Awicebron

Dzieła

• ok. 1050Źródło życia (Fons Vitae)

  Neoplatoński dialog zachowany po łacinie: wszystkie byty stworzone, nawet dusze i intelekty, składają się z materii i formy.

Stanowisko

Ibn Gabirol was one of the great Hebrew poets – his “Royal Crown” is still recited on the Day of Atonement – and a philosopher. His Fountain of Life, a Neoplatonic dialogue, almost never cites the Bible. Everything except God, he argues, is composed of matter and form: even souls and intelligences have a “spiritual matter” (universal hylomorphism). Between God and creation stands the divine will, through which forms are imparted to matter. The Arabic original is lost; the Latin version circulated under the name “Avicebron”, taken for a Muslim or Christian until Salomon Munk identified him in 1846. Franciscans such as Bonaventure adopted spiritual matter; Thomas Aquinas rejected it.

Życie i kontekst

Solomon ibn Gabirol was born around 1021 in Málaga and grew up in Saragossa, then a centre of Jewish culture in al-Andalus. Orphaned and sickly, he found a patron in the courtier Jekuthiel ibn Hassan, who was killed in 1039; later he wrote poems for Samuel ha-Nagid of Granada. He died young, around 1058 – some sources say around 1070.

Dalsze główne dzieła

• The Improvement of the Moral Qualities (Tikkun middot ha-nefesh, 1045)
• The Fountain of Life (Arabic original lost; Latin Fons Vitae, c. mid-11th century, translated 12th century)
• The Royal Crown (Keter Malkhut, poem, 11th century)