Arabic philosophy

that the true opinions concerning the secrets and mysteries of

the Torah

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358 steven harvey

were not hidden, enclosed in riddles and treated by all men of knowledge

with all sorts of artifice through which they could teach them without

expounding them explicitly, because of something bad being hidden in them,

or because they undermine the foundations of Law . . . Rather have they been

hidden because at the outset the intellect is incapable of receiving them . . .

This is the cause of the fact that the “Torah speaketh in the language of the

sons of man” [BT Yevamot 71a, BT Bava Mes.i‘a 31b] . . . This is so because

it is presented in such a manner as to make it possible for the young, the

women, and all the people to begin with it and to learn it. Now it is not

within their power to understand these matters as they truly are. Hence

they are confined to accepting tradition with regard to all sound opinions

that are of such a sort that it is preferable that they should be pronounced

as true and with regard to all representations of this kind – and this in such

a manner that the mind is led toward the existence of the objects of these

opinions and representations but not toward grasping their essence as it

truly is.32

In other words, Maimonides wishes to assure his vulgar reader that

although the Torah, the sages, and he himself engage in concealment,

this is not because the teachings that are so hidden undermine the

faith. Rather it is a consequence of the different intellects of man.

Some are able to understand the secrets of the Torah as they truly are,

while most others must understand these truths through tradition

and through representations of them. The truths are basically the

same, but they are known in different ways. As for knowing these

secrets as they truly are, Maimonides had assured the reader in the

introduction that “these great secrets are [not] fully and completely

known to anyone among us.”33

Maimonides’ distinction between his intended readers and the

vulgar readers or between the few and the many reflects the approach

of the fala¯ sifa. Al-Fa¯ ra¯bı¯, for example, had written in his Attainment

of Happiness:

[N]ations and the citizens of cities are composed of some who are the elect

[al-kh¯ as.s.

a] and others who are the vulgar [al-‘a¯mma]. The vulgar confine

themselves, or should be confined, to theoretical cognitions that are in conformity

with unexamined common opinion. The elect do not . . . but reach

their conviction and knowledge on the basis of premises subjected to thorough

scrutiny.34

This distinction between the elite and the multitude was understood

by all the fala¯ sifa and is the underlying reason for their esotericism.

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Islamic philosophy and Jewish philosophy 359

This does not mean that they agreed either on the limitations of

human knowledge or on the intellectual capabilities of the multitude.

In fact, there was no standard position. The issue of the

limitations of human knowledge for Maimonides and the Islamic

fala¯ sifa has been discussed in recent decades in several important

studies.35 As for the intellectual capabilities of the multitude, it

is, as we have seen, agreed by the fala¯ sifa that they cannot know

things by demonstration or as they really are. The disagreement concerns

what precisely they are capable of grasping. Thus, for example,

Maimonides insisted that they be taught to believe that God is incorporeal;

while Averroes maintained that this was not a suitable belief

for the multitude.36

Maimonides’ explanation for the need for esotericism, cited above,

is itself inevitably esoteric. Is it true that the sages and the philosophers

do not conceal their teachings “because of something bad being

hidden in them, or because they undermine the foundations of law”?

A century after Maimonides, Isaac Albalag wrote inhis book, Tiqqun

ha-De‘ot, that Maimonides taught creation in place of eternity. But

was thisMaimonides’ true position or simply his exoteric one? Scholars

today disagree, but Albalag suggested that “it is possible that, in

his discretion, the Master did not think it useful to reveal what the

Torah has concealed from the vulgar.”37 Albalag explained that at the

time of Maimonides “the theory of the eternity of the world was altogether

alien to theminds of the common people, so much so that the

simple believers imagined that if anyone accepted it he so to speak

denied the whole Torah.”38 In other words, for Albalag, Maimonides

exoterically put forward the philosophically indefensible opinion of

creation because the multitude in his day could not bear the truth

of eternity, which view would have undermined the foundations of

law for them. In a similar vein, Gersonides argued that certain of

Maimonides’ teachings were forced by theological considerations.

