Abstract
The study of the soul from a scientific perspective is an integral if not critical part of Aristotelian philosophy, and the thirteenth-century Hebrew encyclopedists—both the anonymous author of Ru’aḥ Ḥen and Gershom ben Solomon of Aries, as well as Judah ben Solomon ha-Cohen and Shem-Tov ibn Falaquera—regularly included it in their survey of the sciences which they offered their coreligionists. While Aristotle’s On the Soul was the dominant text in this tradition, the commentaries and responses of Hellenistic and Muslim authors, particularly Avicenna and Averroes, were equally important to the encyclopedists. Averroes’ Middle Commentary on On the Soul, as well as his Epitome of that work, were of particular significance in this pursuit, and the encyclopedists made ample use of excerpts from them, mostly translating themselves from the Arabic to Hebrew.1
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References
Of the Hebrew works just mentioned, only that by Gershom ben Solomon makes use of the Hebrew translations of any of Averroes’ commentaries on On the Soul. Moses ibn Tibbon translated the Epitome (דוצק) of On the Soul in 1244, and the Middle Commentary (דואנ) on On the Soul in 1261. Another translation of the Middle Commentary was made a few years before that of Moses, sometime between 1255–1260, by Shem-Tov ben Isaac of Tortosa. An anonymous translation of the Long Commentary on On the Soul was made from the Latin translation much later, in the fourteenth-fifteenth century. Cf. now Mauro Zonta, La filosofia antica nel Medioevo ebraico (Brescia, 1996), 152 and 183, and see Resianne Fontaine, “Arabic Terms in Judah ben Solomon ha-Cohen’s Midrash ha-Ḥokhmah” DS-NELL (1997): 121, 128.
A rare exception in this section of his work to this practice occurs in Judah’s appropriation in the Midrash ha-Hokhmạh of the statement attributed to Simeon the son of Rabban Gamliel in Mishnạh Avot I,17 that “not the expounding (of the Law) is the chief thing but the doing (of it)” (השצמה אלא דקיצn (!) אiה שדדמה אל). Judah applies this to the wise person who has realized his intellectual potentiality, this actualization regarded as his preeminent activity, or השצמ (see Midrash ha-Ḥokhmah, 86r). See too below, n. 6. I am indebted to Dr. Resianne Fontaine for providing me with a copy of the section of Midrash ha-Hokhmạh on On the Soul, as found in Oxford, Bodleian MS Mich. 551, fols. 85r-95v; as well as for sharing with me her typescript of this section of the manuscript. The reference to Midrash ha-Hokhmạh here, and those below, are to this Bodleian MS.
Cf. Ru’ạh Ḥen (Warsaw, 1826), 7a-8b; Sha’ar ha-Shamayim, (Roedelheim, 1801), 77b-78a. Cf. too the English translation, however poor, of F.S. Bodenheimer, The Gate of Heaven (Jerusalem, 1953), 318–20.
Ru ‘ạh Ḥen, 9a.
Sha’ar ha-Shamayim, 80b-82a (English, 321–3).
Similarly in his section on biblical verses, Judah associates, however briefly, the study of the soul with such issues of Jewish concern as moral perfection, the afterlife and resurrection. I thank Dr. Fontaine for this observation, and take this opportunity to express my gratitude to her for her careful and helpful reading of this article. A discussion of Judah’s treatment of divine science can be found in Colette Sirat, A History of Jewish Philosophy in the Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1985), 252–5.
See the translation of Iggeret ha-Vikkuạh in Steven Harvey, Falaquera’s “Epistle of the Debate”: An Introduction to Jewish Philosophy (Cambridge, Mass., 1987), 51. See also Raphael Jospe, Torạh and Sophia: The Life and Thought of Shem Tov Ibn Falaquera (Cincinnati, 1988), 49.
After Jospe, Torạh and Sophia, 50, and see n. 96 there.
Cf., however, Fontaine, “Arabic Terms,” 128, who follows Zonta, Filosofia antica, 122–3, in seeing Judah’s particular terminology as indicative of a critical attitude to Aristotle.
Midrash ha-Ḥokhmah, 89v.
Midrash ha-Ḥokhmah, 86r.
Midrash ha-Ḥokhmah, 87r.
Midrash ha-Ḥokhmah, 90r.
Midrash ha-Ḥokhmah, 86v. See Fontaine, “Arabic Terms,” 121–31, for a more complete study of Judah’s Arabisms.
De’ot ha-Filosofim, Parma MS Parmense 3156 (De Rossi 164), fol. 150r. A copy of the relevant section of this manuscript was kindly given me by Professor Steven Harvey. References below to the De’ot ha-Filosofim are to this manuscript.
