotinus, a gradual and successive emanation of the lower from the
higher in the manner of a ray of light radiating from a luminous body,
the successive radiations diminishing in brightness and spirituality
until when we reach the Sphere the process of obscuration has gone so
far as to make the product material and visible to the physical sense.
The Intelligence and the three Souls proceeding from it in order are
clearly not individual but cosmic, just as in Plotinus. The relation
between these cosmic hypostases, to use a Neo-Platonic term, and the
rational and psychic faculties in man Israeli nowhere explains, but we
must no doubt conceive of the latter as somehow contained in the former
and temporarily individualized, returning again to their source after
the dissolution of the body.
Let us follow Israeli further in his account of the nature of these
substances. The Intelligence is that which proceeds immediately from the
divine light without any immediate agency. It represents the permanent
ideas and principles--species in Israeli's terminology--which are not
subject to change or dissolution. The Intelligence contains them all in
herself eternally and immediately, and requires no searching or
reflection to reach them. When the Intelligence wishes to know anything
she returns into herself and finds it there without requiring thought or
reflection. We can illustrate this, he continues, in the case of a
skilful artisan who, when he wishes to make anything, retires into
himself and finds it there. There is a difference, however, in the two
cases, because Intelligence always knows its ideas without thought or
reflection, for it exists always and its ideas are not subject to change
or addition or diminution; whereas in the smith a difficulty may arise,
and then his soul is divided and he requires searching and thinking and
discrimination before he can realize what he desires.
What has been said so far applies very well to the cosmic Intelligence,
the [Greek: nous] of the Neo-Platonists. It represents thought as
embracing the highest and most fundamental principles of existence, upon
which all mediate and discursive and inferential thinking depends. Its
content corresponds to the Ideas of Plato. But the further account of
the Intelligence must at least in a part of it refer to the individual
human faculty of that name, though Israeli gives us no indication where
the one stops and where the other begins.
He appeals to the authority of Aristotle for his division of
Intelligence into three kinds. First, the Intelligence which is always
actual. This is what has just been described. Second, the Intelligence
which is in the soul potentially before it becomes actual, like the
knowledge of the child which is at first potential, and when the child
grows up and learns and acquires knowledge, becomes actual. Third, that
which is described as the second Intelligence. It represents that state
of the soul in which it receives things from the senses. The senses
impress the forms of objects upon the imagination ([Greek: phantasia])
which is in the front part of the head. The imagination, or phantasy,
takes them to the rational soul. When the latter knows them, she becomes
identical with them spiritually and not corporeally.
We have seen above the Aristotelian distinction between the active
intellect and the passive. The account just given is evidently based
upon it, though it modifies Aristotle's analysis, or rather it enlarges
upon it. The first and second divisions in Israeli's account correspond
to Aristotle's active and passive intellects respectively. The third
class in Israeli represents the process of realization of the potential
or passive intellect through the sense stimuli on the one hand and the
influence of the active intellect on the other. Aristotle seems to have
left this intermediate state between the potential and the eternally
actual unnamed. We shall see, however, in our further study of this very
difficult and complicated subject how the classification of the various
intellects becomes more and more involved from Aristotle through
Alexander and Themistius down to Averroes and Levi ben Gerson. It is
sufficient for us to see here how Israeli combines Aristotelian
psychology, as later Aristotelian logic and physics, with Neo-Platonic
metaphysics and the theistic doctrine of creation. But more of this
hereafter.
From the Intelligence, as we have seen, proceeds the rational soul. In
his discussion of the general nature of the three-fold soul (rational,
animal and vegetative) Israeli makes the unhistoric but thoroughly
mediæval attempt to reconcile Aristotle's definition of the soul, which
we discussed above (p. xxxv), with that of Plato. The two conceptions
are in reality diametrically opposed. Plato's is an anthropological
dualism, Aristotle's, a monism. For Plato the soul is in its origin not
of this world and not in essential unity with the body, which it
controls as a sailor his boat. Aristotle conceives of the relation
between soul and body as one of form and matter; and there is no union
more perfect than that of these two constituent elements of all natural
substances. Decomposition is impossible. A given form may disappear, but
another form immediately takes its place. The combination of matter and
form is the essential condition of sublunar existence, hence there can
be no question of the soul entering or leaving the body, or of its
activity apart from the body.
