Metaphor and Imagination in Medieval Jewish Thought: Moses ibn Ezra, Judah Halevi, Moses Maimonides, and Shem Tov ibn Falaquera [1st ed. 2019] 978-3-030-29421-2, 978-3-030-29422-9

Table of contents :
Front Matter ....Pages i-xi
Introduction (Dianna Lynn Roberts-Zauderer)....Pages 1-18
“Human Language”: Classifying Metaphor in Jewish Sources (Dianna Lynn Roberts-Zauderer)....Pages 19-60
“Taste and See:” Imagination and Intellect (Dianna Lynn Roberts-Zauderer)....Pages 61-102
Transmission (Dianna Lynn Roberts-Zauderer)....Pages 103-153
Shem Tov ibn Falaquera and the Iberian ‘Afterlife’ of Maimonides’ Guide (Dianna Lynn Roberts-Zauderer)....Pages 155-188
“No Share in Poetry:” The Ethics of Figurative Language (Dianna Lynn Roberts-Zauderer)....Pages 189-215
Afterword (Dianna Lynn Roberts-Zauderer)....Pages 217-222
Back Matter ....Pages 223-268

Citation preview

Metaphor and Imagination in Medieval Jewish Thought Moses ibn Ezra, Judah Halevi, Moses Maimonides, and Shem Tov ibn Falaquera

Dianna Lynn Roberts-Zauderer

Metaphor and Imagination in Medieval Jewish Thought

Dianna Lynn Roberts-Zauderer

Metaphor and Imagination in Medieval Jewish Thought Moses ibn Ezra, Judah Halevi, Moses Maimonides, and Shem Tov ibn Falaquera

Dianna Lynn Roberts-Zauderer Toronto, ON, Canada

ISBN 978-3-030-29421-2    ISBN 978-3-030-29422-9 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29422-9 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the ­publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and ­institutional affiliations. This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

...as if the fullness of the soul did not sometimes overflow in the emptiest metaphors, since no one can ever give the exact measure of his needs, nor of his conceptions, nor of his sorrows; and since human speech is like a cracked tin kettle, on which we hammer out tunes to make bears dance when we long to move the stars. —Gustave Flaubert

For Rick

Preface

This book seeks to challenge assumptions that posit imagination as the opposite of intellect, and argues that the complexities of epistemology require a nuanced, rather than binary, approach to imagination. By exploring metaphor and imagination in medieval Arabic Aristotelian and Jewish thought, my work examines how metaphoric language creates conceptual figurations that require imagination to unravel their meaning. Texts are read in their original Judeo-Arabic, and translations of Maimonides’ Guide are compared in order to analyze their fidelity to the Judeo-Arabic original. Although imagination is a necessary contributor to abstract thought, and Andalusı̄ thinkers writing in Arabic highlight the difference between the faculty of imagination and its functions, this aspect of human psychology has not been transmitted through translations and across borders. This book highlights the cognitive aspect of metaphoric language, rehabilitates imagination’s vital role in human psychology, and highlights a nuanced approach to imagination that is lost on Maimonides’ interpreters and translators. Its significance lies in the examination of medieval Jewish thought in relation to both Islamo-Arabic and Christian Scholastic traditions. It takes an interdisciplinary approach, looking at medieval Jewish and arabophone philosophy and poetry through the lens of Greek philosophy, modern literary theory (including metaphoralogy and translation studies), and comparative literature. In this endeavour, I am indebted to my mentor, Jill Ross. She read the first and subsequent drafts of every chapter of my dissertation, from which this book evolved, and commented with wisdom, honesty and encouragement. Our discussion of both medieval and modern academic theories have ix

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PREFACE

widened the scope of this project. Her patience and understanding have been invaluable. I am fortunate to call Dr. David Novak an advisor and friend. His erudition in all things Jewish, philosophical and everything else, combined with his insightful comments, added substance to my research. Jeannie Miller enriched my ideas with her knowledge of Arabic language and literature. Her challenging questions helped sharpen my thinking. Aaron W. Hughes was an enthusiastic and inspiring reader, as was Walid Saleh. Fereshteh Hashemi and the staff and students of the Department for the Study of Religion at the University of Toronto provided me with academic friendship and a scholarly home during this journey. Every day, I feel privileged to have been a doctoral student at the University of Toronto. Robarts Library has such a vast collection of resources that I rarely have to look any farther afield. A stroll through the beautiful campus, throughout all the seasons, never fails to invigorate me. Thank you to Mark Meyerson and Nicholas de Lange. As teachers and researchers, they ignited my interest in medieval history and literature, and set me off on the journey that ultimately led to this book. My chevruta, Rabbi Asher Turin, zt”l, was unfailingly curious and supportive, and could always be counted on for a biblical or Talmudic source. Sara Abdel-Latif deserves special mention for patiently explaining the sometimes-­maddening intricacies of Arabic language and grammar. Her smile and patience greatly encouraged me. To my peers in my writing groups: I couldn’t have completed the writing of this project without their feedback and encouragement. Jonathan Decter encouraged the direction of my research. I thank Phil Getz and Amy Invernizzi at Palgrave Macmillan for their backing and expertise. To my family, whose support has been so vital. They sustained me through years of hard work, family health crises, a couple of surgeries, and many dinners of macaroni, pizza and cereal. To my parents, Andor and Ilona Roberts, and my siblings and their families; I hope I have made them proud. To my children, Tanya, Ariel and Bossmat, Leora, and Oshri, who maintained constant enthusiasm for and confidence in this project. To Rick, my husband and partner, whose unwavering support, unflinching optimism and good humour is a continuing source of strength and love. Every day is better because of him. Toronto, ON, Canada

Dianna Lynn Roberts-Zauderer

Contents

1 Introduction  1 2 “Human Language”: Classifying Metaphor in Jewish Sources 19 3 “Taste and See:” Imagination and Intellect 61 4 Transmission103 5 Shem Tov ibn Falaquera and the Iberian ‘Afterlife’ of Maimonides’ Guide155 6 “No Share in Poetry:” The Ethics of Figurative Language189 7 Afterword217 Appendix to Chapter 4223 Bibliography235 Index253

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Introduction

Once in my youth in the city of my birth, a scholar of Muslim law asked me – I was in his favour and certain of his fondness – to read before him the Ten Commandments in Arabic. I understood his intention: he wanted to reveal the dullness of [Scriptures’] figures of speech. I asked him to read the opening of the Qur’aˉn in the Latin language – he knew how to speak and understand it. When he undertook to transfer [the Qur’aˉn] to that language, his words were sullied and their beauty became abominable. He then understood my intentions and discharged me from his request. —Moses ibn Ezra, Kitaˉb al-muḥaˉḍara wal-mudhaˉkara/Sefer ha-‘iyunim ve-ha-­diyunim al ha-shirah ha-‘ivrit [Heb.], edited and translated by A.S. Halkin (Jerusalem: 1975) 45. My translation from Hebrew to English.

The anecdote retold above by Moses ibn Ezra (c. 1055–c. 1135) helps to describe the social, cultural and intellectual position of Jews in medieval al-Andalus. The protagonists of the story  – one a young Jewish scholar and poet, the other a Muslim legal expert – are clearly members of the educated class: they move effortlessly between Arabic, Hebrew and Latin and quote freely from Hebrew Scriptures and the Qur’ān. Their rapport is easy: Ibn Ezra emphasizes how he is esteemed and liked by the Muslim scholar, and when he turns the tables on his companion, he suffers no adverse consequences. © The Author(s) 2019 D. L. Roberts-Zauderer, Metaphor and Imagination in Medieval Jewish Thought, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29422-9_1

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On the surface, this story seems to affirm a “golden age” in medieval Spain, a time characterized by religious diversity and cultural exchange between Jews, Muslims and Christians. Two intellectuals, one Jewish, the other Muslim, engage in a game of linguistic and religious competition. The Jew is acculturated enough to represent his Scripture in Arabic and to challenge his interlocutor to translate the Qur’ān into Latin. He is clearly schooled in adab, the cultivated knowledge of grammar, poetry, history and ethics, among other intellectual subjects. The familiarity of both parties with each other’s language and scripture hints at linguistic borrowings and cultural hybridity, with Ibn Ezra as an example of an “Arabized Jew”1 who has internalized Arabic theology and culture. The notion of Jews well-versed in high culture at this time plays into the convention that Jews and Muslims indeed coexisted peacefully and respectfully in medieval al-Andalus. While Jews in Muslim Spain did have freedom of religion, autonomy in legal and religious affairs within their community and the freedom to engage in trade without restriction, they were tolerated rather than embraced. In the t ̣ā’ifa kingdoms of the eleventh century, Jews were useful to the rulers: those who had commercial connections and proficiency in languages became intermediaries between Muslim and Christian Spain. Jews could be “tolerated” as long as they maintained their inferior, “humiliated” status.2 Linguistic and theological rivalries between Muslims and Jews mirrored the polemical ‘arabiyya/ shu‘ubiyya debate wherein Muslims who traced their genealogy from ­pre-­Islamic Arabia viewed themselves as superior to later converts to Islam, with Arabic deemed the superior language for literary expression.3 1  Ross Brann, “The Arabized Jews,” in The Literature of Al-Andalus, eds. Menocal, Scheindlin and Sells (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 435. Scholars no longer use the language of “influence” when speaking of Andalusı̄-Jewish culture, writes Brann, but refer to its “ambiguity and conflict” (Scheindlin; Brann), cultural closeness and distance (Wasserstein), symbiotic cultural duality of Jewish and Arabic elements (Scheindlin; Goitein) and literary contacts and cultural interference (Drory). Brann, “The Arabized Jews,” 440. 2  Jewish participation in t ̣ā’ifa courts should not be overstated; individuals were employed as long as they had a unique skill or ability to offer, and without widespread support in the courts, they could be deposed or attacked at any time. David Wasserstein, The Rise and Fall of the Party Kings: Politics and Society in Islamic Spain, 1002–1086 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985). 3  As the Muslim world expanded and incorporated non-Arab Muslims, there was a need for Muslims to understand the original Arabic language of the Qur’ān and the culture of the Arabic peninsula. Arabic Muslims began to research pre-Islamic Arabic poetry as a source for understanding the Qur’ān. Yosef Tobi writes that Sa’adia Gaon (882/892–942) was aware

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While this anecdote confirms shared cultural values between Andalusı̄ Jews and Muslims, it complicates the assumption of a “golden age” of co-­ existence between the two faiths. The young Jewish scholar is challenged by the Muslim scholar to recite the Ten Commandments in Arabic and has no choice but to answer his charge. The Muslim scholar wants to prove to him the inferiority of the Hebrew Bible and the paucity of biblical language, to the extent that even when Jewish Scripture is recited in Arabic – the language of divine revelation for Muslims – it will not sound good. However, Ibn Ezra parries the Muslim scholar by asking him to recite a sūra in Latin, knowing full well that even when translated, the poetry of Qur’ānic verse cannot be adequately transferred to another language; in attempting to do so, its beauty would be sullied and its holiness debased. Issues of language and the transference of images and words from one idea or language to another are central to this book. Transference is a theme that recurs in various forms throughout this book, be it the transference of images and ideas within a metaphor, the progress of knowledge from imagination to reason, the movement of words from one language of these trends in Arabic literature and wanted to preserve the status of the Hebrew language and Jewish culture. As Qur’ānic Arabic was elevated to the status of a divine, immutable and inimitable language, Sa’adia sought to promote the Hebrew Bible as divine revelation by undertaking a literal translation and interpretation into Arabic. At this point, Hebrew poetry was limited to piyyutim, liturgical poetry. Sa’adia was the author of the first poetics; he maintained that the purpose of poetics was to understand God’s message to the Jewish people through the rhetoric of the prophets. Sa’adia’s poetics sought to teach the purity of the Hebrew language to Jews who were primarily Arabic or Aramaic speakers. Later Jewish thinkers such as Moses ibn Ezra, Judah Halevi and Maimonides also championed the Hebrew language as the language of divine revelation. Tobi, Proximity and Distance: Medieval Hebrew and Arabic Poetry, trans. Murray Rosovsky (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 122–152. Sa’adia, writes Alfred Ivry, also preceded Maimonides in recommending that biblical anthropomorphism should not be read literally. Ivry, “The Guide and Maimonides’ Philosophical Sources,” in The Cambridge Companion to Maimonides, Kenneth Seeskin, ed. (Cambridge: 2005) 64. According to Ross Brann, Hebrew poetry reflects an overt and a covert intent: outwardly it is a competitive reaction to ‘arabiyya, inwardly it reflects the condition of their cultural inferiority vis-à-vis the dominant Arabic culture in which they lived. Brann, The Compunctious Poet: Cultural Ambiguity and Hebrew Poetry in Muslim Spain (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991), 24–25. However Esperanza Alfonso writes, “In these poems, Jewish poets did not represent themselves as on the periphery but in direct competition with Muslims for the command of a shared cultural system.” She points out that both Muslim and Jewish cultures value the acquisition of knowledge and its transmission and they share exegetical methodologies as well. Alfonso, Islamic Culture Through Jewish Eyes: Al-Andalus from the tenth to the twelfth century (London and NY: Routledge, 2008), 37.

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to another in translation, and the conveyance and subsequent entrenchment of ideas by scholars in a commentary or translation that may or may not transfer all the nuances of the original text. * * * In medieval al-Andalus, two highly valued elements of Muslim court culture were recitation of verse and theological discourse based on analogical reasoning. Poetry was defined in Arabic poetics in two distinct ways. The first trend defined poetry formally as metre and rhyme. The second determined that poetry was “related…to creativity, to the power of emotional and intellectual apprehension, to intuition and imaginative creation.”4 Metre and rhyme alone could not capture these conceptual facets of poetry. Arabic Aristotelian philosophers took note of the critical inquiry into poetry and poetics; they looked to Greek commentaries for terminology and linked poetry to imitation or mimesis (muḥākāh), imagination (takhyı̄l), and metaphor (ist‘iāra).5 They recognized that language could carry both literal and non-literal messages, and similarly, figurative language could signify multiple meanings. In the t ̣ā’ifa courts of eleventh-century Muslim Spain, scribes were elevated to positions of power and the palace became a place where written and oral eloquence were esteemed. This eloquence was manifest in court poetry that praised the t ̣ā’ifa sovereign in elaborate elegies, among other styles of poetry that contained “hidden significations.”6 These encoded messages were carefully and artfully woven into poetry, philosophy and architecture, with the intent of puzzling the listener, reader or viewer, who would then decipher their meaning. As a result, artists and thinkers composed with multivalence in mind. In poetry, meanings were encoded through metaphor, or isti‘āra, a means of figurative expression that allowed difficult or abstract concepts to be understood through “likeness or similarity articulated through analogy.”7 Using metaphors, similes  Kemal Abu Deeb, “Literary Criticism,” in Julia Ashtany et  al., Abbasid Belles-Lettres (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 359. 5  See Alfārābı̄, Avicenna and Averroes’ commentary on Aristotle’s Poetics in Salim Kemal, The Philosophical Poetics of Alfarabi, Avicenna and Averroes: The Aristotelian Reception (London, New York: Routledge Curzon, 2003). 6  Julia S. Meisami, Medieval Persian Court Poetry (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987), 30. 7  Cynthia Robinson, In Praise of Song: The Making of Courtly Culture in al-Andalus and Provence, 1005–1134 AD (Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2002), 156. 4

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and other rhetorical devices, poets encoded multiple meanings into their poetry, in the same way that palace architects built rooms within rooms, gardens within courtyards, and layer upon layer of pattern into Andalusı̄ palaces.8 Medieval Jewish thinkers, following their Arabic Aristotelian precursors, understood metaphor to be a function of human imagination. Metaphor was viewed as one of the most beautiful aspects of literature; an analogy between two disparate concepts was a puzzle to be solved and to be delighted by when deciphered. However, metaphor also pointed to the limits of human intelligence, because without figurative language the mind could not fathom the immaterial, such as God or his actions. Comparing God’s actions with something analogous in the sensible world allowed people to comprehend figurative biblical language. Medieval Jewish thinkers sought to define a role for the proper usage of metaphor in poetry and scripture. These guidelines were expressed in both poetic and theological treatises. This book examines the role of metaphor as a form of cognitive expression in three treatises written by important medieval Jewish in thinkers. These three treatises were chosen because, taken together, these texts present an emerging medieval Arabophone epistemology, psychology and poetics: a guide for how to read scriptural and poetic metaphor, understand the intricacies of human psychology and circumscribe the various workings of imagination. Moses ibn Ezra’s poetic treatise Kitāb al-muḥāḍara wal-­ mudhākara/Sefer ha-‘iyunim ve-ha-diyunim/Book of Conversation and Deliberation, was written in Judeo-Arabic with the intention of integrating Arabic Aristotelian poetics with Hebrew poetry and scripture,9 and illustrating these points of contact with scriptural, classical Arabic and Hebrew poetry.10 Part One of Moses Maimonides’ book of philosophy, Dalālat al-ḥā’irı̄n/Moreh ha-Nebukhim/Guide of the Perplexed attempts, like Sa‘adia Gaon before him, to define a role for the proper interpretation of metaphor in scripture. This study will extract a definition of metaphor from Part One of Maimonides’ Guide. The operation of imagination and intellect within cognition cannot be understood without examining the  Robinson, In Praise of Song, 142ff.  Joseph Dana, Poetics of Medieval Hebrew Literature According to Moshe ibn Ezra [Heb.] (Tel Aviv: Dvir Company Ltd., 1990), 45. 10  Alfonso, Islamic Culture Through Jewish Eyes, 21. 8 9

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medieval view of human psychology. Judah Halevi’s theological treatise Kitāb al-radd wal-dalı̄l fı̄ al-din al-dhalı̄l/Sefer ha-Kuzari/The Book of Refutation and Proof in Support of the Despised Religion presents the most complete scheme of Arabic Aristotelian psychology in a medieval Jewish-­ Andalusı̄ text. Research into this book began with the question: What is the evolution of Maimonides’ stance on imagination in the Guide? Is his depiction of the features of imagination loyal to Arabic Aristotelian psychology? In order to support the claim that Maimonides’ perspective does indeed evolve, this book will examine how imagination is depicted in Part One of the Guide. Little critical attention has been paid to the Judeo-Arabic terms Maimonides used to describe imagination. A close reading of these terms will highlight linguistic nuances heretofore unexplored and, as a result, analyse the narrative development of Maimonides’ attitude towards imagination based on the terminology he carefully selected. Part One of the Guide deals with how to interpret scriptural metaphors properly and warns against the erroneous interpretation of figurative language. For example, biblical metaphors compare divine actions to human activities, such as sitting, descending, and outstretching an arm. Since it is impossible to conceive God actually performing these actions, biblical metaphors are meant to be understood figuratively. However, Maimonides determined that care must be taken with the interpretation of these similitudes, because erroneous interpretations can lead to anthropomorphizing God, which is, at least theoretically, an act of idolatry. Given that biblical metaphors use figurative language to describe God, and Maimonides advocates several ways to interpret these metaphors, the following questions arise: How does metaphor, which uses language to paint a pictorial image, transfer its meaning from figurative representation to abstract comprehension of God? If humans can only understand immaterial beings by comparing them to things sensed in the material world, how does the human mind convey these images? What role, if any, does imagination play in cognition? How does cognition, a rational process, extract meaning from metaphor, a creative expression? In order to answer these questions, this book will demonstrate how metaphor – both biblical and poetic – acts as a link between imagination and reason and contributes to the cognitive understanding of abstract concepts. Rather than solely considering medieval Arabic theories of figurative language, this book draws upon modern theories of metaphor (met-

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aphoralogy) to help illuminate the intellectual aspects of metaphor, as outlined in ibn Ezra and Maimonides. Academic scholarship tends to posit reason and imagination as opposing and competing aspects of human psychology, especially with regard to Maimonidean thought, and fails to account for their relationship as delineated in Arabic Aristotelian psychology. A primary objective of this study is to revise this view in two ways: first, by surveying the relationship of imagination and reason in medieval psychology; and second, by closely reading relevant passages of the Guide in Judeo-Arabic in order to glean how Maimonides presents imagination within  – or outside of  – the parameters and complexities of Avicennian psychology. Although others have written about Maimonides’ psychology and how his epistemology corresponds with Arabic Aristotelian epistemology, it is striking that there has yet to be a study of the role imagination plays in Maimonides’ psychology.11 I will address this gap by highlighting where Maimonides is loyal to his Arabic Aristotelian predecessors and how he veers from their psychological blueprint with regards to imagination’s role in cognition. Some of these issues have been dealt with by scholars who recognize the role of metaphor in helping to bridge the divide between divine and human thought, as well as the important role of imagination as a link between sensation and rational thought.12 In discussing medieval Jewish psychology, some modern scholars posit Maimonides and Halevi as representing opposing poles of reason and imagination,13 intellect and 11  Josef Stern’s work covers the process of intellectual acquisition of metaphysical knowledge, or how human beings can know God, rather than the role of imagination in the process by which humans acquire this knowledge. Stern, “Maimonides’ Epistemology,” in Kenneth Seeskin, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Maimonides (Cambridge and NY: Cambridge University Press, 2005) 118–126; idem. The Matter and Form of Maimonides’ Guide (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013). See also Lenn E. Goodman, “Maimonides on the Soul,” in Maimonides After 800 Years: Essays on Maimonides and His Influence, ed. Jay M. Harris (Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 2007), 65–80; Alfred Ivry, “Maimonides’ Psychology,” in Maimonides and His Heritage, eds. Idit Dobbs-Weinstein, Lenn E. Goodman, James Allen Grady (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2009). 12  See Mordechai Z.  Cohen, “Moses ibn Ezra vs. Maimonides: Argument for a Poetic Definition of Metaphor (Isti‘āra),” Edebiyat (2000) Vol. 11: 1–28; Aaron W. Hughes, The Texture of the Divine: Imagination in Medieval Islamic and Jewish Thought (Bloomington and Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2004). 13  James Arthur Diamond, Maimonides and the Hermeneutics of Concealment: Deciphering Scripture and Midrash in the Guide of the Perplexed (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002).

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superstition.14 This book avoids reading the simplistic dichotomy of reason/intellect versus imagination/superstition into Halevi’s Kuzari and Maimonides’ Guide.15 This study takes a more holistic approach by finding points of agreement  – as well as division  – between these two thinkers, specifically in their theories about the role of imagination and intellect in human psychology, and the limits of human cognition. Avicenna, Alfārābı̄ and other medieval Arabic thinkers developed a systematized epistemology that acted as a cornerstone for medieval Jewish thinking about cognition and how we know what we know. Issues of influence are not the primary focus, as it is taken for granted that the medieval Jewish thinkers dealt with are using Arabic Aristotelian philosophical foundations as a ground for their own exploration of psychology and epistemology.16 Without exploring medieval Arabic Aristotelian psychology, one cannot, then, identify the subtleties and mutations of Maimonides’ thought regarding imagination. This study will reference Avicenna’s psychology, in which he outlines the relationship of the senses to intellect, a blueprint that figures heavily in Halevi’s theory of intellect and imagination; and Alfārābı̄’s poetics, in which he links Aristotle’s discussion of imagination with human psychology and poetics, in other words, the connection between how we think and how we creatively imagine.17 In the pages that follow, passages are selected from Maimonides’ Guide that present the terms he uses to describe imagination and its functions. 14  Menachem Kellner, Maimonides’ Confrontation with Mysticism (Oxford: The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2006). 15  In this I differ with Warren Zev Harvey in his article “Three Theories of Imagination in Twelfth-Century Jewish Philosophy,” in M.C.  Pacheco, J.F.  Meirinhos, eds., Intellect et imagination dans la Philosophie Médiéval/Intellect and Imagination in Médiéval Philosophy/ Intelecto e imaginaçâo na Filosofia Médiéval: Actes du Xte Congrès International de Philosophie Médiévale de la Société Internationale pour l’Étude de la Philosophie Médiévale (S.I.E.P.M.), Porto, du 26 au 31 août 2002, (Rencontres de philosophie médiévale, 11) Vol. I (Brepols Publishers, Turnhout, 2006), 299. 16  For discussions about the Aristotelian underpinnings of medieval Jewish thought, see: Daniel H. Frank, “Maimonides and medieval Jewish Aristotelianism,” in Daniel H. Frank and Oliver Leaman, eds., The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Jewish Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 136–156; Ivry, “The Guide and Maimonides’ Philosophical Sources,” 58–81; Joel L.  Kraemer, “The Islamic Context of Medieval Jewish Philosophy,” in Daniel H. Frank and Oliver Leaman, eds., The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Jewish Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 38–68. 17  Nabil Matar, “Alfārābı̄ on Imagination: With a Translation of His ‘Treatise on Poetry,’” College Literature, 104.

