A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy/Chapter 11
CHAPTER XI
MOSES AND ABRAHAM IBN EZRA
I. Moses ibn Ezra
Among the Jewish Neo-Platonists must be included the two Ibn Ezras, Moses and Abraham. They were contemporary and came from Spain. Moses, the older of the two, was born at Granada about 1070 and died after 1138. Abraham, who travelled all over the world, was born at Toledo in 1092 and died in 1167. Neither is particularly famous as a philosopher. Moses's celebrity rests on his poetic productions, secular as well as religious, which are highly praised by Harizi, above even those of Halevi. Abraham is best known as a grammarian and Biblical commentator, particularly the latter, though his versatility is remarkable. Besides grammar and exegesis he wrote on mathematics, astronomy and astrology, on religious philosophy, and was a poet of no mean order; though, as Zunz says,212 "flashes of thought spring from his words, but not pictures of the imagination."
All that is accessible in print of Moses Ibn Ezra's philosophical treatise is a Hebrew translation of extracts under the title "Arugat ha-Bosem" (Bed of Spices).213 If we may judge of the rest of the work by these Hebrew fragments, we should say that philosophy was not Ibn Ezra's forte. He dabbled in it as any poet of that age did, but what caught his fancy was more the mysteriously sounding phrases of celebrated authorities like Pythagoras, Empedocles, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Hermes (whom he identifies with Enoch), than a strictly reasoned out argument. Accordingly the Hebrew selections consist of little more than a string of quotations on the transcendence and unknowableness of God, on the meaning of philosophy, on the position of man in the universe, on motion, on nature and on intellect. It is of historical interest to us to know that Moses ibn Ezra, so famous as a poet, was interested in philosophy, and that the views which appealed to him were those of Ibn Gabirol, whose "Fountain of Life" he knew, and from which he quotes a celebrated mystical passage. A few details will suffice to make this clear.
Man is a microcosm, a world in miniature, and there is nothing above or below, the counterpart of which is not found in man. There is no sphere, or star, or animal, or plant, or mineral, or power, or nature, but something similar, mutatis mutandis, is found in man. The ten categories, which according to the philosophers embrace all existence, are also found, all of them, in man. The perfection of man's creation points to a wise Creator. Man comes after multiplicity, God is before multiplicity. Man is like the great universe, and in both the spiritual cannot come in direct contact with the corporeal, but needs intermediating powers to bring the extremes together. In man soul and spirit stand between intellect and body.
Hence a man must know himself before he can know the universe, else he is like a person who feeds other people while he is himself hungry. To know the Creator, the soul must first know herself, and this is one of the definitions of philosophy, to know one's own soul. He who can strip his soul of his corporeal senses and worldly desires, and rise to the sphere will find there his reward. Other similarly ascetic and mystical expressions are quoted from Aristotle (!), Pythagoras, and "one of the modern philosophers." The last is none other than Ibn Gabirol, and the passage quoted is the same as that cited above, p. 69.
Unity precedes the unitary object as heat comes before the hot object. Unity alone is self-subsistent. Numerical unity is prior to two, and is the very root and essence of number. God's unity is above all other unities, hence it cannot be described, because it has no cause, being the cause of everything else. As our eye cannot see the sun by reason of its very brilliance, so our intellect cannot comprehend God because of the extreme perfection of his existence. The finite and imperfect cannot know the infinite and perfect. Hence no names can apply to God except metaphorically. When we say that God knows, we mean that he is knowledge itself, not that knowledge is an attribute which he possesses. Socrates (!) said in his prayers, "Thou art not far from me so that I should raise my voice to thee, nor art Thou near unto me that I should content myself with a low whisper and the meditation of the heart; nor art Thou on any side of me so that I may turn toward Thee; for nearness and distance have measure, but there is no measure between me and Thee. Thou art united with me and embracest me more closely than my intellect and soul."
