Universe of Platonic Thought 2022

31st International Conference “The Universe of Platonic Thought: Plato’s Dialectics: Method, Norm, Self-Knowledge”

Dmitry Arkadjevich Fedchuk, DSc in Philosophy, Associate Professor; Institute of the philosophy of a human, Herzen University (Saint Petersburg, Russia), Professor; Saint Petersburg State University (Saint Petersburg, Russia), Assistant Professor

The basic results of the controversy between rationalists, traditionalists in Jewish philosophy of the XIII – XIV centuries and Christian scholasticism*

As a result of the comparison of scholastic and Jewish philosophy of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries it becomes obvious that there is a difference in the two views on the meaning of the relationship between the knowledge of God and the knowledge of the world. In many of its aspects this kind of distinction is based on Neoplatonism. From the point of view of Christian scholasticism, there is no contradiction between these two ways of knowing God and the world, while the Jewish rationalists put forward the thesis of a dual concept of truth: what is true for philosophy can be false from the point of view of theology. At the origin of the rationalist and traditionalist teachings of medieval Jewish and Christian natural theology lies the idea of the unity of the First Principle. Traditionalist Jewish criticism of theological rationalism in the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries substantiated the thesis of the unknowability of God and the universe by the fact that the opposite point of view leads to an anthropomorphic understanding of the First Principle. At the same time, the idea of complete (Judaism) or partial (Christian scholasticism) unknowability of God through his essential attributes existed both in Jewish traditionalism and, in part, in rationalism. Important in general for medieval metaphysics and natural theology the theme of the relationship between divine Providence and free will, as well as the way it is solved in traditionalism, shows that the position of traditionalism led to the denial of freedom.

Keywords: Jewish philosophy, scholasticism, Jewish rationalism, traditionalism, First Principle, divine attributes, Providence, Free will

The followers of Maimonides thought along the lines of those directions that were set by their teacher, and did not create their own original concepts. However, the rationalistic tradition laid down by Rambam is of great interest from the point of view of developing theological and theological problems common to both traditional movements of Judaism and Christianity. We are talking about the possibility of interpreting the essence of the Primordial from a reflexive philosophical position rooted in the philosophy of Aristotle and Platonism. Therefore, as later in Christianity, one of the first considered the question of the relationship of faith and knowledge to establish the significance of each of these sides in the knowledge of God. Isaac Albalag continues to follow Maimonides who wrote in the «Guide of the Perplexed» about the presence of true ideas of reason and introduceв a distinction between two truths – philosophical and theological. If Christian scholasticism recognized harmony and unity between the truths of reason and the truths of faith, then for such a representative of traditionalism as Albalag such recognition was not necessary: true for philosophy can be false from the point of view of theology. The God of philosophers and the God of theologians perform various functions in knowledge required to achieve, albeit not final, but relative completeness of truth. In such an approach the claims to truth are satisfied not only by rationalism but also by traditionalism: the knowledge of the prophet is combined with rational proof in the mind of the wise man.

It was found that the rationalistic teachings of medieval Jewish and Christian natural theology are based on the idea of unity of the First Principle. Developed by Maimonides and continued in the works of his followers it allows us to reduce the central ideas of metaphysics to the following theses.

1. The theoretical foundation is Aristotelian hylomorphism. In all things consciousness distinguishes two correlated ontological principles – matter and form. Matter is the potential beginning of the being; form is the actual beginning. The attempt to discover them in the nature of God leads to the impossibility of thinking of the infinite by way of the concept of the potential. The latter must be excluded from the understanding of God. This kind of elimination is carried out through negation of passive power, potency in God (Maimonides, Aquinas, Gersonides (and his reflections on matter)).

2. Unity of concepts. From the denial of potentiality in the Supreme Being follows: its immateriality; incorporeality; unity; relevance; absolute simplicity; uncomposability; infinity; eternity; causelessness; the relation of causal dependence of creation on the Creator, understood as the first and Highest acting cause (that is, the cosmological cause); understanding of being as a consequence of the Highest Cause. But all of the above converges in the central concept of the absolute unity of the Creator.

3. The differences in the understanding of the divine attributes in the currents under consideration are dictated by the difference in the initial positions of their representatives.

The reaction of Hasdai Kreskas (1340-1410) to rationalism actually marked the beginning of the destruction of rationalism. Crescas' anti-rationalism was based on the fact that existence is incomprehensible: God and the universe are unknowable; God, as an acting cause, is incapable of becoming an object of human cognition because He is characterized by forms of movement that cannot be comprehended by the human mind; therefore, the claim of rationalists to distinguish divine attributes based on the abilities of the finite intellect leads to anthropomorphism and an inadequate representation of the Creator. From the theses of rationalism, according to Crescas and the traditionalists, we have the right to leave only the absolute unity of God and His immateriality. We cannot move further in our reasoning. God is known not through essential attributes but through the world He created. According to Crescas the perfection of the knowledge of the Almighty is not in the mind but in an ever deeper feeling of love for God.

The next argument of traditionalism against rationalism is the denial of the first possibility to know the will of God by reason. Therefore, the explanations by the followers of Maimonides of the contradiction between divine providence and the free will of man and its recognition by them were recognized as erroneous. On the one hand, as the traditionalists believed, there is an immutable necessity of natural laws emanating from God, and on the other, free choice is sufficient from the point of view of justifying morality, but does not conflict with the law of causality, which determined this choice. Such a point of view leads to the denial of free will as it was understood in rationalism.

* This research was carried out thanks to the funding of the Russian Science Foundation, project No. 22-28-01221; Saint-Petersburg State University.