Download PDF | (Cambridge Companions to Philosophy) Daniel H. Frank, Oliver Leaman - The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Jewish Philosophy-Cambridge University Press (2003).
484 Pages
the cambridge companion to MEDIEVAL JEWISH PHILOSOPHY
From the ninth to the fifteenth centuries Jewish thinkers livingin Islamic and Christian lands philosophized about Judaism. Influenced first by Islamic theological speculation and the great philosophers of classical antiquity, and then in the late medieval period by Christian Scholasticism, Jewish philosophers and scientists reflected on the nature of language about God, the scope and limits of human understanding, the eternity or createdness of the world, prophecy and divine providence, the possibility of human freedom, and the relationship between divine and human law. Though many viewed philosophy as a dangerous threat, others incorporated it into their understandingof what it is to be a Jew. This Companion presents all the major Jewish thinkers of the period, the philosophical and non-philosophical contexts of their thought, and the interactions between Jewish and nonJewish philosophers. It is a comprehensive introduction to a vital period of Jewish intellectual history.
Daniel H. Frank is Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Judaic Studies Program at the University of Kentucky. Amongrecent publications are History of Jewish Philosophy (edited with Oliver Leaman, 1997), The Jewish Philosophy Reader (edited with Oliver Leaman and Charles Manekin, 2000), and revised editions of two Jewish philosophical classics, Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed (1995) and Saadya Gaon’s Book of Doctrines and Beliefs (2002).
Oliver Leaman is Professor of Philosophy and Zantker Professor of Judaic Studies at the University of Kentucky. He is the author of An Introduction to Classical Islamic Philosophy (2002), Evil and Suffering in Jewish Philosophy (1995), and is editor of Encyclopedia of Asian Philosophy (2001) and Companion Encyclopedia of Middle Eastern and North African Film (2001). He is co-editor, with Glennys Howarth, of Encyclopedia of Death and Dying (2001).
contributors ari ackerman is Lecturer in Jewish Thought and Philosophy of Education at the Schechter Institute in Jerusalem. In addition to his doctoral dissertation, “The Philosophic Sermons of Zerahia ben Isaac Halevi Saladin: Jewish Philosophic and Sermonic Activity in Late 14th and Early 15th Century Aragon” (Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2000), he has published articles on other aspects of late medieval Jewish philosophy, including“The Composition of the Section on Divine Providence in [Crescas’] Or Hashem,” Da‘at 32–3 (1994), 37–45. seymour feldman is Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at Rutgers University. Amonghis publications are a complete translation of and commentary on Gersonides’ Wars of the Lord (3 vols. 1984–99), articles on several medieval Jewish philosophers and on Spinoza, and Philosophy in a Time of Crisis: Don Isaac Abravanel, Defender of the Faith (2003). paul b. fenton is Professor of Hebrew Language and Literature at the Sorbonne. He has published extensively on Jewish civilization in the Islamic world, especially on the mystical tradition. Among recent publications is Philosophie et exeg´ ese dans le jardin de la ` metaphore ´ (1997), dealingwith the Golden Age in Spain. daniel h. frank is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Kentucky. Amongrecent publications are History of Jewish Philosophy (edited with Oliver Leaman, 1997), The Jewish Philosophy Reader (edited with Oliver Leaman and Charles H. Manekin, 2000), and revised editions of two Jewish philosophical classics, Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed (1995) and Saadya Gaon’s Book of Doctrines and Beliefs (2002).
