Hasdai Crescas on Codification, Cosmology and Creation

Hasdai Crescas' Preface

Previous articleNext article No AccessNew Biological BooksIntroduction to the History of Science. Volume III. Science and Learning in the Fourteenth Century. Part I. The Time of Abu-l-Fida', Levi ben Gerson, and William of Occam. George Sarton Introduction to the History of Science. Volume III. Science and Learning in the Fourteenth Century. Part II. The Time of Geoffrey Chaucer, Ibn Khaldun, and Hasdai Crescas. George Sarton Owsei TemkinOwsei Temkin Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Quarterly Review of Biology Volume 24, Number 3Sep., 1949 Published in association with Stony Brook University Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/397077 PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Written in 1425 by one of the participants in the Disputation of Tortosa (1413-1414), the Sefer ha-Iqqarim is one of the most important philosophical-theological writings of the 14th and 15th centuries. It was composed during the period comprised between the persecutions of 1391 and the expulsion of 1492 and characterised by the multitude of conversions. Like Sa‘adya Gaon, Maimonides and Hasdai Crescas – the latter being his teacher – Joseph Albo examines the “Principles” of Judaism, their relation with reason and their religious specificity. This reflection is constructed by means of references to the Jewish tradition, but also, in one particular context, by opposing everything that calls this tradition into question. Thus, references to Christianity, in various forms, are omnipresent in the Sefer ha-Iqqarim. A veritable “Defence and Illustration” of Judaism, the Sefer ha-Iqqarim cannot be reduced to its polemical dimension, yet this dimension should be taken into account for an exact appreciation of its purpose, reception and scope.

R. Hasdai Crescas’ magnum opus, The Light of the Lord, written in Spain and completed in 1410,1 is a study in contrasts. It is a treatise devoted to a systematic presentation of Jewish dogma that contains probably more original and profound purely philosophic insights and arguments than any other Jewish treatise of the Middle Ages. It is an Anti-Aristotelian work that not only attacks the foundations of Aristotelian philosophy from a religious standpoint but also from a philosophic one. In many ways it anticipates Spinoza’s 17th century critique of Aristotle, and may well have influenced it.2 At the same time, Aristotelian thought pervades the Light of the Lord. Despite the fact that Crescas clings to the view of a freely willing personal deity of Jewish tradition and makes it the foundation of his philosophy, he in many ways remains in the orbit of the Aristotelian tradition in his thinking.

Hasdai Crescas: The Refutation of the Christian Principles. Translated by Daniel J. Lasker. SUNY Series in Jewish Philosophy. Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1992. x + 156 pp. $12.95 - Volume 63 Issue 3

The noted Jewish scholar Harry Wolfson (d. 1929) claimed in youthful writings that the fifteenth‐century rabbinic thinker and physicist, Hasdai Crescas, was a pragmatist. This essay introduces evidence that there are, indeed, significant analogies between elements of Hasdai Crescas’s critique of Aristotle and elements of Charles Peirce’s pragmatism. The essay concludes that Crescas’s primary work, Light of the Lord (Or Hashem), displays a unique analogue to classical American pragmatism, which analogue I label “rabbinic pragmatism” and classify as a subtype of “Jewish pragmatism.” The essay’s central hypothesis is that Crescas’s scientific reasoning is correlative to his Torah‐based reasoning. A second hypothesis is that the enabling conditions of this correlativity are the inquirer’s relation to God as author of Creation and of the Commandments (mitzvah). I argue that Crescas’s non‐finite mathematics (a potential source for Galileo) is correlative to his account of the non‐finite meanings of each Commandment so that each command displays fresh meanings in each new context of life.

