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JEWISH PHILOSOPHY |
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Select: Joseph Solomon Delmedigo -- Moses Hayim Luzzatto -- Baal Shem-Tov -- Benedict Spinoza -- Moses Mendelssohn Joseph Solomon Delmedigo - (1591 - 1655) A restless spirit makes Delmedigo (picture) the prototype of the wandering Jew. He traveled from Candia, Crete, his native town, to Padua, Italy; thence to Egypt, Turkey, Poland, Hamburg, Amsterdam, Frankfort, Worms, and then finally died in Prague. He earned his living either as physician or teacher but wherever he sojourned, he remembered to study the natural sciences. He was a disciple of Galileo and a keen critic of the medieval philosophy of nature; but he had to be careful, lest the ecclesiastical and secular authorities were offended by his ideas. He was shrewd enough to avoid such disturbances. His only known works are: Elim (Palms) dealing with matematics, the natural sciences, and metaphysics, and some letters and essays. In The Radical Academy Elsewhere On The Internet
Moses Hayim Luzzatto - (1707 - 1747) Some occurrences in Luzzatto's life show a parallel to that of Spinoza. Just as Spinoza earned his living by grinding optical lenses, Luzzatto did the same by grinding lenses. Like Spinoza, he was ex-communicated from his co-religionists. But Luzzatto remained a faithful Jew, ardently devoted to the cause of Judaism. He even felt himself, like the Messiah, bound to rescue the Jewish people from danger and misery, and he believed that the study of the Kabbalah would enable him to perform that mission. From 1727 he claimed to hear a voice revealing heavenly secrets. Eventually he was accused of Sabbatian heresy and witchcraft. In 1743 he set out for Israel, where three years later he and his family perished in a plague. Notwithstanding pressure on the part of orthodox rabbis, Luzzatto did not turn his thoughts from the mysticism that not only incited his loftiest aspirations but also inspired him to the conception of high ethical principles. Luzzatto was a versatile and gifted writer whose Hebrew style is much admired. He composed a drama, many liturgical poems and philosophical treatises in Hebrew, while his mystical works were written in Aramaic. His best-known book is Mesillat Yesharim (Path of the Upright) which has been compared with Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress though it was not influenced by the latter. His poetry and plays occupy a transitional position between medieval and modern Jewish literature. In The Radical Academy Elsewhere On The Internet
Israel ben Eliezer (picture) was born in Ukraine. Little is known of his life, and that little is encrusted with legend. Many of the legends closely parallel the stories that have clustered around the lives and activities of Christian saints. After seven years of solitary meditation, Israel ben Eliezer began to teach, in 1740, a mysticism which later became known as Chassidism. This earned him the title of Ball Shem-Tov (Master of the Good Name), even though in his early years he had been despised by his people as an ignorant and inefficient man. He taught that the divine spirit is omnipresent in each man and in everything that exists. Therefore, it is possible to serve God in even the most trifling of actions. In contradistinction to other schools of mysticism and to various Jewish mystical doctrines, he declared that the pleasures of the senses are not sinful, because man must serve God with his body as well as with his soul. In reaction to the intellectualism and casuistry of the rabbinical legalists, Baal Shem-Tov stressed the joyous and enthusiastic experience of religious participation. Song and dance, fervent prayer, and ecstatic communion with God are the keys to unlock spiritual powers. To complete the list of cardinal virtues, he added humility to the virtues of joyfulness and enthusiasm. He emphasized the elements of adherence (devekut) to God through a recognition of the divine immanence in nature. Attainment of this adherence demanded the total concentrated devotion (kavvanah) of the person in fervent communion with God. In his teachings, all things, including the lowest acts, had dignity. Although he did not reject learning, he put prayer above scholarship, insisting that his followers pray "with gladness" and forget, through religious concentration, all the sufferings imposed by life. The teachings of Baal Shem-Tov gained a large number of adherents among the Jews of Eastern Europe who, at that time, were subject to frequent persecutions and whose economic situation was constantly growing worse. These people were impressed by his kind and humble personality and revered him as a saint. He received gifts of immense value, but ended each day by distributing all his wealth among the poor. He saved many co-religionists from despair, enabled them to endure extreme hardship, and imbued them with the spirit of confident piety. In The Radical Academy Elsewhere On The Internet
Benedict Spinoza - (1632-1677) An expanded version of the philosophy of Spinoza is presented HERE. Main Ideas:
Important Works:
