The Problem

I TAKE my text from the concluding words of Husik's standard work on the history of Jewish medieval philosophy: ‘There are Jews now and there are philosophers: but there are no Jewish philosophers and there is no Jewish philosophy.'

Let me read that again: ‘There are no Jewish philosophers and there is no Jewish philosophy.’ You will note that he is talking about the present ('There are Jews now and there are philosophers’), with the implication (presumably) that the matter was not always so: after all he had just concluded a big volume on Jewish medieval philosophy himself. But even among the philosophers whom he describes there would seem to be some who would not merit the title Jewish philosophers even though they lived long ago. You may recall, for example, the remarks prefaced by the editor to the first edition (1560) of Gersonides’ Wars of the Lord: ‘His words seem to contradict our Torah and the wise men of our people …. But he has explained in his Introduction and the last chapter of his First Part that the Torah is one thing and philosophy another, and each occupies itself with its own affairs … ’. Since the sixteenth-century editor does not seem to be shocked by this avowal of Gersonides, it would seem that in Renaissance Italy too it could be said that there are Jews now and there are philosophers, but that it does not follow from the fact that a philosopher happens to be a Jew and even writes in Hebrew that his philosophy is necessarily Jewish.

So the problem is fairly set. In what sense can we talk about Jewish philosophy, and what can we expect to find if we look for it?

The Meaning of Philosophy

And there is a further difficulty. I shall have to discuss with you not only the word Jewish but also the word Philosophy. AB you all know, philosophy in our day and country has fallen into disrepute, and not so much in the mouth of the ordinary man as in the mouths of the philosophers themselves. Philosophers in England today seem to spend their time in pointing out how foolish previous philosophers were.