Thus, for example, he writes:

It seems to us that Maimonides’ position on this question of divine cognition

is not implied by any philosophical principles; indeed reason denies his view,

as I will show. It seems rather that theological considerations have forced

him to this view.39

Gersonides related to Maimonides exoteric teachings which he

claimed could not stand up to philosophic argument. For Gersonides,

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360 steven harvey

Maimonides was compelled to hold these views because he believed

the philosophic teachings undermined the faith. In other words, both

Albalag and Gersonides among others held that Maimonides put forward

exoteric and philosophically inadequate teachings concerning

the secrets of the Torah precisely because he believed the philosophic

views undermined the belief of the multitude.40

Maimonides could respond to these accusations that the secrets

of the Torah need to be concealed not because they undermine the

faith, but because, given the intellectual capacities of the vulgar,

they could lead them astray. This raises the question of the difference

between knowing something as it truly is and accepting it by

tradition as true. In other words, what is the difference between the

knowledge of the few and the beliefs of the many? These questions

are treated most directly by al-F ¯ar¯ab¯ı in his Attainment of Happiness,

his most important work on the relation between philosophy

and religion. There he writes that philosophy is prior to religion in

time and that religion is an imitation of philosophy. “In everything

of which philosophy gives an account based on intellectual perception,

religion gives an account based on imagination.”41 According

to al-F ¯ar¯ab¯ı, the function of the philosopher is thus not only to learn

the sciences, to know the beings, to attain supreme happiness, but

also to exploit hiswisdom for the good of the multitude who can only

come to know the images. Al-F¯ar¯ab¯ı writes that the “perfect philosopher

is the one who not only possesses the theoretical sciences, but

also the faculty for exploiting them for the benefit of all others so

that they too can reach happiness or perfection according to their

capacity.”42 Only the man who has grasped the truths can represent

the images of these truths to others. As Mahdi explains, al-F ¯ar¯ab¯ı

assigns to the philosopher a function ordinarily associated with the

prophet, the founder of a religion.43 Al-F¯ar¯ab¯ı thus describes here the

emergence of natural religion whereby the philosopher brings into

being and establishes a religion in a natural way by means of his

knowledge and imagination, without divine revelation. Now there

is some disagreement among scholars as to whether Maimonides

saw the relation of Judaism to philosophy in precisely this light, but

there is no question that al-F ¯ar¯ab¯ı’s statements in the Attainment of

Happiness influenced his thinking.

Interestingly, the Attainment of Happiness and indeed the entire

trilogy, The Philosophy of Plato and Aristotle, of which it is the

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Islamic philosophy and Jewish philosophy 361

first part, were not translated into Hebrew, despite the great respect

held for their author and their important subject matter. Shem-T. ov

Falaquera in the mid-thirteenth century wrote an abbreviated paraphrastic

Hebrew version of the three books of the trilogy inhis Reshit

H.

okhma, but did not specify that his paraphrase was based on al-

F¯ar¯ab¯ı. Rather he wrote that his words were those of “Aristotle or

of the philosophers of his school.”44 To the extent that Falaquera’s

paraphrase influenced other authors, it may be seen as an illustration

of the way inwhich Arabic thought at times penetrated directly

into Jewish philosophic discourse without the author’s awareness of

its source. In addition, Falaquera’s paraphrase is itself of interest for

the way in which a thirteenth-century thinker, very well read and

strongly influenced by the fala¯ sifa, sought to present their political

teachings to his Jewish reader.45

Falaquera alone among the Jewish medievals, or moderns for that

matter, attached enough value to al-F ¯ar¯ab¯ı’s most important writings

on the relation between philosophy and religion, the Philosophy of

Plato and Aristotle as well as chapters from the Book of Letters, to

translate them into Hebrew. Remarkably, he omits their most interesting

and controversial sections, such as the one from the Attainment

of Happiness cited above. Al-F¯ar¯ab¯ı suggests in these sections

that philosophy alone is necessary for human happiness and perfection.

Religion is animitation of philosophy that is useful for teaching

and governing the multitude, but does not contribute to the perfection

of the philosopher’s intellect. Falaquera was not prepared to go

that far. He was not prepared to say that true religion is an imitation

of philosophy and comes after it. Philosophy, for him, may be

necessary for human happiness, but it is not sufficient.

the genre of supercommentary: gersonides

and his school

As we have seen, in the areas of logic, physics, psychology, and metaphysics,

wheremajorwritings and commentaries of the fala¯ sifawere

translated into Hebrew and well known, their influence is manifest

and direct. Aristotle was the Philosopher, but Jews learned

Aristotelian science primarily through the commentaries of Averroes.

Shortly after Qalonimus ben Qalonimus completed the project

of the translation of Averroes’ epitomes and middle commentaries

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362 steven harvey

on natural science and thus made possible the thorough study of

Aristotelian science and philosophy in Hebrew, a new genre of literature

emerged with Gersonides’ commentaries (written between

the years 1321 and 1324) on Averroes’ commentaries. Gersonides’

supercommentaries were the most popular of the genre, but similar

commentaries onAverroes were written by Gersonides’ students and

colleagues in subsequent years.46 These supercommentaries explicated

the commentaries of Averroes in a way similar to that inwhich

Averroes had explicated the texts of Aristotle. One significant difference

is that while Averroes’ commentaries could be read independently

of the book of Aristotle upon which they commented, this

was usually not the case for the supercommentaries.47 Rather, like

the medieval Hebrew Biblical or Talmudic commentaries, they were

intended to be read alongwith the text upon which they commented.

