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                   A HISTORY OF
            MEDIAEVAL JEWISH PHILOSOPHY

                        BY

              ISAAC HUSIK, A.M., PH.D.
 ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN THE UNIVERSITY
                 OF PENNSYLVANIA


                     New York
              THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
                      1916

              _All rights reserved_




                 COPYRIGHT, 1916
            BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
  Set up and electrotyped. Published October, 1916.




This book is issued by the Macmillan Company in conjunction with the
Jewish Publication Society of America.




                       TO
            SOLOMON SOLIS COHEN, M.D.
                   AS A TOKEN
                       OF
              GRATITUDE AND ESTEEM




PREFACE


No excuse is needed for presenting to the English reader a History of
Mediæval Jewish Philosophy. The English language, poor enough in books
on Jewish history and literature, can boast of scarcely anything at all
in the domain of Jewish Philosophy. The Jewish Encyclopedia has no
article on Jewish Philosophy, and neither has the eleventh edition of
the Encyclopedia Britannica. Hastings' Encyclopedia of Religion and
Ethics will have a brief article on the subject from the conscientious
and able pen of Dr. Henry Malter, but of books there is none. But while
this is due to several causes, chief among them perhaps being that
English speaking people in general and Americans in particular are more
interested in positive facts than in tentative speculations, in concrete
researches than in abstract theorizing--there are ample signs that here
too a change is coming, and in many spheres we are called upon to
examine our foundations with a view to making our superstructure deep
and secure as well as broad and comprehensive. And this is nothing else
than philosophy. Philosophical studies are happily on the increase in
this country and more than one branch of literary endeavor is beginning
to feel its influence. And with the increase of books and researches in
the history of the Jews is coming an awakening to the fact that the
philosophical and rationalistic movement among the Jews in the middle
ages is well worth study, influential as it was in forming Judaism as a
religion and as a theological and ethical system.

But it is not merely the English language that is still wanting in a
general history of Mediæval Jewish Philosophy, the German, French and
Italian languages are no better off in this regard. For while it is true
that outside of the Hebrew and Arabic sources, German books and
monographs are the _sine qua non_ of the student who wishes to
investigate the philosophical movement in mediæval Jewry, and the
present writer owes very much to the researches of such men as Joel,
Guttmann, Kaufmann and others, it nevertheless remains true that there
is as yet no complete history of the subject for the student or the
general reader. The German writers have done thorough and distinguished
work in expounding individual thinkers and problems, they have gathered
a complete and detailed bibliography of Jewish philosophical writings in
print and in manuscript, they have edited and translated and annotated
the most important philosophical texts. France has also had an important
share in these fundamental undertakings, but for some reason neither the
one nor the other has so far undertaken to present to the general
student and non-technical reader the results of their researches.

What was omitted by the German, French and English speaking writers was
accomplished by a scholar who wrote in Hebrew. Dr. S. Bernfeld has
written in Hebrew under the title "Daat Elohim" (The Knowledge of God) a
readable sketch of Jewish Religious philosophy from Biblical times down
to "Ahad Haam." A German scholar (now in America), Dr. David Neumark of
Cincinnati, has undertaken on a very large scale a History of Jewish
Philosophy in the Middle Ages, of which only a beginning has been made
in the two volumes