De’ot ha-Filosofim, fol. 151r.
17 Cf. the citation from Shem-Tov ben Isaac’s translation in Moses Narboni, Ma’amar bi-Shelemut ha-Nefesh, ed. Alfred L. Ivry (Jerusalem, 1977), 26:3, and cf. the variants there. This passage from De’ot ha-Filosofim is given in full in Jospe, Torạh and Sophia, 355, n. 5.
Cf. ibid., 53–9.
Jospe states that Falaquera quotes in this section from Avicenna and Alfarabi (Torạh and Sophia, 60), and mentions (ibid., n. 110) that Moritz Steinschneider noted the absence of Averroean sources here. See further, Zonta, Filosofia antica, 209.
Cf. Avicenna’s short Treatise on Psychology, ed. and trans, into German in Samuel Landauer, “Die Psychologie des Ibn Sina,” Zeitschrift der deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 29 (1875): 340, 374; and Altmann, “Delphic Maxim,” 196–7. That Avicenna was indeed Falaquera’s source for the maxim seems certain from Falaquera’s citation of it in his Sefer ha-Ma’alot, where like Avicenna he writes that it is “written in the temple of Aesculapius.” See Harvey, Falaquera’s “Epistle of the Debate,” 40, n. 73.
See the passages from the introduction cited in Steven Harvey, “Shem-Tov ibn Falaquera’s De’ot ha-Filosofim: Its Sources and Use of Sources,” in the present volume, 214, 216–7.
According to Zonta, Filosofia antica, 152, no trace of this work is to be found in the Hebrew philosophical literature, including specifically the writings of Falaquera (see n. 32 there).
These excerpts have been assembled by Abdelkader Ben Chahida in his “Discovery of the Arabic Text of Significant Parts of Averroes’ Long Commentary on On the Soul “ (Arabic), al-Hayâh al-Thaqâfiyyah 35 (1985): 14–48.
My translation here follows the translation of On the Soul by W.S. Hett (Cambridge, Mass., 1957), 9.
See the edition of the Latin translation of the Long Commentary, Averrois Cordubensis, Commentarium magnum in Aristotelis De anima Libros, ed. F. Stuart Crawford (Cambridge, Mass., 1953) 1, lines 16–19. This passage is rendered by Richard Taylor in his forthcoming translation of the Long Commentary as follows: “For the arts differ from one another only in one of these two ways: either in the confirmation associated with demonstration or in the nobility of the subject or in both. For example, geometry surpasses astronomy (Astrologia) in the confirmation associated with demonstration, but astronomy surpasses it in the nobility of its subject…. Because these two are found in the science of the soul, it is necessary that an account of it take precedence over other sciences.” I thank Professor Taylor for sharing his translation with me.
Cf. Themistii in Libros Aristotelis De anima Paraphrasis, ed. Richard Heinze (Berlin, 1899), 1, line 12, and see Robert B. Todd’s translation, Themistius: On Aristotle’s On the Soul (Ithaca, New York, 1996), 15. See too M.C. Lyons, ed., An Arabic Translation of Themistius’ Commentary on Aristotele’s De anima (Thetford, Norfolk, 1973), 1, line 12. References to Themistius’ paraphrase are to Heinze’s edition of the Greek text, with the pagination to the translations usually supplied in parentheses.
See Themistius, Paraphrase of On the Soul, 2, line 5. Todd (5) translates: “So if [the soul] knows itself, it is credible on other [matters] too; but if misled about itself, on what else could it be considered credible?” The Arabic translation (3, 1. 6) is quite faithful here: fa-hiya idhâ ‘arafa dhâtahâ wathiqa bi-ma’rifatihâ bi-sâ’ir al-umûr fa-ammâ in dhahaba ‘alayhâ amruhâ fî nafsihâ xva-ghalitat fîhi fa-lan yûthiq bi-hâ fî amr ghayrihâ.
Cf. On the Soul 1,1 402a5; Themistius, Paraphrase, 1, line 28 (English, 15); and Averroes, Middle Commentary on On the Soul, ed. Alfred L. Ivry (Cairo, 1994), 1, line 9. Averroes’ text reads: ma’rifat mabâdi’ hull ‘Urn hiya hâsïlạh fî hâdhâ al-’ilm.
De’ot ha-Filosofim, fol. 149r. See On the Soul I,1 402a7–10, and cf. the equivalent paraphrase in Averroes’ Middle Commentary, which can be identified by the Bekker numbers in the margins.
Equivalent to On the Soul I,1 403a3. % From On the Soul I,3 406a31–407b20.
Long Commentary on On the Soul, 87, line 20.
