A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy

by Isaac Husik

We have thus shown that God is one both in the sense of simple and in the sense of unique. To have a clear insight into the nature of his unity, we must now show that nothing else outside of God is really one, though we apply the term one to many things. No one will claim that a collective is one; but neither is an individual really one, for an individual man, for example, consists of many organs. You might think that a homogeneous and continuous elementary mass like air or water is one. But this is not true either, for everything that is corporeal is composed of matter and form. If then we set aside corporeal objects and aim to find real unity in mathematical entities like line and surface, which are not corporeal, we are met with the difficulty that line and surface are divisible, and hence potentially multiple. But neither are the simple intellectual substances, like the angels, true ones; for they are composed of their own possible existence and the necessary existence they acquire from another. The only being therefore that may be a true one is that which is not corporeal and not dependent upon another for its existence.

Considering the question of unity from a different aspect, in its relation, namely, to the thing designated as one, we find that unity never forms the essence of anything called by that name; but is in every case an accident. Thus if it were the essence of man as man that he is one, there could not on the one hand be many men, and on the other there could not also at the same time be one horse, one tree, one stone. In God his unity cannot be an accident, since as simple he has no accidents. Hence his unity is his essence. And if we examine the matter carefully we find that it is a negative concept. It involves two things. First, that every other unity involves plurality in some form or another. And second that being unlike anything else, he cannot bear having other things associated with him to make the result many, as we can in the case of man. A, for example, is one; and with B, C, and D he becomes many. This is not applicable to God.[238]

The divine attributes form the next topic we must consider. Here Ibn Daud offers little or nothing that is essentially new. He admits neither essential nor accidental attributes, for either would bring plurality and composition in the nature of God. The only attributes he admits are negative and relative. When we speak of God as cause we do not place any special entity in his essence, but merely indicate the dependence of things upon him. The truest attributes are the negative, such as that he is not body, that his existence is not dependent upon another, and so on; the only difficulty being that negative attributes, though removing many doubts, do not give us any positive information. All the anthropomorphic attributes in the Bible endowing God with human functions like sleeping and waking, or ascribing to him human limbs, eyes, ears, hands, feet, etc., must be understood metaphorically. For the Bible itself warns us against corporealizing God, "Take ye therefore good heed unto yourselves; for ye saw no manner of form on the day that the Lord spake unto you in Horeb" (Deut. 4, 15). When the Bible speaks of God's anger and favor, the meaning is that good deeds bring man near to God and cause happiness which is known as paradise ("Gan Eden"), and bad deeds remove far away from God and lead to misfortune, called Gehenna. It is like the apparent motion of the trees and the mountains to the traveller, when in reality it is he that is moving. So here God is said to approach and depart, to be angry with and favor, when in reality it is man who by his deeds comes near to God or departs far from him. When we assign many attributes to God we do not mean that there is any multiplicity in his nature. This cannot be. It is like the case of a man whose eyes are not properly co-ordinated. He sees double when there is only one. So we too suffer from intellectual squinting, when we seem to see many attributes in the one God.

The most common and most important attributes are the following eight: One, existent, true, eternal, living, knowing, willing, able. It can be easily shown (and Ibn Daud does proceed to show, though we shall not follow him in his details) that all these are at bottom negative. Unity means that there is nothing like him and that he is indivisible. Eternal means he is not subject to change or motion. True means he will never cease existing and that his existence does not come from another, and so on with the rest.

He closes his discussion of the attributes by intimating that he has more to say on this topic, but had better be content with what has been said so far, for a more thorough discussion of these matters in a book might do harm to those who do not understand and interpret the author's words incorrectly. This reminds us of Maimonides's adjuration of the reader to keep what he finds in the "Guide of the Perplexed" to himself and not to spread it abroad. Philosophy clearly was a delicate subject and not meant for intellectual babes, whose intellectual digestion might be seriously disturbed.[239]

We have now concluded our theory of God and his attributes; and in doing so we made use of principles of physics, such as matter and form, potentiality and actuality, motion and infinity. The next step is to prove the existence and nature of intermediate spiritual beings between God and the corporeal objects of the superlunar and sublunar worlds, called angels in the Bible, and secondary causes by the philosophers. For this purpose we shall have to apply the principles we have proved concerning the soul and the motions of the heavenly bodies. We have proved above that the human soul is at first in the child intelligent potentially and then becomes intelligent actually. This requires an agent, in whom the end to which the potential is proceeding is always actual. As the rational soul is neither body nor a corporeal power, this actual agent cannot be either of these, hence it is neither a sphere nor the soul of a sphere, but it must be a simple substance called Active Intellect. The prophets call it "Holy Spirit" ("Ruah Ha-Kodesh"). We thus have a proof of the existence of at least one such simple intellectual substance, or angel, the relation of which to the human soul is as that of light to vision. Without light vision is potential, light makes it actual. So the active intellect makes the potential soul actual and gives it first the axioms, which are universally certain, and hence could not have originated by induction from experience.

Similarly we can prove the existence of other simple substances from the motions of the heavenly spheres. We have already shown that the spheres are living beings and endowed with souls. But souls, while causing motion in their bodies are at the same time themselves in a sort of psychic motion. This must be caused by unmoved movers, or intellects, who are also the causes of the souls. To make this difficult matter somewhat clearer and more plausible, we may instance an analogy from familiar experience. A ship is made by the shipbuilder, who is its corporeal cause. But there is also an incorporeal cause, likewise a ship, viz., the ship in the mind of the shipbuilder. The analogy is imperfect, because the incorporeal ship in the mind of the builder cannot produce an actual corporeal ship without the builder employing material, such as wood, iron, etc., and in addition to that expending time and physical exertion on the material. But if he had the power to give the form of a ship to the material as soon as the latter was prepared for it without time and physical manipulation, we should have an instance of what we want to prove, namely, the existence of simple immaterial substances causing forms to emanate upon corporeal existences. This is the nature of the active intellect in its relation to the soul of man, and it is in the same way that the philosophers conceive of the motions of the heavenly spheres. God is the first unmoved mover. The angels or simple substances stand next to him; and they, too, are always actual intelligences, and move the heavenly bodies as the object of love and desire moves the object loving it without itself being moved. The heavenly bodies move therefore because of a desire to perfect themselves, or to become like unto their movers.

So far Ibn Daud agrees with the philosophers, because the doctrines so far expounded are not incompatible with the Bible. But when the philosophers raise the question, How can the many originate from the One, the manifold universe from the one God, and attempt to answer it by their theory of successive emanations, Ibn Daud calls a halt. The human mind is not really so all-competent as to be able to answer all questions of the most difficult nature. The doctrine of successive emanations is that elaborated by Alfarabi and Avicenna, which we have already seen quoted and criticized by Judah Halevi (cf. above, p. [178 f.]). It is slightly more complicated in Ibn Daud, who speaks of the treble nature of the emanations after the first Intelligence—an intelligence, a soul and a sphere—whereas in Halevi's account there were only two elements, the soul not being mentioned.[240]

We have so far dealt with the more theoretical part of theology and religion, so much of it as may be and is accepted by nations and religions other than Jews. It remains now to approach the more practical and the more specifically Jewish phases of religion; though in the purely ethical discussions and those relating to Providence we have once more a subject of general application, and not exclusively Jewish.

As the introduction to this second part of the subject, Abraham Ibn Daud devotes a few words to the theoretical defence of tradition, or rather of mediate knowledge. He does so by analyzing the various kinds of knowledge. Knowledge, he says, is either intelligible or sensible. Sensible knowledge is either directly perceived by the subject or received by him from another who perceived it directly, and whom he believes or not as the case may be. That is why some things believed by some people are not believed by others. The ignorant may think that this weakness is inherent in matters received from others. As a matter of fact such indirect knowledge is at the basis of civilization and makes it possible. If every man were to judge only by what he sees with his own eyes, society could never get along; there would be no way of obtaining justice in court, for the judge would not put credence in witnesses, and the parties would have to fight out their differences, which would lead to bloodshed and the disruption of social life. The different attitude of different persons to a given matter of belief is due not necessarily to the uncertainty of the thing itself, but to the manner in which the object of the belief came down to us. If a thing rests upon the testimony of one man, its warrant is not very strong. But if a whole nation witnessed an event, it is no longer doubtful, unless we suppose that the account itself is due to one writer, and the event never happened. We shall discuss these matters in the sequel.[241]