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Close attention to the Judeo-Arabic terms he chooses will determine whether Maimonides hews closely to the Arabic Aristotelian view of imagination as a faculty that works in tandem with intellect, or if he presents a new consideration of imagination as an acting faculty with its own agency that can purposely act in opposition to intellect. A comparison of the original Judeo-Arabic terms used by Maimonides, along with their translations, will determine whether the positing of reason as antithetical to imagination is germane to the Guide’s original text, or a later imposition by translators. The turn to translation theory provides analytical approaches to translation, the act of transferring words and ideas from one language to another. In drawing upon Hebrew, French and English translations of the Guide, as well as modern translation theory, this study is able to create a picture that highlights the subtle theoretical move made by Maimonides and his translators regarding imagination, a viewpoint lost in most considerations of Maimonidean philosophy and psychology. A true appreciation of this theoretical shift can only be obtained by examining both the Judeo-­ Arabic terms and their subsequent translations, a study that will reveal the complex texture of imagination in medieval Jewish thought. Jewish studies scholarship that focuses on the Middle Ages is often compartmentalized into disciplinary categories of historiography, poetry and philosophy and their attendant methodologies. Medieval Arabic theories of cognition are traditionally explored from a philosophical standpoint.18 The present investigation maintains that Greek philosophy and Arabic Aristotelian psychology are useful starting points for the task of extracting theories of metaphor, imagination and the role of imaginative thought on cognition in medieval Andalusı̄ Jewish thought. This book engages modern literary and theoretical approaches regarding metaphor, translation and practices of textual composition to open up medieval literary and philosophical texts. In delineating an intellectual history, I seek to methodologically approach philosophical texts  – both medieval source material and their commentary – from a literary point of view, using modern literary theory to interrogate and open up textual, conceptual and rhetorical problems where applicable. This approach is not restricted to a 18  See Deborah L.  Black, Logic and Aristotle’s Rhetoric and Poetics in Medieval Arabic Philosophy (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1990); Black, “Imagination and Estimation: Arabic Paradigms and Western Transformations,” Topoi 19: 59–75; and Herbert A.  Davidson, Alfarabi, Avicenna, and Averroes on Intellect: Their Cosmologies, Theories of the Active Intellect and Theories of Human Intellect (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992).

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single theoretical framework, and as such it freely incorporates philosophical, literary, and poetic theories into the analysis. This multi-disciplinary approach is influenced by the works of Cynthia Robinson, who situates Islamic poetry within both the material and philosophical culture of al-­ Andalus19; Tova Rosen, who allows modern literary theory and gender studies to enhance her close reading of Hebrew poetic texts20; and Aaron Hughes, who weaves Avicennian psychology and Jewish philosophy into his analysis of Hebrew allegory.21 In The Texture of the Divine: Imagination in Medieval Islamic and Jewish Thought, Hughes contends that the real connection with the divine is experiential, non-discursive and situated in human imagination (as opposed to intellectual and discursive). He challenges the Maimonidean contention that there is such a thing as “imageless thinking.”22 In a similar vein, Josef Stern stresses that the material composition of human beings prevents them from achieving a completely conceptual, immaterial apprehension of the divine.23 This book takes up the challenge presented by both scholars by delineating how metaphor can act as a bridge between material, sense imagery and abstract thought. This study will argue that one of the ways that embodied human beings can understand metaphysical ideas is through image-laden, metaphoric language that awakens their imagination, subsequently enabling their intellect to achieve a rational understanding of theoretical concepts. Although this paradigm is explored in Arabic Aristotelian poetics, it is striking that there has not yet been a study of how this process has been addressed in medieval Jewish thought. This book deals in depth with the rhetorical function of metaphor in describing divine matters, the role of the imaginative faculty in cognition, and the application of metaphor and imagination in rhetoric and poetics.  Robinson, In Praise of Song.  Tova Rosen, Unveiling Eve: Reading Gender in Medieval Hebrew Literature (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003). 21  Hughes, The Texture of the Divine. 22  Hughes examines imagination’s function within cognition in his analysis of the initiatory tale, an allegorical text that uses images and metaphors to initiate the reader’s experience of the Neo-Platonic ascent of the soul towards transcendent truth. He advocates that medieval allegorical narratives be examined for their philosophical underpinnings. These tales “[challenge] the logocentric assumption that philosophical thinking is somehow image-free or that there even exists such a phenomena as imageless thinking.” Hughes, The Texture of the Divine, 49. 23  Stern, “Maimonides’ Epistemology,” 118–126, and idem., The Matter and Form of Maimonides’ Guide. 19 20

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Although the topics of dreams, prophecy and allegory seem to be a natural extension of these themes, especially in medieval Jewish thought, this book does not devote too much attention to these matters, except as they impact the examination of imagination.24 Even though Ibn Ezra has a chapter on the subject of dreams in his treatise on poetry, this book will not be delving into the topic because it is not germane to the examination of metaphor and imagination.25 The subject of prophecy is ably covered in other academic monographs.26 The field of medieval allegorical interpretation is vast27 and beyond the scope of this book.28 Scholars who view the  For example, when analysing Halevi’s opinion on prophetic imagination.  Moses ibn Ezra, Sefer ha-‘iyunim ve-ha-diyunim al ha-shirah ha-‘ivrit, Avraham Shlomo Halkin, ed. and trans. (Jerusalem: Hotsa-at Mekitze Nirdamim, 1975), 121–133. For a philosophical treatment of dreams, see Herbert A.  Davidson, Alfarabi, Avicenna, and Averroes on Intellect: Their Cosmologies, Theories of the Active Intellect, and Theories of Human Intellect (NY, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 118–186; Amira Eran, “Intuition and Inspiration  – The Causes of Jewish Thinkers’ Objection to Avicenna’s Intellectual Prophecy (ḥads)” in Jewish Studies Quarterly, Vol. 14, No. 1 (2007), 63–68; Collette Sirat, A History of Jewish Philosophy in the Middle Ages (Paris: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 64–5. 26  See Howard Kreisel’s comprehensive work on prophecy in medieval Jewish philosophy: Kreisel, Prophecy: The History of an Idea in Medieval Jewish Philosophy (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2001). In Sirat’s history of Jewish philosophy in the Middle Ages, she enumerates three types of prophecy: the true, veridical dream; the prophetic vision of the scriptural prophets; and the vision of a person of high moral character (such as Moses) while awake. The imaginative faculty can trick the rational soul by playing with images and using parables. Sirat, A History of Jewish Philosophy in the Middle Ages, 118–124; 152–153; 192–198. See also Yochanan Silman’s book on Judah Halevi: Silman, Philosopher and Prophet: Judah Halevi, the Kuzari, and the Evolution of his Thought, trans. Lenn J. Schramm (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995). 27  See, for example, the articles on medieval philosophic allegory in Jon Whitman, ed., Interpretation and Allegory: Antiquity to the Modern Period (Leiden: Brill, 2000). 28  On the use of allegory in Maimonides’ Guide, Diamond writes that Maimonides uses Midrashic allegory in the Guide creatively, as poetry that needs to be unpacked. Diamond, Maimonides and the Hermeneutics of Concealment, 3. Ivry writes: “Maimonides’ allegorical treatment of Bible extends beyond treating depictions of God’s actions as metaphors; it extends towards understanding the entire text as an imaginative human construct, not to be taken literally as God’s spoken word.” Ivry, “The Guide and Maimonides’ Philosophical Sources,” 67. Ivry explains this in a subsequent article: According to Guide II:36, Moses is the only biblical prophet to have received his prophecy purely through his intellect, wholly bypassing his imagination. As a result, writes Ivry, “[t]he purely intellectual revelations that Moses received…have been translated into imaginative language, the language of normative prophetic discourse.” Thus, he continues, “the entire Pentateuch, Moses’ torah, must be seen as his allegoresis of what escapes language essentially.” Ivry, “Triangulating the Imagination – Avicenna, Maimonides and Averroes”, in M.C. Pacheco, J.F. Meirinhos, eds., 24 25

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parable as a means of articulating philosophical ideas and divine commands fail to explain the role of figurative language such as metaphor or the role of imagination in decoding the meaning of these parables.29 Symbols, sense impressions and imagination play an important role in the mystical experience; however, the role that imagination plays in allowing the mystic to enter into the imaginal realm will not be covered in this study.30 Although this book does not deal directly with Midrash or parables, it will investigate the relationship between metaphor and imagination and their role in cognition. Given that the intention is to determine the place of metaphor and imagination within human epistemology according to the Andalusı̄ Jewish thinkers Moses ibn Ezra, Judah Halevi and Maimonides, it is fitting to look at the reception of these ideas in Iberia, where Jews crossed the frontier from Muslim into Christian Spain. Shem Tov ibn Falaquera is an appropriate subject to examine: he was a prolific thirteenth-century Jewish thinker and poet who translated numerous Arabic Aristotelian philosophical texts into Hebrew, wrote a commentary on Maimonides’ Guide, and composed several treatises arguing for the necessity of philosophy during an era when philosophical study, including the study of Maimonides, was under a ban by traditional rabbinic scholars. In addition, he noted that he wrote over twenty thousand verses of poetry. The intermittent Maimonidean controversies of the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries ended with the public burning of Maimonides’ books in Montpellier and the expulsion of the Jews from France.31 Intellect et imagination dans la Philosophie Médiéval/Intellect and Imagination in Médiéval Philosophy/Intelecto e imaginaçâo na Filosofia Médiéval: Actes du Xte Congrès International de Philosophie Médiévale de la Société Internationale pour l’Étude de la Philosophie Médiévale (S.I.E.P.M.), Porto, du 26 au 31 août 2002, (Rencontres de philosophie médiévale, 11) Vol. I (Brepols Publishers, Turnhout, 2006), 676. Stern conflates the term “allegory” with “parable,” preferring the latter because it connects Maimonides to the “rabbinic parable (mashal) in whose tradition he also situates himself.” Stern argues that, given the human being’s “epistemic limitations,” the parable is the “primary medium for the expression of incomplete knowledge of metaphysics.” Josef Stern, “The Maimonidean Parable, the Arabic Poetics, and the Garden of Eden,” Midwest Studies in Philosophy, XXXIII (2009), 212. 29  Notably Diamond, Maimonides and the Hermeneutics of Concealment; and Stern, The Matter and Form of Maimonides’ Guide. 30  See Elliot R.  Wolfson, Through a Speculum that Shines: Vision and Imagination in Medieval Jewish Mysticism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), 61–63. 31  Steven Harvey, “Falaquera’s Epistle of the Debate and the Maimonidean Controversy of the 1230s” in Torah and Wisdom: Studies in Jewish Philosophy, Kabbalah, and Halacha: essays in honor of Arthur Hyman, ed. R. Link-Salinger (New York: Shengold Publisher, Inc., 1992), 76.

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Before that, Jewish sages of southern France and northern Spain were embroiled in conflict over the study of philosophy and the inclusion of Maimonides’ Guide in the yeshiva curriculum, a debate that echoed the so-called Averroistic controversies in the universities. Perhaps because those debates dominated the cultural history of that period, and perhaps because Jewish scholars were involved in the reception of Maimonidean ideas, modern scholars view the thirteenth century as a time when there was a dearth of original Jewish thought. They point to the works of Jewish thinkers like Falaquera as being derivative and unoriginal. In reality, though, the thirteenth century saw the spread of works of Jewish literature and philosophy, and the flourishing of Talmudic scholarship and rabbinic responsa.32 Given the scholarly interest in Maimonides and his interpreters, it is notable that there has yet to be a study of Shem Tov ibn Falaquera that analyses his contribution to medieval Jewish psychology and aesthetic theory.33 This omission reflects the prevailing opinion of Falaquera as an unoriginal thinker in a derivative century (thirteenth-century Iberia) that yields very little scholarship worth examining. As a result, academic study has failed to address Falaquera’s involvement in the scholarly endeavour of compilation, or his participation in medieval Iberian intellectual culture, as a member of the interconnected web of Arabic, Hebrew and Latin erudition. This book intends to address this gap by examining texts by Falaquera that deal with figurative language and human psychology  – specifically imagination. In so doing, the hope is to bring to light Falaquera’s 32  Notably Nahmanides, Solomon ibn Adret, and Menahem Meiri. Henry Malter, “Shem Tob ben Joseph Palquera: Thinker and Poet of the Thirteenth Century,” The Jewish Quarterly Review 1 (1910–1911), 153. 33  With the notable exception of Raphael Jospe, Torah and Sophia: The Life and Thought of Shem Tov ibn Falaquera (Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 1998). Other works that have examined Falaquera’s contribution to medieval Jewish thought are: Steven Harvey, Falaquera’s Epistle of the Debate: An Introduction to Jewish Philosophy (Cambridge, MA and London: Cambridge University Press, 1987); M.  Herschel Levine, The Book of the Seeker (Sefer Ha-Mebaqqesh) by Shem Tob ben Joseph ibn Falaquera (New York: Yeshiva University Press, 1976); Henry Malter, “Shem Tob ben Joseph Palquera: Thinker and Poet of the Thirteenth Century” (JQR 1:1910–1911) 451–501; Aurora Salvatierra Ossorio, “Shem Tov ibn Falaquera: From Logic to Ethics,” Comparative Literature Studies 45:2 (2008) 165–181; and Yair Shiffman, “The Differences between the translations of Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed by Falaquera, Ibn Tibbon and Al-Harizi, and their textual and philosophical implications,” Journal of Semitic Studies XLIV:1, Spring, 47–61.

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contribution to medieval Jewish psychology and aesthetic theory, a fitting coda to the study of medieval Andalusı̄ Jewish psychology and its attention to metaphor and imagination. * * * Chapter 2, introduces the reader to the opinions of Moses ibn Ezra, Judah Halevi and Moses Maimonides on figurative language, in an attempt to develop a typology of metaphor. In medieval al-Andalus, metaphor was not only considered the highest form of poetic expression, but also an important component in epistemology, because analogies expressed within metaphoric language conveyed multiple meanings that begged to be deciphered cognitively. Ibn Ezra’s introduction – in his poetic treatise – of a cognitive component to metaphor has ramifications beyond Hebrew poetic theory. His view that, in addition to being the ultimate rhetorical ornament, metaphor is a figure of speech that requires rational examination to unlock its meaning, opens the door for a new understanding of scriptural metaphor, and even allows other medieval Jewish thinkers like Maimonides to examine metaphor philosophically. This chapter will turn to modern theories of metaphor for analytical approaches to medieval poetics. We cannot fully comprehend metaphor without understanding medieval psychology and the role of human imagination within human psychology. In Chap. 3, the epistemology of the medieval thinkers Avicenna and Alfārābı̄ will be delineated, paying special attention to the relationship of the senses, imagination and reason within human cognition. The impact of Arabic Aristotelian philosophy is strongly felt in Halevi and Maimonides, and this chapter will weigh the challenges each of these Jewish thinkers faced in squaring this epistemology with their theological beliefs. It is widely accepted by scholars that Maimonides took a dim view of imagination, which he viewed as a faculty that leads humans astray. It is the goal of this book to abandon the dichotomies of reason/truth and ­imagination/falsehood in favour of a more nuanced view that presents imagination in all its complexity. In addition to amending the standard monolithic presentation of imagination, a primary objective of this book is to trace Maimonides’ portrayal of imagination throughout Part One of the Guide. By indicating the language Maimonides used to describe imagination and its functions, the aim is to reveal that Maimonides suggested a more nuanced way of thinking about imagination, a view that develops over the course of the first part of the Guide. Chapter 4 will engage with select

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passages in the Guide to present the terms Maimonides used to describe imagination. These readings will compare and contrast the original Judeo-­ Arabic text with its Hebrew, French and English translations in an attempt to determine whether Maimonides’ intended meaning was transferred to the target languages; modern theories of translation will aid the analysis. Chapter 5 follows Shem Tov ibn Falaquera, compiler and translator into Hebrew of Arabic Aristotelian philosophy and defender of Maimonidean rationalism. His Moreh ha-Moreh is an early translation and commentary upon the Guide; in addition, he is the author of several works that contain an evaluation of the usefulness of poetic expression. The intention in surveying Falaquera is to explore whether Maimonides’ reconfiguration of imagination in the Guide is transferred forward in Jewish psychology and epistemology. Falaquera is a unique thinker to study; his output includes both philosophical compilations and poetic theory. The impact of Andalusı̄ poetics is strongly felt in Falaquera’s critique of the “falsity” of figurative language; however, the present work maintains that Falaquera’s critique reconfigures an ethical role for poetry. By drawing upon Christian scholastic poetics, which were part of a system of literary trends in thirteenthcentury Iberia, the intention is to delineate a medieval Iberian poetic that integrates a Maimonidean imagination which eschews its Arabic Aristotelian poetic roots, especially with regards to figurative language. * * * It is hoped that this analysis of metaphor and imagination will help to illuminate the significance of formulating a medieval Jewish poetics that incorporates both philosophic and literary currents. A true appreciation of the meaning of metaphor – and its instantiation in imagination – can only be obtained by investigating the history of these ideas in Arabic Aristotelian, Andalusı̄ and Iberian thought. There has yet to be a study of how these currents impact medieval Arabophone epistemology and poetics written by Jewish thinkers. What follows is an attempt to trace some of these encounters.

Bibliography Alfonso, Esperanza. 2008. Islamic Culture Through Jewish Eyes: Al-Andalus from the Tenth to Twelfth Century. New York: Routledge. Ashtiany, Julia, T.M.  Johnstone, J.D.  Latham, and R.B.  Serjeant, eds. 1990. Abbasid Belles-Lettres. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Black, Deborah L. 1990. Logic and Aristotle’s Rhetoric and Poetics in Medieval Arabic Philosophy. Leiden: E.J. Brill. ———. 2000. Imagination and Estimation: Arabic Paradigms and Western Transformations. Topoi 19: 59–75. Brann, Ross. 1991. The Compunctious Poet: Cultural Ambiguity and Hebrew Poetry in Muslim Spain. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. ———. 2000. The Arabized Jews. In The Literature of Al-Andalus, eds. Maria Rosa Menocal, Raymond Scheindlin, and Michael Sells, 435–454. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Cohen, Mordechai Z. 2000. Moses ibn Ezra vs. Maimonides: Argument for a Poetic Definition of Metaphor (Isti’āra). Edebiyat 11: 1–28. Dana, Joseph. 1992. Poetics of Medieval Hebrew Literature (According to Moshe ibn Ezra) [Hebrew]. Tel Aviv: Dvir Company Limited. Davidson, Herbert A. 1992. Alfarabi, Avicenna, and Averroes, on Intellect: Their Cosmologies, Theories of the Active Intellect and Theories of Human Intellect. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Diamond, James. 2002. Maimonides and the Hermeneutics of Concealment: Deciphering Scripture and Midrash in the Guide of the Perplexed. Albany: State University of New York Press. Eran, Amira. 2007. Intuition and Inspiration – The Causes of Jewish Thinkers’ Objection to Avicenna’s Intellectual Prophecy (ḥads). Jewish Studies Quarterly 14 (1): 39–71. Frank, Daniel, ed. 1995. The Jews of Medieval Islam: Community, Society and Identity. Leiden: Brill. Goodman, Lenn E. 2007. Maimonides on the Soul. In Maimonides After 800  Years: Essays on Maimonides and His Influence, ed. Jay M.  Harris. Cambridge, MA/London: Harvard University Press. Halevi, Judah. 1994. Sefer ha-Kuzari le-rabbi Yehuda ha-Levi. Translated and Annotated by Yehuda Even Shmuel. Tel Aviv: Dvir Publishing Company Limited. Harvey, Steven. 1992. Falaquera’s Epistle of the Debate and the Maimonidean Controversy of the 1230s. In Torah and Wisdom: Studies in Jewish Philosophy, Kabbalah, and Halacha: Essays in Honor of Arthur Hyman, ed. Ruth Link-­ Salinger. New York: Shengold Publisher, Inc. Harvey, Warren Zev. 2006. Three Theories of Imagination in 12th-Century Jewish Philosophy. In Intellect et imagination dans la Philosophie Médiéval/ Intellect and Imagination in Médiéval Philosophy/Intelecto e imaginaçâo na Filosofia Médiéval: Actes du Xte Congrès International de Philosophie Médiévale de la Société Internationale pour l’Étude de la Philosophie Médiévale (S.I.E.P.M.), Porto, du 26 au 31 août 2002, (Rencontres de philosophie médiévale, 11), eds. M.C.  Pacheco and J.F.  Meirinhos, vol. I, 287–302. Turnhout: Brepols Publishers, Turnhout.

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Hughes, Aaron W. 2004. The Texture of the Divine: Imagination in Medieval Islamic and Jewish Thought. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Ibn Ezra, Moses. 1975. Sefer ha-‘iyunim veha-diyunim al ha-shirah ha-‘ivrit [Kitāb al-muḥāḍara wa-l-mudhākara]. Ed. and Trans. Avraham Shlomo Halkin. Jerusalem: Hotsa-at Mekitze nirdamim. Ivry, Alfred. 2005. The Guide and Maimonides’ Philosophical Sources. In The Cambridge Companion to Maimonides, ed. Kenneth Seeskin. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2006.Triangulating the Imagination: Avicenna, Maimonides and Averroes. In Intellect et imagination dans la Philosophie Médiéval/Intellect and Imagination in Médiéval Philosophy/Intelecto e imaginaçâo na Filosofia Médiéval: Actes du Xte Congrès International de Philosophie Médiévale de la Société Internationale pour l’Étude de la Philosophie Médiévale (S.I.E.P.M.), Porto, du 26 au 31 août 2002, (Rencontres de philosophie médiévale, 11), eds. M.C. Pacheco and J.F. Meirinhos, vol. 1, 667–676. Turnhout: Brepols. Jospe, Raphael. 1988. Torah and Sophia: The Life and Thought of Shem Tov ibn Falaquera. Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press. Kellner, Menachem. 2006. Maimonides’ Confrontation with Mysticism. Oxford: The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization. Kemal, Salim. 2003. The Philosophical Poetics of Alfarabi, Avicenna and Averroes: The Aristotelian Reception. London/New York: Routledge Curzon. Kraemer, Joel L. 2003. The Islamic Context of Medieval Jewish Philosophy. In The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Jewish Philosophy, ed. Daniel H. Frank and Oliver Leaman, 38–68. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kreisel, Howard. 2001. Prophecy: The History of an Idea in Medieval Jewish Philosophy. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Levine, M.  Herschel, ed. and trans. 1976. The Book of the Seeker (Sefer Ha-Mebaqqesh) by Shem Tob ben Joseph ibn Falaquera. New York: Yeshiva University Press. Maimonides, Moses. 1963. The Guide of the Perplexed. Trans. Shlomo Pines. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Malter, Henry. 1910–1911. Shem Tob ben Joseph Palquera: Thinker and Poet of the Thirteenth Century. The Jewish Quarterly Review 1: 451–501. Matar, Nabil. 1996. Alfaˉraˉbī on Imagination: With a Translation of His Treatise on Poetry. College Literature 23 (1): 100–110. Meisami, Julie Scott. 1987. Medieval Persian Court Poetry. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Robinson, Cynthia. 2002. Praise of Song: The Making of Courtly Culture in al-­ Andalus and Provence, 1005–1134 A.D. Leiden: Brill. Rosen, Tova. 2003. Unveiling Eve: Reading Gender in Medieval Hebrew Literature. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

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Salvatierra Ossorio, Aurora. 2008. Shem Tov ibn Falaquera: From Logic to Ethics. Comparative Literature Studies 45 (2): 165–181. Shiffman, Yair. 1999. The Differences Between the Translations of Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed by Falaquera, Ibn Tibbon and Al-Harizi, and Their Textual and Philosophical Implications. Journal of Semitic Studies XLIV (1): 47–61. Silman, Yochanan. 1995. Philosopher and Prophet: Judah Halevi, the Kuzari, and the Evolution of His Thought. Trans. Lenn J. Schramm. Albany: State University of New York Press. Sirat, Colette. 1996. A History of Jewish Philosophy in the Middle Ages. Paris: Cambridge University Press. Stern, Josef. 2005. Maimonides’ Epistemology. In The Cambridge Companion to Maimonides, ed. Kenneth Seeskin, 105–133. Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2009. The Maimonidean Parable, the Arabic Poetics, and the Garden of Eden. Midwest Studies in Philosophy XXXIII: 209–247. Tobi, Yosef. 2004. Proximity and Distance: Medieval Hebrew and Arabic Poetry. Trans. Murray Rosovsky. Leiden: Brill. Wasserstein, David. 1985. The Rise and Fall of the Party Kings: Politics and Society in Islamic Spain 1002–1086. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Whitman, Jon. 2000. Interpretation and Allegory: Antiquity to the Modern Period. Leiden/Boston: Brill. Wolfson, Elliot R. 1994. Through a Speculum that Shines: Vision and Imagination in Medieval Jewish Mysticism. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

CHAPTER 2

“Human Language”: Classifying Metaphor in Jewish Sources

The purpose of this chapter is to develop a typology of metaphor, as expressed in the writings of Moses Ibn Ezra, Judah Halevi and Maimonides. Themes such as metaphor as a form of cognitive expression and the role of figurative language in human imagination and understanding receive their most articulated expressions in specific Judeo-Arabic works by these three medieval thinkers. Furthermore, their work exemplifies the type of literary output that was valued by the cultural literati of al-Andalus during the so-­ called Golden Age of Spain, from the tenth until the end of the twelfth century.1 That period ended when many Jews left al-Andalus for Christian northern Spain in the wake of the Almohad persecutions. For Jews as well as Muslims in al-Andalus, to be well versed in the intellectual sciences that comprised adab was to be urbane, noble and courteous. Adab is an Arabic term that refers to proper deportment and exemplary character as well as to the literature one was expected to study in order to achieve moral excellence. Some of adab’s multidisciplinary training included mastery of grammar, poetry, poetic theory, logic, oratory, and mathematics. Mastery of these sciences and arts, preparation for which began at a young age, could lead to a much-desired post in the royal court as a scribe, or kātib,2 with potential for advancement and a measure

1 2

 For a brief examination of the term “Golden Age of Spain” see Chap. 1.  Encyclopedia of Islam, s.v. “Adab.”

