Philosophers of the Middle Ages

The earliest Jewish philosophers followed the teachings of the Arab Kalamists. Among the Karaites may be mentioned : Joseph Al Basir (I 1 th century) and Jeshua ben Judah (nth century); among the Rabbinites, David ben Merwan Al Mukammas (I oth century), Saadia Ben Joseph Al-Fayyumi (892-942), Bahya Ibn Pakuda (12th century), Joseph Ibn Zaddik (d. 1149). The Karaites followed the Arab Kalamists more closely than did the Rabbinites, but none of the Jewish Kalamists went so far as to deny natural law. Thus Saadia, whose philosophical work Ernunot ve-Deot (Beliefs and Opinions) is based upon the Kala mistic model, rejects the doctrine of metempsychosis or transmi gration of souls on the ground that there must be a certain kin ship between a given soul and its body, that the soul of a human being cannot be associated with the body of a lower animal.

Neo-Platonists.

The next wave of philosophic tradition that passed over Arabic culture and hence over Jewish culture also in Mohammedan countries, was the neo-Platonic. Plotinus was the founder of this school of thought in the 3rd century, and it was the last attempt of the Greeks to establish a system of phi losophy on purely scientific though pagan lines. As the name in dicates it was a return to Plato in the sense of being a spiritual istic philosophy, which regarded the material, the concrete and the sensible as unreal and as the source of evil. The intelligible alone is real and good. By intelligible is meant that which can be grasped by intellect alone and not by the five senses. The neo Platonists, however, went even beyond Plato in assuming that that which can be apprehended by intellectual thinking is not the highest reality, that beyond the intelligible is the transcendent, which cannot be subsumed under the categories of thought. This is God, the unknowable. But though God cannot be known as we understand knowledge, an exceptional individual may in rare instances reach the state of enthusiasm or ecstasy in which, losing consciousness of himself as an individual, he may mo mentarily enter into a mystic union with the source of all be ing. This idea of the transcendence of God and of mystic union. with Him is found also in Philo ; and as the precursor of the neo Platonic philosophy, Ammonias Saccas, who was the teacher of Plotinus, lived in Alexandria, it is probable that the Philonian philosophy had its share in the formation of the neo-Platonic doctrine.

In their derivation of the universe from God the neo-Platonists used the method of emanation, which makes their system Pan theistic. There is no creation ex nihilo, nor do they start, as did

Plato and Aristotle, with two ultimate principles, mind and mat ter, or form and matter, but beginning with the One good God, they allow everything else to emanate from Him as light emanates from a luminous object. First emanates Intellect (Greek vas), then universal Soul (11/vx0, then Nature (Oats), then Matter (An), which, as the last in the series, is farthest from the Source and hence the coarsest, the least real and the source of evil, which is pure negation and not anything positive.

The chief representative of the neo-Platonic philosophy in the Jewish literature of this subject is Solomon Ibn Gabirol (1021– 58), though neo-Platonic ideas are also found in Isaac Israeli (855-955), the oldest Jewish philosopher of the middle ages, Bahya, Pseudo-Bahya, Abraham bar Hiyya (i2th century), Joseph Ibn Zaddik, Judah Halevi (12th century), Moses (107o 1138) and Abraham Ibn Ezra (1092-1167). Gabirol's Fons Vitae is completely neo-Platonic, though he deviates from the traditional neo-Platonic doctrine in placing universal matter and universal form in all the stages of existence as they emanate from God, in stead of making matter the last stage in the emanation series. Matter itself changes its nature in the course of its descent and coarseness is not the property of matter as such, but the result of increasing distance from the source. The essential quality of matter is rather indeterminateness, as determination is the char acteristic quality of form.

Aristotelians.

The last positive philosophic stage among the Jews of the middle ages was Aristotelianism, and to this system of philosophy belong the most important Jewish thinkers of that period, namely, Abraham Ibn Daud ( III 0-80), Moses Maimoni des (1135-1204) and Gersonides (1288-1344). Aristotle's is the most rationalistic system of Greek antiquity, using the term ra tionalism not in contrast to empiricism but in opposition to mysti cism. Perhaps intellectualism is the better word. Aristotle is re garded as the philosopher par excellence and all his works are studied with all their details, not necessarily the translations of them, but in the majority of instances paraphrases and commen taries on the works of Aristotle made by the Arabs Al Kindi, Al Farabi, Ibn Sina (Avicenna) and Ibn Roshd (Averroes).