Middle Commentary on On the Soul, 34, line 5. The text reads: wa-qad buyyina hâdhâ al-ma’na’alâ al-tamâm fî sharh kalâmihi fî hâdhâ al-fasl. See further Alfred L. Ivry, “Averroes* Middle and Long Commentaries on the De Anima,” Arabic Sciences and Philosophy 5 (1995): 79–80.
Such is the interpretation of Herbert A. Davidson. See his response to the article cited in the preceding note, “The Relation between Averroes’ Middle and Long Commentaries on the De Anima,” Arabic Sciences and Philosophy 7 (1997): 139–51.
I have checked the only other extant copy of De’ot ha-Filosofim, Leiden MS Warner 20, fol. 276r, and the reading is the same. This does not, of course, preclude this fourth posssibility or the possibility of scribal error.
Cf. Alfred Ivry, “Averroes’ Short Commentary on Aristotle’s De anima,” Documenti e studi sulla tradizione filosofica medievale 8 (1997): 511–3.
Middle Commentary, 59, line 13.
Epitome, 24–5.
Middle Commentary, 63, 11. 6–14.
Epitome, 25, line 12.
Epitome, 25, line 16.
Epitome, 29, line 6. Cf. On the Soul II,4 415a30.
See Themistius, Paraphrase, 50, line 5 (English, 69; and esp. Arabic, 68, line 7).
Epitome, 72, line 3.
De’ot ha-Filosofim, fol. 169v. My translation of “formative” for this faculty follows Deborạh Black, “Memory, Individuals, and the Past in Averroes’s Psychology,” Medieval Philosophy and Theology 5 (1996): 164. Jospe, Torạh and Sophia, 220, 223, calls it the “informing faculty,” tracing its usage to Avicenna’s Treatise on Psychology (above, n. 24), 352. Landauer, 400, calls it Vor Stellungsvermögen.
Jospe, Torạh and Sophia, 223, 225. As Jospe shows, Falaquera actually is ambivalent about the imagination’s identification with this formative function, since in chapter 13 he denies its relation to the imagination, and in chapter 18 he affirms it.
Avicenna, Treatise on Psychology, 359, specifically uses the term mumayyiz, discriminating, in this connection.
Cf. Michael Blaustein, “Averroes on the Imagination and the Intellect” (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1984), 18–31, 43, 58; 68–90, 185–200; and Black, “Memory, Individuals and the Past,” 166, n. 17. See too Helmut Gätje, “Die ‘inneren Sinne’ bei Averroes,” Zeitschrift der deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 115 (1965): 279–93.
De’ot ha-Filosofim, fol. 169v, and Averroes, Epitome, 74, line 6. See further, Ivry, “Averroes’ Short Commentary,” 537.
Cf. Jospe, Torạh and Sophia, 15–9, and Harvey, Falaquera’s “Epistle of the Debate,” 128–32.
Cf. Herbert A. Davidson, Alfarabi, Avicenna, and Averroes, on Intellect (New York, 1992), 258–95. While Davidson presents Averroes’ diverse views concerning the material intellect accurately, his analysis of the different strata in the Middle Commentary (and its relation to the Long Commentary) is debatable. See Abdelali Elamrani-Jamal, “Averroes: La doctrine de l’intellect material dans le Commentaire Moyen sur le De Anima d’Aristote, présentation et traduction, suive d’un lexique-index du chapitre 3 livre III: de la faculté rationnelle,” in Langages et Philosophie, hommage à Jean Jolivet, ed. Alain de Libera, et al (Paris, 1997), 284–9. Cf. too my “Averroes’ Three Commentaries on De anima” in Averroes and the Aristotelian Tradition: Sources, Constitution and Reception of the Philosophy of Ibn Rushd (1126–1198), ed. Gerhard Endress and Jan A. Aertsen with Klaus Braun (Leiden, 1999), 201–18.
Moses Narboni made ample use of this text as well. Cf. The Epistle on the Possibility of Conjunction with the Active Intellect by Ibn Rushd with the Commentary of Moses Narboni, ed. and trans. Kaiman P. Bland (New York, 1982).
De’ot ha-Filosofim, fol. 184v, quoted by Jospe, Torạh and Sophia, 403, n. 45. Jospe also refers to Avicenna’s Najâh, citing the translation in Fazlur Rahman, Avicenna’s Psychology (London, 1952), 37. The Agent Intellect is more commonly referred to by Avicenna (and by Falaquera too) as the “Holy Spirit.” Cf. Jospe, Torạh and Sophia, 257–8.
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Ivry, A.L. (2000). The Soul of the Hebrew Encyclopedists. In: Harvey, S. (eds) The Medieval Hebrew Encyclopedias of Science and Philosophy. Amsterdam Studies in Jewish Thought, vol 7. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-9389-2_18
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