Simone Luzzatto’s Scepticism in Light of Medieval Jewish Apologetics
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Abstract
Seventeenth-century Italian scholarly milieus show an extensive use and appraisal of the most common authoritative sources that were highly esteemed in the previous centuries. A major break with the past was represented by new interpretations of the traditional texts, which were now reread against the background of contemporary speculative trends. This chapter will discuss the way in which the main character of Luzzatto’s Socrates resembles the Socrates mentioned by Judah Halevi in his Kuzari, another work that enjoyed a surprising reappraisal in seventeenth-century Italy. In his philosophical/apologetic work, Halevi portrays Socrates as a representative of the prisca philosophia tradition, as a mystic, and as a scholar who is charged by both the lower and the upper intellectual classes with being incapable of correctly addressing his students. These various interpretations of Socrates perfectly match the various interpretations of the ancient philosopher offered by Luzzatto, and they should all be studied in the context of the medieval Arabic interpretations of ancient Greek philosophy. It is possible that in this wide array of sources, a new kind of scepticism was born, a reading of rational thought that stressed the fallacies of human reasoning in the context of adherence to traditional religion.