But Israeli does not seem to have grasped Aristotle's meaning, and
ascribes to him the notion that the soul is a separate substance
perfecting the natural body, which has life potentially, meaning by this
that bodies have life potentially before the soul apprehends them; and
when the soul does apprehend them, it makes them perfect and living
actually. To be sure, he adds in the immediate sequel that he does not
mean temporal before and after, for things are always just as they were
created; and that his mode of expression is due to the impossibility of
conveying spiritual ideas in corporeal terms in any other way. This
merely signifies that the human body and its soul come into being
simultaneously. But he still regards them as distinct substances forming
only a passing combination. And with this pretended Aristotelian notion
he seeks to harmonize that of Plato, which he understands to mean not
that the soul enters the body, being clothed with it as with a garment,
and then leaves it, but that the soul apprehends bodies by clothing them
with its light and splendor, and thus makes them living and moving, as
the sun clothes the world with its light and illuminates it so that
sight can perceive it. The difference is that the light of the sun is
corporeal, and sight perceives it in the air by which it is borne;
whereas the light of the soul is spiritual, and intelligence alone can
perceive it, not the physical sense.
Among the conceptual terms in the Aristotelian logic few play a more
important part than those of substance and accident. Substance is that
which does not reside in anything else but is its own subject. It is an
independent existence and is the subject of accidents. The latter have
no existence independent of the substance in which they inhere. Thus of
the ten categories, in which Aristotle embraces all existing things, the
first includes all substances, as for example, man, city, stone. The
other nine come under the genus accident. Quantity, quality, relation,
time, place, position, possession, action, passion--all these represent
attributes which must have a substantial being to reside in. There is no
length or breadth, or color, or before or after, or here or there, and
so on except in a real object or thing. This then is the meaning of
accident as a logical or ontological term, and in this signification it
has nothing to do with the idea of chance. Clearly substance represents
the higher category, and accident is inferior, because dependent and
variable. Thus it becomes important to know in reference to any object
of investigation what is its status in this respect, whether it is
substance or accident.
The nature of the soul has been a puzzle to thinkers and philosophers
from time immemorial. Some thought it was a material substance, some
regarded it as spiritual. It was identified with the essence of number
by the Pythagoreans. And there have not been wanting those who, arguing
from its dependence upon body, said it was an accident and not a
substance. Strange to say the Mutakallimun, defenders of religion and
faith, held to this very opinion. But it is really no stranger than the
maintenance of the soul's materiality equally defended by other
religionists, like Tertullian for example, and the opposition to
Maimonides's spiritualism on the part of Abraham ben David of
Posquières. The Mutakallimun were led to their idea by the atomic
theory, which they found it politic to adopt as more amenable to
theological treatment than Aristotle's Matter and Form. It followed then
according to some of them that the fundamental unit was the material
atom which is without quality, and any power or activity in any atom or
group of atoms is a direct creation of God, which must be re-created
every moment in order to exist. This is the nature of accident, and it
makes more manifest the ever present activity of God in the world. Thus
the "substantial" or "accidental" character of the soul is one that is
touched on by most Jewish writers on the subject. And Israeli also
refers to the matter incidentally in the "Book of the Elements."[34]
Like the other Jewish philosophers he defends its substantiality.
The fact of its separability from the body, he says, is no proof of its
being an accident. For it is not the separability of an accident from
its substance that makes it an accident, but its destruction, when
separated. Thus when a white substance turns green, the white color is
not merely separated from its substance but ceases to exist. The soul is
not destroyed when it leaves the body.
Another argument to prove the soul a substance is this. If the soul were
an accident it should be possible for it to pass from the animal body to
something else, as blackness is found in the Ethiopian's skin, in ebony
wood and in pitch. But the soul exists only in living beings.