He who knows most of the secret of the Creator, knows least; and he who knows least, knows most. As the limbs of the body and the senses cannot know the intelligible ideas because the latter are superior to them, so the intellect cannot know the essence of the Creator because he is above the sphere of the intellect. Although the intellect is spiritual, it cannot comprehend the Creator because he is above all intellectual powers, and is infinite. What is infinite has no division or multiplication, or part or whole.
The Gentiles make use of the anthropomorphic expressions in the Bible to annoy us, charging us with believing in a corporeal God. Would that we had strength to silence their impudence by a crushing reply. But alas! their tyranny prevents us from raising our voice. But it is still more aggravating to hear men of our own people, heretics, repeating the same charge against the Bible and Talmud, when they ought to know better, since the expressions in question are metaphorical. Saadia has made this sufficiently clear.
The Active Intellect is the first of God's creations. It is a power emanating from the Will. It is a simple, pure and transparent substance, bearing in itself the forms of all existing things. The human intellect is known as the passive intellect. The rational soul is a pure substance giving perfection to a natural body, etc. It is inferior to the intellect, and the animal soul is inferior to the rational. The soul is the horseman, the body represents the soldiers and the arms. As the horseman must take care of his arms that he may not be put to death, so the soul must take care of the body that she may not perish. And the senses must be taken into account, for the powers of the soul are dependent upon the powers of the body. If the food of the body is in proper proportion, the activity of the soul is proper and right. Similarly if one neglects moderation in food, he is bound to suffer morally and spiritually.
The above selections, which are representative of the accessible portion of Moses ibn Ezra's philosophical treatise, except that such recurring phrases have been omitted as "And the philosopher said," "And they say, " etc., show that the work is nothing but a compilation of sayings on various philosophical topics, without any attempt on the author's part to think out the subject or any part thereof, for himself.
2. Abraham ibn Ezra
Abraham Ibn Ezra did not write any special work on philosophy, and his importance lies chiefly in his Biblical commentary, which unlike that of Rashi, is based upon a scientific and philological foundation. Ibn Ezra was thoroughly familiar with Arabic and well versed in the philological, scientific and philosophical studies cultivated by Arabs and Jews in his native land. For reasons not known to us—poverty was very likely one of them—he left his native Spain and wandered as far as Rome in the east, Egypt and Morocco in the south, and London in the north. Everywhere he was busy with literary activity, and as he wrote in Hebrew his purpose must have been, as the result certainly proved to be, the enlightenment of the non-Arabic speaking Jews of England, France and Italy, by bringing before them in a language that they knew the grammar of Hayyuj, the mathematics and astronony of the Greeks and the Arabs, the philosophy of Neo-Platonism, and the scientific and rationalistic spirit generally, as enlightened Spain had developed it in Jew and Arab alike.
We are interested here more particularly in Ibn Ezra's philosophical views. These are scattered through his Biblical commentaries and in a few other small works devoted to an investigation of the laws of the Pentateuch and the meaning of the names of God.214 For though Ibn Ezra favors the philological method as the best way to arrive at the true meaning of Scripture, and decries allegory as well as Midrash when pushed too far, and though his commentary is for the most part based upon the philological method of interpretation, he was too much a child of his age to be able to refrain from finding in the Bible views akin to those he learned from Gabirol, the Brethren of Purity and what other philosophical literature of the Arabs he read and was influenced by. And so he, too, the grammarian and philologist, succumbed to the allegorical and symbolical method he condemned. Without denying the historical reality of the Garden of Eden, the Tree of Knowledge and the Tree of Life, he also sees in these expressions symbols of cosmological, psychological and ethical ideas. In the fashion of Philo he sees in Eden a representation of the higher world of the divinity, in the Garden the intermediate world of the spheres and Intelligences, in the river issuing from the Garden the substance of the sublunar world, in the four heads into which the river divides the four elements, and so on. He speaks of these symbolic meanings as the "secrets," and so we have the secret of the Garden, of the rivers, of the coats. And in the same way he speaks of the secret of the Cherubim, of the ark and the Tabernacle. These objects also symbolize metaphysical and cosmological truths. He was a believer in astrology, and laid this pseudo-science also under contribution in the interpretation of Holy Writ. Here the various numbers found in the Bible in connection with ritual prescriptions, the construction of the Tabernacle, and so on, were of great service to Ibn Ezra in his symbolizations. Like Philo and the Neo-Pythagoreans he analyzes the virtues and significances of the different numbers, and thus finds a symbol in every number found in the Bible. Writing as he did for the Jews of central Europe, who were not trained in secular science and philosophy, Ibn Ezra was not prepared to shock the sensibilities of his readers by his novel and, to them, heretical views; and hence he expressed himself in cryptic phrases and allusions, which often make his meaning difficult if not impossible to decipher. This, taken together with the fact that his views are not laid down anywhere systematically and in connected fashion, but are thrown out briefly, often enigmatically, in connection with the explanation of Biblical verses and phrases, accounts for the difference among critics concerning the precise doctrines of Abraham Ibn Ezra.
