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Arabic-Jewish Philosophy Arabic Language Among' Jews

THE JEWISH ENCYCLOPEDIA

ment of Hebrew and Arabic. For halakic decisions (Saadia Gaon and Maimonides), for religious poetry (Ha-Levi and Gabirol), and especially Arabic for Biblical exegesis (Ibn Daud, GerSuited to sonides, Ibn Ezra, and Abravanel) the Philosoph- Hebrew language was used while for ical Termi- philosophic writings the Arabic idiom nology. was currently employed. The vulgar

tongue seemed most appropriate for possessing as it did the advantage developed philosophical vocabulary,

things profane of



a finely which the Hebrew acquired only after the school of the Tibbonides had accomplished their labors of translation.

A fundamental difference between the cabalists and the exponents of pure philosophy in the conception of the philosophical problem may be found in the position assigned by either to human Reason. The former rejected

the authority of the conclusions

of Reason, and relied

upon tradition, inspiration, and Those thinkers, on the other hand, who based upon Reason considered inspiration and "in-

intuition.

tellectual intuition " as pertaining to prophets only for themselves and ordinary human beings Reason

was

the prior requisite for all perception and knowledge. Saadia (892-942) in his "Emnnot we-De'ot " (The Principles of Faith and Knowledge) posits the rationality of the Jewish faith with the Reason restriction that Reason must capituand late wherever it contradicts tradition. Tradition. Dogma must take precedence of Reason. Thus, for example, in the question concerning the eternity of the world, Reason teaches since Aristotle, that the world is without beginning that it was not created Dogma asserts a creation out of nothing. Again, Reason insists also since the time of Aristotle upon only a general immortality Dogma, on the contrary, maintains the immortality Reason, therefore, must give of the individual.

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way.

While Bahya ben Joseph (eleventh century) in Hobot ha-Lebabot " (Duties of the Heart) book still popular among Eastern Jews maintained an almost hostile attitude toward rationalistic thought and was satisfied with mere pulpit-moralizing, the poet-philosopher Judah ha-Levi (twelfth his "

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century) in his religio-philosophical work " Cuzari took the field with strenuous arguments against all philosophizing. He became thus the Jewish Algazali, whose " Destructio Philosophorum " was the model for the " Cuzari. " Against Mohammedanism and Christianity his antagonism is somewhat milder than against Peripatetic philosophy: he inclines rather toward Sufi's skeptical mysticism. Human reason does not count for much with him inward illumination, emotional vision, is eveiyThe thing. The " Cuzari " is interesting as "Cuzari." a literary type. It describes representatives of the different religions and of philosophy disputing before the king of the Khazars concerning the respective merits of the systems they stand for, the palm of course being ultimately awarded to Judaism. Herein is the germ of those comparative studies of religion which the French;

man, Jean Bodin (1530-96), developed in his"Hep-

48

taplomeres" (partially translated into German by Guhrauer, 1841), and which has been still further continued in our age as the science of comparative religion.

But not even a Judah ha-Levi could bar the prog-

among the Arabic-writing As among the Arabs, Ibn Sina and Ibn Roshd leaned more and more on Aristotle, so among the Jews did Abraham ibn Daud and Moses Maimonides, whose "Moreh Nebukim" has remained the text-book for Arabian-Jewish Aristotelianism. The ress of Aristotelianism

Jews.

commentaries on the " Guide for the Perplexed are always in Hebrew (by Falaquera, Ibn Caspi, Moses Narboni, and Isaac Abravanel), and are beyond the scope of an article dealing with Arabian-Jewish philosophers; these thinkers do not belong to MoorFor similar ish Spain, but to Provence or Portugal. reasons, the Aristotelian, Levi ben Gerson (RaLBaG) (1288-1345) who wrote " Milhamot Adonai " (Wars of the Lord), can not be discussed Gersonides here he was a denizen of Bagnols, in southern France, and wrote in Hebrew. and Among all scholastics, Levi b. Gerson Hasdai (Gersonides) was by far the most adCrescas. vanced for he, and he only, had the courage to place reason above tradition, or, to express it differently, to oppose the theory of creation out of nothing. Similarly, Hasdai Crescas (13401410), another writer in Hebrew, combated another dogma of Judaism, the freedom of the will, so energetically that he may be considered a rara avis among Jews and so valiantly did he break a lance for fatalism that he enjoyed the honor of being appreciatively quoted by Spinoza. His " Or Adonai (Light of the Lord) is one of the most original and independent works of scholasticism in general and not of Jewish scholasticism alone. Apart from its hardihood in openly and unreservedly attacking Maimonides' claims of infallibility for Aristotle in all matters pertaining to the sublunary world, it has the merit of projecting the problem of causes into the very foreground of philosophical thought. The mental heights of Crescas were by no means maintained by his pupil Joseph Albo, the last Jewisk scholastic in the Spanish peninsula. In his " Tkkarim" (Fundamental Doctrines) he sinks to the level of an ordinary philosophizing rhetorician and moralist. It is difficult perhaps to penetrate the depth of thought and deft language of Crescas but it is just as difficult to work one's way through the pitiful shallows of Albo's unctuous commonplaces. These lastnamed philosophers wrote in Hebrew, and therefore can hardly be reckoned among Arabic-Jewish phi:







losophers.

The

chief representative of Arabic-JewMaimonides, must now receive

ish scholasticism, attention.

Maimonides holds tenaciously, as against Aristotle, to the doctrine of creation out of nothing. God is not only the prime mover, the original form, as with Aristotle, but is as well the creator of matter. Herein Maimonides approaches more closely the Platonic " Timseus " than the Stagirite. Of God, the All-One, no positive attributes can be predicated.

The number

of His attributes would seem to prejudice the unity of God. In order to preserve this

doctrine undiminished, all anthropomorphic

attri-