The Role of a vicenna and of Islamic ‘A Vicennism’ in the 14th-Century Jewish Debate around Philosophy and Religion

Abstract

The role played by Avicenna's philosophy and, in particular, by the Cor us Avicennianum in late-medieval Jewish philosophy has been never examined as a whole2 and, in any case, a rather limited number of studies on particular aspects of it exists. European Jewish philosophy in the 13th, 14th and 15th centuries has been traditionally regarded as over whelmingly influenced not by Avicenna, but by Averroes. In facts, the list of Hebrew translations of philosophical texts made during these cen turies in Spain, Provence and Italy shows that, while the Corpus Averro icum was almost completely rendered into Hebrew, only some fragments of Avicenna's philosophical works were quoted and translated by Jewish scholars.3 Here follows a survey of the hitherto detected total or partial Hebrew translations of Avicenna's authentic philosophical writings. In the case of al-Sif ' (The Cure), some chapters from the Isagoge and the Prior Analytics were inserted by Todros Todrosi of Aries in his 'phi losophical anthology' (dated 1334); a brief quotation from the Physics is found in the 'physical' section of the same anthology; another brief quo tation from the De caelo is found in the commentary on Maimonides' Guide of the Perplexed, the Moreh ha-moreh, written in 1280 by the Spanish Jewish philosopher Shem Tov Ibn Falaquera; from the section on Minerals and Meteorology, some brief references are found in Samuel Ibn Tibbon's 'annotated translation' of Aristotle's Meteorol gica, written in 1210, in Ibn Tibbon's Treatise on 'Let the waters be collected' (Ma'amar be-yiqqawu ha-mayim) and in Ibn Falaquera's cited work; from the section on Animals, two quotations are found in the fifth book of