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of financial security.3 Such people were sought-after by the cognoscenti to perform poetry and speak about their knowledge. They formed their own inner circles of practice literature where they recited original verses and improvised on well-known poems in front of one another.4 For poets, the highest form of expression was metaphor. Metaphors “lead the meaning toward the heart in the most beautiful image provided by the form,” wrote the eleventh-century literary critic Ibn Rashı̄q.5 Poets understood that metaphor was a useful tool for them to play with as craftsmen of words, and they took delight in trying to decipher the metaphors of other poets’ verses. They valued the multiple levels of meaning found in the metaphoric image. At the same time, philosophers turned their gaze towards the role of scriptural metaphor to discover how the human mind needs to find likenesses in order to understand the concept of the divine. Maimonides, in particular, devotes the first part of his philosophical opus, The Guide of the Perplexed, to a lexicography of specific terms used in the Hebrew Bible to describe divine actions and attributes. The biblical terms he lists describe God in human terms, and Maimonides explains how these imaginative terms are not meant to be understood literally, but rather, metaphorically. This chapter will isolate and interpret texts that deal with metaphor in Moses Ibn Ezra’s Kitāb al-muḥāḍara wal-mudhākara/Sefer ha-‘iyunim ve-ha-diyunim/Book of Conversation and Deliberation,6 Judah Halevi’s Kitāb al-radd wal-dalı̄l fı̄ al-dı̄n al-dhalı̄l/Sefer ha-Kuzari/The Book of Refutation and Proof in Support of the Despised Religion7 and Moses 3  Peter Heath, “Knowledge,” in The Literature of Al-Andalus, eds. Maria Rosa Menocal, Raymond P. Scheindlin, and Michael Sells (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 107; Cynthia Robinson, In Praise of Song: The Making of Courtly Culture in Al-Andalus and Provence, 1005–1134 A.D. (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 97ff. 4  Ann Brener, Judah Halevi and His Circle of Hebrew Poets in Granada (Leiden: Brill, 2005), 61. Brener recreates the historical and social circumstances of Hebrew poets in lateeleventh and early-twelfth centuries al-Andalus. Through close readings of the poetry of the period, particularly the correspondence between Moses Ibn Ezra and Judah Halevi, she demonstrates that Hebrew poets adapted the paradigms of Islamic court conduct, particularly the affected performance during the majlis al-uns, or wine party of intimate friendship, to fashion themselves as loving companions composing songs of praise to one another. 5  Robinson, In Praise of Song, 185. 6  Henceforth referred to as Muḥāḍara. All references are to A.S. Halkin’s 1975 Hebrew translation, Sefer ha-‘iyunim ve-ha-diyunim al ha-shirah ha-‘ivrit, A.S. Halkin, ed. and transl. (Jerusalem: Hotsa’at Mekhitze nirdamim, 1975). English translations are my own. 7  Henceforth called Kuzari.

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Maimonides’ Dalālat al-ḥā’irı̄n/Moreh ha-Nebukhim/Guide of the Perplexed.8 Each of these books was written in Judeo-Arabic, and these texts will be analyzed in the original as well as in their Hebrew and English translations. In the past fifty years, metaphor studies have emerged as an academic discipline.9 New findings in linguistics, cognitive science, education and related fields have transported metaphor from its position in the pre-­ modern world as an important rhetorical and poetic figure of speech to a vital factor of conceptual thinking.10 Recent studies in the field promote correspondences between present-day “metaphorology” and medieval formulations of metaphor that share a focus on the role of metaphor in human cognition. Eva Kittay’s study of the multiple meanings of metaphor and Paul Ricoeur’s adaptation of Aristotle’s formulation of metaphor as “transference,” for instance, aid in the formulation of the meaning of metaphor in medieval Andalusı̄ sources. In the Babylonian Talmud, “human language” (lashon bnei adam) is a term used to explain words and terms in the Torah whose inclusion cannot be explained. It is rabbinic ordinance that there are no superfluous words in the Torah, and that every word has its reason for appearing in the scriptural text. The Talmud employs the term human language to indicate that imperfect humans do not understand why these seemingly superfluous terms are used.11  Henceforth called Guide.  See, for example, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Live By (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980); and Miriam Taverniers, Metaphor and Metaphorology: A Selective Genealogy of Philosophical and Linguistic Conceptions of Metaphor from Aristotle to the 1900s (Gent: Academia Press, 2002). 10  While most of these studies pay their scholarly debt to Aristotle’s formulation of the metaphor, unfortunately many of them give short shrift or completely ignore medieval studies of cognition and human psychology. See, for example, Taverniers, Metaphor and metaphorology (Gent: Academia Press, 2002). 11  See, for example, BT Avodah Zarah 27a re: Gen. 16:13; Sanhedrin 85b re: Lev. 20:9. I am indebted to David Novak for explaining this distinction. See Novak, “The Talmud as a Source for Philosophical Reflection,” in History of Jewish Philosophy, eds. Daniel H. Frank and Oliver Leaman (London and New York: Routledge, 1997), 71–72. Amos Funkenstein discusses the pre-Maimonidean and medieval uses of this hermeneutic principle in Perceptions of Jewish History (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1993), 88–90. These terms and others from the Talmud are discussed in Jay M. Harris, How Do We Know This?: Midrash and the Fragmentation of Modern Judaism (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995), 25–50. 8 9

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Maimonides radically reinterprets this rabbinic principle. He uses the idiom “the Torah speaks in human language” in his Guide of the Perplexed to answer the theological question, why does Scripture employ equivocal and parabolic language when speaking of God?12 It seems counterintuitive that Scripture uses language that is difficult to decipher and thus open to misinterpretation when it ought to use clear and unequivocal language to convey its important message. Maimonides explains that for the multitudes  – by which he means most of the population who cannot “hear” unmediated “God-talk” because they are not philosophically inclined – to receive the message of revelation, scripture has to condescend to the level of human beings. Scripture does this by transforming its God-talk into human language, employing figurative language that is more easily comprehended, on an emotional and imaginative level, by the average person.13 “Human language” is thus a fitting title for a chapter on metaphor and figurative language.

Things Known and Unknown: Moses ibn Ezra on Metaphor Born in Granada, Moses Ibn Ezra (c. 1055–c. 1135) was a prolific Andalusı̄ Hebrew poet, scholar,14 poetic theorist and philosopher, who boasted of having written over six thousand poems.15 He was a leader within the Jewish literary circle of Granada, the elite group of poets he called kvutzah nehederet ve-ḥavurah mefo-eret (“a wonderful group and a splendid circle”)16 and a mentor to Judah Halevi.17 As a poet, his ­individual poems 12  Abraham Nuriel, “‘Dibra Torah kilshon bnei adam’ be-Moreh Nevukhim,” in Religion and Language: Philosophical Essays (Hebrew), edited by Moshe Hallamish and Asa Kasher (Tel Aviv: University Publishing Projects, 1981), 97. 13  Maimonides, Guide, I:26. 14  Student of Joseph b. Jacob Ibn Sahal (d. 1124), dayyan of Cordoba. C. De Valle and G. Stemberger, Saadia Ibn Danān El Orden de las Generaciones “Seder ha-Dorot” (Alcobendas, Madrid: Aben Ezra Ediciones, 1997), 67. 15  Ibn Ezra, Muḥāḍara, 103. 16  Ibn Ezra, Muḥāḍara, 79. 17  Brener, Judah Halevi, 28. Brener’s book brings to life the Andalusı̄ Hebrew practice of poetic imitation, or mu’arada, whereby one poet composed in a given rhyme and meter, and another poet “responded” with a new poem that used the same rhyme and meter and similar language. Rather than being viewed as plagiarism, poetic imitation paid homage to the original poem while demonstrating the improvising poet’s mastery over language, imagery and rhyme. Citing extensively from Andalusı̄ Hebrew poetry, Brener demonstrates that Halevi

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and diwan are anthologized together with those of Samuel Ibn Naghrella, Solomon Ibn Gabirol and Judah ha-Levi,18 Hebrew poets of the Golden Age of Spain. And yet, with the exception of Hebrew scholarship,19 and most recently Paul Fenton’s monograph,20 little attention has been paid to Ibn Ezra’s poetics. However, his literary treatises (Muḥāḍara, Arugat haBosem) cannot be ignored if one wishes to know how Andalusı̄ Jewish thinkers understood the role of metaphor in Scripture and Hebrew poetry. Moses Ibn Ezra’s Kitāb al-muḥāḍara wal-mudhākara/Sefer ha-‘iyunim ve-ha-diyunim/Book of Conversation and Deliberation,21 resists genre classification. Part poetics, part polemical discourse, part theological treatise, with a historiography of Andalusı ̄ Jewish high culture thrown into the mix, it has been characterized as a work of adab. It follows in the footsteps of Saadia Gaon’s poetical treatise, Sefer ha-egron, in which the Babylonian sage promotes the uniqueness of biblical language and provides ­morphological tools and a lexicon to help the aspiring poet compose in

“introduced” himself and later became a member of the Granadan circle of poets by creating excellent and delightful imitations of poems by Ibn Ezra. The high regard seems to have been mutual, as Ibn Ezra singles out: Abu al-Hasan ben ha-Levi, ha-tzollel le-dalut peninim, ba’al ha-ḥidudim ha-shanunim (“Judah Halevi, diver into the scarcity of pearls, master of sharp [or memorized] witticisms”). Ibn Ezra, Muḥāḍara, 79. 18  See Haim Brody, “Moses ibn Ezra: Incidents in His Life,” Jewish Quarterly Review, n.s., 24 (1933): 309–330; Haim Schirmann, ed. Ha-shira ha-‘ivrit be-sefarad uve-provence. Book 1, Part 2 (Jerusalem, Bialik Institute; Tel Aviv: Dvir Company, 1959); Raymond P. Scheindlin, Wine, Women and Death: Medieval Hebrew Poems on the Good Life (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986); and Raymond P. Scheindlin, The Gazelle: Medieval Hebrew Poems on God, Israel, and the Soul (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991). 19  Nehemiah Allony, “A Study of Kitāb al-muḥāḍara wal-mudhākara by Moses ibn Ezra,” in Studia Orientalia: Memoriae D.H. Baneth Dedicata [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: The Magnes Press, The Hebrew University, 1979); Joseph Dana, Poetics of Medieval Hebrew Literature (According to Moshe ibn Ezra) [Hebrew] (Tel Aviv: Dvir Company Limited, 1992); Dan Pagis, Secular Poetry and Poetic Theory: Moses ibn Ezra and his Contemporaries [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1970). 20  Paul B. Fenton, Philosophie et exégèse dans Le Jardin de la métaphore de Moïse Ibn ‘Ezra, philosophe et poète andalou du XIIe siècle (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1997). 21  Rina Drory speculates that Ibn Ezra wrote this treatise for a Jewish audience in Christian Spain, where Arabic-style poetry was not revered as it was in al-Andalus, to convince them of the supremacy of Hebrew poetry. However, Ibn Ezra’s treatise was not amongst the JudeoArabic books translated into Hebrew in Christian Spain or Provence. In fact, no complete Hebrew translation of Muḥāḍara was published until Halkin’s Sefer ha-iyunim ve-ha-diyunim in 1975. Drory, Models and Contacts: Arabic Literature and Its Impact on Medieval Jewish Culture (Leiden: Brill, 2000), 213.

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Hebrew.22 Like Sefer ha-egron, Ibn Ezra’s treatise serves as a counterpoint to Muslim claims of the inimitability of the Qur’ān. He acknowledges the superiority of Arabic poetry,23 and employs numerous citations from Arabic poetry to demonstrate his lessons on poetics. He admits that “poetry is the science of the Arabs and Jews follow them in this art,”24 and cautions that it is wise to learn from Arabic rhetoric.25 Nevertheless, he bestows pre-eminence on Hebrew ornamentation, citing passages from the bible in order to demonstrate the beauty and perfection of the Hebrew language, and declaring that Arabic poets copied biblical metaphors after they read them in the books of the Prophets.26 Muḥāḍara is divided into eight sections, plus an introduction and conclusion. In each section, Ibn Ezra addresses a question asked by a prospective student of poetry. Part One deals with rhetoric and rhetoricians. Part Two looks at poetry and poets. Part Three explains how poetry reached its highest natural expression amongst the Arabs. Ibn Ezra examines the influence of scriptural prose poetry in Part Four. He describes the contribution of Spanish Hebrew poets to the craft of poetry and rhetoric in Part Five. In Part Six, Ibn Ezra conveys his thoughts about the moral and social life of the poet. Part Seven asks whether poetry can be composed in a dream. Finally, Ibn Ezra advises the aspiring Hebrew poet on the craft of ornament in Part Eight, the longest section of the book.27 I turn now to the examination of this last section. Part Eight of Muḥāḍara is a comprehensive guide for the aspiring poet, “to instruct you in the most proper way of the craft of Hebrew poetry according to Arabic poetics.”28 The art of poetry, writes Ibn Ezra, lies in 22  See Yosef Tobi, Proximity and Distance: Medieval Hebrew and Arabic Poetry, trans. Murray Rosovsky (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 134; Rina Drory, “The Hebrew and the Arabic Introductions of Saadia Gaon’s Sefer ha-Egron,” in Israel Oriental Studies XV: Language and Culture in the Near East, eds. Shlomo Izre’el and Rina Drory (Leiden: Brill, 1995), 11–23. 23  Ibn Ezra, Muḥāḍara, 223. 24  Ibn Ezra, Muḥāḍara, 223. 25  Ibn Ezra here uses the Arabic word “badı̄‘” (tropes). Joseph Dana points out that Muḥāḍara borrows heavily from Greek rhetoric by way of Arabic poetics. It cites Qur’ānic and Arabic poetry alongside biblical and Hebrew poetic examples to illustrate its rhetorical lessons. Dana, Poetics of Medieval Hebrew Literature, 45. 26  Ibn Ezra, Muḥāḍara, 225. 27  For two wide-ranging examinations of Ibn Ezra’s treatise, see Pagis, Secular Poetry and Poetic Theory, and Dana, Poetics. 28  Ibn Ezra, Muḥāḍara, 135.

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its clarity, brevity, truth and getting to the point quickly.29 The poet can improve his craft by choosing words that are precise and pleasing. He should practice economy of verbiage, insert lovely imagery, apt metaphors and strong parallels, use repetition within the openings and endings of the poems, and close with an examination of the subject matter.30 This advice is attributed to “the philosopher” and corresponds with Aristotle’s discussion of lexis or style in Poetics and Rhetoric III.31 Poetry is the wisdom of the Arabs, Ibn Ezra acknowledges, and Jews follow them in this art. He tells his reader, the prospective student of poetry, that it is unwise to listen to those who deny this link and subsequently forbid Jews to imitate Arabic poetry. Rather, when it comes to rhetoric, Jews must learn from the Arabs, even though it might not seem proper to follow them in this art alone and reject the rest of their learning.32 Ibn Ezra acknowledges that there are Jewish legal theorists and others of like mind who criticize adopting any wisdom from the gentiles. To them he quotes the Babylonian Talmud, “‘Remove the beam from between your eyes’”33 (in other words, do not be so wilfully ignorant), and Babylonian Talmud Megillah 16a, “‘Whoever speaks wisdom  – even when it comes from the gentiles – is called wise.’”34 He instructs the prospective poet to collect from Scripture what he pleases and to take careful deliberation of the poetry of both the Jewish and Arab people. A poet can gain much from this: “For every speech I organized, every letter I wrote, and every poem I composed, I used this technique after studying the holy writings.”35 As for ornamentation, Ibn Ezra insists there is no harm in metaphoric language; indeed, one cannot write without it.36 Many figures of speech,  Ibn Ezra, Muḥāḍara, 149.  Ibn Ezra, Muḥāḍara, 143. Ibn Ezra attributes these instructions to Aristotle. 31  Aristotle, Poetics, 22, 1458a, 18–1458b, 5; and Rhetoric iii. 2,1404b—iii.5,1407b, 25. The Complete Works of Aristotle, vol. 2, ed. J. Barnes (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), 2333–2335 and 2239–2245. 32  Ibn Ezra, Muḥāḍara, 223. 33  This is a reference to the passage in Bava Batra 15b that discusses the impiety and hypocrisy of the leaders during the era of Judges. “R.  Johanan further said: What is the import of the words, ‘And it came to pass in the days of the judging of the judges?’ It was a generation that judged its judges. If the judge said to a man, ‘Take the splinter from between your teeth,’ he would retort, ‘Take the beam from between your eyes.’ If the judge said, ‘Your silver is dross,’ he would retort, ‘Your liquor is mixed with water.’” 34  Ibn Ezra, Muḥāḍara, 227. 35  Ibn Ezra, Muḥāḍara, 229. 36  Ibn Ezra, Muḥāḍara, 225. 29 30

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such as metaphor and hyperbole, are already found in the books of ­prophecy.37 Take, for example, the metaphors “wings of the dawn” in Psalms 139:9, or “the bread of sloth” in Ecclesiastes 31:27, or “the iron sinews of your neck” in Isaiah 48:4. Arabic poets praised and then copied these metaphors after finding them in our books of prophecy, writes Ibn Ezra. “Mother of the road/Eim ha-derekh” in Ezekiel 21:26 became “mother of the book/eim ha-sefer” in Qur’ān 3:7, 13:39, 43:3; the “wings of dawn” became the “wings of humility” in Qur’ān 17:25. There are so many imitations of biblical language in the Qur’ān that if Ibn Ezra were to enumerate them all there would be no end to the list.38 The most important rhetorical ornament is metaphor. Metaphor, or hash-alah/isti‘āra, is “a word for something unknown taken from something known.39 This is all; if you examine it [the metaphor] deeply and logically and weigh it on the scales of investigation, it will reveal to you its praiseworthiness.”40 Ibn Ezra’s classification of metaphor builds on Aristotle, who wrote in his Poetics, “Metaphor consists in giving the thing a name that belongs to something else; the transference being either from genus to species, or from species to genus, or from species to species, or on grounds of analogy.”41 Using the idea of transference taken from Aristotle, Paul Ricoeur formulates metaphor as “a transference that affects the possession of predicates [inherent characteristics that describe or represent the thing or idea] by some specific thing, rather than the application of these predicates to something.”42 George Lakoff characterizes metaphor as a phenomenon in which we understand “one kind of thing in terms of another.”43 Aristotle’s formulation of metaphor as transference has influenced all subsequent attempts to define what a metaphor does. 37  Ibn Ezra, Muḥāḍara, 225. By “books of prophecy” he means the totality of Hebrew Scripture, the Tanakh. 38  Ibn Ezra, Muḥāḍara, 227. 39  “Wa-ma’ani al-isti‘āra al-khalima bi-shay lam yu‘araf bi-shay qad yu‘araf” / “Ve-‘inyan ha-hash-alah milah le-davar lo yadu‘ah mi-davar yadu‘ah.” Ibn Ezra, Muḥāḍara, 229. 40  Ibn Ezra, Muḥāḍara, 229. 41  Aristotle, Poetics, 1457b 7–9, in Complete Works, 2332. See also Poetics, 1459a 5–8 and Rhetoric iii 21405a 8–11, 35–37. 42  Ricoeur quoted in Taverniers, Metaphor, 98. Taverniers’ otherwise comprehensive genealogy of metaphor studies jumps from Aristotle to the twentieth century, calling the centuries in between “a relatively barren period in the history of metaphorology.” Taverniers, Metaphor, 169. 43  George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Live By (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), 5.

