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49 Arabic-Jewish Philosophy Arabic Language Among Jews

THE JEWISH ENCYCLOPEDIA

49

butes, such as existence, life, power, will, knowledge, the usual positive attributes of God in the Kalitrn

—

—must

Maimoni- Him.

be avoided in

and those of man

des the Chief

speaking of attributes of God there is no other simi-

Between the

larity than one of words (homonymy), Scholastic, no similarity of essence ("Moreh," i. The negative attributes imply 35, 56). that nothing can be known concerning the true being of God, which is what Maimonides really means. Just as Kant declares the Thing-in-itself to be unknowable, so Maimonides declares that of God it can only be said that He is, not what He is. Finally, it may be stated that in the question of

—the

chief problem of scholasticism Aristotelian ground strict takes ("Moreh," i. 51, iii. 18; treatise on "Logic," ch. 10), in so far as he denies reality to the human species, but admits its true essence to exist only in the individual (according to the formula " Universalia in re "). In his " Ethics " (as systematized by D. Rosin, 1876) he follows the Stagirite in consistently insisting upon the " fitting mean " (peofrnic) as well as in the elevation of the intellectual virtues over

universals

Maimonides

Thus, the Arabic-Jewish philosophy the ethical. presents the same endeavor as the contemporary Arabian, Byzantine, and Latin- Christian scholasticism, namely, to bring about from the standpoint of the knowledge of the day a reconciliation be-

tween religion and

science.

compared with the fund of our present knowledge, this Arabic-Jewish philosophy may appear in its attitude toward the various problems and their solutions, two things must not be overlooked. In the first place, modern pride of culture should not prevent the confession that not a single step taken since the days of Maimonides has brought the solution of such problems any And, in the second place, it must not be fornearer. gotten that the scholastics preserved the continuity Without the activity of of philosophical thought. these Arabic-Jewish philosophers, especially of those Jewish translators of whose work Steinschneider has treated so exhaustively, the mental culture of the Western world could scarcely have taken the direction it has, and certainly not at, Position in the rapid rate which was made posthe History sible through the agency of the Huof Thought, manists and of the Renaissance. The Arabic-Jewish philosophers were the Humanists, the agents of culture, of the Middle Ages. They established and maintained the bond of union between the Arabic philosophers, physicians, and poets on the one hand, and the Latin-Christian world on the other. Gabirol, Maimonides, and Crescas are of eminent importance in the continuity of philosophy, for they not only illumined those giants of Christian scholasticism, Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas, but their light has penetrated deeplv into the philosophy of modern times. Leibnitz speaks with no little respect of Maimonides, as does Spinoza of Crescas. Moses Mendelssohn and Solomon Maimon, the two Jewish friends of Tmmanuel Kant, took their point of departure from the ArabicJewish philosophy, as Baruch Spinoza had done. Suf-

However

insignificant,

ficiently indicative of the

II.—

bond of

intellectual con-

the fact that the same Solomon Maimon, the name Maimon simply out of reverence for Maimonides, was gratefully described by Kant in a letter to Marcus Herz as the critic who understood him best, and who had penetrated most deeply into his " Critique of Pure Reason. Jews play merely a secondary role in the history of philosophy: they are transmitters of thought, apostles of culture, typical representatives of the intellectual continuity of the human race. The first Jew who was a real philosopher of prime magnitude, Spinoza, evolved his system not as a Jew; no more than Descartes framed his as a Frenchman and Catholic, or Leibnitz his as a Protestant and German. Philosophy has divested itself, more and more decisively, of all narrowing restraints of sectarianism and nationalism, and, like science itself, has become more and more cosmopolitan. The ArabicJewish philosophy was the last that could be desigTo-day there are still Jews who nated Jewish. philosophize but there are no Jewish philosophers. tinuity

is

who assumed



Bibliography: There is a mine ol information in the annotations to Solomon Munk's Guide des Bgares as also in Steinschneider's monumental Hebr. Uebers. Berlin, 1893. General treatises upon Arabic-Jewish philosophy exist only in the form ol sketches, such as that ol Munk, already mentioned, and in the manuals ol the history ol medieval philosophy by Bitter and Stockl Lasswitz, Gesch. der AtomistUt Prantl, Gesch. also in the Encyclopedias ol Ersch-Gruber, Herd. Logik zog, and Encye. Britannica. Uselul lor the literary history is the Ueberweg-Heinze Grundriss der Gesch. d. Philosophic 8th ed., 1898, ii. 237-253. The sketch ol I. S. Spiegler, Gesch. d. Philosophic d. Judenthums, 1881, is ol little practical value. Much that is valuable may be lound in the larger histories ol Jost, Graetz, and David Cassel. The essay on Jewish-religious philosophy by Philip Bloch in Winter- Wunsche, Jud. Lit. 1894,







thoroughly reliable, as is also G. Karpeles, Gesch. 1886, pp. 419 et seq. 01 monographs may be menCabala, Ad. Franck, Systeme de la Kabbale, 1843, 2d ed., 1889 (German by A. Jellinek, 1844) D. H. Joel, Die ReligUmsphilosophie des Sohar, 1849. Among works dealing with special problems and individual exponents ol ArabicJewish philosophy, the most important are M. Joel, BcitrOge zur Gesch. d. Philosophic 1876, and David Kaulmann, Gesch. d. Attributenlehre in d. Jttd. Relwonsphitosophie, 1877. See also the studies by Moritz Eisler and A. Scbmiedl. Optimism and pessimism in Jewish religious philosophy have been treated by H. Goitein, 1890 the doctrine ol the Freedom ol the Will,

ii.

699-793,

d.

Jud. Lit.

tioned



is

On the





by L Knoller, Das Problem der Willensfreiheit, 1884, and by L. Stein, Die Freiheit des Willens, 1882. J. Guttmann has famished excellent monographs upon Saadia, Ibn Gabirol, and Ibn Daud. A conclusive monograph upon Maimonides' philosophy has not yet been written but his " Ethics " has been luminously treated by Jaraczewsky, Zeitsehrift fVur Philosophic 1865, and by D. Rosin, 1876. L. S. K.

ARABIC LANGUAGE AMONG JEWS, USE OF The precise period of the first settlement

of

Jews

in Arabia

is

unknown, and

it is

therefore

the Arabic language was Historical data concernfirst employed by them. ing the Jews of Arabia do not reach further back than the first century of the common era; but, judging by the important positions which they oc-

impossible to say

when

cupied then in parts of Arabia (compare Yakut, " Geog. WOrterbuch," ed. WUstenfeld, iv. 461 et seq.) and by the purely Arabic names which they bore, Jews must have already been settled in the country for several centuries.

Among the ante-Islamic poets there were a number Jews and a certain Sarah, a Jewess, wrote some Arabic verses, in which she poured forth her grief at the massacre of her tribe of Koraiza (Noldeke, "Beitrage zur Kenntniss der Poesie der Alten AraA Jew, named Al-Samau'al, made himber," p. 54). of

self as



famous by

his loyalty as

by

his poetry,

and