Gersonides states explicitly that his purpose in these supercommentaries

on the epitomes is “to explain concisely the epitomes

of Averroes on the physical writings of Aristotle, for even though

most of what Averroes says is very clear, there remain some profound

things that he does not sufficiently explain.”48 His stated aim

is more ambitious in his introduction to the middle commentaries

on the physical writings:

In the places where our opinion does not agree with that of Aristotle, we will

mention our opinions and refute those of Aristotle . . . This is in addition to

the benefit that follows from such a commentary for the students in helping

them understand some difficult things.49

But these different statements of purpose should not be interpreted

to mean that Gersonides is acquiescent in his commentaries on the

epitomes. Jesse Mashbaum, for example, has shown how in his commentary

on Averroes’ Epitome of the “De Anima” he rejects positions

of both Aristotle and Averroes on human intellection as formulated

inAverroes’ Epitome andMiddle Commentary.50 Similarly,

Ruth Glasner, who has contributed more than any other scholar to

our appreciation of Gersonides as a boldly original interpreter of Aristotle

and Averroes, has time and again cited Gersonides’ commentaries

on the epitomes of the books on natural science as well as those

on themiddle commentaries to illustrate his rejections of fundamental

Aristotelian teachings presented therein, such as the Aristotelian

accounts of natural motion and violent motion.51 But these studies

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Islamic philosophy and Jewish philosophy 363

and others that illustrate Gersonides’ role in the supercommentaries

as a critic of teachings of both Aristotle and Averroes should not

cloud the simple fact that Gersonides was himself an Aristotelian

who very much valued the commentaries of Averroes. Thus Charles

Manekin, who has studied Gersonides’ supercommentaries on the

books of the Organon and has investigated his role as an informed

and competent critic of aspects of Aristotle’s logic, has noted that

Gersonides “thanks Averroes for performing zealously the task of a

commentator, which, he says, is to determine the true intentions of

the author and not to distort them for the sake of criticism.”52

The fact is that medieval Jewish Aristotelians studied Aristotelian

science through the commentaries of Averroes and respected him

as the Commentator. While Averroes himself repeatedly praised

Aristotle in the highest of terms for having originated and completed

the sciences and thus saw his own task simply to explain the truths

that he taught (and if absolutely necessary to correctmistaken teachings

subtly), supercommentators like Gersonides, despite their high

estimations of Aristotle and his Commentator, were less dogmatic

and less hesitant to criticize them.53

the waning of the influence of the fala￣ sifa

on jewish thought

The influence of the fala¯ sifa on post-Maimonidean Jewish thought

is evidenced in several areas: (1) the study of science and philosophy

according to the proper order, which entails first mastering logic,

then studying natural science according to the order of the books of

the Aristotelian corpus, and only then studying metaphysics; (2) the

study of logic, natural science, and metaphysics through the books

of Aristotle as interpreted by Averroes; (3) the impact of Plato in matters

of political philosophy as his thought was adapted to religious

communities by al-Fa¯ ra¯bı¯ and later fala¯ sifa; (4) a subtle writing style

that considers the different intellectual capacities and shortcomings

of potential readers; and (5) theological-philosophic discussions such

as those related to the existence of God, his attributes, his knowledge

of particulars, creation, prophecy, providence, free will, ethics,

immortality of the soul, and the happiness and perfection of man.

It would be a mistake to imagine that Jewish thinkers learned

science and philosophy from the fala¯ sifa, but were uninfluenced

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364 steven harvey

by their theological discussions. Indeed those Jews who, following

the recommendation of Maimonides, learned science from Averroes’

commentaries inevitably had to confront his theological teachings

that could be found embedded in the commentaries. It is only reasonable

that if they respected his philosophy and science, they would

consider carefully his theological philosophy. It thus is not surprising

that when Rabbi H.

