Philosophers of the Middle Ages

PHILOSOPHERS OF THE MIDDLE AGES The Jewish philosophers of the middle ages can be best clas sified under four heads as follows : Kalamists, neo-Platonists, Aristotelians and anti-rationalists. These divisions represent the predominating tendencies and are not to be taken strictly. Many of the mediaeval Jewish philosophers were eclectic in their teach ings, either consciously or unconsciously ; consciously, in that they tried to harmonize diverse systems; unconsciously, because their sources were confused, and spurious works as well as apocryphal sayings circulated under the name of Empedocles, Plato, Aris totle, etc.

Kalamists.

Kalam is the name given to a system of doctrine which originated among the Arabs in the 9th century and con tinued until the eleventh. The adherents of this form of teaching were called in Arabic Mutakallimun, which may be anglicized into Kalamists. They were the first to add reason as an aid in arriving at true knowledge. In seeking for a basis in reason for their theology, they adopted the atomistic doctrine of the pre Aristotelian philosophers, Leucippus and Democritus. The basis of all physical being is atom and accident. The atom is the basic substance, the accident is the quality or attribute. God created both, and His will alone determines what accident is to be joined to what atom. There is no other causal activity in the world except the Divine will; natural law and necessity are fictions es tablished by philosophers on the basis of observed repetitions.

There is no inherent difference between the ordinary and the ex traordinary, the normal and the abnormal, the natural and the supernatural or miraculous, except as repetitions in the physical world create in us habits of expectation that what has happened before will happen again. To God nothing is normal and nothing is abnormal. The rare phenomenon of the division of the Red sea and the daily phenomenon of the rising of the sun stand on the same footing. If we leave out the Divine will we have in these views an anticipation of David Hume.

These doctrines were preliminary to the more properly theo logical teachings which the Kalamists advocated. In conformity

with their reliance on reason they elaborated proofs for the existence of God which were based upon the doctrine of the world's creation in time. They argued as follows: The world either had an origin in time or not. If it had no origin in time, it had existed from eternity, and no one made it. If, on the other hand, it had a beginning in time, it must have been made by someone, since nothing can make itself. Hence if the creation of the world in time can be proved, the existence of a Creator can be proved likewise. Accordingly they proceeded to prove that the world was created in time, and then based upon this conclu sion the proof of the existence of God. They defended the unity of God against the Christians, His incorporeality against the an thropomorphists in their own midst, and invented ingenious and hair-splitting discussions concerning the Divine attributes so as to make the absolute unity of God consistent with the theology of the Koran. Unity was understood in the absolute sense as exclud ing any and every kind of plurality. There is no such unity in our experience, since every object, no matter what, has parts and di visions or is capable of receiving them. Hence God is absolutely different from everything else, and when we say, He is living, wise and powerful, we must not be understood as ascribing to God three distinct qualities. In God they are one with Him and with each other, though we do not understand how.

The Kalamists also defended God's justice against the ortho dox views of the arbitrariness of the Divine will and of fatalism or determinism. If good and evil, right and wrong, mean simply conformity to and deviation from God's will, then God's will is neither good nor evil, and God is neither just nor unjust. This is an untenable doctrine, hence they taught that good and evil are absolute and not relative to the Divine will. God wills the good because it is good and abhors evil because it is evil. Similarly if man is determined to act as he does, reward and punishment are not just. Hence to vindicate God's justice they taught free dom of man's will.