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Hegel's Lectures on the History of Philosophy: Volume 3 (of 3)

Chapter 5: C. Jewish Philosophers.
By Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
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About This Book

These lectures present a systematic history of Western philosophy, beginning with the assimilation of Neo-Platonic ideas into Christian thought and the medieval synthesis, surveying Arabian and Jewish commentators, scholastic theologians and debates such as realism versus nominalism, and the revival of classical learning during the Renaissance. They then trace the emergence of modern approaches—empiricism, rationalism, and scientific methods—through figures associated with Bacon, Descartes, Spinoza, Locke, Leibniz, and others, and conclude with the transition to German Idealism and the critical philosophies that reshaped metaphysics and epistemology.

C. Jewish Philosophers.

With the Arabians are closely connected the Jewish philosophers, among whom the above-mentioned Moses Maimonides held a distinguished place. He was born at Cordova, in Spain, A.D. 1131 (Anno Mundi 4891, or, according to others, 4895), and lived in Egypt.[13] Besides More Nevochim, which has been translated into Latin, he composed other works; of him and other Jews much more of a literary character might be said. In their philosophy a strong Cabalistic element, on the one hand, makes itself felt throughout, in astrology, geomancy, &c.; on the other hand, we find in Moses Maimonides, as in the Fathers, that the foundation is laid in history. He deals with this in a strictly abstract system of metaphysics, which is connected, in Philo’s fashion, with the Mosaic books and their interpretation. We find in these Jewish philosophers proofs brought forward that God is One, that the world was created, and that matter is not eternal; Maimonides also speaks of the nature of God. The unity of God is dealt with as it was among the ancient Eleatics and the Neo-Platonists; to prove, namely, that not the Many, but the self-begetting and self-abrogating One is the truth.[14]