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When modern scholars speak of metaphors as, for instance, “projections” or “conduits” towards “targets,” they are concretizing Aristotle’s idea of transference. For both Ibn Ezra and Aristotle, metaphor involves borrowing (the literal meaning of hash-alah) one term to render another, and implies a comparison or analogy between the thing and its linguistic representation. Yet Ibn Ezra takes Aristotle’s definition one step further by elaborating on the need to mentally scrutinize the metaphor. He suggests that readers, as they contemplate the metaphor, “examine it deeply and logically” and “weigh it on the scales of investigation.”44 This introduces a rational aspect to the unpacking of metaphor. It is an act of cognition. In Aristotle this cognitive element is implied; in Ibn Ezra it is specified. Both Aristotle and Ibn Ezra speak of the movement involved in conveying or transferring one idea or thing to describe another idea or thing, a move that invokes comparisons between them. Rather than cataloguing the transference as from one identifiable genus or species to another, as Aristotle does, Ibn Ezra identifies the movement of the image from the cognizable “known” to the imaginatively impossible “unknown.” The poet’s creation of a linguistic association engages the reader in such a way that he or she draws a figurative representation that turns the unknowable into something imaginable. The reader must engage with and enquire deeply into a metaphor so that it will yield its meaning. It will then offer up its “praiseworthiness,” a value that implicitly reflects the merit of its creator. There are two types of metaphor: haqı̄qa, a description of something truthful according to its discernable reality45; and majāz, a figurative depiction that does not correspond to the obvious reality of the thing.46 In each of their manifestations  – haqı̄qa and majāz  – metaphors ask to be unravelled. The latter hermeneutic is more desired by poets because it is like a riddle and requires unpacking.47 This can be done in two ways: by  Ibn Ezra, Muḥāḍara, 229.  Also called ta’wı̄l. Tobi, Proximity and Distance, 269. For a discussion of exegetical ta’wı̄l, see Mordechai Z. Cohen, Opening the Gates of Interpretation: Maimonides’ Biblical Hermeneutics in Light of his Geonic-Andalusı̄ Heritage and Muslim Milieu (Leiden: Brill, 2011). 46  Ibn Ezra, Muḥāḍara, 229. Halkin translates these Arabic terms as pshat and ha’avara. 47  In the language of modern metaphorology, Max Black calls these “resonant metaphors [that] support a high degree of implicative elaboration.” “More about Metaphor” in Metaphor and Thought, ed. Andrew Ortony (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 26. 44 45

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jalı̄, interpreting them according to their literal meaning; and by khafı̄, working to uncover their hidden meaning.48 For example, a haqı̄qa or obvious metaphor, is found in the scriptural idioms “the fat of the earth” (Gen. 45:18) or “cords of love” (Hosea 11:4).49 Joseph Dana explains that this type of metaphor is easily decipherable at first glance. Everything that is required to solve this type of metaphor is included in the figure of speech itself. The “fat” of the earth is its bounty; the “cords” of love are the strong feelings that bind lovers to one another. Contrast this, writes Dana, to the phrase “the heavens speak praises of the Lord” in which the metaphor is hidden and one must either continue reading or draw from another source in order to comprehend it. Since the heavens are silent and, unlike human beings, are incapable of speech, we need to be told what the heavens will “say.” The continuation of the verse tells us that the heavens will “speak the praises of the Lord.” Dana claims that the continuation of the verse clarifies this hidden metaphor.50 While it is true that in the latter case the entirety of the metaphor is not contained in the phrase “the heavens speak,” it is difficult to comprehend Dana’s distinction between the two examples since some of the forty scriptural metaphors that Ibn Ezra cites as “obvious” also require unravelling. When Isaiah says “your neck is a sinew of iron” (48:24), or “the wings of dawn” (Ps. 139:9), are these metaphors any less inscrutable than “the heavens speak praises of the Lord”? The only difference between the former “obvious” metaphors and the latter “hidden” metaphors is that the haqı̄qa metaphors are elegantly brief while the majāz metaphors are lengthier. A clearer example of the distinction between haqı̄qa and majāz metaphors can be understood from a later chapter of Ibn Ezra’s treatise, where he explains the simile.51 A simile can exist with or without the linking Hebrew kaf.52 “Like the coolness of snow at harvest time is a trustworthy messenger to those who send him; he refreshes the spirit of his masters.” (Prov. 25:13). King David’s enemies are “like a lion hungry for prey” (Ps. 48  Black, “More about Metaphor,” 26. In Hebrew these terms are geluyah and temirah. Dana, Poetics, 115. 49  It is interesting to note that Ibn Ezra does not problematize metaphors that anthropomorphize divine attributes in the way that Maimonides does. 50  Dana, Poetics, 115. 51  In Arabic tashbı̄h; in Hebrew dimui. Ibn Ezra, Muḥāḍara, 259. 52  Equivalent to “like” or “as” in a simile. Aristotle writes, “The simile is also a metaphor; the difference is but slight.” Rhetoric iii 4, 1406b20.

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17:12). Other comparisons do not employ the kaf, but still describe analogies: “Judah is a lion’s cub” (Gen. 49:9). “Issakhar is a large-boned ass” (Gen. 49:14). “A gold ring in a pig’s snout” (Prov. 11:22). If we employ Dana’s methodology, the first simile cited from Proverbs is a hidden metaphor. We can only understand the analogy between a “trustworthy messenger” and “the coolness of snow at harvest time” by the continuation of the verse: we are told that both are refreshing phenomena. The equation of Judah to a lion’s cub is obvious because we do not need any new information to understand the comparison. But Dana’s methodology does not take into account that both similes require unpacking. How is Judah like a lion’s cub? Is he brave? Fearless? Lighthaired? Learning how to become a beast of prey? Surely not all the properties of this analogy are obvious, and contextualization of the simile will help us decipher it. Why does the author of Proverbs link the first snow with a trustworthy messenger? Perhaps they both arrive early? Even with the elaboration provided by the continuation of the verse, the association of these two disparate elements necessitates rumination. Dana’s methodology is too simplistic to distinguish between hidden and obvious metaphors. Wolfhart Heinrichs, on the other hand, presents a convincing taxonomy of metaphor. Heinrichs looks at the meaning of metaphor, or isti‘āra, as presented in the handbooks of rhetoric and books on poetics of medieval Muslim theorists. He proposes classifying Arabic poetic metaphors into “old” and “new.” An old metaphor is presented in early texts as ja‘l al-shay’ lil-shay’, “making something belong to something else,” while a new metaphor is ja‘l al-shay’ al-shay’, “making something become something else.”53 Although we can recognize Aristotle’s definition of metaphor as transference within these formulations, Heinrichs’ classification uncovers an even more subtle way to distinguish between types of metaphors. An example of an old metaphor is “the claws of Death,” which expresses a comparison in the form of a genitive construction (the A of B), or a verbal predicate (i.e., “Death looks on”).54 The former metaphor employs an  Wolfhart Heinrichs, The Hand of the Northwind: Opinions on Metaphor and the Early Meaning of Isti‘āra in Arabic Poetics (Wiesbaden: Deutsche Morgenlandische Gesellschaft, 1977), 2, emphasis mine. 54  Heinrichs, Northwind, 8. 53

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analogy, or tamthı̄l (likeness), whereby the analogue – “claws” – is mapped or projected onto the topic – “Death.” Death does not have claws, but in this metaphor, the poet, Abū Dhu’ayb, takes an image from the real world and imaginatively projects it onto something that does not possess the associated trait. Heinrichs explains, “This brings us down to the original meaning of isti‘āra: It does not consist in ‘borrowing’ a name from its original ‘owner’ and transferring it to a new one, as later interpretations, based on the ‘new’ metaphor, have it; on the contrary, it means ‘borrowing’ an object from an owner who possesses it in our real world and giving it on loan to one who does not.”55 In our example, the poet figuratively makes claws belong to Death for the purpose of the metaphor. He does it by permitting the animal kingdom to loan claws to Death, which has no claws. Thus, it is fitting that this process is called isti‘āra, or borrowing.56 Using the same metaphors that Ibn Ezra quotes above as having been “imitated” by the Qur’ān from Scripture, Heinrichs illustrates the process of metaphoric borrowing with this chart: Borrowed word

Known in connection with

Not known in connection with

Mother Wing

Child Bird

Book Humilitya

a William Heinrichs, “Isti‘āra and Badı̄‘ and Their Terminological Relationship in Early Arabic Literary Criticism,” in Zeitschrift für Geschichte der Arabisch-Islamischen Wissenschafen 1, Ed. Fuat Sezgin (Frankfurt am Main: Institut für Geschichte der Arabisch-Islamischen Wissenschaften an der Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität, 1984), 190

The concept of mother is generally associated with child, not with book. Likewise, in the metaphor “wing of humility,” wing is known in connection with bird, not with the quality of humility. However, using metaphoric license, the Qur’ān has borrowed the word mother and juxtaposed it with book to create a new association: the mother, which was formally “of the child” has become “mother of the book.” Similarly, wing has been taken from its association with bird and dropped into the metaphor “wing of humility” where wing is now associated with humility. Each of these figures of speech, or badı̄ ‘, creates an entirely new mental image that needs to be deciphered. The term badı̄‘, used in Arabic poetics to denote figurative  Heinrichs, Northwind, 9.  Heinrichs, Northwind, 9. In Hebrew, hash-alah has a similar meaning.

55 56

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speech, literally denotes originality. When a metaphor is created by lending an element of a thing to something that does not possess it, like wings to humility, an original comparison is made. Badı̄‘ is etymologically related to the theological concept of bid‘a, innovation.57 Like bid‘a, badı̄‘ can be praiseworthy and good, as when a metaphor is fitting, or blameworthy and bad, as when a metaphor is exaggerated and far-fetched. The distinction between old and new metaphors emerges in the literary theory of the medieval Persian scholar of rhetoric and Arabic language, ‘Abdalq’āhir al-Jurjānı̄ (d. 1078 or 1081).58 A new metaphor collapses the analogue and the topic into one imaginative figuration. Heinrichs calls this a “double-faced” or “dual” metaphor because it contains both tamthı̄l (likeness) and tashbı̄h (simile).59 Heinrichs presents the following line from the poet Imra’alqays as an example of a double-faced metaphor: “And I said to it (i.e., the night) when it stretched out its back and followed up with (its) hindquarters and struggled to get up with (its) breast.”60 In this example of new metaphor, the poet compares the slow-­departing night to a camel reluctantly stretching out its back and unwillingly getting up. He uses the rules of old metaphor by making a camel’s back and hindquarters belong to the night. He does it not by employing an Aristotelian model (i.e., the hindquarters of the night where night has no hindquarters) in a genitive construction (i.e., the hindquarters of the night) or a verbal predicate (i.e., night gets up), but through his use of a sustained metaphor in which the night becomes a slow-moving camel. Writes al-Jurjānı̄: “One of the basic types that produce excellence of the ‘borrowing’ is when the poet has evidently brought together several ‘borrowings’ with the intention of joining element to element (shakl) and completing (both) the topic (ma‘nā) and the analogue (shabah) in what he wants to say.”61 In a “double-faced” metaphor “the imaginary elements resulting from the underlying tamthı̄l are tied up with the topic by an additional tashbı̄h.”62 Heinrichs calls this type of metaphor “imaginary ascription,” which Arab literary critics classify as isti‘āra.63 This is an example of new metaphor according to Heinrichs.  Encyclopedia of Islam, s.v. “badı̄‘”; and s.v. “bid‘a.”  Heinrichs, Northwind, 12. 59  Heinrichs, Northwind, 13. 60  Heinrichs, Northwind, 16. 61  Cited in Heinrichs, Northwind, 23. 62  Cited in Heinrichs, Northwind, 22. 63  Heinrichs, “Isti‘āra and Badı̄‘,” 181. 57 58

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Heinrichs’ classification of old and new metaphor has compelling ramifications for medieval Hebrew poetry. Using Heinrichs’ taxonomy, Mordechai Z. Cohen examines both Ibn Ezra’s and Maimonides’ designations of metaphor in light of Arabic poetics and finds each writer supporting opposing definitions. Ibn Ezra and Maimonides are “the only two medieval Jewish authors who saw fit to define metaphor and to describe its function, [with regards to] language in general and specifically [with regards to] Scripture.”64 Maimonides’ definition of metaphor will be analysed below, but this section presents Cohen’s breakdown of Ibn Ezra’s classification of metaphor. When Ibn Ezra lists forty examples to illustrate scriptural metaphors/isti‘ārāt,65 to what category of isti‘āra do they belong? Ostensibly, these metaphors, which employ the genitive construction (“mother of the road” “bread of sloth” “iron sinews of your neck,” etc.), belong to the old metaphor category, in which a topic borrows an analogue to allow it to belong to something else. Some of these metaphors have become so common that they are now dead metaphors – idioms that have entered everyday parlance and do not need any explanation, such as “cords of love” (Hos. 11:4), “fat of the land” (Gen. 45:18), “horn of his anointed one” (I Sam. 2:10), and “pillars of smoke” (Joel 3:3).66 But what is the meaning of “mother of the road”? “Wine of violence”? “Sun of righteousness”? How do we make sense of the juxtaposition of these concepts?67 Some of these biblical metaphors have been untangled by ­biblical exegesis,68 but many of them, as well as some Qur’ānic metaphors that Ibn Ezra claims are based on these paradigms, remain inscrutable.

64  Mordechai Z.  Cohen, “Dimyon ve-higayon, emet ve-sheker: gishotehem shel Ramba veRambam le-metaphora ha-miqra-it le-or ha-poetica ve-ha-philosophia ha-‘aravit,” Tarbiz 73 (2004), 422. Translation from Hebrew mine. See also his “Moses Ibn Ezra vs. Maimonides: Argument for a Poetic Definition of Metaphor (Isti‘āra),” Edebiyat 11 (2000): 1–28. 65  Ibn Ezra, Muḥāḍara, 223–225. 66  Cohen, “Dimyon ve-higayon,” 431; “Moses Ibn Ezra vs. Maimonides,” 20 n. 22. 67  The difficulty of deciphering this type of metaphor is also expressed in Arabic rhetoric. An anecdote is told about the poet Abu Tammam, who was known and also derided for his far-fetched metaphors, such as “water of reproach”: “One of his mockers sent to him a bottle and said: ‘Put herein some water of reproach.’ Abu Tammam answered him: ‘If you send me a feather of the ‘wing of humility,’ then I will send you some water of reproach.’” Cohen, “Moses Ibn Ezra vs. Maimonides,” 15. 68  In his commentary on Proverbs 4:17, R. David Kimchi (1160–1235) explains that the phrase “wine of violence” demonstrates that the wicked are as accustomed to violence as to drink. Cohen, “Moses Ibn Ezra vs. Maimonides,” 20 n. 23.

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Perhaps sensing the difficulty of developing a theory around these examples, and recognizing that the inviolate nature of Scripture (both Jewish and Muslim) does not permit him to critique some expressions as copious, Ibn Ezra lists his forty biblical examples of metaphors and leaves them unanalyzed. Soon enough, Ibn Ezra offers his own definition of metaphor as “a word for something unknown from something known.”69 Ibn Ezra’s formulation builds upon the Aristotelian tradition as filtered through Arabic poetics, which by the eleventh century was a combination of classical Arabic rhetoric and Arabic translations of Aristotle’s Rhetoric and Poetics.70 As a member of Granada’s inner circle of Hebrew poets, Ibn Ezra would have studied rhetorical literature as a student and practitioner of adab, and he would have been adept at employing figurative language (badı̄‘) necessary for composing lively and beautiful verse. In Ibn al-­ Mu‘tazz’s (d. 908) Badı̄‘, written in 887 CE, the poet gives the following definition of metaphor, as translated by Heinrichs: “the borrowing of a concept for something in connection with which it has not been known from something in connection with which it has been known.”71 His contemporary Tha’lab (d. 904) defines isti‘āra as “to borrow for something… the mental representation of something else or (to attribute to it) a characteristic that is not its own,” and illustrates his definition with the example of the poet Imru’ al-Qays’ description of the night as a slow-moving camel, which we saw above.72 Heinrichs explains: “It is not the name ‘camel’ that Imru’ al-Qays has borrowed for the night, it is rather the mental image of the camel, and this contains all the properties of the camel from which the appropriate ones can be selected to establish the analogy between camel and night.”73 The old metaphor is the result of a process that Heinrichs calls “name transfer,” in which the topic borrows the name  Ibn Ezra, Muḥāḍara, 229.  Although Aristotle’s Organon, the corpus of his logical writings, was translated from Syriac into Arabic in the ninth and early tenth centuries, Rhetoric and Poetics were initially ignored by Muslim theorists because these rhetorical treatises were seen to offer little instruction to those interested in Greek logic and rational argumentation. In addition, because Muslims had their own corpus of rhetorical treatises, they considered Hellenistic ideas to be alien. It was not until Muslim philosophers such as Alfārābı̄ and Avicenna wrote commentaries on Aristotle’s rhetorical treatises that these works became accessible and widely-studied not only by philosophers but by students of adab. Uwe Vagelpohl, Aristotle’s Rhetoric in the East: The Syriac and Arabic Translation and Commentary Tradition (Leiden: 2008). 71  Heinrichs, Northwind, 34. 72  Heinrichs, Northwind, 32. 73  Heinrichs, Northwind, 33. 69 70

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(ism) of an analogue, or a concept (ma‘nā) belonging to an analogue. In the new metaphor model, the “mental image” or “mental representation” is the “known” aspect of the analogue that is borrowed to describe the “unknown” topic. The mental representation of a lazy camel, which can easily be imagined because it is a common occurrence to see camels in the Arabian desert, is loaned to describe the actions of the slow-departing dawn, which is “unknown” because it belongs to the realm of the spheres, or astronomy, whose attributes cannot be easily described even though it occurs every morning. Ibn Ezra’s exploration of the properties of similes is more helpful in making this distinction. Similes are unlike metaphors because they do not borrow from the known to the unknown, as metaphors do.74 When the author of Song of Songs writes, “your lips are like a scarlet thread,” [4:3] this is an obvious comparison. Even though lips and thread are not the same, they have three similarities: softness, colour and thinness. This is an example of a haqı̄qa that is jalı̄, or obvious. There is no borrowing from known to unknown. When something can be compared in colour, quantity, shape, size, or other physical characteristics, then it is a haqı̄qa, a comparison of the likeness of two things according to their discernable reality. Sara Newman, in her analysis of Aristotle’s theory of metaphor, points to the difference between sense perception and cognition as receptors of metaphor. The notion of “bringing-before-the-eyes” (found in Aristotle’s Rhetoric and Poetics) indicates that metaphor originates in perception and is not – in its initial capacity – a conceptual entity.75 When a poet writes, “the dawn spread her fingers across the sky,”76 he is using an anthropomorphic term – “fingers” – to describe an aspect of nature  – “dawn.” The psalmist’s metaphor “wings of dawn” is similarly anthropomorphic (Ps. 139:9). This is a majāz, a figurative description that is tamir. The analogy is hidden and requires deep scrutiny to decipher it. Fingers do not correspond to the dawn in colour, quantity, shape, or any other obvious characteristic, and one must work at trying to unravel the comparison. In Aristotelian terms, the metaphor employs the transference of one species – fingers and wings – to another – sky and dawn – to create  Ibn Ezra, Muḥāḍara, 229.  Sara Newman, “Aristotle’s Notion of “Bringing-Before-the-Eyes”: Its Contributions to Aristotelian and Contemporary Conceptualizations of Metaphor, Style, and Audience,” Rhetorica 20, no. 1 (2002) 1–23. 76  Aristotle discusses a similar metaphor, “rosy-fingered morn,” in Rhetoric iii 2, 1405b20. 74 75

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an analogy. The writer borrows something known  – fingers, sky, wings, dawn – to describe something unknown or in need of definition – those chiaroscuro moments when night becomes morning. But it is an acceptable comparison, because fingers and dawn can both spread or reach across something, and even though you are borrowing from one species to another, the two things can be compared in aspects of the actions they perform. This simile contains both tamthı̄l and tashbı̄h and conforms to Heinrichs’ definition of “new” metaphor as “imaginary ascription.” Cohen explains: “Whereas Aristotle’s name transfer model reduces metaphor to linguistic ‘borrowing,’ i.e., a novel choice of language to designate an otherwise existing entity, imaginary ascription entails conceptual ‘borrowing,’ crossing boundaries set by empirical reality to create new entities in a ‘virtual reality.’ Name transfer breaks only the rules of language, but not of empiric reality; imaginary ascription goes beyond linguistic creativity and empowers the poet to “create” new entities in his mind.”77 Ibn Ezra’s list of scriptural metaphors, which he claims are copied by Arabic poets,78 are essentially forty genitive constructs that conform to the Aristotelian model (the A of B, where B has no A) of old metaphor, or what Heinrichs calls “name transfer.” When Ibn Ezra expands his definition of metaphor as “a word for something unknown from something known” in a later section of Muḥāḍara, he conflates Ibn al-Mutazz (“borrowing…known…not been known”) with Tha’lab (“mental image”) to give us a cognitive definition of metaphor that conforms to Heinrichs’ definition of “new” metaphor as an “imaginative ascription.” While both Aristotle and Ibn Ezra define metaphor as a borrowing or transference of one idea or thing to describe another idea or thing, Ibn Ezra expands upon the Aristotelian model by introducing a cognitive element to this linguistic association. He intimates that a metaphor needs to be puzzled over and contemplated in order to unpack its meaning, to move it from a linguistic unknown to a figurative known.

Judah Halevi: The Problem with Comparisons Judah Halevi (c. 1075–1141) was a poet and doctor born in Christian Spain who moved to al-Andalus to join the elite group of Hebrew poets led by Moses Ibn Ezra and others. After an illustrious career in al-Andalus,  Cohen, “Moses Ibn Ezra vs. Maimonides,” 15.  Ibn Ezra, Muḥāḍara 227.

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Halevi set out to fulfil a dream of living in the land of Israel and travelled to Egypt in 1140, a year before he died. What was supposed to be a brief stopover became an extended stay because his sponsors and hosts kept their celebrated guest busy writing and performing muwashshat for their amusement. Halevi finally left Egypt in 1141 and died a few months later. Kitāb al-radd wa al-dalı̄l fı̄ al-dı̄n al-dhalı̄l/Sefer ha-Kuzari/The Book of Refutation and Proof in Support of the Despised Religion is commonly referred to as Kuzari, the title by which Halevi referred to this work.79 Written during the 1130s80 and completed by the time he left al-­Andalus for Egypt, Halevi’s treatise was translated into Hebrew for a non-­Arabic-­ speaking Jewish population by Judah Ibn Tibbon in Lunel, France, in the late 1160s.81 It is a polemical work that argues for the chosenness of the Jewish people and their prophetic revelation as well as the superiority of the Hebrew language and land of Israel above all other revelations, languages and places. It is structured as a predominantly one-sided dialogue between the king of the Khazars and a learned Jewish sage, the Ḥ aver. In response to the king’s terse comments and queries about Judaism, the Ḥ aver’s lengthy discourse resembles freestyle associative thinking. The main purpose of the Kuzari is to discuss the superiority of the Jewish religion and its tenets over what the Ḥ aver views as the leading belief systems of present-day al-Andalus: philosophical rationalism, Christianity and Islam.82 79  See Yehuda Even Shmuel’s introduction to his Hebrew translation Sefer ha-kuzari lerabbi yehuda halevi, (Tel Aviv: Dvir Publishing Co. Ltd., 1994), 48. All references to Judah Halevi’s Kuzari will be to this edition, unless otherwise specified. Translations are my own. 80  In al-Andalus, Jewish works of philosophy and polemic – as opposed to poetry, which was written in Hebrew – were generally written in Judeo-Arabic. 81  Adam Shear, The Kuzari and the Shaping of Jewish Identity, 1167–1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 21. 82  For further reading on Judah Halevi’s Kuzari, see this partial list: Yochanan Silman, Philosopher and Poet: Judah Halevi, the Kuzari, and the Evolution of his Thought, trans. Lenn J. Schramm (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995); Raymond Scheindlin, The Song of the Distant Dove: Judah Halevi’s Pilgrimmage (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008); Ross Brann, The Compunctious Poet: Cultural Ambiguity and Hebrew Poetry in Muslim Spain (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991); Barry Kogan, “Judah Halevi and His Use of Philosophy in The Kuzari” in The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Jewish Philosophy, eds. Daniel H.  Frank and Oliver Leaman, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 111–135; Warren Zev Harvey, “Halevi’s Synthetic Theory of Prophecy,” in Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Thought 13 (1996): 141–156; Adena Tanenbaum, The Contemplative Soul: Hebrew Poetry and Philosophical Theory in Medieval Spain (Leiden: Brill, 2002); Joseph Yahalom, Yehudah Halevi: Poetry and Pilgrimmage (Jerusalem: Hebrew

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Kuzari is divided into five sections. Ostensibly an argument against Greek philosophy, it uses philosophical methodology to synthesize Jewish beliefs with rationalism.83 Given that the work strives to illuminate Jewish religious thought for those who attack Judaism as a despised and rejected religion, Kuzari does not deal explicitly with poetics. However, careful reading of Halevi’s work uncovers some discussion of issues related to poetics – namely, the metaphorical use of divine terms,84 a compunctious attitude towards the writing of poetry,85 and a detailed excursus on medieval cognitive psychology, which will be examined in Chap. 3. Halevi does not provide either a definition of metaphor, in the manner of Ibn Ezra, or a problematization of metaphor, as does Maimonides. In Book One, however, he uses a parable to demonstrate the dangers of both talismans  – which promote superstitious belief, and logical analogies  – philosophical rationalizations. These modes of belief are opposed to pure intuitive belief in God, and can promote fallacies that may lead to a denial of the one God. What is this [the use of talismans and logical analogies] like? The idiot who went into the doctor’s apothecary, in which there were good and useful medicines that patients wanted and needed, when the doctor wasn’t there. The idiot began to take medications for them, without knowing which medicine and what quantity must be given to each individual. These medications, which could have saved lives, ended up killing the very people they could have saved … The point is that it is the wisdom of the doctor who prepares the medicine for each patient, according to need, the proper dosage required.86

Like medicine, which only works well when dispensed by a medical practitioner in proper dosages to treat a corresponding illness, talismans University Magnes Press, 2009). For the history of the reception of Halevi’s Kuzari, see: Adam Shear, The Kuzari and the Shaping of Jewish Identity, 1167–1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008). For a critique of Halevi as an anti-rationalist thinker, see: Harry A.  Wolfson, Studies in the History of Philosophy and Religion, vol. 1, eds. Isadore Twersky and George H. Williams (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1973), chapters 1–3; Menachem Kellner, Maimonides’ Confrontation with Mysticism (Oxford: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2006). 83  Silman, Philosopher and Poet, 3. 84  Halevi, Kuzari, 2:4; 4:3. 85  Halevi, Kuzari, 2:54, 60 and 78. 86  Halevi, Kuzari, 1:79.