L’objectiu d’aquest article es fer llum a la complexa i ambigua explicacio sobre la creacio del mon que proposa Hasday Cresques —un rabi, metge i filosof jueu nascut a Barcelona al segle xiv— a Or Adonay (La llum del Senyor). Harry A. Wolfson (1953) analitza com Cresques intenta conciliar la doctrina de l’emanacio, d’arrel plotiniana, amb la de la creacio del no-res, d’origen biblic. Es a dir, les dues explicacions, d’entrada excloents, que filosofs i teolegs jueus, musulmans i cristians empraven per explicar l’origen del mon. Al nostre entendre, Cresques i, en menys mesura, Wolfson sembla que passen per alt que l’esmentada conciliacio nomes es pot dur a terme a costa de desembocar en una serie de contradiccions logiques vinculades a la voluntat divina i a la temporalitat. En aquest article, les assenyalem. Tambe hi mostrem com l’aporia en la qual desemboca l’argumentacio de Cresques no es fruit de la seva manca de destresa logica, sino del fet que esta intuint, sense encara disposar de les eines conceptuals per enfrontar-s’hi, que el concepte de creacio del mon es aporetic perque produeix les seves propies condicions de possibilitat. Explorem aquesta idea amb l’ajut de les reflexions que Jacques Derrida fa d’altres fenomens performatius aporetics.

Medieval Jewish intellectuals living in Muslim and Christian lands were strongly concerned to recover what they regarded as a 'lost' Jewish philosophical tradition. As part of this project they transmitted and produced many philosophical and scientific works and commentaries, as well as philosophical commentary on scripture, in Judaeo-Arabic and Hebrew, the principal literary languages of medieval Jewry. This volume presents translations of seven prominent medieval Jewish rationalists: Saadia Gaon, Solomon ibn Gabirol, Moses Maimonides, Isaac Albalag, Moses of Narbonne, Levi Gersonides, Hasdai Crescas and Joseph Albo - including, for the first time in English, the complete Falaquera abridgement of Gabirol's Source of Life. These works range over topics that are both theological (e.g. the creation of the world) and philosophical (e.g. determinism and free choice), but they are characterized by two overarching principles: the unity of truth, and its accessibility to human reason.

Warren Zev Harvey wrote a bold and now famous paper over thirty years ago entitled “A Portrait of Spinoza as a Maimonidean,” defending the dominant influence of the philosophy of the medieval Jewish philosopher Moses Maimonides on the thought of Baruch Spinoza. However, since then, he further developed his thesis by publishing numerous articles showing that Spinoza was not only developing the ideas of Maimonides, but also was unique in synthesizing many different competing strands within medieval Jewish philosophy more generally, including those of Abraham Ibn Ezra, Levi Gersonides, and Hasdai Crescas. In other words, one can even be a Maimonidean by adapting the views of Maimonides’s critics who nonetheless continued his philosophic legacy within the discourse that he began. While the thought and character of Baruch Spinoza has been continually scrutinized and reinterpreted in every generation since his death, I argue that Harvey’s emphasis on the diversity of Jewish sources within Spinoza’s thought aims to be a model for a political liberalism that is rooted within the texts of the Jewish tradition, while also one that advocates an intellectual pluralism.

This essay shows three things: first, that we cannot comply with a command from God to believe in God; second, that God cannot command us to believe in God; and, third, that the divine command theory is false. The third conclusion follows from the second, and the second follows from the first. The essay focuses on an argument from the medieval Jewish philosopher, Hasdai Crescas. It also draws from, and is something of a sequel to, an argument from Brown and Nagasawa published previously in this journal.

List of contributors Preface Chronology Note on transliteration Glossary Part I: Background and Context: 1. Introduction to the study of medieval Jewish philosophy Oliver Leaman 2. The biblical and rabbinic background to medieval Jewish philosophy David Shatz 3. The Islamic context of medieval Jewish philosophy Joel L. Kraemer Part II. Ideas, Works and Writers: 4. Saadya and Jewish kalam Sarah Stroumsa 5. Jewish Neoplatonism: being above Being and divine emanation in Solomon ibn Gabirol and Isaac Israeli Sarah Pessin 6. Judah Halevi and his use of philosophy in the Kuzari Barry S. Kogan 7. Maimonides and medieval Jewish Aristotelianism Daniel H. Frank 8. Maimonides and the sciences Tzvi Langermann 9. Medieval Jewish political thought Menachem Lorberbaum 10. Judaism and Sufism Paul B. Fenton 11. Philosophy and kabbalah: 1200-1600 Hava Tirosh-Samuelson 12. Arabic into Hebrew: the Hebrew translation movement and the influence of Averroes upon medieval Jewish thought Steven Harvey 13. Philosophy in southern France: controversy over philosophic study and the influence of Averroes upon Jewish thought Gregg Stern 14. Conservative tendencies in Gersonides' religious philosophy Charles H. Manekin Part III. The Later Years: 15. The impact of scholasticism upon Jewish philosophy in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries T. M. Rudavsky 16. Jewish philosophy and the Jewish-Christian philosophical dialogue in fifteenth-century Spain Ari Ackerman 17. Hasdai Crescas and anti-Aristotelianism James T. Robinson 18. The end and aftereffects of medieval Jewish philosophy Seymour Feldman Guide to further reading in English Index.

