Medieval Jewish Philosophers and the Human Body

Abstract

Medieval Jewish philosophers approached the human body and being in a body from various aspects: ontological, ethical, psychological, and eschatological. Thinkers from many different geographical and philosophical backgrounds nonetheless all shared a common point of reference: Judaism as an “embodied religion.” Jewish day-to-day practice (“mitzvot”) and Jewish law (“halakha”) have much to do with the regulation and moderation of the body, in this life as well as after the resurrection (if taken literally). This creates potential tension with the different philosophical and theological traditions many Jewish philosophers responded to. Passages from the writings of—among others—Saadya Gaon, Judah Halevi, Bahya ibn Paquda, Maimonides, and Abraham ibn Daud, are analyzed and assessed, exhibiting a wide scope of opinions and approaches, all of which have some affinity to the “embodiment” of the Jewish religion, which perhaps reduces the ontological distance between the realm of body and the realm of mind.