  What then was he trying to do in such compilations?  Falaquera’s agenda is clearly seen in his delightful little treatise, Iggeret ha-Vikkuah (The Epistle of the Debate), whose subtitle is: “In Explanation of the Agreement that Exists between the Law and Wisdom.” At the outset of this treatise he makes known that its purpose is “to explain that the study of the true sciences by whoever is worthy of them and whom God in his mercy has favored with an intellect to discover their depths is not prohibited from the point of view of our Law, and that the truth hidden in them does not contradict a word of our belief” (56; trans., 14–15) Unlike the first two great Jewish Aristotelian philosophers of the century before him, Abraham Ibn Daud and Maimonides, who sought in the introductions to their philosophico-theological works to dissuade the unworthy from reading on, Falaquera wished to awaken his co-religionists to the importance of philosophy. Falaquera, like his distinguished predecessors, realized that philosophy is not for everyone. He explicitly stated that it “is not necessary for all men, but for the one who is meticulous in his faith and endeavors to ascend the rank of the perfect man and to conceive what he conceives by way of the intellect, not by way of the imagination. As for the others who do not perceive this degree, tradition without their knowing the reason is sufficient” (65; trans., 29). Yet, there is a definite sense that Falaquera believed that philosophy could be of benefit to a far greater percentage of Jews than Ibn Daud or Maimonides thought. His Iggeret ha-Vikkuah, which is intended as an introduction to philosophy, provides a good indication of this. It is a dialogue between a scholar and a pietist, both observant Jews, in which the scholar – who investigates the secrets of wisdom and studies the philosophic books – tries to persuade the pietist – who considers such books a stumbling-block and cause of heresy and therefore forbidden – of the permissibility and desirability of philosophic study. The pietist is not perplexed and would certainly not be considered by Maimonides among the few for whom he intended the Guide, yet he is the type of reader Falaquera seeks to win over to philosophy. There may have been an additional reason for Falaquera’s interest in persuading the pietist. Falaquera wrote during the respite between the Maimonidean controversy of the 1230s and the controversy that culminated in 1305 with the ban issued by Solomon ibn Adret against the study of Greek philosophy and science by anyone under the age of twenty-five. In writing the Iggeret ha-Vikkuah, he was influenced by the epistolary debate of the former controversy between David Kimhi and Judah Alfakhar, and apparently sought in his dialogue to have his scholar accomplish what Kimhi and the other Maimonideans could not. Perhaps he hoped that if he could counter in his debate the real objections of the anti-Maimonideans with sensitive convincing responses, he could persuade future anti-rationalists of the religious importance of philosophy and the sciences and that the study of them was permissible and required of those who had the intellectual ability to undertake it (Harvey, “Maimonidean Controversy of the 1230s”). If he wished thereby to prevent future such controversies, he did not succeed (cf. in this connection, his much later Mikhtav ‘al Devar ha-Moreh, in defense of Maimonides’ Guide). In any case, by the end of the dialogue, the scholar indeed convinces the pietist, and promises to write for him three books: Reshit Hokhmah, Sefer ha-Ma‘alot, and De‘ot ha-Filosofim. Falaquera in fact wrote this trilogy. These works condense into three volumes the finest writings of the Greco-Islamic philosophic tradition and offer the Hebrew reader a rich program of education, beginning with a classification of the sciences and culminating with an encyclopedia of Aristotelian natural science and metaphysics. For Falaquera, philosophy and science are necessary for a complete and true understanding of the Divine Law and for the attainment of ultimate human felicity. His goal in the trilogy seems to have been to interest his fellow Jews in philosophy and science and then to educate them by making available to them the choicest fruits of the philosophic tradition in a form and language they could understand.  The Iggeret ha-Vikkuah was one attempt at leading his readers to philosophy and the path to perfection. Another attempt – quite well known to students of Hebrew literature – whose maqâmah form bespeaks the author’s desire to reach a wide audience and popularize philosophy, was his Sefer ha-Mevaqqesh, the tale of a young man’s search for wisdom.  The search concludes with the seeker’s encounter with a philosopher.