We find, besides, that the activity of the soul extends far beyond the
body, and acts upon distant things without being destroyed. Hence it
follows that the soul itself, the agent of the activity, keeps on
existing without the body, and is a substance.
Having made clear the conception of soul generally and its relation to
the body, he next proceeds to treat of the three kinds of soul. The
highest of these is the rational soul, which is in the horizon of the
Intelligence and arises from its shadow. It is in virtue of this soul
that man is a rational being, discriminating, receptive of wisdom,
distinguishing between good and evil, between things desirable and
undesirable, approaching the meritorious and departing from wrong. For
this he receives reward and punishment, because he knows what he is
doing and that retribution follows upon his conduct.
Next to the rational soul is the animal soul, which arises from the
shadow of the former. Being far removed from the light of Intelligence,
the animal soul is dark and obscure. She has no knowledge or
discrimination, but only a dim notion of truth, and judges by appearance
only and not according to reality. Of its properties are sense
perception, motion and change in place. For this reason the animals are
fierce and violent, endeavoring to rule, but without clear knowledge and
discrimination, like the lion who wants to rule over the other beasts,
without having a clear consciousness of what he is doing. A proof that
the animals have only dim notions of things is that a thirsty ass coming
to the river will fly from his own shadow in the water, though he needs
the latter for preserving his life, whereas he will not hesitate to
approach a lion, who will devour him. Therefore the animals receive no
reward or punishment (this in opposition to the Mutakallimun) because
they do not know what to do so as to be rewarded, or what to avoid, in
order not to be punished.
The vegetative soul proceeds from the shadow of the animal soul. She is
still further removed from the light of Intelligence, and still more
weighed down with shadow. She has no sense perception or motion. She is
next to earth and is characterized by the powers of reproduction,
growth, nutrition, and the production of buds and flowers, odors and
tastes.
Next to the soul comes the Sphere (the heaven), which arises in the
horizon and shadow of the vegetative soul. The Sphere is superior to
corporeal substances, being itself not body, but the matter of body.
Unlike the material elements, which suffer change and diminution through
the things which arise out of them as well as through the return of the
bodies of plants and animals back to them as their elements, the
spiritual substances (and also the sphere) do not suffer any increase or
diminution through the production of things out of them. For plants and
animals are produced from the elements through a celestial power which
God placed in nature effecting generation and decay in order that this
world of genesis and dissolution should exist. But the splendor of the
higher substances, viz., the three souls, suffers no change on account
of the things coming from them because that which is produced by them
issues from the _shadow_ of their splendor and not from the essence of
the splendor itself. And it is clear that the splendor of a thing in its
essence is brighter than the splendor of its shadow, viz., that which
comes from it. Hence the splendor of the vegetative soul is undoubtedly
brighter than that of the sphere, which comes from its shadow. The
latter becomes rigid and assumes a covering, thickness and corporeality
so that it can be perceived by sight. But no other of the senses can
perceive it because, although corporeal, it is near to the higher
substances in form and nobility, and is moved by a perfect and complete
motion, motion in a circle, which is more perfect than other motions and
not subject to influence and change. Hence there is no increase or
diminution in it, no beginning or end, and this on account of the
simplicity, spirituality and permanence of that which moves it. The
Intelligence pours of her splendor upon it, and of the light of her
knowledge, and the sphere becomes intelligent and rational, and knows,
without investigation or reflection, the lordship of its Creator, and
that he should be praised and glorified without intermission. For this
reason the Creator assigned to the Sphere a high degree from which it
cannot be removed, and gave it charge of the production of time and the
four seasons of the year, and the month and the day and the hour, and
made it ruler of the production of perishable things in this world of
generation and dissolution, so that the upper souls may find bodies to
apprehend, to clothe with their light, and to make visible in them their
activities according to the determination of God.
The Sphere by its motion produces the four elements, fire, air, water,
earth; and the combinations of these in various proportions give rise to
the minerals, plants and animals of this world, the highest of whom is
man.
That the elements are those mentioned above and nothing else is proved
by the definition of element and its distinction from "principle." A
principle is something which, while being the cause of change, and even
possibly at the basis of change, is not itself subject to change. Thus
God is undoubtedly the cause of everything that happens in the world. He
may therefore be called a principle of the world, but he does not enter
with his essence the changing things. Hence it is absurd to speak of God
as an element of the sublunar world. Matter, i. e., primary formless
matter, does enter all changing things and is at the basis of all
change; but it does not itself change. Hence matter also is a principle
but not an element. An element is something which is itself a composite
of matter and form, and changes its form to become something else in
which, however, it is contained potentially, not actually. The product
ultimately goes back to the element or elements from which it was made.
When we follow this resolution of a given composite into its elements
back as far as we can until we reach a first which is no longer
produced out of anything in the same way as things were produced from
it, we have the element. Such is the nature of fire, air, water, earth.
All things are made from them in the manner above indicated. But there
is nothing prior to them which changes its form to become fire,
continues to reside potentially in fire and returns to its original
state by the resolution of fire. The same applies to the other three.
The matter is now clear. The elements stand at the head of physical
change and take part in it. Prior to the elements are indeed matter and
form, but as logical principles, not as physical and independent
entities. Hence it would seem, according to Israeli, that matter and
form are side-tracked in the gradual evolution of the lower from the
higher. For the elements, he tells us, come from the motion of the
Sphere, the Sphere from the shadow of the Soul, the Soul from the shadow
of the Intelligence, the Intelligence is created by God. To be sure he
tells us that the Sphere is not body, but the matter of body. Yet the
Sphere cannot take the place of prime matter surely, for it is
undoubtedly endowed with form, nay is rational and intelligent, as we
have seen.
When Israeli says that prior to the four elements there is nothing but
the Omnipotence of God, he means that the sublunar process of change and
becoming stops with the elements as its upper limit. What is above the
elements belongs to the intelligible world; and the manner of their
production one from the other is a spiritual one, emanation. The Sphere
stands on the border line between the corporeal and the intelligible,
itself a product of emanation, though producing the elements by its
motion--a process apparently neither like emanation nor like sublunar
becoming and change.
Creation in Israeli seems to be the same as emanation, for on the one
hand he tells us that souls are created, that nothing precedes the four
elements except the Omnipotence of God, and on the other that the
elements come from the motion of the Sphere, and the souls issue from
the shadow of the Intelligence. For matter and form there seems to be no
room at all except as logical principles. This is evidently due to the
fact that Israeli is unwittingly combining Aristotelian physics with
Neo-Platonic emanationism. For Aristotle matter and form stand at the
head of sublunar change and are ultimate. There is no derivation of
matter or form from anything. The celestial world has a matter of its
own, and is not the cause of the being of this one except as influencing
its changes. God is the mover of the Spheres, but not their Creator,
hence he stands outside of the world. This is Theism. In Israeli there
is a continuity of God, the intelligible world and the corporeal, all
being ultimately the same thing, though the processes in the two worlds
are different. And yet he obviates Pantheism by declaring that God is a
principle not an element.
We said before that Israeli takes no avowed attitude to Jewish dogma or
the Bible. He never quotes any Jewish works, and there is nothing in his
writings to indicate that he is a Jew and is making an effort to
harmonize Judaism with philosophy and science. In words he refers to
creation _ex nihilo_, which is not necessarily Jewish, it might be just
as well Mohammedan or Christian. But in reality, as we have seen, his
ideas of the cosmic process are far enough removed from the orthodox
doctrine of creation as it appears in Bible and Talmud.
Incidentally we learn also something of Israeli's ideas of God's
relation to mankind, of his commandments, and of prophecy. God created
the world, he tells us, because of his goodness. He wanted to benefit
his creatures. This could not be without their knowing the will of God
and performing it. The will of God could not be revealed directly to
everybody because the divine wisdom can speak only to those in whom the
rational soul is mistress and is enlightened by the Intelligence. But
people are not all of this kind; for some have the animal soul
predominating in them, being on that account ignorant, confused,
forward, bold, murderous, vengeful, unchaste like animals; others are
mastered by the vegetative soul, i. e., the appetitive, and are thus
stupid and dull, and given over to their appetites like plants. In
others again their souls are variously combined, giving to their life
and conduct a composite character. On this account it was necessary for
God to select a person in whom the rational soul is separated, and
illumined by the Intelligence--a man who is spiritual in his nature and
eager to imitate the angels as far as it is possible for a man to do
this. This man he made a messenger to mankind. He gave him his book
which contains two kinds of teaching. One kind is spiritual in its
nature, and needs no further commentary or interpretation. This is
meant for the intellectual and discriminating. The other kind is
corporeal, and requires spiritual interpretation. This is intended for
the various grades of those who cannot understand directly the spiritual
meaning, but who can grasp the corporeal teaching, by which they are
gradually trained and prepared for the reception of higher truths. These
people therefore need instructors and guides because a book alone is not
sufficient for the purposes of those who cannot understand.
Dreams and prophecy are closely related, hence an explanation of the
former will also throw light on the latter. A dream is caused by the
influence of the Intelligence on the soul in sleep. The Intelligence
receives its knowledge directly from God, and serves as a mediator
between him and the soul, like a prophet who mediates between God and
his creatures. In communicating to the soul the spiritual forms which it
received from God, the Intelligence translates them into forms
intermediate between corporeality and spirituality in order that they
may be quickly impressed upon the common sense, which is the first to
receive them. The common sense stands midway between the corporeal sense
of sight and the imagination, which is in the anterior chamber of the
brain, and is known as phantasy (Aristotelian [Greek: phantasia]).
That the forms thus impressed on the common sense in sleep are
intermediate between corporeal and spiritual is proved by the fact that
they are different from the corporeal forms of things seen in the waking
state. The latter are obscure and covered up, whereas those seen in
sleep are finer, more spiritual and brighter. Proof of this is that a
person sees himself in sleep endowed with wings and flying between
heaven and earth. He sees the heavens opening and someone speaking to
him out of the heaven, and so on. There would be no sense in all this if
these phenomena had no spiritual meaning, for they are contrary to
nature. But we know that they have real significance if interpreted by a
really thoughtful person. The prophets also in wishing to separate
themselves from mankind and impress the latter with their qualities,
showed them spiritual forms of similar kind, which were preternatural.
Hence all who believe in prophecy admit that dreams are a part of
prophecy.
Now these intermediate forms which are impressed upon the common sense
in sleep are turned over by it to the phantasy and by the latter to the
memory. When the person awakes, he recovers the forms from the memory
just as they were deposited there by the phantasy. He then consults his
thinking power; and if this is spiritual and pure, the Intelligence
endows him with its light and splendor and reveals to him the spiritual
forms signified by the visions seen in sleep. He is then able to
interpret the dream correctly. But if his powers of thought are not so
good and are obscured by coverings, he cannot properly remove the husk
from the kernel in the forms seen in sleep, is not able to penetrate to
the true spirituality beneath, and his interpretation is erroneous.
This explanation does not really explain, but it is noteworthy as the
first Jewish attempt to reduce prophecy to a psychological phenomenon,
which was carried further by subsequent writers until it received its
definitive form for the middle ages in Maimonides and Levi ben Gerson.
To sum up, Israeli is an eclectic. There is no system of Jewish
philosophy to be found in his writings. He had no such ambitions. He
combines Aristotelian logic, physics and psychology with Neo-Platonic
metaphysics, and puts on the surface a veneer of theistic creationism.
His merit is chiefly that of a pioneer in directing the attention of
Jews to the science and philosophy of the Greeks, albeit in Arab dress.
There is no trace yet of the Kalam in his writings except in his
allusions to the atomic theory and the denial of reward and punishment
of animals.