Work · Philosophy in the Islamic World
The Light of the Lord (Or Adonai)
Aristotelian physics and Maimonides’ intellectualism attacked from within: an actual infinite and a void are possible, and the soul’s end is love of God, not knowledge.
Introduction
Crescas’ philosophical summa, written in Hebrew over at least fifteen years and completed around 1410; it is also cited as Or Hashem. Its four treatises deal with the foundations of all religion (God’s existence, unity and incorporeality), the six fundamental principles of the Torah (among them God’s knowledge, providence, power and human choice), further true beliefs such as creation, and a set of open questions, among them whether other worlds exist. The first treatise examines one by one the propositions of Aristotelian physics on which Maimonides had based his proofs and rejects several of them, including the impossibility of an actual infinite and of a void. Harry A. Wolfson’s Crescas’ Critique of Aristotle (1929) made this part known to historians of philosophy and science.
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Connections
Criticizes
- Physicsc. 350 BCE · Aristotle
- The Guide for the Perplexedc. 1190 · Maimonides
- The Wars of the Lord (Milhamot Adonai)1329 · Gersonides (Levi ben Gershom)
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