steven harvey is Professor of Philosophy at Bar-Ilan University. He has published extensively on the medieval Jewish and Islamic philosophers, with special focus on Averroes’ commentaries on Aristotle and on the influence of the Islamic philosophers on Jewish thought. He is the author of Falaquera’s “Epistle of the Debate”: An Introduction to Jewish Philosophy (1987) and editor of The Medieval Hebrew Encyclopedias of Science and Philosophy (2000). barry s. kogan is Clarence and Robert Efroymson Professor of Philosophy and Jewish Religious Thought at Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion, Cincinnati. The author of Averroes and the Metaphysics of Causation (1985) and of articles on medieval Jewish and Islamic philosophy, he is currently preparingfor the Yale Judaica Series a new English translation of Judah Halevi’s Kuzari. joel l. kraemer is John Henry Barrows Professor in the Divinity School and the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago. He has written on the transmission of the intellectual heritage of Greek antiquity to Islamic civilization. Among his major publications are Humanism in the Renaissance of Islam: The Cultural Revival during the Buyid Age (2nd rev. ed. 1992) and Philosophy in the Renaissance of Islam: Al-Sijistani and his Circle (1986). His more recent interests concern the interplay of cultural and religious themes within Islam and Judaism. tzvi langermann is Associate Professor of Arabic at Bar-Ilan University. His recent books include Yemenite Midrash: Philosophical Commentaries on the Torah (1997) and The Jews and the Sciences in the Middle Ages (1999).
oliver leaman is Professor of Philosophy and Zantker Professor of Judaic Studies at the University of Kentucky. He has published extensively on Islamic and Jewish philosophy. He is the author of An Introduction to Classical Islamic Philosophy (2002) and Evil and Suffering in Jewish Philosophy (1995), and editor of Encyclopedia of Asian Philosophy (2001) and Companion Encyclopedia of Middle Eastern and North African Film (2001). menachem lorberbaum is Senior Lecturer in Jewish Philosophy at Tel Aviv University and a research associate at the Shalom Hartman Institute, Jerusalem. He is the author of Politics and the Limits of Law: Secularizing the Political in Medieval Jewish Thought (2001) and co-editor, with Michael Walzer and Noam Zohar, of the multi-volume The Jewish Political Tradition (2000–). charles h. manekin is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Maryland at College Park. He is the author of On Maimonides (2003), and a co-editor of The Jewish Philosophy Reader (2000) and Freedom and Responsibility: General and Jewish Perspectives (1997).
sarah pessin is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at California State University, Fresno. Her research interests focus on medieval Jewish and Islamic Neoplatonism, and she is currently completing a book on Solomon ibn Gabirol. Amongher recent publications are “Hebdomads: Boethius Meets the Pythagoreans,” Journal of the History of Philosophy 37 (1999) and “Matter, Metaphor, and Private Pointing: Maimonides on the Complexity of Human Being,” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, special Maimonides issue, ed. D. H. Frank (2002). james t. robinson is Assistant Professor of the History of Judaism in the Divinity School at the University of Chicago. He is the author of Philosophy and Exegesis in Samuel ibn Tibbon’s Commentary on Ecclesiastes (forthcoming). Recent articles include “The First References in Hebrew to al-Bitruji’s On the Principles of Astronomy,” Aleph 3 (2003). t. m. rudavsky is Professor of Philosophy at Ohio State University. She is the author of Time Matters: Time, Creation, and Cosmology in Medieval Jewish Philosophy (2000), and editor of Gender and Judaism: Tradition and Transformation (1995) and Divine Omniscience and Omnipotence in Medieval Philosophy (1985).
david shatz is Professor of Philosophy at Yeshiva University. He has published extensively on both Jewish and general philosophy. His work in general philosophy focuses on epistemology, free will, and philosophy of religion, while his work in Jewish philosophy focuses on Maimonides and on twentieth-century figures. He has recently edited Philosophy and Faith: A Philosophy of Religion Reader (2002) and co-edited, with Steven M. Cahn, Questions about God: Today’s Philosophers Ponder the Divine (2002). gregg stern is Lecturer in the Study of Religions at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, and Sam and Vivienne Cohen Fellow at the London School of Jewish Studies. Amonghis recent publications is “Philosophic Allegory in Jewish Culture: The Crisis in Languedoc (1304–6),” in Interpretation and Allegory: Antiquity to the Modern Period, ed. J. Whitman (2000).
