The Cambridge History of Jewish Philosophy: From Antiquity through the Seventeenth Century (review)

Although much has been said about the decline of the printed word, this would be hard to claim for the discipline of philosophy. Recent years have seen a proliferation of dictionaries, anthologies, "companions," and histories. Though varying in format, they are all intended to give readers—scholars, students, and philosophically-inclined members of the public—both a general overview of certain periods and fields, and a sophisticated, up-to-date discussion of standard topics and problems. While this might all seem too much of a good thing, especially since many of the same authors are included in the different collections published by different presses, taken as a whole the enterprise will no doubt serve to elevate learning and discussion at both the scholar and student level.

The volume under review here succeeds admirably in both tasks of general overview and sophisticated discussion. It introduces some fresh perspectives, approaches, and analyses. It has been meticulously prepared and printed, with a very thorough, extensive bibliography and useful "biobibliographical" appendix. Typographical errors are extremely rare. The list of contributing authors is cosmopolitan. Above all, it fills the gap, noted by the editors of Cambridge Histories published previously—e.g. Later Greek and Early Medieval Philosophy (1967) and Later Medieval Philosophy (1982)—with respect to the nature, sources, and problematics of medieval Jewish philosophy. In their introduction, the editors of this volume contribute to the longstanding problem of defining Jewish philosophy: is it Jewish philosophy or Jewish philosophy, and what is the difference? They suggest, correctly in my view, that the field should be regarded as including both: for those who saw themselves primarily as Jewish philosophers, the aim was to put their philosophical skill of analysis to work on liturgical, legal, and social issues in the religion of Judaism; whereas those who viewed themselves primarily as philosophers were concerned with "what it is rational to believe" (2). As a practical matter, Jewish philosophy can and should be identified by "the kinds of questions one is asking, the texts to which one is responding, and the thinkers with whom one is in dialogue" (3).

Like the earlier Cambridge Histories, this one is thematically organized (the editors claim that this is a distinctive feature of the present volume, but it is not) rather than being a chronological account of the lives and theories of individual philosophers. Within each subdiscipline or topical section, though, the contributing authors do strive to give a chronological ordering, often moving from Philo on to Saadia, Maimonides, Gersonides, and Spinoza. This thematic organization underscores the fact that Jewish philosophers, though perhaps small in number compared to those coming out of the Christian or Muslim traditions, were active in the full range of philosophic disciplines, including logic, philosophy of language, cosmology and physics, epistemology and psychology, metaphysics, ethics, and political thought. It also helps the reader in discerning influences, both religious and specific philosophical, e.g. Platonic as opposed to Aristotelian. A separate early section, "Texts and Contexts," provides a survey of the main topics emerging out of the Greek background, and a very detailed account of the variegated Muslim influences and issues surrounding the integrity of textual traditions and translations. A downside to the thematic organization, however, is that for someone who has little or no acquaintance with a particular thinker, it is difficult to obtain a coherent picture of his philosophical work overall. There is also no sense of philosophical problematics changing over time, as may have occurred with the decline of scholasticism in "general" philosophy or what might be called the philosophy of the Latin-dominated Christian West in the latter stages of the medieval period (Abraham Melamed's chapter on political philosophy raises the question of whether this is a useful designation at all).

Nonetheless, the lack of overall coherence in the representation of individual thinkers is more than compensated for by the uniformly high level of scholarship and...