Philosopher
Gersonides
1288–1344
Also known as Levi ben Gerson, Ralbag
Provençal philosopher, astronomer and biblical commentator whose Wars of the Lord trusts reason to settle even creation and God's knowledge, sometimes against tradition.
If reason causes to affirm doctrines that are incompatible with the literal sense of Scripture, we are not prohibited by the Torah to pronounce the truth on these matters, for reason is not incompatible with the true understanding of the Torah.
Levi ben Gerson was born in Provence in 1288. The region had taken over from a declining Spanish Judaism as the heart of Jewish learning. He probably lived most of his life in Orange, with several trips to Avignon, where the popes were lenient towards the Jews, and died on 20 April 1344. He spoke Provençal but wrote all his works in Hebrew, and knew Aristotle through the Hebrew translations of Averroes’ commentaries.
His Wars of the Lord (1329) examines six questions in turn: the immortality of the soul, prophecy, God’s knowledge of particulars, providence, the heavens, and whether the world is eternal or created. Its astronomy was already translated into Latin while he was alive, and the lunar crater Rabbi Levi bears his name. An opponent called the book the “Wars against the Lord”, but through Hasdai Crescas and others his ideas reached Spinoza and Leibniz.
Key ideas
- Reason and Torah cannot conflict
- Reason is God-given and fully able to reach the important truths. Where reason proves something that conflicts with the literal sense of scripture, the passage must be interpreted to fit, since reason agrees with the true meaning of the Torah.
- Creation from eternal matter
- Against Maimonides, who held that creation cannot be demonstrated, Gersonides argues that it can. Creation from nothing is incompatible with physical reality, so God, acting freely, formed the world from an inert, formless matter that had always existed, as in Plato’s Timaeus.
- God does not know future contingents
- God knows particular things only through the general order they belong to, knowing individual people through the species humanity. If God knew in advance which of two possible outcomes would happen, nothing would be contingent, so God knows only that either may happen.
- Astronomy as a path to God
- Gersonides trusted observation made with good instruments over authority, even Ptolemy’s. He invented an instrument for measuring the heights of stars, known to Christians as Jacob’s staff, and held that studying the heavens leads to a fuller knowledge of God.
- Immortality through knowledge
- If all humans shared a single intellect, no individual could be immortal, so Gersonides rejects that view. Like Alexander of Aphrodisias, he places immortality in the intellect’s perfection through knowledge, though the two disagree about what that perfection consists in.
- Tradition
- Jewish
- Region
- Provence
- Period
- Provence and Spain
Influences
Influenced by
Gersonides1288–1344
Influenced
Influenced by
Gersonides1288–1344
Influenced
Where these links come from
- Gersonides drew on Aristotle. Source: Tamar Rudavsky, Gersonides, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- Gersonides drew on Averroes. Source: Tamar Rudavsky, Gersonides, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- Gersonides drew on and argued against Maimonides. Source: Tamar Rudavsky, Gersonides, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- Hasdai Crescas drew on and argued against Gersonides. Source: Shalom Sadik, Hasdai Crescas, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Key works
- The Wars of the Lord (Milhamot ha-Shem), 1329
- Read free at Wikisource (in Hebrew)
- Commentary on the Book of Job
Sources
- Tamar Rudavsky, Gersonides, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy