Studies in Rationalism, Judaism, and Universalism in Memory of Leon Roth (review)

Book Reviews Studies in Rationalism, Judaism, and Universalism in Memory o/ Leon Roth. Edited by Raphael Loewe. (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul; New York: The Humanities Press, 1966. Pp. xiii+357) Leon Roth (1896-1963) in whose honor these essays have been collected, made significant contributions to the study of modern philosophy, especially Descartes and Spinoza. For thirty years he was a professor of philosophy, first (1923-1927) under Samuel Alexander at Manchester University and then (1927-1953) as incumbent of the Ahad Ha'am Chair at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. During his quarter of a century of service in the Hebrew University he devoted much of his time to the preparation of Hebrew versions of classical texts in philosophy and to the presentation and defense of Anglo-American conceptions of democracy to the Palestinian public. The emergence of the State of Israel after 1948, writes editor Raphael Loewe, "with certain characteristics with which Roth felt himseLf out of sympathy ethically as well as ideologically" (p. 5), led to his resignation and return to England. Ten years of study and writing, especially on Jewish subjects, followed his return. Roth was a faithful adherent of Judaism, a religious rationalist, and a committed universalist. Of the fifteen papers included in this memorial tribute, three deal directly with the general history of philosophy. Alexander Altmann (of Brandeis University) presents "Moses Mendelssohn on Leibniz and Spinoza," showing how Mendelssohn presents Spinoza as the mediator of the transition between Cartesian and Leibnizian systems. Spinoza missed the Leibnizian truth by but a step. Throughout his philosophic life, Mendelssohn was obsessed by Spinoza, even making the attempt to demonstrate that Spinoza's pantheism (or acosmism) can be reconciled with religion and that Spinoza's system can be identified with the Leibnizian world in God's mind. Altmann has made a very careful and useful study. David Daiches Raphael (of the University of Glasgow), whose studies of eighteenth-century moral and political philosophy have been so valuable, here explores "Rationalism in Hobbes' Political Philosophy," suggesting that "Hobb.es is the first to make a deliberate use, in social studies, of the tools of physical science" (p. 199). This essay is especially interesting in its development of the mathematical model of Hobbes' political theory and in its discussion of Hobbes' theory of obligation. Nathan Rotenstreich (Roth's successor as Ahad Ha'am Professor in the Hebrew University) writes a third paper of general philosophic interest on "Ethics and Education," arguing for their inseparability, even where an ethical intention is expressly denied by educators. Two other papers on philosophic subjects are of direct concern to students of Jewish philosophy: Harry A. Wolfson's "Maimonides on Modes and Universals" and Erwin I. J. Rosenthal's "Torah and Nomos in Medieval Jewish Philosophy." Wolfson's essay is another example of the careful historical and textual analysis that so often we have had occasion to be grateful for and to applaud. His conclusion is that "with respect to modes in the sense of universals, Maimonides agrees with the Modalists that they have a conceptual existence.., but he disagrees with them as to the logical propriety of the use of their formula. With regard to the use of modes as an interpretation of divine predicates," however, Maimonides rejects the Modahst position (pp. 318-319). [3221 BOOK REVIEWS 323 Rosenthal's essay investigates the relation of faith (Torah: revealed law) and reason (Nomos: human law), particularly in the thought of Abraham ibn Da'ud and Moses Maimonides. In noting that both writers give primacy to the divinely revealed Torah, rather than the humanly elaborated Nomos, Rosenthal argues that it would be more proper "to speak of the intellectualism of Jewish medieval thinkers, and not of their rationalism; for intellectualism grants primacy to faith with its religious commandments, whereas rationalism insists on the primacy of sovereign reason" (p. 218). Rosenthal might well have been wilting to accept the term "rationalism" had he seen the typology of rationalisms offered by Daiches Raphael at the beginning of his essay on Hobbes. Collective volumes of this sort rarely achieve consistency or distinction. Of its kind, Studies in Rationalism, Judaism and Universalism ranks high. JOSEPH L. BLAU Columbia University...