The primary aim of this chapter it to provide a survey and outline of the chief elements of Spinoza’s modal philosophy, and its medieval Jewish philosophical background. The first section focuses on Hasdai Crescas, a bold and original, anti-Aristotelian philosopher. The rest of the chapter focuses on Spinoza’s main modal concepts, his understanding of contingency, and the extent of his commitment to necessitarianism. In addition, the chapter argues that Spinoza makes a distinction between two notions of contingency, which in turn shows how his various assertions about contingency can be rendered consistent. Second, the chapter shows how one central text in Spinoza, which is commonly taken to be the strongest and most stubborn proof against the reading of Spinoza as strict necessitarianism, has been widely misunderstood, and how it is perfectly compatible with reading Spinoza as a strict necessitarian.

This paper is devoted to the analysis and to the comparison of concepts on theodicy and on the nature of evil that was developed by two medieval Jewish philosophers. They are Levi ben Gershom (Gersonides or Ralbag, 1288-1344) and Hasdai Crescas (1340-1410/12). The sources of the analysis are the third chapter of the fourth book of the “Wars of the Lord” (1329) by Gersonides and the second chapter of the second book of the “Light of the Lord” (1410) by Crescas. Both philosophers assert that evil essentially cannot come from God. The causes of evil are the sinfulness of human beings, or the celestial bodies, or the breaking of the connection between human and God. The problem of evil and injustice in this world are closely related for Gersonides and Crescas to other problems, such as divine knowledge of future events, free will, reasons for reward and punishment. Gersonides and Crescas differ considerably on these issues. Gersonides demonstrates that God is not an essential source of evil. He proceeded to build on this statement with the fallacy of the opinion that divine providence extends to individuals. After all, said Gersonides, retribution would make God a source of evil. And in this case, righteous men would always be rewarded, and sinners would always be punished for their sins. But obviously this is not the case. Crescas, in contrast to Gersonides, claims that God knows individuals. This does not prevent him from agreeing with Ralbagh that God is not the source of evil. According to Crescas, any punishment or suffering (even for the righteous) always leads to good. It is obvious therefore that Crescas adheres to a more traditional position, trying, inter alia, to bring his thoughts as close as possible to the ideas expressed in the Torah. Gersonides adheres to a position close to the ideas of Maimonides. Gersonides, in the author’s opinion, created a philosophical concept that is more consistent in comparison with Crescas’ conception, however more distant from the Jewish teaching.

Hasdai Crescas on the Possibility of Multiple, Simultaneous Worlds

The fourteenth century saw the emergence of a new trend in medieval philosophy and science. While continuing to adhere generally to an Aristotelian understanding of nature, Christian scholars began to question and modify certain premises of Aristotelian physics and to suggest non-Aristotelian alternatives, reviving pre-Socratic or Hellenistic views and developing original ideas based on observation and experience. Such remarkable figures as Thomas Bradwardine and his successors in Oxford, and Jean Buridan and his students in Paris challenged basic Aristotelian tenets about infinity, place, vacuum, motion, and material substance, suggesting the possibility of an infinite cosmos filled by multiple worlds. Although motivated largely by Christian doctrine and the condemnations of Aristotle, this move towards critical inquiry led to a new conception of the universe, which anticipated and contributed to the scientific revolution of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.