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and rationalist explanations of God are only effective when handled or taught by the right leaders or prophets and practiced correctly. Just as medicine in the hands of a layman can be harmful, these methods of belief, when used excessively or incorrectly, are dangerous and harmful. Halevi’s medical analogy has precedents in Greek philosophy. In Plato’s Gorgias, Socrates marvels at the persuasive power of rhetoric: “I have often in the past gone with my brother and the other doctors to some sick man refusing to drink a medicine or let the doctor cut or burn him; when the doctor couldn’t persuade him, I persuaded him, by no other craft than rhetoric.”87 An experienced orator with a smooth tongue can convince a sick patient to partake of an unpleasant treatment better than a plain-­ speaking doctor. But this skill can be used unwisely. Further on, Socrates describes two types of oratory: shameful, flattering oratory, in which he includes poetry, and the type of rhetoric that improves the souls of citizens by urging them to be virtuous and do justice. He argues against obsequiousness by using this parallel: “Yes, for what’s the benefit, Callicles, of giving lots of the most unpleasant food or drink or anything else to a sick body in wretched condition, which won’t help it one bit more than the opposite method, on the right account, and will help even less? Is that so?”88 Rhetoric that only tells people what they want to hear is pointless. An orator must craft his or her speeches to instruct the audience in how to live virtuously. If that includes taking the bitter pill of criticism for bad behaviour, then so be it, as long as the end result will bring about a temperate, virtuous soul. Aristotle, in Book 1 of Rhetoric, writes of the persuasive power of words and the harm that comes of using them unjustly. He, too, uses a medical analogy to describe the utility of rhetoric: “That rhetoric, therefore, does not belong to a single defined genus of subject but is like dialectic and that it is useful is clear – and that its function is not to persuade but to see the available means of persuasion in each case, as is true also in all the other arts; for neither is it the function of medicine to create health but to promote this as much as possible; for it is nevertheless possible to treat well 87  Plato, Gorgias 456b, trans. Terence Irwin (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979), 24. Although Halevi would likely not have read Gorgias, he references Plato’s Republic in Kuzari 3:19 and 4:3 and Timaeus in Kuzari 4:25. Hence, there is a parallel analogy in the Republic, where Plato compares judges and physicians, both of whom need experience and a command of rhetoric to render legal or medical opinions. Stephen Pender, “Between Medicine and Rhetoric,” in Early Science and Medicine, Vol. 10, No. 1 (2005): 43. 88  Plato, Gorgias 504e, 82.

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those who cannot recover health.”89 Rhetoric must be used properly, in proper doses. Similar to Plato, Aristotle argues that the end result of rhetoric should be truth and justice. Like medicine, words can be so powerful that using them “justly one would do the greatest good and unjustly, the greatest harm.”90 Although Halevi extends the medical analogy to talismans and rational explanations of the divine, his argument echoes the ones made by Plato and Aristotle against rhetoric. For the Greeks, rhetoric, like medicine, has a prophylactic purpose. When used properly, it can prevent immoral actions and promote justice and virtue. For Halevi, true, unmediated belief in the divine also has a prophylactic purpose: it can prevent superstitious behaviour and wrong ways of thinking about God. Teaching erroneous beliefs, such as the use of talismans or engaging in rationalizations about God, is like dispensing bad medicine. This analogy can be extended to the metaphoric use of anthropomorphic terms to describe God. The sin of the golden calf, writes Halevi, came about because the Israelites relied on the advice of prognosticators and soothsayers who advised them to use figurative analogies to conjure up a likeness of God. The seers mistakenly recommended that fabricating a physical object – the golden calf – that imaginatively represented their idea of the divine was akin to true worship. This was erroneous on two levels. First, the seers who endorsed this plan were not true practitioners of prophetic revelations. Second, the remedy they prescribed was not a divinely sanctioned mode of worship, and so it was idolatrous. It is true, as Halevi later tells us, that human beings need to perceive the divine in sensory and physical images. The Israelites heard God’s revelation at Sinai amidst the sights and sounds of thunder and lightning. But just as medicine is only beneficial in the hands of a trained physician, representations of the divine, be they ritual, verbal or written, are only acceptable in the hands of a prophet who has received divine instruction. “In the worship of God there is no room for hypothesis or syllogism or considerations.”91 Only a true prophet has the capability of using language that accurately and precisely expresses God’s will. For Plato and Aristotle, rhetoric, like medicine, can be used to instruct its audience in how to live a virtuous, hence philosophically healthy, life.  Aristotle, Rhetoric i 1, 1355b9–15.  Aristotle, Rhetoric i 1, 1355b3–7. 91  Halevi, Kuzari, 1:99. 89 90

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Doctors and judges can use their own counsel in trying to persuade their patients and citizens as long as justice and truth guide them. For Halevi, rhetoric and figurative language is only acceptable if it is a true representation of God’s authority. Thus, the Israelites at Sinai were punished for the sin of creating and worshiping a golden calf because they listened to unauthorized soothsayers whose persuasive words did not reflect God’s will. The above examples from Kuzari do not deal directly with metaphor or the use of metaphorical language in the Bible. Instead, they deal with the uses and abuses of rhetorical language in the hands of people who are unqualified and not guided by God’s authority. Halevi raises the concern that figurative language, and independent thinking, is not always a legitimate way of understanding the divine. While Moses ibn Ezra recommends using one’s own reasoning to help unravel puzzling figures of speech such as metaphors that describe the “unknown,” Halevi cautions against using one’s own reason to interpret or convey God’s will in one’s own words. Unless one is experienced and guided by truth, as Plato and Aristotle recommend, or guided by God’s authority, according to Halevi, in other words, unless someone is a true prophet, one ought not practice rhetoric in order to persuade or render judgments or else it will lead to sin. By problematizing independent thinking, which is one of the ways the human mind understands figures of speech according to Moses Ibn Ezra, Halevi raises concerns that move us one step closer towards Maimonides’ attempt at unraveling the problem of scriptural metaphors.

Meaning and Misinterpretation: Maimonides’ Guide on Metaphor Moses Maimonides (c. 1137–1204), was born in Córdoba, al-Andalus, and died in Fez, Egypt. He was a Jewish philosopher, rabbi, physician and prolific writer whose erudition and expertise in Jewish law led him to become recognized as a leader throughout the Jewish world and sought out for his legal opinions. In al-Andalus, where he spent his early years, he was educated in the Arabic Aristotelian tradition. After his family fled to North Africa, and then to Egypt, Maimonides became a physician in the court of the sultan. While working for the sultan and caring for the medical needs of the Jewish community, Maimonides continued to write, producing a commentary on the Mishnah in Judeo-Arabic, a fourteen-volume Mishneh Torah in Hebrew, rabbinic responsa written to Jewish individuals and communities all over the Jewish world, medical treatises and more.

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Towards the end of his life, he wrote his masterwork of philosophy, Dalālat al-ḥaʻ̄ irı̄n/Moreh ha-nevukhim/Guide of the Perplexed. Maimonides, who lived in al-Andalus in the years following Moses ibn Ezra and Halevi’s deaths, was versed in the scholarship of his Jewish ­predecessors as well as the Arabic synthesis of Greek thought. Arabic Aristotelian poetics informs Maimonides’ discussion of biblical metaphors. In Part One of the Guide, Maimonides’ focus on biblical terms can be viewed as a continuation and expansion of his predecessors’ discussion on figurative language, where Maimonides both refines and complicates the matter of biblical metaphors. In the Introduction to the Guide of the Perplexed,92 Maimonides explains that there are two reasons why he wrote the book: first, to explain the meanings of certain terms in Scripture, and, second, to explain obscure parables in Scripture. Maimonides’ precise way of clarifying how to understand metaphorical terms in Part One of the Guide indicate that he is receptive to issues of language, translation and interpretation. Without understanding the meanings of specific terms, he explains, we cannot understand the plain meaning of the text, and without understanding the plain meaning of the text, we cannot hope to understand obscure parables. Both endeavours are within the capacity of human beings, albeit only to those who possess an intellect that searches for meaning and those who can work towards the achievement of clarity – with the help of Maimonides’ guidebook – on these linguistic complexities. Maimonides lists three categories of scriptural terms whose meanings he will explain in the Guide: equivocal (shem meshutaf/mushtarak), derivative (mushaalim/musta‘ar), and amphibolous (mesupaqim/mushakkik or mashkūk).93 These three categories follow Arabic philosophical texts, and build upon Aristotle’s distinction between “univocal” and “equivocal” terms in Categories, Chap. 1.94 The category in between univocal and equivocal, writes Aristotle, has many meanings and can thus be perceived

92  Maimonides, The Guide of the Perplexed, trans. Shlomo Pines (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1963). All references will be to this text, unless otherwise specified. 93  English translation by Shlomo Pines, Hebrew translation by Samuel Ibn Tibbon. The Judeo-Arabic text used is: Moses Maimonides, Moreh ha-nevukhim: Dalālat al-ḥāʻirı̄n, trans. Joseph Kafiḥ (Jerusalem: Mosad ha-rav Kook, 1972). 94  Harry A. Wolfson, “The Amphibolous Terms in Aristotle, Arabic Philosophy and Maimonides,” in Studies in the History of Philosophy and Religion, vol. 1, eds. Isadore Twersky and George H. Williams (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1973), 455.

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as an “ambiguous” term.95 Arabic philosophers commenting on Aristotle define ambiguous terms as those which apply both to a thing and to its opposite (as the category of “law” includes both what is “just” and what is “unjust”).96 Averroes defines ambiguous terms as “terms applied to things according to the relation of analogy,” or those terms that are related due to a similarity, or analogy, that exists between them.97 In The Treatise on Logic/Be-ur melekhet ha-higayon, written in Arabic in his youth for a Muslim patron,98 Maimonides devises a similar tripartite scheme for nouns.99 In chapter thirteen of this book of grammar, he explains that in every language, nouns can be divided into three types: nivdalim (which corresponds to “univocal”) where every concept or thing has its own separate term to describe it; nirdafim (which corresponds to “equivocal”) where several synonyms can be used to describe one concept or thing (for example, an epee and a sword both describe a specific type of armament); and meshutafim (which corresponds to “ambiguous”) where one word can be used to describe “very different things.”100 In biblical Hebrew, for example, the word ‘ayin can be used to describe both an eye and a well.101 This third term describes a quality that two disparate things have in common, such as an element of their composition (in the case of ‘ayin they both contain water) or description, yet it does not define the essence of either one, since neither a similar composition nor a physical description can define the spirit of a thing.102 In the example Maimonides cites, Reuben is a thinking, living man, while another man is dead, and a third man is made of wood. All are “men” in shape only, yet one breathes, the other does not, and the third is non-human. The true essence of one does not approach the true essence of the other, even though they are all called “men.” Maimonides calls this comparison mesupak because, 95  That these are ambiguous terms is only implied in Aristotle. Wolfson, “The Amphibolous Terms,” 455. 96  Wolfson, “The Amphibolous Terms,” 459. 97  Wolfson, “The Amphibolous Terms,” 466, 470. 98  Herbert A.  Davidson disputes the assignment of this text to Maimonides; however, Sarah Stroumsa brings evidence from other scholars to attribute its authorship to Maimonides. Davidson, Moses Maimonides: The Man and His Works (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 313–322. Stroumsa, Maimonides in His World: Portrait of a Mediterranean Thinker (Paris and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2009), 127–128. 99  Cohen, Dimyon ve-higayon, 423. 100  Maimonides, Be-ur melekhet ha-higayon, 166–168. 101  Maimonides, Be-ur melekhet ha-higayon, 168–169. 102  Maimonides, Be-ur melekhet ha-higayon, 170.

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although they are comparable by some physical quality, their lack of other similarities makes them quintessentially distinct.103 In the Treatise on Logic Maimonides further divides the third category, meshutafim, into six parts, two of which are the metaphor, or ha-shem ha-­ mushaal/al-ism al-musta’ar, and transference, or ha-shem ha-mu’avar/al-­ ism al-manqūl.104 Regarding the metaphor, Maimonides writes that it guides us towards a particular aspect of the noun. Sometimes this noun can be called by a different name, as when a different aspect needs to be emphasized. “Poets use these often,” he concludes.105 Transference occurs when something is known primarily by one name, and that name is transferred to another thing “because of a specific similarity between the two or even without the similarity.”106 Each of these figurative terms, ha-shem ha-mushaal/al-ism al-musta’ir and ha-shem ha-mu’avar/al-ism al-manqūl “points in a fundamentally linguistic manner to a concept that is not like itself.”107 This corresponds to Tha’lab’s definition of isti‘āra as borrowing the “mental representation of something else or (to attribute to it) a characteristic that is not its own.”108 103  Maimonides, Be-ur melekhet ha-higayon, 170. The Arabic term for the Hebrew mesupak is mushakkik, writes Wolfson, which derives from the Arabic root shakk, to doubt. Similarly, the Hebrew mesupak contains the word safek, doubt. Both can be correctly translated as “ambiguous.” However, fifteenth-century Latin translations from Hebrew manuscripts of Arabic philosophy often translated the term mushakkik as “analogical.” Wolfson, “The Amphibolous Terms,” 475. 104  The term for metaphor used by early Arabic translators of Aristotle’s Poetics was manqul, or transference, which is a more literal translation of the Greek metaphora. Avicenna’s commentary uses the term manqul to denote metaphor. For a discussion of manqul, see Cohen, Dimyon ve-higayon, 426–428. 105  Maimonides, Be-ur melekhet ha-higayon, 171–172. 106  Maimonides, Be-ur melekhet ha-higayon, 172. Wolfson, citing Greek and Arabic sources, explains how a term can be transferred from one thing to another thing with which it shares no similarity. First, when both originate from one beginning, for example, the term “medical” can be variously applied to a book, a small knife and a drug; second, when both lead to a similar end, for example, the term “healthy” applies to (and is the end result of) a drug, gymnastics and surgery; and third, when they share a beginning and an end, for example, the term ‘divine’ can be applied to all things. Wolfson, “The Amphibolous Terms,” 462. For his part, Heinrichs describes “cases of transference that are not based on similarity between donor (manqūl) and receptor (manqūl ilayhi)” as “old” metaphors. Heinrichs, Northwind, 24. To illustrate Heinrichs’ point, each of the illustrated examples is a tamthı̄l / analogy that can be expressed in a genitive construction such as “the book of medicine,” “the gymnastics of health” and “the creation of the divine.” 107  Maimonides, Be-ur melekhet ha-higayon, 172. 108  Heinrichs, Northwind, 34.

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The scriptural terms that Maimonides discusses in Part One of the Guide have multiple meanings. If they were not polyvalent, there would be no source of perplexity for the student. How does Maimonides characterize the three categories  – equivocal, derivative and amphibolous/ ambiguous – found in Aristotle and his Arabic commentators? Samuel Ibn Tibbon’s Hebrew translation of the Guide, which was produced during Maimonides’ lifetime in consultation with the author, contains an appendix that attempts to distinguish the nuances in these three terms: 1. “Equivocal” (Pines’ English translation) = shem meshutaf (Samuel Ibn Tibbon’s Hebrew translation) = mushtaraka / ‫ משתרכה‬/ ‫לא משתרך‬ (Judeo-Arabic original). Ibn Tibbon explains that when you find one word used for different things, such as ‘ayin which in Scripture is both an eye and a well, it can be equivocal depending on its context.109 This is a homonym, a pair of words that share the same spelling and pronunciation but have different meanings. For example, “cold” describes both a frigid temperature and acute rhinitis. 2. “Derivative” (Pines)  =  mushaalim (Ibn Tibbon)  = musta‘āra / ‫( מסתעארה‬Judeo-Arabic). Both the Hebrew hashaalah and the Arabic isti‘āra / ‫ אסתעירה‬come from the root “borrowed,” and are used more commonly for metaphor. In English, a cell is a small unit within a larger organism, be it the body or a monastery. The term “cell” is borrowed by the phrase “terrorist cell,” a unit of guerillas who are part of a larger group, and by “cellphone,” a wireless telephone whose operational system divides a geographical area into a network whose parts can communicate with each other. 3. “Amphibolous” (Pines)  =  Shem mesupaq/mesupaqim/sipuq (Samuel Ibn Tibbon) = mushakkika /‫( משככה‬Judeo-Arabic). Maimonides, informed by Arabic poetics, writes that sometimes these terms are thought to be univocal and sometimes equivocal. Ibn Tibbon’s translation informs us that sometimes these terms are conventional (be-haskama),110 and sometimes they are used to describe two 109  Maimonides, Sefer Moreh ha-nebukhim le-rabbenu Moshe ben Maimon be-targumo shel rabbi Shmuel ben rabbi Yehuda Ibn Tibbon, ed. Yehuda Even-Shmuel (Jerusalem: Mosad harav Kook, 2000), 86. 110  Maimonides, Sefer Moreh ha-nebukhim, 4. For a definition of haskama as the conventional understanding of a term, see Israel Efros, Philosophical Terms in the Moreh Nebukim (New York: Columbia University Press, 1924), 33–35.

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­ ifferent things (mishtatfim).111 In the appendix to the Hebrew d translation of the Guide, Ibn Tibbon provides a dictionary to clarify the foreign and difficult terms he uses and coins in his translation. He explains that a term can be analogous to one or more other terms. For example, in Guide I: 3, the term temunah/figure is used for three analogous notions: first, the shape and configuration of a thing that we can apprehend using our senses, such as a graven image; second, the picture we retain in our imagination or in our dreams after we have seen or heard it; and third, the philosophical notion we can grasp intellectually. In Numbers 12:8, which describes the direct manner in which Moses looks upon “the figure of the Lord,” he neither sees God with his senses nor recalls Him in a dream, but perceives God through intellectual apprehension.112 Thus, in order to understand the term shem mesupaq/mesupaqim/sipuq, we can explain it this way: it refers to a term that has analogous uses; that while the above term, figure, can be used for all three notions, in reality, each usage is conceptually very different. The first figure is physical (perceived by the senses), the second figure is envisaged (dreamed or imagined), and the third figure is intellectual (understood philosophically). Thus, the term figure denotes corresponding physical, imaginary and intellectual realities or concepts. Israel Efros, in his dictionary of philosophical terms in the Guide, defines hishtatfut/equivocity as commensurability; in poetic terms, homonymity; and in philosophic terms as association or co-operation, as in the idea that God does not participate with other beings in creating and governing the universe.113 He defines mushaalim simply as metaphor or figure of speech, and mesupakim as “an amphibolous term, i.e., a term applied to two or more objects which so far as essential properties are concerned are totally heterogeneous so that the term would be a homonym; but they have a mutual resemblance in unessential properties, thus making the term

111  Maimonides, Sefer Moreh ha-nebukhim, 4. For a definition of mishtatfim as homonymity or association, see Efros, Philosophical Terms, 43–44. 112  “He grasps the truth of God.” Maimonides, Guide I:3. 113  In Efros’ philosophical definition, we understand what God is not – that is, He is not associated with divine beings who create and govern the universe with Him, because to understand God as “commensurate” with other beings is a “logical difficult[y].” Efros, Philosophical Terms, 43–44.

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a class name.”114 By “class name” Efros means a generally agreed-upon name, a nomen appellativum, in the way that “living being” applies to man, horse, fish, because they share the characteristic of life and the need to eat.115 Cohen rightly points out that these nomina appellativa or shemot mefursamot are “dead” metaphors.116 Their usage has entered into common parlance and can be employed outside of poetics, as when one wishes to depict something with exactitude, for example, when locating a river’s “mouth” or describing traffic as a “bottleneck.” In Part One of the Guide, Maimonides organizes his lexicography in a manner similar to his predecessor, Jonah Ibn Janakh, whose Sefer ha-­ shorashim is a dictionary of biblical terms. In Sefer ha-shorashim, Ibn Janakh catalogues scriptural examples according to their grammatical roots and, when applicable, informs the reader how the term is used figuratively.117 Similarly, Maimonides initially presents each biblical term according to its conventional meaning and then lists its metaphorical meanings. For example, in Guide I:23, when he explains the term yetsiyah/ going out: “Going out [yetsiyah] is the opposite of coming in. The term is used when a body – be it living or nonliving – leaves the place it was in to go to another place. Thus: ‘They left the city [heym yatsu et ha-‘ir – Gen. 44:4]’; ‘If fire should break out [ki teytse eysh – Ex. 22:5].’”118 The first definition of going out is conventional and literal: it means leaving, or the opposite of coming in. This definition corresponds to a dictionary entry. Maimonides brings scriptural prooftexts to illustrate this first meaning 114  Here he brings Maimonides’ example from Treatise on Logic about the word “man” as applied to a human being and a statue. Efros, Philosophical Terms, 75. 115  Efros, Philosophical Terms, 33–34. The example “living being” is from Maimonides, Treatise on Logic, 169. 116  Cohen writes that the manqul, or “transferred” name, becomes a “dead” metaphor, an expression we use with such regularity that the transferred term no longer carries a metaphoric meaning, or any direct relation to the original term it was transferred from. Like the term ‘ayin to denote both eye and well, these terms have no relation except in name. This is in opposition to the “borrowed” metaphor, isti‘āra, wherein the metaphoric meaning is perpetually dependent upon the original meaning. Cohen, Dimyon ve-higayon, 427–428. 117  Abdulwalid Merwan (Jonah) Ibn Janah, Sefer ha-shorashim, trans. Judah Ibn Tibbon (Berlin: Druck von H. Itzkowski, 1896; Jerusalem: Herat Mekitsei Nirdamim, 1966). Ibn Janah is mentioned only once in Maimonides, Guide, I:42. Ibn Janah does not define isti‘āra, and uses it interchangeably with similar terms such as majāz, mathal (allegory/mashal), tamthı̄l and tashbı̄h. Cohen, Dimyon ve-higayon, 420. 118  Maimonides, Guide I:23, 52–53.

