This volume of twenty-one articles entitled Gersonides’ Afterlife: Studies on the Reception of Levi ben Gerson’s Philosophical, Halakhic, and Scientific Oeuvre in the 14th through 20th Centuries is the second volume of the Officina Philosophica Hebraica book series published by E.J. Brill, a subseries of the Studies in Jewish History and Culture series. This subseries, created by Giuseppe Veltri and myself, is dedicated to publishing texts of and studies on Jewish philosophy, primarily during the Middle Ages (ninth through sixteenth centuries), and is intended to become a forum for research and discussion on the history of pre-modern Jewish philosophy. The present volume of studies on the afterlife of the great philosopher Levi ben Gershom (Gersonides, 1288–1344) has its natural place in this subseries.
The Latin word officina means “workshop.” This can be conceived as a place where different craftsmen use their respective skills in order to produce—in a collaborative endeavor—the components of a product whose creation would be beyond the abilities of each individual. This is what the reader will find in the pages that follow.
In the final chapter of his magnum opus, La pensée philosophique etthéologique de Gersonide (1973), Charles Touati single-handedly sketched the entire history of the reception of Gersonides’ thought. The research program he developed there, however, was not implemented during the following four decades. Gersonides’ Afterlife is finally beginning to fill this gap: in its five parts, the reader will find a collection of fine studies from scholars specializing in different fields of research, who have collaboratively and from diverse directions shed light on the work and reception of one of the greatest medieval minds. The book significantly furthers our understanding of the transitional period between the later Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and the early modern era—a fascinating period in the history of Jewish (and general) philosophy, which is enjoying a growing interest in contemporary scholarship.
Gersonides belongs to the last generation of the great movement of Jewish philosophy in Southern France, which was instigated almost two hundred years earlier, mostly by Jewish immigrants from Muslim Spain, and faded out after the middle of the fourteenth century. He was the heir to the Arabic-into-Hebrew translation movement of the late twelfth and thirteenth centuries, which made the vast heritage of ancient and medieval Arabic and Judeo-Arabic philosophy and science available to Jews in Southern Europe and paved the way for their integration into Jewish culture and thought. Gersonides also followed the movement that popularized these bodies of knowledge documented in the so-called Hebrew encyclopedias of the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. He composed his works after the last great wave of the Maimonidean Controversies (1300–1306), which is generally believed to have ended with the catastrophe of the expulsion of the Jews from the lands under the French crown. Dramatic as these events were for the Jewish communities in France, it remains unclear how deep their impact on Gersonides’ life was once he and his family had become residents in cities of the Comtat Venaissin (Orange, Avignon), which was under the rule of the Avignon popes. On the other hand, Gersonides died before the outbreak of the Black Death in Southern France in 1347/48 (probably spreading from the nearby port of Montpellier), which diminished both the Jewish and the non-Jewish population of the region and was undoubtedly a major factor in its economic and cultural decline in the second half of the century.
As a Jewish philosopher and scientist, Gersonides was not only heir to a long tradition of the study of Aristotelian and Averroean philosophy and science in Southern France, bitter controversies, and attempts to integrate these new impulses into Jewish thought. He was also a contemporary of philosophical authors and translators such as Yedaya ben Abraham ha-Penini Bedersi (Beziers, ca. 1270–1340), Nissim ben Moses of Marseilles (fourteenth century), Joseph ben Abba Mari ben Joseph ben Jacob Kaspi (Arles, 1280—Majorca, 1345), Qalonymos ben Qalonymos (Arles, 1286/87—after 1329), Samuel ben Judah of Marseilles (1294—after 1343), Moses of Beaucaire (early fourteenth century), and others. Within this group, however, Gersonides assumes a special place. This is not only because he was the sharpest and most penetrating thinker of Jewish Aristotelianism in his time (and, in fact, the most important Jewish philosopher after Maimonides and—together with Ḥasdai Crescas [ca. 1340–1410]—one of the most important medieval Jewish philosophers): Gersonides’ working method and literary style also elevate him above his contemporaries. Beginning with the earliest drafts of The Wars of the Lord (1317) and philosophical and scientific studies (on Aristotelian logic in 1319 and on mathematics in 1321), through his systematic commentary project on the Aristotelian-Averroean corpus (from 1321), his series of biblical commentaries (from 1325), and up to the final shaping of The Wars of the Lord, Gersonides clearly followed and carried out a largely self-referential working project in which his main interlocutors were not so much his contemporaries, but rather the greatest luminaries of the philosophical and scientific tradition. With an amazing amount of optimism and self-assurance, he was convinced that methodical inquiry, based on the systematic investigation of the opinions of his predecessors (the so-called “diaporematic” method), combined with advanced mathematics and empirical studies, would—and in fact often did—allow him to attain the answers to intricate questions that had haunted previous generations of scholars. These achievements, he believed, would also eventually pave the way for a harmonious integration of the truths of philosophy, science, and religious tradition.
Research into the historical context of Gersonides’ philosophical and scientific activities and their immediate reception history makes it clear that the image of him as an isolated, unique, almost singular figure needs to be counterbalanced. For one thing, it seems quite plausible that Gersonides, who apparently did not read any Arabic, was in direct or indirect contact with some of the contemporary translators (e.g., Qalonymos ben Qalonymos), whose translations he used shortly after they had been produced. For another, at least some of his works were read and studied soon after having been made public. We know, for example, that he infuriated at least one his contemporaries living in his closest vicinity: Samuel ben Judah of Marseilles, who, like Gersonides, was a resident of the Comtat Venaissin, sharply criticized his opinions about some logical issues. Furthermore, he also had a number of students, a fact which is confirmed by the studies of Charles H. Manekin, Steven Harvey, and Resianne Fontaine presented in this volume. Yet it would be a gross exaggeration to say that he succeeded—or even that he was interested—in founding a philosophical school of his own.
