T. M. Rudavsky - Jewish Philosophy in the Middle Ages: Science, Rationalism, and Religion

Medieval Jewish philosophy, like Islamic and Christian philosophy, is fundamentally focused on the relationship between faith and reason. The Islamic philosophers Avicenna and Averros, the Jewish philosophers Ibn Daud, Maimonides, and Gersonides, and the Christian scholastics Albertus Magnus and Aquinas, all attempted to reconstruct a unified system that accommodated both theological and natural-philosophical considerations in the wake of Platonism, Neoplatonism, as well as Aristotelian natural philosophy and metaphysics. Arising as an effort toward harmonizing the tenets of Judaism with philosophic teachings, medieval Jewish philosophers dealt with conflicts between philosophical speculation and acceptance of Judaic beliefs. The Jewish philosopher is constrained to reconcile two distinct bodies of knowledgethe secular and religious domainswhere secular itself incorporates both Christian and Islamic thought. In this work, we will examine the extent to which this reconstruction in the Jewish domain is successful.

The purpose of this volume is to provide an account of how Jewish philosophy, from the tenth century to Spinoza, forms part of an ongoing dialogue with medieval Christian and Islamic thought. It is intended to supplement available histories of medieval philosophy, many of which have devoted little space to Jewish philosophy. Our focus is on the tensions between Judaism and rational thought, as reflected in particular philosophical controversies arising in the context of issues in metaphysics, language, cosmology, and philosophical theology. Much new research has occurred in these latter areas, and so it is important to introduce readers to the rich discussions found in medieval Jewish philosophical texts in light of this new research. This volume will thus achieve two aims: to provide a broad historical survey of major figures and schools within the medieval Jewish tradition, and to focus more narrowly on the importance and challenge of rationalist discourse within this tradition.

For a long time, standard histories of medieval philosophy, when they devoted any attention to Jewish philosophy, did so almost solely for the purpose of illuminating the Christian intellectual world. Both the Islamic and Jewish philosophical traditions were regarded as background and context, recognized primarily for their influence on Latin philosophy. Over the last decade or so, this neglect has begun to be overcome and the richness and importance of Jewish philosophy addressed in its own right by volumes devoted explicitly to it. Most of these volumes address a more specialized scholarly audience, one familiar with the broad strokes within Jewish philosophy. My hope is that this work will function as a resource for scholars in a wide variety of disciplines: intellectual historians, scholars of religion, theologians, historians, and literary scholars (especially of the medieval period). It should also be useful for undergraduate and graduate students in those disciplines, but especially in the history of philosophy. Further, it should be accessible to philosophers who want to learn more about the role played by science in the field of medieval Jewish philosophy.

In contradistinction to most recent histories of Jewish philosophy, I have organized the major topics and chapters of this study thematically, ranging from Jewish philosophys earliest awakening in the Hellenistic era with the Greek writings of Philo of Alexandria, through its flourishing in the medieval period, to its culmination in the seventeenth century with the radical thought of Baruch Spinoza. The first two chapters provide an historical overview of the sources (e.g., Platonic, Neoplatonic, and Aristotelian) and contexts (e.g., Islamic, Scholastic) of Jewish philosophizing in the medieval and early modern periods, as well as the textual traditions of Jewish philosophy. Emphasis in this section will be upon the ways in which medieval Jewish philosophers viewed the many philosophical sources available to them.

While present a preliminary chronological overview of the major figures discussed in the work, the remaining chapters focus upon recognizable philosophical issues, each of which reflects a particular set of tensions originating between secularism, science, and Jewish belief. It will be taken for granted by the volume that Jewish philosophy represents an important and identifiable strand within medieval and early modern philosophy as a whole, one worth investigating in its own right. By concentrating on topics such as medieval Jewish science, cosmology, and theory of knowledge, this volume will underscore the important contributions made by Jewish philosophy to the general field of philosophy.

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