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(although one could argue that “fire breaking out” is a metaphor, it is nonetheless, as pointed out by Cohen, a “dead” metaphor).119 Next, Maimonides explains how the term is used metaphorically: “The term is applied figuratively [ve-hushaal/wa-ista‘ār] to the manifestation of things that are in no way a body. Thus: ‘Word went out [yatsah] from the king’s mouth’ [Esther 7:8]…meaning the propagation of the matter. ‘From Zion the Torah shall go forth’ [Is. 2:3] and ‘the sun rose [yatsah] upon the earth’ [Gen. 19:23]. Every mention of ‘going out’ in Scripture with reference to Him, may He be exalted, conforms to this figurative use.”120 God’s actions are not like human actions, but rather “likened [tashbı̄h] to those that proceed from kings, who propagate their will through speech.”121 The figurative use of going out when it refers to God is a similitude, a tashbı̄h, because God’s actions are likened to human actions. When the verse in Isaiah 26:21 says, “Behold the Lord goes out of His place,” Scripture uses the verb goes out (yotsay) to describe God’s action. But God’s going out cannot be understood in the conventional or human terms of leaving one place and going into another. Since “His acts are accomplished exclusively by means of His will alone,” then every divine instance of going out is “figuratively [hushaal/ista‘ār] applied to the manifestation of an act of God…and the term returning is figuratively [hushaal/ista‘ār] applied to the cessation of such an act likewise brought about in virtue of God’s will.”122 In philosophical terms, God “going out” instigates acts of providence, while God “returning” removes His presence from the world and brings about the privation of providence. Cohen contrasts Maimonides’ definition of metaphor in Treatise on Logic with his use of metaphor in the Guide, and explains how the transformation is necessary in order to serve Maimonides’ philosophical ends. While the borrowed term [ha-shem ha-mushaal] is defined in [Maimonides’] Treatise on Logic as a poetic figure of speech that awakens a pictorial image or similitude, in the Guide Maimonides presents it as a dead metaphor, an example of a transferred name, in order to set up a diametric opposition  Cohen, Dimyon ve-higayon, 431.  Maimonides, Guide I:23, 52–53. 121  Maimonides Guide, I:23. Although human royalty is mortal, its authority allows it to propagate its will and command obedience. Likewise, God exerts his authority and brings about his actions through his will. 122  Maimonides, Guide, I:23. 119 120

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between metaphor and allegory. Despite the high exegetical cost he had to pay for this, Maimonides chose this route in order to enable the Scriptural descriptions of God to be understood using the intellect alone, without exercising the imagination.123

In the Treatise on Logic, the initial definition of a term lends its meaning to and enables the decipherment of a borrowed term. In the Guide, the first meaning of the term is literal, the definition one would find in the dictionary. Subsequent equivocal or figurative uses of the term are conventions of the scriptural world and not to be understood poetically. Like nomina appellativa, Maimonides employs them as dead metaphors whose meanings are already understood. Nobody should take God’s “going out” to mean that a physical God literally leaves a place, and nobody should engage a pictorial image of God taking such an action. Rather, the metaphoric use of going out when referring to God has one meaning, and one meaning only: the bestowing of providence. Maimonides would like us to accept this meaning as we would a dead metaphor, as a convention, writes Cohen, without holding it up to its original term and forming a pictorial image with which to compare it. We are asked to grasp these terms intellectually, similar to the way in which Moses apprehended the divine through intellect and not through sense perception or imagination. Cohen’s own bold exegetical move of describing the derivative class of scriptural language as dead metaphors is informed by Arabic poetics, Efros’ definitions, and Maimonides’ original Judeo-Arabic use of the term musta‘āra/isti‘āra ‫ אסתעירה‬/‫מסתעארה‬. It does an excellent job of specifying what Maimonides may have had in mind when he used the term musta‘āra/ isti‘āra. However, I would like to raise several issues with Cohen’s designation. First, in Dimyon ve-higayon, Cohen tells us that Maimonides intended the borrowed or transferred figure of speech to be taken as a dead metaphor in order to set up a difference between metaphor and allegory. This is an important distinction. However, in the article Cohen does not explain or define allegory.124 Next, although Cohen masterfully details the second class of scriptural language according to both Hebrew and Arabic poetics, 123  Cohen, Dimyon ve-higayon, 436. For more on imagination and medieval psychology, including the distinction between imagination and intellect, see Chap. 3. 124  Cohen, Dimyon ve-higayon, 436. In his book Opening the Gates of Interpretation, (185–239), Cohen provides a detailed account of allegory, but not in contradistinction to metaphor.

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we are left wondering what role the third class, the ambiguous terms, have to play in human rhetoric and cognition.125 Maimonides writes that this class of terms is both univocal and equivocal. Should they be viewed in the manner of dead metaphors or as something else entirely? Do they have their own role to play in human cognition? And finally, there is a conceptual problem with Cohen’s interpretation: If we eliminate the cognitive work that has to be done with metaphor and skip the mental image because it is problematic, how then do we apprehend divine being? This is a fundamental issue in Maimonides as well: Is it humanly possible to achieve intellectual cognition of divine being without using human imagination?126 Cohen’s study of what to do about the problem of multiplicity of meaning in biblical terms posits that Maimonides owes an intellectual debt to Alfārābı̄.127 Thus, writes Cohen, “[Alfārābı̄] provides Maimonides with a theoretical framework for explaining the complex ways in which words signify meanings and how those significations change over time.”128 Metaphorology, the modern study of how metaphors work, also weighs in on the polyvalence of language and the linguistic relationship between a word and its context. Paul Ricoeur, in discussing terms that hold several meanings at the same time, writes, “Polysemy designates that phenomenon of language by which words have more than one signification or meaning.”129 Eva Kittay explains, “Polysemy is a pervasive feature of word meaning, one which has the potential to generate an indefinitely large set of meanings for each word…The context of the sentence may significantly disambiguate word meaning in many sentences…Rather than assert that context allows us to distinguish between pre-given senses of a term, we can say that the contextual environment serves to confer different ­meanings on a given word, a multiplicity of meaning to be distinguished from vagueness.”130 Just as a word only has meaning within the context of a 125  In Opening the Gates of Interpretation, Cohen writes that he does not deal specifically with amphibolous terms because they are not often mentioned in the Guide (186). 126  This issue will be analyzed in Chap. 3. 127  Cohen, Opening the Gates of Interpretation, 187. See also Mordechai Z. Cohen, “Logic to Interpretation: Maimonides’ Use of al-Fārābı̄’s Model of Metaphor,” Zutot: Perspectives on Jewish Culture 2 (2002): 104–113. 128  Cohen, Opening the Gates of Interpretation, 187. 129  Paul Ricoeur, “The Power of Speech: Science and Poetry,” trans. Robert F.  Scuka, Philosophy Today 29, no. 1 (1985): 61. 130  Eva Feder Kittay, Metaphor: Its Cognitive Force and Linguistic Structure (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), 107.

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sentence, so a sentence or metaphor has no meaning outside its linguistic and situational context. Or, to paraphrase Ricoeur, without a determinate use, words have meaning, but not significance.131 Kittay brings the following examples to illustrate: The verb draw has no pre-given meaning until placed within a phrase context. Then, whether we draw a picture, draw a curtain, draw lots, hold a draw, we cannot know what the word draw means. Kittay argues that even within the context of each phrase, the word draw has no meaning. In English, what does it mean to draw a curtain, or draw a lot – what is the significance of the word draw in each of these idioms? According to this theory, it has none. The meaning of the phrase draw a curtain does not illuminate the meaning of draw lots. While each expression uses the word draw, it is only within the context of each phrase that we can distinguish how the word draw should be interpreted. Kittay argues against context giving pre-­assumed meaning to a term, but maintains instead that the contextual environment of a polyvalent term only serves to distinguish it from vagueness. If we take seriously the proposition that a theory of meaning is a theory of understanding, that is, a theory of what we must know if we understand a word or sentence, then we should conclude that we must understand how context (sentential or extra-sentential) helps determine the meanings of words and sentences. Contextual considerations are inseparable both from word meaning and sentence meaning, and they are as inseparable from the meaning of literal sentences as they are from the meaning of metaphorical sentences.132

What does this mean and how does it relate to Maimonides? Let us say that Kittay’s theory is what Maimonides refers to when he talks in the Guide about the ambiguous category of scriptural nouns, mesupakim. 131  Ricoeur, “The Power of Speech,” 62. He argues that words are not in and of themselves poetic or scientific or mathematical or philosophical. It is the way that words are used that renders them poetically or scientifically or mathematically or philosophically significant. 132  Kittay, Metaphor, 113. The idea that a word has no meaning outside of the context of a sentence originates with Gottlob Frege, the nineteenth-century German philosopher. Rather than look at a word as a linguistic unit or as a representation of a thing, this view holds that word meaning is completely dependent upon how we experience the world we live in, which influences the way we view reality. In a metaphor, then, one conceptual domain, the “source domain,” is figuratively applied to another, “target domain.” The target domain of the metaphor is thus understood in terms of some experiential aspect of the source domain. Taverniers, Metaphor and Metaphorology, 104, 120.

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How? Let us say that ambiguous terms/mesupakim are infinitely polysemous, so much so that even when used within a given contextual environment – the Hebrew Bible – their meaning is still vague. Can any of the terms in Part One of the Guide have a pre-given, unambiguous meaning? Yes, according to Cohen’s reading of equivocal/mushaalim/ musta‘āra terms as dead metaphors that carry conventional, idiomatic meaning. If so, we can ask, does the idiomatic meaning of a conventional term carry meaning from one application to another, or does it, as Kittay posits, need to be interpreted in relation to its context each time it is used? In the example we quoted above from Guide I: 23, does the equivocal (according to Maimonides) term yetsiyah/going out as it is used in one biblical context illuminate how it is to be interpreted in another? Or does it have no significance at all until it is placed within the sentence, at which point we can determine, based on its context, which of its multiplicity of meanings we can assign to it? Let us return to Maimonides’ explanation of several uses for this term: First, “The term is used to denote the going-out of a body, which may be a living being or not, from a place in which it rested to another place”133 – e.g., when someone goes out or when fire breaks out; second, “The term is applied figuratively to the manifestation of things that are in no way a body…the coming into being of something after its not having existed” – e.g., when the sun comes out; third, every use of the term going out when used to refer to God refers to His decree becoming known to human beings; and fourth, the opposite of going out is returning/shivah: “Inasmuch as the term going out…was figuratively applied to the manifestation of an act of God [i.e., divine providence]… this removal [returning/shivah] is followed by a privation of providence.”134 When it comes to understanding the polyvalent Biblical term yetsiyah/going out, Maimonides provides us with several contextual environments, including understanding the term through its antonym, in order to help release the term from its linguistic vagueness. Whether we say the sun goes out/rises, or the Torah “goes out” upon Zion, or the Lord “goes out” of His place,135 the contextual environment of each term does not clarify its meaning. From where does the sun “go out”? How does the Torah “go out”? What exactly does it mean for the Lord to “go

 Maimonides, Guide, I:23.  Maimonides, Guide, I:23. 135  Isaiah, 26:21. 133 134

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out”?136 Similar to Kittay’s clarification of the verb to draw given above, one can argue that the biblical term to go out has no intrinsic significance, and only its placement in a phrase or sentence indicates how it should be interpreted. The explanation that biblical metaphors have no intrinsic meaning until placed in sentential context seems to sufficiently explain Maimonides’ categorization of scriptural language. However, Maimonides has in fact set up two levels of metaphoric meaning, independent of the old and new metaphorical categories described by Heinrichs and differing from his own classification of univocal, equivocal and ambiguous terms as explained by Cohen. Both levels apply to the way metaphors are used throughout Scripture. The first level of metaphoric meaning applies to metaphoric language that describes human beings, inanimate objects and celestial bodies. On this level going out can refer to a person exiting a room or a fire breaking out or the sun rising. Context indicates interpretation, and meaning is dependent upon context. The second level of meaning applies to metaphoric terms used to describe God. On this level, going out has but one fixed (Cohen would say conventional) meaning: it refers to God’s providence. Maimonides differs from Kittay on this key point: when it comes to metaphoric terms anthropomorphizing God, polyvalent terms are not ambiguous at all but have only one set meaning, the metaphysical meaning he presents in the Guide. Context merely points us to the multiplicity of meanings that distinguish a term from vagueness. This multivalence, together with our susceptibility towards misinterpretation, is precisely the source of our perplexity. And so it falls to Maimonides to present us in the Guide with a lexicon of metaphorical terms that disambiguates such polysemous phrases. If their meanings were easily understood, we would not need this lexicon. However, not only are these terms linguistically ambiguous, but mistaken understanding of these terms is dangerous because it can lead to ascribing erroneous attributes to God and this, says Maimonides, is idolatrous.137 136  James A.  Diamond, in Maimonides and the Hermeneutics of Concealment: Deciphering Scripture and Midrash in The Guide of the Perplexed (Albany: State University of New York, 2002) writes: “Poetic metaphor taken literally, according to Ricoeur, creates a ‘semantic collision’ that leads to a ‘logical absurdity where meaning would be annulled by incompatibility.’” Diamond writes that Ricoeur’s formulation is instructive in comprehending how Maimonides would want us to understand “all anthropomorphic language regarding God” (10). 137  Maimonides, Guide, I:36. See also Diamond, Maimonides and the Hermeneutics of Concealment, 15.

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With ambiguity comes misinterpretation, and with polysemy comes erroneous readings. Consequently, Maimonides, in the first part of the Guide, lists terms associated with divine actions and attributes used in the Bible, and presents the reader with the correct way of reading them. Although he tells us that these terms have multiple meanings, when they are used to describe God, he argues for univocity,138 or one sole meaning for anthropomorphic terms. He acknowledges that biblical metaphors and allegories that describe God’s actions and attributes are fraught with dangerous ambiguity; however, if one follows his exegesis of these terms, one will not be led astray. All this linguistic abstruseness seems counterintuitive to the purpose of Scripture, which is to provide a clear guide to instruct humans on the proper way to live through prescription, law and moralistic histories. Why are Scriptures written using equivocal and parabolic language, opening them up to multiple and even erroneous interpretations? Maimonides answers with a Talmudic dictum, “Dibrah Torah kilshon bnei adam”139 – The Torah speaks in human language. In other words, God’s words are filtered through the medium of human speech, and subsequently the Torah is written using human idioms. According to medieval ontology, God is unchanging and eternal. There is no way that any living creature, being mutable, fallible, contingent and finite, can bridge the epistemological gap and learn how God operates. No matter how hard he or she may try, through experience or study, it is fundamentally impossible for a human being to know God’s true essence.140 Nevertheless, the Torah  This is a term used by Ricoeur, in “The Power of Speech,” 65.  Sources for this expression: Brachot 31b (where the origin of this axiom is attributed to Rabbi Akiva, who used it to explain the verse “If You will look” in I Sam. 1:11, where Hannah asks God to “look” upon her misery); Ketubot 67a; Kiddushin 17b; Gittin 41b; Nedarim 3a; Baba Metziah 31b, 94b; Avodah Zara 27a; Sanhedrin 56a, 64b, 85b, 90b; Makkot 12a; Zevaḥim 108b; Kritut 11a; Arakhin 3a; Niddah 32b, 44a. In the Talmud, this axiom is used to explain seemingly superfluous scriptural terms and phrases whose meanings cannot be readily discerned because fallible humans have a limited ability to understand God’s communication. 140  See Exodus 33:18–23. For a survey of ontology and epistemology in medieval Muslim and Jewish thought, see Peter Adamson and Richard C. Taylor, The Cambridge Companion to Arabic Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005); Herbert A. Davidson, Alfarabi, Avicenna, and Averroes, on Intellect: Their Cosmologies, Theories of the Active Intellect and Theories of Human Intellect (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992); Daniel H. Frank and Oliver Leaman, eds., The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Jewish Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003); Kenneth Seeskin, ed., The Cambridge 138 139

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­ riginates in divine speech and is given to humans – the people of Israel – o as a law by which to live their lives. The Torah is a bridge between divine and human. In order to follow the commandments within the Torah, the Jews need to know about the God who has given them this law. They need to know the difference between the one true God and idolatrous substitutes, so that they can worship God in the proper manner and not commit the sin of idol worship. Because God decided to bridge the ontological gap and communicate with earth-bound beings through Sinaitic revelation, the text that emerged from that communication must employ terminology that can be understood by human minds. To communicate with human beings, the Torah must use “human language.”141 What is “human language?” It is comprised of divine notions filtered through human semantics. It employs similes and metaphors, prophetic “parables and riddles.”142 Its carefully-chosen words have encrypted in them an obvious meaning and a hidden meaning: “A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in settings of silver/tapuḥei zahav be-maskiyyot kesef davar davur ‘al ofnav.”143 It engages terms that must be deciphered using human imagination. The process by which human imagination deciphers metaphoric language is discussed in the next chapter. In the Guide, Maimonides warns that even though the Torah uses human language and employs physical traits to describe God’s actions and attributes, one is making a grave error if one supposes that there is any similarity between God and humans. “Know that likeness is a certain relation between two things and that in cases where no relation can be supposed to exist between two things, no likeness between them can be represented to oneself,”144 he writes, echoing Moses Ibn Ezra’s warning about falsely comparing humans to God and Halevi’s admonition against analogy when describing the divine. Ordinarily, “when terms are used ambiguously [be-sipuk/bi-tashkı̄k] they are predicated of two things between which there is a likeness [dimyon/tashābuh  – from tashbı̄h] in respect to some notion.”145 However, God’s essence is unlike anything we Companion to Maimonides (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005); Colette Sirat, A History of Jewish Philosophy in the Middle Age (Paris: Cambridge University Press, 1996). 141  Maimonides, Guide, I:26. 142  Maimonides, Guide, Introduction, 11. 143  Maimonides, Guide, Introduction, 11. 144  Maimonides, Guide, I:56. 145  Maimonides, Guide, I:56. Here we have a more distinct definition of the third class of scriptural terms, ambiguous or ambivalent terms, than the one given by Maimonides in the

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humans know. Even though both God and humans can be said to exist and possess knowledge, and although they seem to share other attributes, they are in no way alike. To use Greco-Arabic philosophical language, in God knowledge exists “primarily” and in humans it exists “subsequently.”146 That is why according to Maimonides such terms – for instance, life and knowledge – are equivocal/shem meshutaf/mushtaraka: they do not mean the same thing but are homonyms, one word used to describe two completely different things (just as ‘ayin can mean either an eye or a well). They are not used analogously, which would imply that there is a similarity between God and humans. Similitude is not the same as sameness, warns Maimonides, when it comes to God. Maimonides, employing an allegory, explains how the hidden meaning of parables can be uncovered by an inquisitive intellect: Now consider the explicit affirmation of [the Sages], may their memory be blessed, that the internal meaning of the words of the Torah is a pearl whereas the external meaning of all parables is worth nothing, and their comparison of the concealment of a subject by its parable’s external meaning to a man who let drop a pearl in his house, which was dark and full of furniture. Now the pearl is there, but he does not see it and does not know where it is. It is as though it were no longer in his possession, as it is impossible for him to derive any benefit from it until…He lights a lamp – an act to which an understanding of the meaning of the parable corresponds.147

The inner sense of Torah terms – the true divinely-intended meaning – is concealed by worthless external words – “human language” – in the same way as the opalescent pearl dropped by its owner is obscured by darkness. But this hidden meaning remains open to human interpretation, if a woman or man employs hermeneutic tools to illuminate dark corners and elucidate the meaning of these terms. Maimonides writes, “Rather have [true opinions of the divine science] been hidden because at the outset the intellect is incapable of receiving them; only flashes of them are made to appear so that the perfect man should know them.”148 Such an individual first encountered these flashes when they “appeared to him as [likenesses] first chapter of the Guide. This class corresponds to “new” or “dual” metaphors that contain both tamthı̄l (analogy) and tashbı̄h (simile). 146  Wolfson, Amphibolous Terms, 470. 147  Maimonides, Guide, Introduction 11. 148  Maimonides, Guide, I:32.

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and parables,” but later they appear “in their truth and [he] understands their essence.”149 “Likenesses and parables,” which include metaphor and Midrash, are a necessary first step in understanding “divine science” or philosophy. When a woman or man will learn how to verify the truth (“Be-haqiqa”) of philosophical propositions, they will no longer need to mediate their knowledge through similitudes and will be able to understand directly the essence of divine science using their cognition alone.150 * * * In Muḥāḍara, Ibn Ezra’s poetic treatise, he defines metaphor as “a word for something unknown taken from something known.” He borrows from Aristotle and expands upon Arabic poetics to provide us with a definition that layers the cognitive on top of the semantic aspect of metaphor. Halevi, poet and master of the lyrical metaphor, warns us in Kuzari of the dangers of using likenesses, whether physical or figurative, to describe God. Maimonides in Part One of the Guide acknowledges the vitality of metaphor as a first step in understanding divine concepts, but warns against their misinterpretation. Biblical metaphors use human language to convey complex ideas, but ideally one should try to understand the divine in an unmediated, unfiltered manner, using one’s cognition alone. What emerges from all three medieval Jewish thinkers is the notion that metaphor operates on the level of human understanding. Without human endeavour, metaphors are meaningless.

Bibliography Adamson, Peter, and Richard C.  Taylor. 2005. The Cambridge Companion to Arabic Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Allony, Nehemiah. 1979. A Study of Kitāb al-muḥāḍara wa-l-mudhākara by Moses ibn Ezra [Hebrew]. Studia Orientalia: Memoriae D.H. Baneth Dedicata. Jerusalem: The Magnes Press, The Hebrew University.  Maimonides, Guide, I:32.  Maimonides explains this further in Book III. However, Maimonides’ prescription is an ideal and it remains to be seen how human beings can transcend the intellectual demands of “knowing” God through images and language. As Ricoeur writes, “Through symbolism, metaphor, as the gift of discourse, comes to structure within language the profound and cosmic being of man. But, in return, it is always by means of a strategy of language, of which metaphor is the most remarkable process, that the mythico-poetic depths of man can be evoked.” “The Power of Speech,” 68. 149 150

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Aristotle. 1984. The Complete Works of Aristotle: The Revised Oxford Translation. Ed. Jonathan Barnes. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ———. 1991. On Rhetoric: A Theory of Civic Discourse. Trans. George A. Kennedy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bearman, P.J., et al., eds. 2000. The Encyclopedia of Islam. Leiden: Brill. Black, Max. 1993. More About Metaphor. In Metaphor and Thought, ed. Andrew Ortony. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Brann, Ross. 1991. The Compunctious Poet: Cultural Ambiguity and Hebrew Poetry in Muslim Spain. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Brener, Ann. 2005. Judah HaLevi and His Circle of Hebrew Poets in Granada. Leiden: Brill. Brody, Haim. 1933. Moses ibn Ezra: Incidents in His Life. Jewish Quarterly Review 24: 309–330. Cohen, Mordechai Z. 2000. Moses ibn Ezra vs. Maimonides: Argument for a Poetic Definition of Metaphor (Isti’āra). Edebiyat 11: 1–28. ———. 2004. Dimyon ve-higayon, emet ve-sheker: gishotehem shel Ramba ve-­ Rambam le-metafora ha-miqra-it le-or ha-poetiqa ve-ha-filosophia ha-‘aravit. Tarbiz 73: 417–458. ———. 2011. Opening the Gates of Interpretation: Maimonides’ Biblical Hermeneutics in Light of His Geonic-Andalusian Heritage and Muslim Milieu. Leiden/Boston: Brill. Dana, Joseph. 1992. Poetics of Medieval Hebrew Literature (According to Moshe ibn Ezra) [Hebrew]. Tel Aviv: Dvir Company Limited. Davidson, Herbert A. 1992. Alfarabi, Avicenna, and Averroes, on Intellect: Their Cosmologies, Theories of the Active Intellect and Theories of Human Intellect. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ———. 2005. Moses Maimonides: The Man and His Works. Oxford: Oxford University Press. De Valle, C., and G.  Stemberger. 1997. Saadia ibn Danān El Orden de las Generaciones “Seder ha-Dorot”. Alcobendas/Madrid: Aben Ezra Ediciones; Edicion critica. Diamond, James. 2002. Maimonides and the Hermeneutics of Concealment: Deciphering Scripture and Midrash in the Guide of the Perplexed. Albany: State University of New York Press. Drory, Rina. 1995. The Hebrew and the Arabic Introductions of Saadia Gaon’s Sefer ha-Egron. In Israel Oriental Studies XV: Language and Culture in the Near East, ed. Shlomo Izre’el and Rina Drory. Leiden: Brill. ———. 2000. Models and Contacts: Arabic Literature and Its Impact on Medieval Jewish Culture. Leiden: Brill. Efros, Israel. 1924. Philosophical Terms in the Moreh Nebukim. New York: Columbia University Press. Fenton, Paul B. 1996. Philosophie et exégèse dans le Jardin de la métaphore de Moïse Ibn Ezra, philosophe et poète andalou de XIIe siècle. New York: Brill.