Of his predecessors among the Jewish philosophers Ibn Ezra shows closest relation to Solomon ibn Gabirol. He does not quote the "Fountain of Life," but he names its author as a great thinker and writer of poems, and shows familiarity with Gabirol's doctrines. Like Gabirol he says that all except God consists of substance (matter) and form. Not only the sublunar things, subject to generation and decay, but the higher incorporeal things, also, are in essence two, i. e., are composed of two elements, subject and predicate. God alone is One; he is subject only and not predicate. And Ibn Ezra also has some allusion to the divine Will as taught by Gabirol.
In giving a connected sketch of Ibn Ezra's philosophical ideas, the most one can do is to collect all the sayings bearing upon our subject which are found scattered through Ibn Ezra's writings, and classify them and combine them into a connected whole. This has been done before by Nahman Krochmal215 and by David Rosin,216 and we shall follow the latter in our exposition here.
God is the One. He gives forms to all things, and is himself all things. God alone is the real existent, all else is an existent by virtue of him. Unity is the symbol of God because in number also the unit is the foundation of all number, and yet is not itself number. It exists by virtue of itself and needs not the numbers that come after. At the same time the unit is also aU number, because all number is made up of the unit. God alone is one, because he alone is not composed of matter and form, as everything else is. God has neither likeness nor form, for he is the creator of all things, i. e., of all likeness and form. He is therefore incorporeal. In God the subject knowing and the object of his knowledge are one and the same thing. Else he would not be one. In knowing himself, therefore, he knows the universe. God as the cause and creator of all things must know all things, the universal as well as the particular, the world soul as well as the various species, and even every single creature, but he knows the particular in a general way. For God knows only what is permanent, whereas the particular is constantly changing, hence he does not know the particular as such, but only as involved in the general and permanent.
As God is incorporeal he is not subject to corporeal accidents or human feelings. Hence the many expressions in the Bible which ascribe such accidents and feelings to God must be understood as metaphors. It is a psychological necessity for man wishing to communicate his ideas to other men to speak in human terms, whether he speak of beings and things inferior or superior to him. The result is that the metaphor he finds it necessary to employ either raises or lowers the object to which it refers. It elevates the sub-human and lowers the superhuman to the human. This is the explanation of such phrases as "the mouth of the earth" the "hand of the Jordan," the "head of the dust of the world," and so on, in which the figure is that of personification. And the fundamental explanation is the same in such phrases as "The Lord repented," "The Lord rested," "The Lord remembered," "He that dwelleth in heaven laughs," and so on, where the process is the reverse of personification. The motive common to both is to convey some idea to the reader.