Spinoza (picture) was born in Amsterdam, of Jewish-Portuguese parents in good circumstances. He pursued theological studies (Hebrew literature) at his father's wish but found little in Jewish theology that satisfied him. He renounced Judaism and was excommunicated from the Jewish faith in 1656. He was forced to leave Amsterdam and he settled at The Hague in 1669, making his living by grinding lenses. He lived a simple and unselfish life, and his writings aroused intense interest and considerable indignation. The Elector Palatine, Karl Ludwig, offered Spinoza the professorship of philosophy at Heidelberg with the condition that he remain reasonably orthodox. Spinoza declined to accept it because he preferred to assert his independence of thought. The majority of his works were not written under his own name because of the strong charge made concerning his supposed atheism. His period of great production was from 1660 to 1677. He died at The Hague in his 45th year, a poor and persecuted man. Of the two questions left unsolved by Descartes, Spinoza aimed to resolve the relationship between the infinite and finite substance by affirming the unity of substance. The relationship between the soul and the body was dogmatically affirmed in virtue of the psycho-physical law. Substance, Attributes, and Modes Spinoza holds that substance (the concept of which has no need of the concept of any other in order to be conceived) is one. The two substances of Descartes ("res cogitans" and "res extensa") are attributes of a single substance. This single substance is God conceived of as Natura naturans; from this proceeds "Natura naturata," the world of men and all things, which are infinite modifications (or modes) of the infinite attributes. The laws which govern Spinoza's substance are:
Man and Ethics Man is a derived mode of the attributes of God; the spirit is a mode of the attribute of thought, and the body is a mode of extension. Man's activities are three, and to each one there is a corresponding moral perfection:
Politics Spinoza maintains that society arose from a pact made by man, who at first lived in the state of irrational nature. Force and violence used by authority are irrational but necessary means for the advent of rationality. If the subjects are more rational than the sovereign, the state will fall in order to give place to another more rational. Importance of Spinoza's Philosophy It is important in three aspects:
Spinoza's system did not meet with good reception at first, perhaps because it was not understood. Idealism took it over because it found in it the principal lineaments for a metaphysics in the idealist sense. Summary The Absolute or God is substance which has two attributes: Thought and Extension. Substance is constituted by its attributes or the ability of the intellect to perceive the essence of thought; it is actual and eternal. Attributes are the essences of substance, the essence of God perceived by the intellect which expresses the substance. Modes are modifications of the substance. The individual substance is a mode of God. God is known through pure thought. In The Radical Academy Elsewhere On the Internet
Moses Mendelssohn - (1729 - 1786) Main Ideas:
Important Works:
Moses Mendelssohn became a major figure in German philosophy and literature while remaining faithful to his Jewish heritage. Thus he encouraged those, both Jewish and Christian, who believed that Jews could accept modern Western culture without apostasy. Although he was a contemporary of Immanuel Kant, Mendelssohn cast his philosophic lot with the "academic" expositors of the philosophy of Leibniz, especially Christian Wolff. In the late seventeenth century, Father Pierre Bonhours, a Jesuit and a refined art critic, published a pamphlet in which he held that a German could never be a poet or an artist, nor could he understand aesthetical problems and phenomena. Of course, the booklet aroused indignation in Germany, and provoked violent counterattacks. At that time, however, Frenchmen and Germans agreed that a Jew could never become integrated into modern culture, let alone contribute to its development. This opinion remained constant until, by 1755, the surprising news was spread in literary circles that there was in Berlin a Jew named Moses Mendelssohn who could not only speak and write German flawlessly but who could discuss philosophical and literary problems and was even esteemed by Gotthold Lessing, the most feared German critic of his time, as an authority in aesthetics and psychology. Many otherwise independent thinkers would simply not believe that the news was true. Some of them went to Berlin in order to gaze in astonishment at such a curiosity. Then, for some years, even Mendelssohn's sincere admirers, such as Kant and Lessing, expressed doubts that he could continue to be devoted to German culture and at the same time remain loyal to Judaism. Later they recognized that he could do both. Mendelssohn enriched descriptive psychology by his treatise on mixed sentiments. His essay on evidence in metaphysical sciences was awarded a prize by the Prussian Academy against his competitor, Immanuel Kant. His Phaedon (1767), defending the idea of the immortality of the soul, was a favorite book of German Jews and Christians alike for more than two generations. In his essay Jerusalem (1783) he first defended the separation of religious and political authority, and then argued for granting full civil rights to Jews. This work deeply impressed Immanuel Kant, who became convinced that Judaism was a true world religion. Mendelssohn also translated the Hebrew Bible into German and demanded civil rights for the Jews as well as the separation of Church and State. With him came the beginning of a new epoch in the history of the Jews, not only those of Germany. Still four decades after his death, hymns to his praise were sung by Christians and Jews united in their adherence to Mendelssohn's ideas. Lessing raised a poetic monument to his friend by using him as a model for the hero of his drama Nathan The Wise. Managing a silk firm and forced by Christian controversialists into extended defenses of his loyalty to Judaism, Mendelssohn lost his health, but campaigned heroically against the civil disabilities imposed on Jews, especially the invidious requirements regarding oaths. He died in 1786. He was the grandfather of the famous composer Felix Mendelssohn. In The Radical Academy Enrich Your Life With a Philosophy Book... Enrich Your Life With a Philosophy Magazine...
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