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Frank, Daniel H., and Oliver Leaman, eds. 2003. The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Jewish Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Funkenstein, Amos. 1993. Perceptions of Jewish History. Berkeley/Los Angeles: University of California Press. Halevi, Judah. 1994. Sefer ha-Kuzari le-rabbi Yehuda ha-Levi. Translated and Annotated by Yehuda Even Shmuel. Tel Aviv: Dvir Publishing Company Limited. Harris, Jay M. 1995. How Do We Know This?: Midrash and the Fragmentation of Modern Judaism. Albany: State University of New York Press. Harvey, Warren Zev. 1996. Halevi’s Synthetic Theory of Prophecy. Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Thought 13: 141–156. Heath, Peter. 2000. Knowledge. In The Literature of Al-Andalus, ed. Maria Rosa Menocal, Raymond P. Scheindlin, and Michael Sells. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Heinrichs, Wolfhart. 1977. The Hand of the Northwind: Opinions on Metaphor and the Early Meaning of Isti’āra in Arabic Poetics. Wiesbaden: Deutsche Morgenlandische Gesellschaft. ———. 1984. Isti’āra and Badı ̄ ’ and Their Terminological Relationship in Early Arabic Literary Criticism. In Zeitschrift für Geschichte der Arabisch-Islamischen Wissenschafen 1, ed. Fuat Sezgin. Frankfurt am Main: Institut für Geschichte der Arabisch-Islamischen Wissenschaften an der Johann Wolfgang GoetheUniversität. Ibn Ezra, Moses. 1975. Sefer ha-‘iyunim veha-diyunim al ha-shirah ha-‘ivrit [Kitāb al-muḥāḍara wa-l-mudhākara]. Ed. and Trans. Avraham Shlomo Halkin. Jerusalem: Hotsa-at Mekitze nirdamim. Kellner, Menachem. 2006. Maimonides’ Confrontation with Mysticism. Oxford: The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization. Kittay, Eva Feder. 1987. Metaphor: Its Cognitive Force and Linguistic Structure. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Kogan, Barry S. 2003. Judah Halevi and His Use of Philosophy in the Kuzari. In Cambridge Companion to Medieval Jewish Philosophy, 111–135. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lakoff, George, and Mark Johnson. 1980. Metaphors We Live By. Chicago/ London: The University of Chicago Press. Maimonides, Moses. 1963. The Guide of the Perplexed. Trans. Shlomo Pines. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. ———. 1972. Moreh ha-nevukhim: Dalālat al-ḥāʻirı̄n. Trans. Joseph Kafiḥ. Jerusalem: Mosad ha-rav Kook. ———. 1987. Be-ur melekhet ha-higayon le-rabbeinu Moshe ben Maimon. Trans. Joseph Kafiḥ. Kiryat Ono: Makhon Mishnat ha-Rambam. ———. 2000. Sefer Moreh ha-nebukhim le-rabbenu Moshe ben Maimon be-targumo shel rabbi Shmuel ben rabbi Yehuda ibn Tibbon. Ed. Yehuda Even-Shmuel. Jerusalem: Mosad ha-rav Kook.

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Newman, Sara J.  2002. Aristotle’s Notion of ‘Bringing-Before-the-Eyes’: Its Contributions to Aristotelian and Contemporary Conceptualizations of Metaphor, Style, and Audience. Rhetorica 20: 1–23. Novak, David. 1997. The Talmud as a Source for Philosophical Reflection. In History of Jewish Philosophy, ed. Daniel H. Frank and Oliver Leaman, 62–82. London/New York: Routledge. Nuriel, Abraham. 1981. Dibra Torah kilshon bnei adam be-Moreh Nevukhim. In Religion and Language: Philosophical Essays [Hebrew], ed. Moshe Hallamish and Asa Kasher. Tel Aviv: University Publishing Projects. Pagis, Dan. 1970. Secular Poetry and Poetic Theory: Moses ibn Ezra and His Contemporaries [Hebrew]. Jerusalem: Bialik Institute. Pender, Stephen. 2005. Between Medicine and Rhetoric. Early Science and Medicine 10 (1): 36–64. Plato. 1979. Gorgias. Trans. Terence Irwin. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Ricoeur, Paul. 1985. The Power of Speech: Science and Poetry. Transl. Robert F. Scuka. Philosophy Today 29 (1): 59–70. ———. 2003. The Rule of Metaphor: The Creation of Meaning in Language. London: Routledge. Robinson, Cynthia. 2002. Praise of Song: The Making of Courtly Culture in al-­ Andalus and Provence, 1005–1134 A.D. Leiden: Brill. Scheindlin, Raymond P. 1986. Wine, Women and Death: Medieval Hebrew Poems on the Good Life. New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press. ———. 1991. The Gazelle: Medieval Hebrew Poems on God, Israel, and the Soul. New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press. ———. 2008. The Song of the Distant Dove: Judah Halevi’s Pilgrimmage. New York: Oxford University Press. Schirmann, Haim, ed. 1959. Ha-shira ha-‘ivrit be-sefarad uve-provence. Book 1, Part 2. Jerusalem/Tel Aviv: Bialik Institute and Dvir Company. Seeskin, Kenneth, ed. 2005. The Cambridge Companion to Maimonides. Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press. Shear, Adam. 2012. The Kuzari and the Shaping of Jewish Identity, 1167–1900. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Silman, Yochanan. 1995. Philosopher and Prophet: Judah Halevi, the Kuzari, and the Evolution of His Thought. Trans. Lenn J. Schramm. Albany: State University of New York Press. Sirat, Colette. 1996. A History of Jewish Philosophy in the Middle Ages. Paris: Cambridge University Press. Stroumsa, Sarah. 2009. Maimonides in His World: Portrait of a Mediterranean Thinker. Paris/Oxford: Princeton University Press. Tanenbaum, Adena. 2002. The Contemplative Soul: Hebrew Poetry and Philosophical Theory in Medieval Spain. Leiden: Brill.

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Taverniers, Miriam. 2002. Metaphor and Metaphorology: A Selective Genealogy of Philosophical and Linguistic Conceptions of Metaphor from Aristotle to the 1900s. Gent: Academia Press. Tobi, Yosef. 2004. Proximity and Distance: Medieval Hebrew and Arabic Poetry. Trans. Murray Rosovsky. Leiden: Brill. Vagelpohl, Uwe. 2008. Aristotle’s Rhetoric in the East: The Syriac and Arabic Translation and Commentary Tradition. Leiden/Boston: Brill. Wolfson, Harry Austryn. 1973. The Amphibolous Terms in Aristotle, Arabic Philosophy and Maimonides. In Studies in the History of Philosophy and Religion, ed. Isadore Twersky and George H.  Williams, vol. 1. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. ———. 1973–1977. Studies in the History of Philosophy and Religion. Eds. Isadore Twersky and George H.  Williams. Cambridge/London: Harvard University Press. Yahalom, Joseph. 2009. Yehudah Halevi: Poetry and Pilgrimmage. Jerusalem: Hebrew University Magnes Press.

CHAPTER 3

“Taste and See:” Imagination and Intellect

When a person’s intellect receives knowledge of divine matters, the imagination takes this abstract knowledge and represents it in images collected from the senses: The imagination does its work: it represents what [the intellect] sees in images; in the form of a visible and audible object of the senses… The active intellect radiates upon its [rational] soul and illuminates it with the intelligibles. The imagination then begins to represent these intelligibles and depict them in the common sense at which time the senses perceive an indescribable grandeur and power that belongs to God. —Dmitri Gutas, “Imagination and Transcendental Knowledge in Avicenna”1

1  Dmitri Gutas, “Imagination and Transcendental Knowledge in Avicenna,” in Arabic Theology, Arabic Philosophy: From the Many to the One: Essays in Celebration of Richard M. Frank. (Leuven and Paris: Uitgeverij Peeters en Departement Oosterse Studies, 2006), 339. In mysticism, the imaginative faculty is the conduit for “transcendent realities” which are made into “concrete and tangible symbols envisioned by a mystic…The world of the imaginal is an intermediary realm wherein the imaginative forms (or archetypal images) symbolize the intelligible in terms of the sensory.” Elliot R. Wolfson, Through a Speculum that Shines: Vision and Imagination in Medieval Jewish Mysticism (Princeton: Princeton University Press), 61–62.

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Through its use of language and imagery, metaphor aims to express a ­likeness upon which the human mind can cogitate. The more complex the metaphor, and the more dissimilar its components, the harder the person must work to decode its meaning. The harder one works, the more rewarding the intellectual payoff when the code is cracked and, according to poets such as Moses Ibn Ezra and Judah Halevi, the more delightful and praiseworthy the metaphor. But how does metaphor operate on the level of human understanding? What mental processes does one go through to unravel a metaphor? Since metaphor is a semantic process that uses words to paint pictures by presenting images to the senses, it requires the work of imagination. Imagination as understood by medieval thinkers is a vital and necessary aspect of thinking. Without imagination, no rational activity can be undertaken. At the same time, medieval thinkers understood imagination as a double-edged sword. When imagination uses sensory material to think and imagine, thought can take fantastical flight. Fantasy, while laudatory in poetry and literature, is undesirable when thinking philosophically. On the other hand, when imagination is a source from which intellect can draw abstract ideas, thought is logical and orderly. How, then, can metaphoric language, which uses sensory images to portray an idea, refer to the immaterial divine? If, as seen in the last chapter, the only way to describe God is with figurative language such as metaphor, and if metaphors can only use sensory images that might be misunderstood by imagination, then how can the human mind think about abstract concepts – such as God – properly? Given that imagination is a necessary contributor to all thinking, including rational thought, and a means to achieving knowledge, is Maimonides’ idea of pure intellectual thought even humanly possible? For medieval thinkers the progression of thought through the brain’s makeup – what they call psychology – is a physiological process, considered a science originating in ancient Greek thought and expanded upon by Arabic Aristotelian philosophers. Medieval Arabic philosophers such as Alfārābı̄ and Avicenna had an understanding of the complexities of the human mind that they based on Aristotle’s analysis of perception and understanding in De Anima. This psychology underpins all medieval discussions of imagination and human understanding. Perhaps not surprisingly, Halevi privileges the sensory and experiential aspects of imagination, while Maimonides privileges the intellectual, ratiocinative aspect of imagination. Their commentaries are grounded in medieval Arabic Aristotelian

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psychology, which recognizes that both the sensory and the intellectual are aspects of imagination; and while Halevi and Maimonides did not add anything new to the understanding of how we think, it is worthwhile to examine how they applied this psychology to their discussions of how we understand divine matters. * * * In Book 3 of De Anima, in the middle of a discussion on the distinction between perception and understanding,2 Aristotle raises the issue of imagination.3 Imagination is different from perception and thought, yet it does not occur without perception or thought. So, what exactly is imagination according to Aristotle? He writes, As for thought, since it is different from perceiving and seems to include on the one hand imagination and on the other supposition, we must determine about imagination before going on to discuss the other. Now if imagination is that in virtue of which we say that an image occurs to us and not as we speak of it metaphorically,4 is it one of those potentialities or dispositions in virtue of which we judge and are correct or incorrect? Such are perception, belief, knowledge, and intellect.5 2  Aristotle explains that all animals have perception, and see objects with their eyes (De Anima iii 12, 434a22 – 434b18), but animals do not have understanding because they cannot reason. Perception is always true, but understanding, because one can think or reason erroneously, can be false. 3  For Aristotle’s treatment of imagination (phantasia), see J.I.  Beare, Greek Theories of Elementary Cognition from Alcmaeon to Aristotle (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1906); Stephen Everson, Aristotle on Perception (New York: Clarendon Press, 1997); D.W. Hamlyn, trans., Aristotle De Anima Books II and III (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993); Martha C.  Nussbaum and Amelie O.  Rorty, eds., Essays on Aristotle’s “De Anima” (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992); Malcolm Schofield, “Aristotle on the Imagination,” in Aristotle on Mind and the Senses: Proceedings of the Seventh Symposium Aristotelicum, ed. G.E.R.  Lloyd and G.E.L.  Owen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978); Gerard Watson, Phantasia in Classical Thought (Galway: Galway University Press, 1988); Michael V. Wedin, Mind and Imagination in Aristotle (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1988). 4  Although Aristotle does not explain here how metaphor is differentiated from “an image that occurs to us,” it is useful to note that in the Poetics, Aristotle describes the role of metaphor, but does not mention phantasia, imagination, as a component in the discourse of poetics. Nabil Matar writes that Alfārābı̄, in his Treatise on Poetry, is “the first Muslim philosopher to link Aristotle’s discussion of imagination in De Anima to poetics.” Nabil Matar, “Alfārābı̄ on Imagination: With a Translation of His ‘Treatise on Poetry,’” College Literature 23, no. 1 (1996): 101, 104. 5  Aristotle, De Anima, trans. D.W. Hamlyn (Oxford: Claredon Press, 1993), 53.

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Perception is a trait shared by humans and animals, but only humans think, understand and imagine.6 Thinking involves both supposition and imagination because in order to suppose, one must use one’s imagination. Michael Wedin explains that imagination and supposition are not two kinds of thought, but rather “components or structural features of thinking.”7 He illustrates it in this way: “X thinks p ⇒ X supposes p and imagination is involved in (re)presenting p.”8 To “picture” a supposition, an image must be (re)presented in the mind, and this picturing involves the imagination. Since all thinking involves images,9 it follows that all thought utilizes imagination. Wedin emphasizes that it is important to point out the role of imagination in thought because it points to a broader issue, that of the “dependence of mind on body. Roughly, the idea is that images require perception and perception in turn requires physical sense organs. So if thought requires images, then what thinks (presumably mind) will depend on body.”10 Wedin’s formulation presents a clearer idea of the role of perception in understanding. Perception does not take place without images, and images are generated using the physical sense organs. Wedin continues, Since there is no thing or fact apart from sensible extended things, then what is thought will be in perceptual forms, both those which are spoken of in abstraction and those which are dispositions and affections of things that are perceived. And because of this, there is no learning or understanding without perceiving and whenever one contemplates, one must at that moment contemplate with an image; for images are like perceptual states, except without matter.11

6  Aristotle, De Anima, trans. Hamlyn, 54. Sara Newman explains that perception is a physical response: “For Aristotle, then, perception is a response to external stimuli registered in an organ which does not mobilize mental activities involving judgment, or belief, or truth-values on the part of the perceiving individual.” Sara Newman, Aristotle and Style (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 2005), 125. 7  Wedin, Mind and Imagination, 102. Wedin defines “supposition” as “taking something to be the case.” Since imagination cannot affirm or deny something, but merely [re]presents that which it takes to be the case, it is not the same as supposition. Wedin, Mind and Imagination, 105–06. 8  Wedin, Mind and Imagination, 102. 9  “That which can think, therefore, thinks the forms in images.” Aristotle, De Anima, iii 8, 432a7–8. 10  Wedin, Mind and Imagination, 110. 11  Wedin, Mind and Imagination, 113.

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All perception, in both humans and animals, originates with an image. This image registers upon the eye, the ear, or any other external sense organ. Subsequently, the image, using one’s imagination, can be thought about and/or felt emotionally, believed or disbelieved, and ultimately understood. Aristotle, in De Anima, sketches out a meaningful relationship between imagination and thought, and the role of perception in understanding. But questions remain unanswered: How does imagination use perception to generate images? The mind perceives physical stimuli, and these external stimuli are registered by an organ in the human body, but how are these physical stimuli transformed into data that the mind can use? What is the process by which the mind transforms physical, sense data into images and thoughts that the human mind can contemplate and understand? These are questions that concerned Aristotle’s earliest commentators,12 and can be examined in light of the medieval Arab Aristotelian philosophers, Alfārābı̄ (870–950) and Avicenna (980–1037), whose description of human psychology is detailed but not entirely unproblematic.13 In his short Treatise on Poetry, Alfārābı̄ outlines what makes a statement poetical and describes the imitative nature of poetry. Imitation works in imagination by making the mind imagine the thing itself and also by imagining the thing in something else14 – in other words, by creating a likeness. “Creative imagining (takhyı̄l) here is like science in demonstration and speculation in logic and persuasion in rhetoric.”15 Empirical demonstration is a means of explaining scientific experiments, speculation is an essential aspect of logic, and persuasion demonstrates the efficacy of rhetoric. Creative imagining displays the art of poetry through its use of similes and metaphors and other poetic devices.16 Alfārābı̄ does not use the term for imagi12  See M.W. Bundy, The Theory of Imagination in Classical and Medieval Thought (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1927), 83–176; Lara Harb, “Poetic Marvels: Wonder and Aesthetic Experience in Medieval Arabic Literary Theory” (PhD diss., New York University, 2013); Simon Kemp, Cognitive Psychology in the Middle Ages (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1996). 13   See Jon McGinnis, Avicenna (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 89–148; F. Rahman, Avicenna’s Psychology: An English Translation of Kitāb al-Najāt, Book II, Chapter VI, with Historico-Philosophical Notes and Textual Improvements on the Cairo Edition (London: Oxford University Press, 1952). 14  Matar, “Alfārābı̄ on Imagination,” 106. 15  Matar, “Alfārābı̄ on Imagination,” 106. 16  Harb writes, “muhakat [mimesis] is the poetic process through which takhyı̄l [creative imagining] is achieved. Or, as Walid Hamarneh has put it, takhyı̄l revolves around the ‘recep-

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nation that Arabic Aristotelian translators of De Anima use – khayāl – perhaps because it carries negative connotations and implies that imagination is false and unreliable.17 Rather, he prefers to use takhyı̄l, which represents the end result of imagining (“the imagining of the thing itself”), and takhayyul, the creating of an image that is imagined (“the imagining of the thing in something else”).18 In his treatise, Alfārābı̄ tries to be philologically precise and uses terms derived from the root kh-y-l very deliberately to specify the workings of the imagination as it applies to poetics.19 He believes that the faculty of imagination – al-quwwa al-­mukhayyila – exists in the human mind apart from the perceptive faculty, which, as posited by Aristotle, receives external sensory stimuli. This faculty of imagination can actively manipulate images received from sense perceptions. It can “project them onto objects, link them with other images, define and compare, analyze and create, thereby arriving at perceptive and abstractive knowledge.”20 Rather than being merely a passive organ that receives stimuli, the faculty of imagination according to Alfārābı̄ has the capability of manipulating and utilizing images for its own ends. Avicenna, who opens his commentary on Aristotle’s Poetics with the statement, “We first say that poetry is imaginative speech (mukhayyil),”21 takes as given the Farabian postulation that imagination is part of poetic discourse.22 In his works on psychology or human cognition,23 Avicenna tion’ of poetry and muhakat is the ‘poetic text’ itself through which a certain ‘reception’ is achieved.” Harb, Poetic Marvels, 20; see also Harb, Poetic Marvels, 20 n. 46. 17  For example, Cantarino translates the root kh-y-l as “to believe,” with the added connotation of a “wrong or unfounded belief or opinion,” a fancy. Vincente Cantarino, Arabic Poetics in the Golden Age (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1975), 80. 18  Matar, “Alfārābı̄ on Imagination,” 101–02, 106. 19  Matar, “Alfārābı̄ on Imagination,” 100. 20  Matar, “Alfārābı̄ on Imagination,” 104. 21  Dahiyat explains that for Avicenna, “imaginative” poetry involves both “imitative” (following Aristotle’s emphasis on imitation and likeness in poetic expression) and “emotive” (as opposed to instructive and purely rational) elements. Ismail M.  Dahiyat, Avicenna’s Commentary on the Poetics of Aristotle: A Critical Study with an Annotated Translation of the Text (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1974), 61n1. 22  “Poetry is an imaginatively creative [mukhayyil] discourse consisting of rhythmic and equipoised locutions which, among the Arabs, are also rhymed.” Avicenna, Kitab ash-shi’r, quoted in Cantarino, Arabic Poetics, 74. 23  Avicenna’s psychology can be found in Kitāb al-Najat, Book II, Chapter VI, and Shifā’, Book VI. For translation of the former, see Rahman, Avicenna’s Psychology. For an introduction to Avicenna, see McGinnis, Avicenna. On Avicenna’s psychology, in particular his schematic of the internal senses, see Deborah L.  Black, “Imagination and Estimation: Arabic

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formulates a philosophy of how humans think. Expanding upon Aristotle, Avicenna hypothesizes a system whereby the human mind receives and processes external stimuli. Building on the belief that all external stimuli need to be received by a physical organ of the human body, Avicenna constructs a five-part system in the human mind, “faculties of internal perception which perceive the form of sensed things,”24 that receives and retains sensory stimuli. No one faculty can both receive and retain sensory information; there is a separate faculty for each task. The five external senses – sight, hearing, taste, smell and touch – are processed progressively by five internal senses, as follows: 1. All external stimuli perceived by the five external senses are received by al-ḥiss al-mushtarak, the sensus communis, or common sense.25 This is the mind’s storehouse for perceived external stimuli. 2. These external stimuli are retained by al-muṣawwira/al-khayāl, or imagination, where all images are stored.26 This faculty “preserves what the sensus communis has received from the individual five senses even in the absence of the sensed objects.”27 In addition, this faculty stores the abstract impressions received by the internal senses from the supernal world.28 In case one wonders why the brain needs both Paradigms and Western Transformations,” Topoi 19 (2000): 59–75; Herbert A. Davidson, Alfarabi, Avicenna, and Averroes, on Intellect: Their Cosmologies, Theories of the Active Intellect, and Theories of Human Intellect (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 93–95; Gutas, “Imagination and Transcendental Knowledge”; E. Ruth Harvey, The Inward Wits: Psychological Theory in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (London: Warburg Institute University of London, 1975), 21–30, 39–52; Kemp, Cognitive Psychology, 52–60; McGinnis, Avicenna, 89–148; Harry A. Wolfson, “The Internal Senses in Latin, Arabic, and Hebrew Philosophic Texts,” in Studies in the History of Philosophy and Religion (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1973–1977), 276–281. 24  Rahman, Avicenna’s Psychology, 30. 25  Avicenna calls this the “faculty of fantasy.” Rahman, Avicenna’s Psychology, 31. 26  Kemp calls this “image store” rather than “imagination.” He prefers to describe its function as a warehouse of images. He only uses the term imagination to describe the process by which mental images are recalled and imagery is visualized. Kemp, Cognitive Psychology, 52–53. Franz Brentano, summarizing Aristotle’s psychology, writes, “the capacity to have images is called imagination.” Franz Brentano, The Psychology of Aristotle: In Particular His Doctrine of the Active Intellect, ed. and trans. Rolf George (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977), 67. 27  Rahman, Avicenna’s Psychology, 31. 28  Dmitri Gutas, “Intellect without Limits: The Absence of Mysticism in Avicenna,” in Intellect et imagination dans la Philosophie Médiéval / Intelecto e imaginaçâo na Filosofia

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al-ḥiss al-mushtarak and al-muṣawwirah/al-khayāl, Avicenna tells us that reception and retention are two different functions that require two separate faculties. He illustrates these capabilities by comparing the mind’s capacity to receive and preserve with the capabilities of flowing water, which can take something in but, because it is always moving, cannot retain it.29 3. After the stimuli have passed through the first two internal senses, they move to the next faculty. Avicenna writes, “Then there is the faculty which is called imaginative (mukhayyila) in relation to the animal soul, and cogitative (mufakkira) in relation to the human soul … and one of its functions is to combine the things which are in the [retentive] imagination (al-khayāl) with one another and to separate them from one another voluntarily.”30 Pure abstract thoughts are uniquely human. Animals have “sensitive imagination,” but because they lack intellect, their imagination can never make use of its ratiocinative features or think about intelligibles.31 The imaginative faculty,32 al-mutakhayyila, is the most active of the faculties. This faculty is always “on,” even during sleep, which explains why dreams are so vivid and packed with images. On its own, the imaginative faculty acts randomly, mixing and dividing data from the retentive faculty (#2) to create imaginative figurations.33 However, its activities can be moved by either the estimative faculty (#4 below), or by the intellect. If it is moved by the estimative faculty, the imaginative faculty functions as imaginative thought; when illuminated by intellect, its activities are cogitative, or in Arabic, al-mufakkira.34 Médiéval: Actes du Xte Congrès International de Philosophie Médiévale de la Société Internationale pour l’Étude de la Philosophie Médiévale (S.I.E.P.M.), Porto, du 26 au 31 août 2002 (Rencontres de philosophie médiévale, 11), vol. 1, eds. Maria Cândida Pacheco and José Francisco Meirinhos (Turnhout: Brepols Publishers, 2006), 356–57. 29  Gutas, “Intellect without Limits,” 356–57. 30  Rahman, Avicenna’s Psychology, 31. 31  Salim Kemal, The Philosophical Poetics of Alfarabi, Avicenna and Averroes (London: Routledge Curzon, 2003), 48. 32  Also called the “compositive” imagination because it combines both “sensitive” (of the senses) and rational (of the intellect) imagination. Since “we do not attain knowledge simply by empirical experience but through actualizing the intellect,” the compositive imagination “provides a means for reaching knowledge, but it is not itself knowledge.” Kemal, Philosophical Poetics, 125. 33  From Shifā’: De anima 1:5, 45, quoted in Black, “Imagination and Estimation,” 70n11. 34  Black, “Imagination and Estimation,” 60.