The Hebrew word "bara," ordinarily translated "created," which implies to most people the idea of creatio ex nihilo, Ibn Ezra renders, in accordance with its etymology, to limit, to define, by drawing or incising a line or boundary. Having said this, Ibn Ezra, in his wonted mysterious manner, stops short, refusing to say more and preferring to mystify the reader by adding the tantalizing phrase, "The intelligent will understand." He means apparently to indicate that an eternal matter was endowed with form. In fact he seems to favor the idea of eternal creation and maintenance of the universe, the relation of which to God is as the relation of speech to the speaker, which exists only so long as the speaker speaks. The moment he ceases speaking the sounds cease to exist.
The two ideas of eternal emanation of the world from God after the manner of the Neo-Platonists and of an eternal matter which God endows with forms, are not really quite consistent, for the latter implies that matter is independent of God, whereas according to the former everything owes its existence and continuance to God, from whom it emanates. But it is difficult from the fragmentary and laconic sayings of Ibn Ezra to extract a consistent and certain system.
The world consists of three parts, three worlds Ibn Ezra calls them. The highest world consists of the separate Intelligences or angels, including the world-soul of which the human soul is a part. The intermediate world consists of the spheres, planets and fixed stars. Finally the lower world contains the four elements and the product of their various mixtures, minerals, plants, animals, man. These three worlds, Ibn Ezra appears to intimate in his oracular manner, are symbolized by the three divisions of the Tabernacle, the holy of holies typif3dng the world of spirits, the holy pointing to the spheres, while the outer court represents the sublunar world.
The highest world, the world of Intelligences and angels, is eternal, though it too is dependent upon God for its existence. The angels, too, are composed of matter and form, and their function is to move the bodies of the intermediate world, the spheres and their stars. Through the instrumentality of the heavenly bodies, the angels form the lower world. This amounts to saying that the corporeal world is the last stage in the descending series of emanations from the One, and is preceded by the heavenly bodies and the Intelligences. The angels are also the immediate agents in prophetic inspiration.
Not all mention of angels in the Bible, however, must be identified with a separate Intelligence or a spheral soul (for the latter too is called angel by Ibn Ezra). There are instances of the expression angel which refer to a momentary, special creation of a light or air for the special benefit of the people. This explains a number of theophanies in the Bible, such as the burning bush, "the glory of the Lord," the cloud in the wilderness, and so on.
The intermediate world of spheres is also eternal and consists of nine spheres, that of the Intelligences making up the perfect number ten. The nine spheres are arranged as follows, the spheres of the seven planets, the sphere of the fixed stars, and the diurnal sphere without stars, which gives the motion from east to west to the whole heaven.
The lower world, the sublunar and corporeal world of generation and decay, was created in time. This, however, does not mean that there was time before this creation, for time exists only with motion and change. Creation here signifies the formation of the chaotic matter. As God cannot come in contact with the material and changeable (we have already seen that he cannot know it as such), it follows that this lower world was not made directly by him, but by the angels, hence the word "Elohim" is used in the first chapter of Genesis, which means primarily the angels, and secondarily God as acting through the angels.
In this lower world man is the noblest creature. By means of his soul he may attain eternal life as an individual like God and the angels (i. e., the Intelligences), whereas all other creatures of the lower world are permanent in species only but not as individuals. This is the meaning of the expression in Genesis, "Let us make man in our image," in the image, that is, of God and the angels. Man is a microcosm, a universe in little, for like the great universe he consists of a body animated by a soul.
As the noblest part of man is his soul, it becomes his duty to know it. He must know whether it is substance or accident, whether it will die when it is separated from the body, and for what purpose it was brought into union with the body. In order to learn all this one must first study the preparatory branches, grammar, logic, mathematics and physics. In the study of psychology we learn that man has three souls, vegetative, animal and rational, and the latter alone is immortal. It is a part of the world soul, having existed before it came into the body, and under favorable conditions will return again to the world soul when separated from the body. The condition which must be fulfilled by the soul before it can return to the world soul is the acquisition of wisdom, for this is the purpose for which it was put into the body, namely, in order that it may learn the work of its master and observe his commandments. There are many sciences, but they are related to each other, all leading up to the one highest science, the knowledge of God and his goodness. A person must advance gradually in studying the work of God from the knowledge of minerals, plants, animals, the human body, to the knowledge of the spheres and heavenly bodies, the causes of eclipses, etc., and from this he will gradually come to know God. The commandments of the Bible are also of importance for this purpose. To understand the secret of the commandments is to gain eternal life. For wisdom is the form of the soul, and hence the soul does not die like a body.
