Aristotelian Philosophical Programs in the Middle Ages
Yehuda Halper2022, Oxford Handbook of Jewish Philosophy
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Abstract
famously characterized the history of European philosophy as "a series of footnotes to Plato." 1 This would not be a good characterization of the history of medieval Jewish philosophy. Indeed, from Philo of Alexandria (1 st c. C. E.) until the 15 th century, we have no direct evidence of Jews reading Plato. 2 One could, perhaps, characterize medieval Jewish philosophy as a series of footnotes to Aristotle, but with the caveat that most Jewish philosophers read very little Aristotle. Indeed, at the height of Jewish Aristotelianism, from the 13 th c. through the first half of the 15 th century, only six texts of Aristotle had been translated from Arabic to Hebrew, three of which appeared only as lemmata to translations of Averroes' Long commentaries, 3 and another two had been translated from Latin into Hebrew. 4 Even if one were to read all of these works together-and it is even possible that no one actually did-one would have only a piecemeal and incomplete sense of Aristotle's philosophy. Still, many medieval Jewish philosophers had a commitment to an Aristotelian program of study. In its earliest versions, this program appears as a loosely construed order of study (logic, physics, metaphysics, ethics, and politics) and a set of central concepts (substance, accident, form, matter, actuality, telos, nature, etc.) which made their way to Jewish thinkers via Arabic translations and commentaries. Later, it consisted of detailed study of Hebrew translations of some of those commentaries, especially those of Averroes, most often without the texts of Aristotle. These ways of studying the Aristotelian works defined how medieval Jews understood philosophy and science and what subjects they saw as beyond the reach of human understanding. In what follows, we shall trace the outline of this program of study, starting from its appearance among Arabic speaking Jews, then turning to Maimonides' treatment of it, and finally to the formation of various scientific curricula in 1 Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality (New York: The Free Press, 1978), p. 39. For a recent explanation of how Whitehead saw his own work as a footnote to Plato, see Nathan Ogelsby, "Footnotes to Footnotes: Whitehead's Plato" (Ph.D. Dissertation, CUNY, 2018). 2 It is not likely that more than ten of Plato's works were ever translated into Arabic before the 20 th century and even these ten may have been summaries rather than translations; see, e.g., Cristina D'Ancona, "Greek Sources in Arabic and Islamic Philosophy", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2019 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2019/entries/arabic-islamic-greek/>. There are no direct citations from any of these works and all references to Plato are general or sufficiently distinct from Plato's text as to deny making any direct connections. European Jews could, perhaps, have read some selections of the Timaeus in Calcidius' 4 th century Latin translation, but if they did they left no record of it. Plato's works, indeed, were not translated into Hebrew until the 20 th century. It is possible, however, that medieval Jews of Byzantium could have read and studied Plato in Greek; there is as yet no evidence of this, but there is still much left to be uncovered. Note, though, that Marsilio Ficino's Latin translations of Plato were extremely influential on Jewish philosophers of renaissance Italy, marking a distinct point of departure from the Middle Ages. 3 These were, in chronological order, Samuel Ibn Tibbon's translation of the Meteorology and Zeraḥyah Ḥen's translations of the De Generatione and Corruptione and De Anima. The Posterior Analytics and Physics were translated by Qalonimos ben Qalonimos along with Averroes' Long Commentaries on those works. The Metaphysics was similarly translated by an otherwise unknown Moses and then revised by Moses of Salon. 4 These were the 13 th century translation of the De Animalibus, probably by Samuel HaLevi, and Meir Alguadez's translation of the Nicomachean Ethics made around 1400. The latter appeared as Sefer ha-middot, ed. J. M. Satanow (Berlin: 1791) in an oft reprinted edition. Another anonymous translation of part of De Anima, produced between 1160 and 1270, is also extant.
Key takeaways
- Still, it is not possible to say how many other Jews in Arabic lands followed some version of an Aristotelian program of study before Abraham ibn Daud and Maimonides.
- That is, on the whole, Maimonides' Guide offers a complete parallel to the Aristotelian program one that begins with logic, continues with physics, metaphysics, ethics, and politics.
- Taken together, Samuel Ibn Tibbon's works and translations provide the Hebrew reader with an Aristotelian curriculum of logic and astronomy revolving around and building off of Maimonides' Guide and its interpretation.
- These thinkers were especially interested in Aristotelian physics, though Mordecai Comtino, perhaps the best known Aegean Jewish philosopher, wrote extensive commentaries on Maimonides' Treatise on the Art of Logic, Euclid's Elements, astronomical writings, and probably also Aristotle's Metaphysics (now lost).
- We first learn of Jewish interest in Aristotelian philosophy and science in the ninth century, but we do not find Jewish thinkers placing explicit value on a complete Aristotelian program of study until the 12 th century with Abraham ibn Daud and Moses Maimonides.