sarah stroumsa is Professor of Arabic Language and Literature and Jewish Thought at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her recent publications include The Beginnings of the Maimonidean Controversy in the East: Yosef ibn Shim‘on’s Silencing Epistle concerning the Resurrection of the Dead (1999) and Freethinkers of Medieval Islam: Ibn al-Rawandi, Abu Bakr al-Razi, and their Impact on Islamic Thought (1999). hava tirosh-samuelson is Associate Professor of History at Arizona State University. The author of Between Worlds: The Life and Thought of Rabbi David ben Judah Messer Leon (1991) and Happiness in Premodern Judaism: Virtue, Knowledge, and Wellbeing (2003), she has edited Judaism and Ecology: Created World and Revealed Word (2002). Amongrecent articles are “Nature in the Sources of Judaism,” Daedelus 130 (2001) and “Theology of Nature in Sixteenth-Century Italian Jewish Philosophy,” Science in Context 10 (1997)
preface
From the ninth through the fifteenth centuries, some six hundred years, Jewish philosophers livingin both Islamic and Christian lands philosophized about Judaism, hopingthereby to put their religion on a sound intellectual footing. Influenced first by Islamic theological speculation and by the great Greek philosophers and their Islamic successors, and then in the late medieval period by Christian Scholasticism, Jewish philosophers reflected on the nature of language about God, the scope and limits of human understanding, the eternity or createdness of the world, prophecy and divine providence, the possibility of human freedom, and the relationship between divine and human law. Duringthe medieval period philosophy was often viewed as dangerous, but for those intent on such speculation the opportunity presented itself to prove that Judaism and human wisdom are compatible with one another. The essays in this volume present all the major Jewish thinkers of the medieval period, the philosophical and non-philosophical contexts of their thought, and the interactions between Jewish and non-Jewish philosophy.
This companion to medieval Jewish philosophy is a bit of an anomaly in the Cambridge series of companions to the major philosophers. First, while volumes in the series are in the main devoted to single authors, ours is devoted to a host of thinkers from the Jewish middle ages. Second, and in our view most important, this Companion extends to non-European locales (Baghdad and Cairo) and Semitic tongues (Arabic and Hebrew). We commend the Press for seeing the need to include within the ambit of a series devoted to “Western” philosophy, the philosophers of medieval Jewry. Before the thirteenth century the best work was done in Arabic and in Arabic lands, including of course Muslim Spain. But, as is increasingly recognized, the work of such philosophically minded Jews, indeed Jewish and Islamic philosophy generally, is part and parcel of “Western” philosophy, the tradition that commenced with the ancient Greeks.
Jews and Arabs saw in Plato, Aristotle, Alexander of Aphrodisias, Themistius, Galen, John Philoponus, and Plotinus much that was of value for better understandingand interpretingtheir own monotheistic traditions. And in so usingand revivifyingthe ancients for their own purposes they bequeathed to future generations of philosophers in medieval Christendom a rich supply of arguments and, as importantly, a non-parochial outlook, an openness, which saw Aquinas look respectfully to Averroes as the Commentator (on Aristotle) and to Maimonides as Rabbi Moyses. One runs the risk of lookingat the Jewish philosophers and their use of the past for present concerns as quite unoriginal, as merely middlemen in the transport of ideas from ancient Greece to medieval Christendom. Such a view bears its Christian triumphalism clearly, and should be stoutly resisted.
Judaism did not end with Jesus, and one should likewise realize that Jewish philosophy continued unabated longafter Aquinas, often seemingly uninfluenced by Christian philosophical trends. It would be very wrongin fact to read medieval Jewish philosophy in isolation from the host cultures in which it invariably found itself, but it would be equally misguided to lose sight of it as a rich source of philosophical argumentation just because it looked to extra-Jewish sources as a means by which to explicate its own monotheistic traditions. It is our hope that the reader will come away with an appreciation of a diverse set of thinkers, often at odds with each other, whose originality consists precisely in its creative use and constant adaptation of traditional texts and norms. Production of this volume has been a pleasingly international project, bringing together scholars from America, Europe, and Israel. We have been aided in our editorial task by the timeliness of our contributors and by the helpful team at Cambridge University Press (UK), especially Kevin Taylor. Our thanks to all.
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