The reward of the soul is re-absorption in the world soul of which it is a part, and the punishment of the unworthy soul that neglected to acquire knowledge is destruction. What Ibn Ezra means by the Hebrew word "abad" (ordinarily rendered to perish, to be destroyed) is not clear. It is hard to see how a pre-existing soul can perish utterly. Rosin suggests that Ibn Ezra is alluding to transmigration,217 but it is not clear.
We have seen that Ibn Ezra holds that the events of the sublunar world and the destinies of men are governed by the positions and motions of the heavenly bodies, which in turn are determined by the Intelligences or angels. The heavenly bodies, he tells us, follow necessary laws imposed upon them, and are not responsible for any good or evil which results to mankind from them, since the effects are not of their intention, and they cannot change them if they would. Accordingly it is foolish to pray to the heavenly bodies in order to appease them and prevent evil, as some of the heathen are accustomed to do. The motions of the heavenly bodies are determined and invariable, and no prayer will change them. This, however, does not mean to say that no one can escape the evil which is destined for him in the stars. Ordinarily, it is true, God does not know the particular individual as such. He knows him only as implied in the whole, and his destiny is determined accordingly. But there are exceptions when a person by developing his soul and intellect, as we saw above, succeeds in his lifetime in separating his soul from the corporeal and particular, and brings it into contact with the spiritual and universal. In that case he attracts to himself the special providence of God, which enables him to evade the evil threatened by his star, without in any way changing the star's natural course or ordinary effects. How this is done, Ibn Ezra illustrates by an example.218 Suppose, he says, that it is fated according to the stars that a given city shall be flooded by a river and its inhabitants drowned. A prophet comes and warns them, urging them to repent of their evil ways before their fate is sealed. They obey him, return to God with all their heart and leave the city to offer prayer to God. The river rises in their absence, as often happens, and floods the city. The wolf is satisfied and the lamb is whole. The decree of the stars is not interfered with, and the good man is delivered from evil. In this way Ibn Ezra endeavors to reconcile natural law (or astrological fatalism) with the ethical purpose of divine providence. And he also vindicates free will and responsibility. The rational soul of man has power, he says, to counteract in part the indications of the stars, though it cannot annul them entirely. The punishment of the wicked is that they are left entirely to the fates determined for them by their constellations.
The highest good of man, we have seen, is the knowledge of God and his work. There are two ways of knowing God. One is through a study of nature, the work of God. This is described in the first part of the nineteenth Psalm, "The Heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament showeth his handiwork." But there is a second and, in a sense, a better way of knowing God. This is derived from his revelation in the Law. As we are told in the second part of the above Psalm (v. 7), "The law of the Lord is perfect, restoring the soul." The law of the Lord restores the soul, Ibn Ezra says, by removing doubt from it. For the first method of knowing God, with all its importance for the man of wisdom and reason, is not fit for all persons; and not everything can be proved by reason. Revelation in the Law is necessary for the simple minded. "I am the Lord thy God" (Exod. 20, 2) is a hint to the philosopher, who need not depend on hearsay, for real knowledge is proved knowledge. But as not everyone is in a position to have such knowledge, the Bible adds, "which brought thee out of the land of Egypt." This all can understand, the simple minded as well as the philosopher. The Law has also a practical purpose, to strengthen the rational soul so as to prevent the body from gaining the upper hand.