asdai Crescas wrote his Light of the Lord, as

part of his efforts to strengthen the faith of the Jewish communities

of Spain after the devastating massacres and mass conversions of

1391, he began with a pioneering critique of fundamental teachings

of Aristotelian/Averroist natural science. After all, it was this science

that led some of its followers to believe in an impersonal God

and an eternal world without the possibility of miracles, a world

that held little hope for the immortal existence and happiness of the

individual soul. For Crescas, it was not reason that was to blame, but

the “weak premises” of Aristotelian/Averroist science and “the fallaciousness

of its proofs and the fraudulence of its arguments.”54 In

his defense of Judaism against this science, Crescas, like al-Ghaz¯ al¯ı

before him, employed his extensive knowledge of Aristotle and the

fala¯ sifa. Crescas was determined to play by their rules and refute

the teachings of the philosophers on the basis of Aristotelian logic

and proof. Here again one may see a striking similarity with al-

Ghaz¯ al¯ı. Al-Ghaz¯ al¯ı was the only Islamic student of philosophy who

prefaced his critique of that philosophy with a separate, clear, and

even, at times, improved account of that philosophy. Crescas was

the only Jewish student of philosophy who prefaced his critique

of Aristotelian philosophy and science with a separate, clear, and

even, at times, improved account of that philosophy. Crescas carefully

presented the arguments of Aristotelian/Averroist science in

order to refute those that were not valid. Yet his critique of that

science – with his revolutionary ideas of infinity, space, vacuum,

motion, time, and matter and form – was not immediately successful,

even among opponents of Averroist philosophy. Jews continued

to study Averroes’ Aristotelian commentaries in the fifteenth century,

but perhaps thanks to Crescas, al-Ghaz¯ al¯ı’s Avicennian science

as presented in the Intentions of the Philosophers suddenly became

a respected alternative.55 Moreover, Jewish scholars were becoming

more and more influenced by the new approaches of the Latin

scholastics.At the same time the fala¯ sifa-inspired radical theological

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Islamic philosophy and Jewish philosophy 365

teachings and concomitant esotericism that were to some extent a

hallmark of thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Jewish Aristotelianism

were slowly fading into oblivion. The fala¯ sifa were still read,

but by the mid-fifteenth century, it was no longer possible to speak

of their predominant influence.

notes

1 H. A. Wolfson, Philo: Foundations of Religious Philosophy in Judaism,

Christianity, and Islam, 2 vols. (Cambridge, MA: 1947), vol. II, 459.

2 Consider Wolfson’s description of the “synthetic mediaeval philosopher,

made up of all the common elements of the Christian, the Moslem,

and the Jewish philosopher,” in Philo, vol. II, 446–55.

3 There are no philosophic discussions in the ancient Rabbinic literature.

See S. Lieberman, “How Much Greek in Jewish Palestine,” in A.

Altmann (ed.), Biblical and Other Studies (Cambridge, MA: 1962), 130,

who states categorically that “Greek philosophic terms are absent from

the entire ancient Rabbinic literature.” See also Wolfson, Philo, vol. I,

91–2, and W. Z. Harvey, “Rabbinic Attitudes toward Philosophy,” in

H. J. Blumberg and B. Braude (eds.), “Open Thou Mine Eyes”: Essays

on Aggadah and Judaica Presented to Rabbi William G. Braude on

his Eightieth Birthday (Hoboken, NJ: 1992), 83–101. Harvey concludes

(101): “The Rabbis considered philosophy to be foreign to their concerns.

They did not use technical philosophic terms, and did not write down

systematic answers to philosophic questions.” Cf. D. Novak, “The Talmud

as a Source for Philosophical Reflection,” in Frank and Leaman

[234], 62–80. To be sure, theological and cosmological speculations may

be found in early Hebrew cryptic texts, such as Sefer Yes.

ira (Book of

Creation).

4 On al-Kind¯ı’s influence on Israeli, see A. Altmann and S.M. Stern, Isaac

Israeli: A Neoplatonic Philosopher of the Early Tenth Century (Oxford:

1958), esp. 27–31, 37–9, 42–5, 68–70, 143–5, 186, 210.

5 S. Pines, “Jewish Philosophy,” in P. Edwards (ed.), The Encyclopedia of

Philosophy (New York: 1967), vol. IV, 262–3.

6 See, for example, Endress [67], and chapter 2 above.

7 For example, al-Ghaz¯ al¯ı [111], 4, singles out al-F ¯ar¯ab¯ı and Avicenna;

Ibn T.

ufayl omits mention of al-Kind¯ı in his introduction to H.

ayy ibn

Yaqz. a¯n; Maimonides does not recommend him in his letter to Ibn

Tibbon (see below); and Ibn Khaldu¯ n excludes himin his list of the greatest

Islamic philosophers (see Ibn Khaldu¯ n, The Muqaddimah, trans.

F. Rosenthal [Princeton: 1967], vol. III, 116).

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