NO MODERN MOVEMENT The philosophic movement among the Jews in the middle ages began to decline in the 15th century, partly by reason of the rise of the mystic lore, known as the Cabala, and partly by reason of the decline of philosophical studies among the Arabs, where the reign of toleration was succeeded by persecution and forced con versions. In Christian countries the status of the Jews was even worse and hence not favourable to science and philosophy. Joseph Albo (1380-1444) is the last one of the mediaeval Jews who sum med up in popular form the entire philosophy of the preceding centuries, and though there are no original contributions to Jew ish thought in his Ikkarim (Dogmas, lit. Roots), nevertheless by reason of his orthodox position and the popular style of his dis cussions, filled as they are with Biblical and Talmudic quotations, Albo was read by many who feared to approach Maimonides' Guide of the Perplexed. There were sporadic individuals in the following centuries who wrote on philosophic questions and re lated them to Bible and Talmud, or who interpreted the Bible in philosophic fashion, and clung to the scholastic method and its authority Aristotle, long after Bacon and Descartes and Leibniz introduced a new method and point of view. But the philosophical movement as such had spent its force, and it was not again re sumed. Spinoza belongs to the general history of philosophy rather than to the history of Jewish philosophy. Mendelssohn was an isolated philosopher and had no successors. Other individ ual thinkers may be mentioned who in modern times endeavoured to lay a general philosophical basis for Judaism : Nahman Kroch mal (1785-1840), Samuel Hirsch (1815-1889), both under the influence of Hegelianism, which the latter used for the defence of the Reform movement in Jewry, Asher Ginzberg (Ahad Haam) (1856-1927), the philosopher of Zionism, Hermann Cohen (1842 1918), the neo-Kantian and founder of the Marburg school. It is extremely doubtful whether in the present status of Jewry, divided and dispersed as it is, and the extreme individualism of the modern Jew, a philosophy of Judaism is possible which will ap peal to more than a very small minority. Such a philosophy, if it
were possible, would have to reckon with the points of view and theories of modern science and the methods and results of the Higher Criticism of the Bible. The mediaeval Jewish philosophy is of historical interest only, though as such it ought to be studied more than it is ; critical editions should be brought out of the classical treatises, and the manuscript material of less important works should be made accessible to the student.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.-Judaeo-Alexandrian Philosophy: Ueberweg-Praech ter, Die Philosophie des Altertums, 2nd ed. Berlin 1926, pp. 566-578 (bibl. 179-183) ; J. Drummond, Philo Judaeus, or the Jewish-Alexan drian Philosophy in its Development and Completion (London 1888), probably the best book on the subject for the student and the general reader; Norman Bentwich, Hellenism (Philadelphia, 1919) ; id., Philo Judaeus of Alexandria (Philadelphia, 191o) ; Brehier, E., Les Idees Philosophiques et Religieuses de Philon D' Alexandrie, 2nd ed. Paris, 1925, good and well documented. Mediaeval: Husik I., A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy (New York, 1916) ; H. Malter, article "Jewish Philosophy" in Hastings' Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, vol. ix., pp. ; id., "Saadia Gaon, His Life and Works" (Philadelphia, 1921), the standard work on the subject; Ueberweg Baumgartner, Die mittlere oder die fratristische and scholastische Zeit (Berlin, 1915), PP. (bibl. 388-92, 146-51) ; D. Neumark, Geschichte der jhdischen Philosophic des Mittelalters, nach Problemen dargestellt, vol. i., Berlin, i9o7, vol. ii., part 1, Berlin 1910 (an unfin ished part of a work planned on a large scale) ; I. I. Efros, The Problem of Space in Jewish Mediaeval Philosophy (New York, 192o) ; J. Guttmann, Die religionsphilosophischen Lehren des Isaak Abravanel (Breslau, 1916) ; M. Waxman, The Philosophy of Don Hasdai Crescas (New York, 192o) ; L. Roth, Spinoza, Descartes and Maimonides, (1924) ; H. A. Wolfson, "The Classification of Sciences in Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy," in Hebrew Union College Jubilee Volume (Cin cinnati 1925), pp. 263-315. (I. H.)