God's messenger, through whom his will is made known, is the prophet. He seeks retirement so as to get in communion with God, and receives such influence as he is capable of getting. Moses was the greatest of the prophets. He was able to communicate with God whenever he chose, whereas the others had to wait until the inspiration came. The revelation of God to Moses was without an intermediary, and without visions and likenesses. Moses saw the things presented to him in their true form.
The laws may be divided into 1. Innate or rational laws, i. e., laws planted by God in the mind of every rational being. There are many such in the Torah. All the laws of the Ten Commandments belong to this class, with the exception of the Sabbath. Hence all mankind beheve in them, and Abraham observed them all before ever the Law was given on Sinai. 2. Hidden laws, i. e., laws, the reason of which is not given. We must not suppose for a moment that there is any law which is against reason, Heaven forbid! We must observe them all, whether we understand the reason or not. If we find a law that apparently is unreasonable, we must assume that it has some hidden meaning and is not to be taken in its literal sense. It is our duty, then, to look for this hidden meaning, and if we cannot find it, we must admit that we do not understand it.
The laws may also be classified as 1. Commandments of the heart, 2. Commandments of the tongue, and 3. Commandments of action. An example of commandments of the heart is, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God," "Thou shalt not hate thy brother in thy heart," and so on. To the commandments of the tongue belong the reading of the Shema, grace after meals, the priestly benediction, and so on. The laws of the third class are so numerous that there is no need of mentioning them. The laws of the heart are the most important of all. The reader will recognize in this two-fold classification Saadia's division of the laws into rational and traditional, and Bahya's classification of duties of the heart and duties of the limbs. This second class includes Ibn Ezra's second and third classes, tongue and action.219
The problem of evil Ibn Ezra solves by saying that from God comes good only. The world as a whole is good; evil is due to the defect of the object receiving higher influence. To argue that because of the small part of evil the whole world, which is good, should not have been created, is foolish.
The highest good of man is to develop his reason. As the traveller and the captive long to return to the land of their birth and be with their family, so the rational soul is eager to rise to the upper world which is not made of clay. This it can do only if it purifies itself from the uncleanness of corporeal desire which drags it down, and takes pains to know its own nature and origin, with the help of Wisdom whose eyes are undimmed. Then she will know the truth, which will remain indelibly impressed upon her when she separates from the body, where she was put for her own good. The suffering she underwent here for a time will give place to everlasting rest and joy. All man's work is vain, for man can neither create nor annihilate a substance. All his corporeal activity consists in combination and separation of accidents. The only thing of value is the fear of God. But no man can rise to this stage until he has ascended the ladder of wisdom, and has acquired understanding.220
More concretely the way to purify the soul from the body is by uniting the rational and spirited soul, as Plato has it, against the appetitive, and giving the reason the mastery over the spirited soul as well. A moderate degree of asceticism is to be recommended as favoring the emancipation of the soul from the tyranny of the body. This is the meaning of the institution of the Nazirite; and the offering he must bring after the expiration of his period is to atone for the sin of returning to a life of indulgence. But one should not go to extremes. Too much praying and fasting results in stupefaction. It is a mistake to develop one side of one's nature at the expense of another. Every one of the three souls (the rational, the spirited and the appetitive) must be given its due.
But the most important activity of man, which leads to eternal life and happiness, is the knowledge of God. This knowledge cannot be attained at once. It must be preceded by a study of one's own soul and of the natural sciences. Through a knowledge of oneself and nature, one arrives finally at a knowledge of God. The soul, originally a tabula rasa, is gradually perfected by the ideas which theoretical speculation acquires. These ideas are identified with the rational soul, and there results the acquired Intellect, which, as absolutely immaterial, is immortal and becomes one with the world soul of which it is a part. During life complete union with the spiritual world is impossible. Even Moses could only see the "rear part" of God. But when one has during life kept as far as possible away from the sensuous and corporeal, then at the time of death, when the soul is separated from the body, he will be completely absorbed in the world soul and possess the knowledge of God.