Crescas and Maimonides

Immortality and

reference to immortality and Providence there is a clear division of opinion between the philosophers (neo-Platonists and Aristotelians) and the Anti rationalists. The former, like Maimonides and Gersonides, make both of these privileges dependent upon intellectual knowledge. The immaterial as such is immortal and the human soul achieves its complete immateriality as an actual entity through contempla tion and thought, hence the human reason or the rational soul is immortal, and the degree of immortality is dependent upon the character and extent of theoretical knowledge. The Anti-rational ists, like Halevi and Crescas, reject this notion on logical grounds and, with a truer understanding of the spirit of Judaism, lay stress on the love of God and the observance of the Biblical and the Rab binic commandments as the sole requisite and condition of immor tality.

The problem of Providence was one of great difficulty both on theoretical grounds and by reason of its apparent conflict with experience. In order to make special Providence theoretically possible, God must know every individual as such and reward and punish him according to his deeds. But it is difficult to see how, on the Aristotelian theory of matter and form and the concept of God and of theoretical knowledge, it is possible for an immaterial being to know the individual person or to take cognizance of par ticular acts which as particulars must be material. Moreover, experience shows that many good men suffer and many bad men are prosperous. The theoretical difficulty did not trouble Mai monides, since he maintains that everything is possible for the transcendent God though it may seem to us contrary to reason. Gersonides, as we have seen, was not so easily satisfied, and lim ited God's direct knowledge to universals, the particulars being indirectly involved as contained in the universals. But the prac tical difficulty could not be so easily disposed of. The main solu tion of the Aristotelians was that not all human beings are equally under the special care of the Divine being. All depends upon the nearness of man to God, which is brought about by theoretical study. The more learned and philosophical a person is the nearer he is to God and the more he enjoys the Divine care. Observance of the Jewish laws and ceremonies are necessary as a step in the acquisition of true knowledge. An immoral man who follows after

the desires of his appetite can never become a truly learned man. And the majority of ordinary persons who are mediocre in theory as well as in practice, not to speak of the wicked, are simply left to their fate as determined by nature and are no more taken special notice of than the beasts of the field. Nature provides for them in a general way in accordance with general laws.

The Anti-rationalist Crescas is opposed to this intellectualistic doctrine. God does know particulars, hence there is no theoretical difficulty. But reward and punishment are not determined by a person's intellectual status, but by his obedience and disobedience to God's will and command. Real reward and punishment are given in the next world, nevertheless the apparent anomalies in the fortunes of men in this world, where the good man suffers and the bad man flourishes, can be explained in various ways. Evil is sometimes a good in disguise ; the suffering man may not really be so good as he seems; one sometimes inherits good and evil from one's parents ; the individual is sometimes involved in the destiny of the majority, and so on. All inequalities, however, will be adjusted in the future world.

In addition to the more general doctrines discussed so far, many of the Jewish philosophers exercised their systematizing ac tivities upon the more specific dogmas of the Jewish religion and upon the interpretation of Scripture. An examination of the laws in the Pentateuch showed that some of the rules of action, like those which have to do with social life, are recognized by human society universally, while others are peculiar to the Jewish law. Accordingly they were divided into two classes, called rational and revealed respectively. Some of the Jewish thinkers treat also of the eschatological doctrines of Judaism, among which are the messianic period, the dogma of resurrection, the nature of reward and punishment after death, the meaning of paradise and hell, the future world, and so on. Rationalism plays a small part in these discussions, which are mainly based upon Biblical and Talmudic statements and the traditions connected with them.