Gersonides communicated with halachists of his time, as shown by his responsa and their reception (discussed by Pinchas Roth). This is an aspect of his activities that is often neglected. He was also in contact with contemporary Christian scientists, especially astronomers, although the extent to which they influenced his thinking is a matter of dispute. The astronomical and astrological works of the last period of his life (discussed in part two of this volume by José Chabás and Bernard R. Goldstein, Gad Freudenthal, and Hagar Kahana-Smilansky) allow us to glimpse a man involved in the scientific and even political affairs of his time. However, the rather limited reception of Gersonides’ scientific oeuvre among both Jews and Christians (despite translations into Latin and Provençal) did not allow the innovative potential of his thought to become fully actualized in the history of science.
It is still difficult to say how important Gersonides influence was on his younger contemporaries in Southern France, such as the translator Todros Todrosi (born in Arles in 1313) or Moses ben Joshua Narboni (Perpignan, c. 1300—after 1362). Also, the use of Gersonides’ biblical commentaries in Nissim Gerondi’s (1315–1375) Derashot needs to be evaluated. From a geographical point of view, the activity of these two thinkers, who were active in Southern France and Spain, indicates a transition in the reception of Gersonides’ works in the fifteenth century which took place mainly in the Iberian Peninsula. This does not necessarily mean, however, that the two authors have to be considered as mediating link in the chain of transmission.
In Spain, Gersonides’ works were mentioned approvingly by Israel al-Naqawa (died 1391) and his son Efraim al-Naqawa (1359–1442). In general, however, the reception of Gersonides’ works and thought seems to have been heavily dominated by the intellectual climate created by the persecutions of 1391, in which the dispute between (Aristotelian) philosophy and science and Jewish religious tradition and their conflicting claims to truth had become virulent once more. Both Isaac ben Sheshet (1326–1408) and Simeon ben Ṣemaḥ Duran (1361–1444) were much more critical of Gersonides than the scholars mentioned earlier. To this group of critics, one could also add Isaac Arama (1420–1494). In Ḥasdai Crescas’ penetrating critique of philosophy, Gersonides seems to have become a key figure to an unprecedented extent (discussed in Warren Zev Harvey’s article in the present volume). He also played a central role in the writings of the fifteenth-century members of the Shem Tov family (as discussed by Doron Forte), Abraham Shalom (died 1492), and Don Isaac Abravanel (1437–1508), discussed here by Seymour Feldman and by Cedric Cohen Skalli and Oded Horezky. Gersonides also had his defenders among the so-called Jewish Scholastics of fifteenth-century Spain (e.g., Abraham Bibago). It should be noted, however, that there is no evidence for downright opposing camps of pro- and anti-Gersonideans. Throughout the ages, opposition to Gersonides’ thought had two entirely different motives: he was attacked as an Aristotelian by more religiously attuned thinkers, whereas staunch Aristotelians would attack him for his often quite un-Aristotelian solutions to time-honored Aristotelian problems and aporiai.
The present volume also sheds light on the various aspects of the reception history of Gersonides’ works in different geographical and cultural areas during the Renaissance, the next chapter in his afterlife. Although Gersonides was perhaps not predestined to gain much appreciation among his co-religionists of later generations, it so happened that the reception of his works in Southern France and then in Spain led to his not being forgotten by posterity. Following the growing Jewish emigration from Spain to the eastern Mediterranean (Byzantium), Gersonides’ works had repercussions among both Rabbanite and Karaite Jews (discussed by Ofer Elior and Daniel J. Lasker) and even reached Slavonic speaking areas (see the article by Moshe Taube). Echoes of him were also heard in Ashkenaz (as explored by Tamás Visi).
It was in Renaissance Italy, however, that Gersonides had his most impressive revival. His works were printed at a surprisingly early stage, perhaps due to the confluence of intellectual currents from Spain and Byzantium. The biblical commentaries in particular were among the earliest Hebrew printed books, as discussed by Zeev Gries, Michela Andreatta, and Menachem Kellner in part three of the present volume. A comprehensive analysis of the manuscript tradition of all the components of Gersonides’ oeuvre would complete this picture. It should also be observed that Gersonides’ works, both in Hebrew and in new Latin translations, played a considerable role in the re-formation of the corpus of Averroes’s writings, which was an essential element of Renaissance Aristotelianism. As a side effect, Gersonides’ own writings started to reach a Christian audience.
As the chapters assembled in part four of this book show (written by Gad Freudenthal, George Y. Kohler, and Torsten Lattki), the re-discovery of Gersonides as a key figure in the development of medieval Jewish Aristotelianism (and perhaps also Jewish Averroism) and science was one of the important achievements of the Wissenschaft des Judentums, and the repercussions of that revival even reached religious-Zionist circles, as discussed by Dov Schwartz in part five. In the last five decades, many scholars such as Charles Touati, Seymour Feldman, Sarah Klein-Braslavy, Gad Freudenthal, Ruth Glasner, Bernard R. Goldstein, José Luis Mancha, and others have made substantial contributions to an ever better understanding of Gersonides’ work and thought. It was left, however, to the initiators of the 2014 conference in Geneva—the editors of the present collection of studies—to draw attention to the afterlife of a Jewish thinker whose uniqueness will probably be fully appreciated only once his life and afterlife have been fully contextualized.
Reimund Leicht