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The final two faculties decide what to do with the sensory information processed through the first two faculties: 4. The wahm, or estimative faculty, judges the consequences of things perceived and then decides how to respond to them. It “perceives the non-sensible intentions that exist in the individual sensible objects, like the faculty which judges that the wolf is to be avoided and the child is to be loved.”35 This faculty, similar to what we might call instinct, receives the intentions or purposes of the sensed objects and judges whether to evade or approach them. This faculty is shared by both animals and humans, and is the highest faculty in animals.36 5. The faculty of memory, al-ḥāfiẓa, also known as recollection, al-dhākira, retains the perceptions and judgments made by the estimative faculty, similar to the way in which imagination (al-khayāl) (#2) stores sense images from the common sense. To sum up, the five internal faculties are (1) common sense or sensus communis, (2) imagination, also called the image store, (3) the imaginative faculty, also known as compositive imagination, (4) estimation or wahm, and (5) memory. The remainder of this chapter summarizes how imagination (al-khayāl) and the imaginative faculty (al-takhayyul, al-­quwwa almutakhayyila) contribute to cognition. An exploration of Avicennian psychology will highlight the differences between the epistemology of Judah Halevi and Maimonides. An analysis of epistemology in Halevi’s Kuzari and Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed will help to illuminate a discursive engagement with imagination and imaginative function. In considering the role of imagination in cognition, Avicenna writes, “[Imagination] represents what [the intellect] sees in images, in the form of a visible and audible object of the senses.”37 This prompts the question, how does the intellect use images and turn them into cogitative thought (as opposed to imaginative thought)? In Chapter XVI of Kitāb al-Najāt, Avicenna explains that an existing thing moves from potentiality to actuality with the help of something else that gives it actuality. Human intellect moves from potentiality to actuality with the help of an actual intellect,  Rahman, Avicenna’s Psychology, 31.  For a discussion of the estimative faculty, or wahm, see Rahman, Avicenna’s Psychology, 79–83; Black, “Imagination and Estimation”; Deborah L.  Black, “Estimation (Wahm) in Avicenna: The Logical and Psychological Dimensions,” Dialogue 32 (1993): 219–58. 37  Gutas, “Imagination and Transcendental Knowledge,” 339. 35 36

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called the active intellect. This active intellect acts upon the passive ­intellect, which is still in potentiality. The intellect created by this interaction between the passive and active intellect is called the acquired intellect. The process wherein the active intellect acts upon the passive intellect is the same process in which the sun acts upon our eyes, making us perceive light. As F. Rahman explains in Avicenna’s Psychology: For when the influence of the sun (i.e., the ray) reaches the potential objects of sight, they become actual perceptibles and the eye becomes an actual percipient. Similarly some power emanates from this active intellect and proceeds to the objects of imagination which are potential intelligibles, and makes them actual intelligibles and the potential intellect an actual intellect. And just as the sun is by itself an object of sight and causes the potential object of sight to become an actual one, similarly this substance is in itself intelligible and causes other potential intelligibles to become actual intelligibles.38

Our eyes are organs of sight. Without light, they cannot see but still have the potential for sight. Only when objects around us are illuminated does the potential for seeing turn into actual sight, and we can make out colours. Similarly, our intellects only have the potential to think rationally until the active intellect, like a ray of light shining into our brains, turns the potential into acquired intellect.39 Finally, just as light is always visible, even when our eyes do not perceive it, the active intellect is always intelligible and, suggests Avicenna, intelligent thought thinking itself.40 The human mind acquires knowledge by moving from potential to actual intellect. Most of the population can only acquire knowledge through instruction. However, there are some people who are extremely intuitive, who can acquire knowledge on their own, without great effort or study.41 Their minds can move from potential to actual intellect almost without effort. These individuals have a highly developed compositive  Rahman, Avicenna’s Psychology, 69.  In De Anima iii 5, 430a14–19, Aristotle writes, “And there is an intellect which is of this kind by becoming all things, and there is another which is so by producing all things, as a kind of disposition, like light, does; for in a way light too makes colours which are potential into actual colours. And this intellect is distinct, unaffected, and unmixed, being in essence activity.” 40  See Aristotle Metaphysics xii, 9 on the nature of divine thought, and for a discussion on divine thought in Wedin, Mind and Imagination, 236–239. 41  Rahman, Avicenna’s Psychology, 35–36. 38 39

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imaginative faculty,42 allowing them to think abstract concepts that ­prepare the way for them to receive rational thoughts emanating from the active intellect. The imaginative faculty receives what is emanated by the active intellect, sorts it into intelligible data, and retrieves it at will. Although Avicenna insists that reception and retention take place in different faculties, it seems as though the imaginative faculty is capable of both.43 The function of the imaginative faculty is two-fold: it receives data from the active intellect (emanation), and retains this data so that the human intellect can retrieve it at any time (conjunction).44 As such, it is a kind of middle ground between human and divine intellect. However, even though the imaginative faculty is capable of receiving emanations from the active intellect, it is a physical faculty and therefore can be prone to erroneous thinking. When moved by the faculty of estimation, or wahm, its output is imaginative thought. At its most developed, when skilled in abstract thought bound by reason, the imaginative faculty can conjoin with the active intellect. If this conjunction takes place effortlessly, due to a person’s deep intuitive insight, this is prophecy.45 On the other hand, when a person is asleep, the imaginative faculty remains active without being harnessed by reason. This is when the faculty is at its most primal and unguarded. Under these circumstances, this faculty can take its image feed and create impressions that are random, even false.46 Rather than shaping abstract thought with reason, the compositive imagination in this state allows the imagination to run unbridled, “hear[ing] and see[ing] colours and sounds that have no existence or causes in the external [world],” but which appear real.47 On the other hand, some people are so intuitive, with their imaginative faculty so finely attuned by intellect, that even figurative images projected during their sleep cycle are instantly understood rationally. Under such circumstances, the compositive imagination may enter a process in which it may conjoin with the divine, and Avicenna understands the culmination of this state as prophecy.48  Ashya’ mutakhayyila. Davidson, Alfarabi, Avicenna, and Averroes, 93.  Rahman, Avicenna’s Psychology, 31. 44  Rahman, Avicenna’s Psychology, 102. 45  Rahman, Avicenna’s Psychology, 37. For a discussion of prophecy according to Avicenna, see Davidson, Alfarabi, Avicenna, and Averroes, 116–26. 46  For a discussion of the implications of “false images/imaginings,” see Chap. 4 in this book. 47  Davidson, Alfarabi, Avicenna, and Averroes, 118. 48  Davidson, Alfarabi, Avicenna, and Averroes, 119. See also Maimonides on prophecy, Guide, II:45. 42 43

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Halevi and Maimonides, each in their own way, utilize the blueprints of Aristotle’s, Alfārābı̄’s and Avicenna’s theories on human psychology in their discussions about imagination and its participation in the venture of knowledge.

Judah Halevi: Sense and Imaginative Sensibility Judah Halevi’s Kuzari is a book of apologetics championing the Jewish religion over Christianity and Islam. In his dialogue with the Khazar king, the Jewish Ḥ aver reiterates ideas in rationalist philosophy and contrasts them with Jewish religion and philosophy. At the outset, the Greek idea of a non-interventionist divine being is disputed and in its stead the Ḥ aver establishes the notion of a God who acts and involves himself in human history. In place of an epistemology that privileges rational contemplation as the way to apprehend the divine, the Ḥ aver proposes that it is only through sense experience that one can know God. However, when it comes to Greek psychology and its heir, Arabic Aristotelian psychology, Halevi in his guise as the Ḥ aver presents no alternative system of human cognition. Halevi’s psychology is firmly rooted in Avicennian psychology, as the excerpts below will demonstrate. Halevi communicates the faculties of the internal senses to the king/educated reader with no modifications and with the assumption that these terms need little explanation. The task of the Ḥ aver is to square the Avicennian model of human cognition and its goal of divine perception with Jewish thought. Both Avicennian psychology and Jewish thought share the goal of contemplation of the divine as the ultimate end. However, they differ only in the methods of achieving this goal. Within the Arabic Aristotelian system, Halevi clearly prefers sensory experience and human imagination to reason and pure thought, which Avicenna privileges. The Kuzari opens with a dream vision. The king, pure of heart and scrupulously observant in the ways of the Khazars, has a recurring dream. An angel appears to him and tells him, “Your intentions are pleasing to God, but your deeds are unsatisfactory.” No matter how he tries to perfect his ways, the dream vision recurs with the same message. He summons representatives of different beliefs in order to choose another faith in which to observe the divine. First he calls upon a philosopher, then a Christian and finally a Muslim, but their replies to his questions are unsatisfactory and he rejects all their doctrines. He hesitates to summon a Jew, believing that the Jewish faith is despised by all and has nothing to offer.

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But after rejecting the other three representatives, he calls upon the Jew to discuss Judaism with him. Halevi’s treatise, Kuzari,49 is the narrative result of these interrogations between the king and the Jewish Ḥ aver. Medieval psychology, or the study of how information is processed from the senses to the rational mind via the imagination, is discussed in four places in Kuzari: chapters 3:5, 4:3, 4:17 and 5:12. Analyzing the components of human thought is an important aspect of Halevi’s discourse because his epistemology privileges sensory perception and the role it plays in achieving connection with the divine. Unlike Maimonides, who emphasizes that only the rational mind can achieve cognition of divine concepts, Halevi underscores the role of sense perception, particularly words and images, in contemplating the divine. In Kuzari 3:5, the Khazar king asks the Ḥ aver to describe how a “superior person” acts. The Ḥ aver describes the actions of a just leader, to which the Khazar king replies, “I asked you about a superior person, not a leader.”50 The Ḥ aver responds that a superior person is not only obeyed by his people, but by his senses and body as well. A person who can govern a city is a person who can control his body by eating, drinking, bathing and earning a living in moderation, and subduing his external and internal senses (“the common sense, imagination, estimation, cogitation and memory”)51 so that they obey his will. He organizes the “community” of his body and soul, his external and internal senses, by commanding his will, or volition, to obey his command without rebellion. “He also commands 49  Kitāb al-radd wa al-dalı̄l fı̄ al-dı̄n al-dhalı̄l (The Book of Refutation and Proof on behalf of the Despised Religion) was written in Judeo-Arabic around 1110 and translated into Hebrew by Judah ibn Tibbon in Granada c. 1140. For the transmission and reception of the Kuzari, see Adam Shear, The Kuzari and the Shaping of Jewish Identity, 1167–1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012); Yehuda Even Shmuel, Introduction to the Hebrew translation of Sefer ha-Kuzari le-rabbi Yehuda ha-Levi (Tel Aviv: Dvir Publishing, 1994). For the cultural background of the Kuzari, see Ehud Krinis, “The Arabic Background of the Kuzari,” Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy 21, no. 1 (2013): 1–56. 50  Halevi, Kuzari, 3:4. 51  The following are the English (from the English translation by Lawrence V. Berman and Barry S.  Kogan)/Judeo-Arabic (from the Judeo-Arabic edition by Wolfson)/Hebrew terms (from the Hebrew edition of Judah ibn Tibbon in Hirschfeld): The commons sense/al-h. iss almushtarak/ha-hargasha ha-mishtatefet; imagination/takhayyul/ha-yetser; estimation/wahm/hara‘ayon; cogitation/fikra/ha-meḥashev; memory/dhikra/ha-zikaron. Judah Halevi, The Kuzari: The Book of Refutation and Proof on Behalf of the Despised Religion, trans. Berman and Kogan (New Haven: Yale University Press, forthcoming).

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[his volition] to not pay attention to the demons of the estimative (alwahmiyya) and imaginative (al-mutakhayyila) [faculties], and neither to accept them nor assent to them until it consults with the intellect (‘aql).” With the help of the intellect, the individual’s volition decides whether or not to accept the “demons” of the estimative and imaginative faculties, both of which can lead a person astray if left unharnessed. Here we see an expression of the deleterious effects of an unguarded imagination. However, if the input from the imaginative faculty is acceptable – in other words, if it is controlled by reason – the voluntary faculty “assigns the imaginative [faculty] the task of presenting the most splendid representations of existing things that it has, with the aid of memory, so that it may thereby imitate the divine order (al-amr al-ilāhı̄)52 which is being sought.” As we saw in Avicenna, the imaginative faculty, when harnessed by reason, can picture divine ideas, or metaphorically express divine c­ oncepts; this is the essence of cognition. A person capable of cogitating on the divine, writes Halevi, “Orders the retentive (al-wahmiyya) (sic.) [faculty] to hold that in trust and not forget it. Moreover, he prevents the estimative [faculty] and its demons from making the truth seem unclear and doubtful. He also prevents the spirited and appetitive [faculties] from prejudicing and corrupting the voluntary [faculty] and causing it to be preoccupied with whatever anger and desire lie within themselves.”53 Such a person is as in control of his intel52  Similar to the Arabic al-ayn al-batiniyya and Latin oculus imaginationis. Aaron Hughes, The Texture of the Divine: Imagination in Medieval Islamic and Jewish Thought (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004), 82. For a discussion of al-amr al-ilahi in Halevi, see Davidson, Alfarabi, Avicenna, and Averroes, 190ff.; Barry S. Kogan, “Judah Halevi and His Use of Philosophy in the Kuzari,” in The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Jewish Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003) 111–135; Diana Lobel, Between Mysticism and Philosophy: Sufi Language of Religious Experience in Judah Ha-Levi’s Kuzari (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2000); Yochanan Silman, Philosopher and Prophet: Judah Halevi, the Kuzari, and the Evolution of His Thought, trans. Lenn J. Schramm (Albany: State University of New York, 1995). 53  Halevi, Kuzari, 3:5. It appears from the Judeo-Arabic terms that Halevi has mixed up these faculties, or, as Davidson writes, is “carelessly” relying on notes or his own memory of prior readings, lessons or conversations. Although Davidson critiques Halevi as having a sloppy grasp of Arabic Aristotelian cosmology and theory of intellect, he does credit him with a sound understanding of Avicennian psychology; this citation, however, proves otherwise. Davidson, Alfarabi, Avicenna, and Averroes, 187. See also Harry A. Wolfson, Studies in the History of Philosophy and Religion, vol. 1, eds. Isadore Twersky and George H.  Williams (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1973), 285–86. For a supportive view of Halevi’s understanding of Arabic philosophical terms, see Lobel, Between Mysticism and Philosophy, 137–38.

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lectual faculties as a leader is of his polis. He or she can draw upon memory reserves to draw up purely cogitative images at will. Halevi utilizes the unambiguous language of “truth” to describe these divine images, and “corrupting” to describe what happens when the estimative faculty gets hold of the imagination, clouds the truth and fills the mind with “anger and desire,” or negative emotions. Although not quite loyal to Avicenna’s construction because it mixes up terms, this formulation loosely conforms to his notion that the estimative (or what Halevi calls “retentive”) faculty, left unbridled, can conjure up false imaginings. It is unclear from this passage what the “voluntary faculty” is and what its role is in human psychology, whether it commands or responds to commands, and its connection with emotions such as anger and desire. In introducing the “appetitive” faculties, perhaps Halevi is referring to the division of the human rational soul into two faculties: theoretical and practical.54 Practical human intelligence shares qualities such as appetence, imagination and estimation, with the animal kingdom: “Its relationship to the animal faculty of appetence is that certain states arise in it peculiar to man by which it is disposed to quick actions and passions such as shame, laughter, weeping, etc. Its relationship to the animal faculty of imagination and estimation is that it uses that faculty to deduce plans concerning transitory things and to deduce human arts.”55 Practical human intelligence is rooted in the physical body. It can be influenced by strong emotions, tendencies and desires, swayed or moved by metaphoric language and artistic representations, and react instinctively to external stimuli. As a result, it is the origin of human action, behaviour and ethical – or unethical – conduct.56 At this point in the Kuzari, although he mixes up the faculties, Halevi is loyal to Arabic Aristotelian psychology. This is unsurprising given that the earlier parts of the Kuzari reflect a philosophical tone that matches this perspective.57 Subsequent chapters in the Kuzari, starting with the one analyzed next, reveal a worldview that rehabilitates the senses and their role in enabling the human to experience the divine.  See Aristotle, De Anima iii, 10.  Rahman, Avicenna’s Psychology, 32. 56  This is in contrast with the theoretical faculty of the rational soul, whose function it is to obtain knowledge. See Rahman, Avicenna’s Psychology, 33. Also see Hughes, Texture of the Divine, 91–93, for a good summary of Avicenna’s psychology of the human soul. 57  For an analysis of the development of Halevi’s thought in the Kuzari, see Lobel, Between Mysticism and Philosophy; Raymond Scheindlin, The Song of the Distant Dove: Judah Halevi’s Pilgrimmage (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008); Silman, Philosopher and Prophet. 54 55

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Kuzari 4:2 – Seeing with the “Inner Eye” In 4:2, the Khazar king asks the Ḥ aver a question about rendering the ineffable: “How do I identify someone as a particular individual who cannot even be referred to, but about whom inferences [of all sorts] have been drawn from His effects?”58 The king is identifying the basic problem of metaphoric language, which, especially when used to designate the divine, cannot hope to approach a realistic depiction of the thing it is describing. The Jewish sage lists various names that God is known by in the bible, such as God of gods, YHWH, Elohim, and so on. Holy, an attribute of God that also serves as an appellation in prayer, is a metaphorical figure of speech (al-majāz) passed down by tradition (taqlı̄d).59 In reality (haqı̄qa), says the Ḥ aver, only a prophet or a descendant of Israel may use this appellation.60 This is puzzling, because the term holy can be used by anybody who wants to pray to God, Jewish or not. What he seems to mean is that in order to use this appellation in reality and not metaphorically – in other words, to directly address God using one of His approved names – one must either be a prophet or a direct descendant of Abraham, the father of the nation upon whom, the Kuzari tells us, the divine order was passed down exclusively. Further on, the sage reiterates and nuances the king’s original question: “How can one refer to the spatial location of someone who has no spatial location and then believe that what is being referred to is the First Cause?”61 The original question referred to a particular individual whose effects, or attributes, can be seen and felt, and thus a person has something to refer to within the realm of his or her own sense perception. However, the divine can be neither seen nor felt, and its substance cannot in any way be experienced firsthand through any of the human senses. The sage brings an example to illustrate this problem. A man can be categorized as the ruler of a city in various ways. His clothes can identify him: the uniform he wears to battle, his royal robe, or even the casual clothes he wears around the palace label him as a ruler. He may have ruled all his life, so that he has been known as a child, when he was middle-aged,  Halevi, Kuzari, 4:2.  Halevi, Kuzari, 4:2. 60  Someone to whom the divine order (al-amr al-ilāhı̄) is attached. On the “divine order” in Halevi see Davidson, Alfarabi, Avicenna and Averroes; Kogan, “Judah Halevi,” 111–35; Lobel, Between Mysticism and Philosophy; Silman, Philosopher and Prophet. 61  Halevi, Kuzari, 4:2. 58 59

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and then as an old man. He can be recognized by his facial features, but also by his character and demeanour. Sometimes he commands, other times he forbids. Each of these traits, says the sage, is a different way of identifying the ruler. Yet based on any or all of these attributes, one can discern that this man is the ruler. It is a judgment that is not made through sense perception, maintains the sage, but “by a judgment of the intellect.”62 This is because the judgment that this man is a ruler is not made because of his clothing or appearance, or by the effects of his rule, which are all “accidents” that the senses apprehend. The judgment is made because the ruler possesses some intangible essence, a “substance” that cannot be captured through sense perception but can only be apprehended through reason; he has a ruler-like quality that can be identified by a judgment of the intellect. A similar example can be given for the sun, which human beings see as a small disc that is hot, light and stationary. Based on the amount of heat the sun gives off, human intellect has concluded the following: that the sun is many times larger than it appears, is not merely hot but burns, and moves from east to west.63 Says the sage, “Thus, the senses have not been given the power to apprehend the substance of things, but rather a special power to apprehend concomitant accidents, from which the intellect seeks proof about their substance and their cause. Therefore, only a sound intellect will come to know the essence and the [true] concept [of these things].”64 At this point the Ḥ aver explains that only angels, who are actual intellects, can apprehend the essence of things-in-themselves. Human intellects, which are only potential intellects because they are housed in a body, can never apprehend the true reality of things, and so can only know things through their accidents. The only way a person can come to know the true reality of things is “through special properties and powers, which He has placed within the senses, corresponding to the accidents belonging to the objects of sense perception, and always accompanying [them] within the entire species.”65 We may be in agreement that the round  Halevi, Kuzari, 4:2.  In Halevi’s time, the sun was thought to move around the earth and not vice versa. 64  Halevi, Kuzari, 4:2. This dialogue parallels Avicenna’s discussion concerning the human soul, particularly how the rational soul acquires knowledge. See Rahman, Avicenna’s Psychology, 34. See Kuzari, 1:1 for the Philosopher’s/Halevi’s concise summation of Arabic Aristotelian epistemology. 65  Halevi, Kuzari, 4:2. 62 63

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s­ urface in the sky that emits heat is the sun because our senses tell us so. Even if two individuals’ perceptions lead them to different conclusions, one can still benefit from the perception of the other. For example, if someone is looking for his camel, he may realize that even a faulty report of the camel’s sighting by, say, a near-sighted person saying that he saw two cranes in a specific location, will lead him to his camel. In the same way, the senses and the imaginative faculty can either be in accord with the intellect (like two individuals identifying the heat-emitting orb as the sun), or differ with the intellect (the near-sighted person seeing two cranes instead of a camel). In both instances, the senses assist the imaginative faculty in recognizing an object, but the imaginative faculty may erroneously identify the object. However, for some select people, when the imaginative faculty is in accord with the intellect, it can successfully identify the material object and even identify the essence or true reality of the thing perceived. This, according to the Ḥ aver, is a God-given capability: [God] has likewise graciously established a relationship between the internal sense and the incorporeal concept [of the thing perceived]. And so, He has given those of His creatures whom He has honoured an inner eye, which sees things in themselves without [any] disparity, and from which the intellect may seek proof through inference about the [true] concept of those things as well as their inner nature.66 The person for whom that eye has been created is the one who is truly [clear-] sighted. He regards all [other] people as being like the blind, and so he guides them and directs them along the right path. It is almost [the case] that the eye is the imaginative faculty as long as it serves the intellectual faculty. Thus, it sees great and awesome forms, which point to realities about which there is no doubt; and the greatest proof for their reality is the agreement of that entire class, I mean, all of the prophets, about those forms.67

God has given a select group of people an “inner eye” that sees the essence of things, the perfect alignment of imagination and intellect.68 66  Avicenna explains that this act of cognition occurs when the compositive imagination works in tandem with reason. Avicenna, Shifā’: Al-Nafs: Book V. 5, trans. D.L. Black. 67  Halevi, Kuzari, 4:3. 68  Lobel explains that Halevi describes this variously as “the inner sense (al-ḥiss al-bātị n), an inner eye (‘ayn bātị na), a vision (baṣar) clearer than logic (qiyās), and the spiritual eye (al-‘ayn al-ruḥaniyya) by which prophets were made superior (fuḍḍilū). Halevi also explains that this inner eye ‘might almost be said to be’ the imaginative faculty (al-quwwa al-

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These people act like a set of eyes leading the blind. They are a community’s visionary leaders, their prophets. “It is almost … that the eye is the imaginative faculty as long as it serves the intellectual faculty,” writes Halevi. This comment recalls Alfārābı̄’s contention that the faculty of imagination operates in service to the rational faculty,69 and has parallels in Avicenna’s man of “intuition,” who is able to discern intelligible truths rationally without having been taught them. In Avicenna, this person’s “soul has such an intense purity and is so firmly linked to the rational principles that he blazes with intuition.”70 In rare and exceptional c­ ircumstances, “this is a kind of prophetic inspiration, indeed its highest form and the one most fitted to be called Divine Power; and it is the highest human faculty.”71 Halevi writes that these people, who can perceive the divine world using their inner eye, have an ability to describe this non-corporeal world according to the physical attributes they have witnessed. Therefore, not only do these visionaries have the ability to see the essence of things, but they also have the talent to describe the attributes of these essences using appropriate descriptions and metaphoric language: “Those attributes are correct in relation to what fantasy, imagination, and the senses are seeking, but they are not correct in relation to the essence that the intellect is seeking, as we have shown concerning the ruler.”72 Halevi is referring to the example, mentioned above, wherein a man or woman is judged to be a ruler not because of his or her external clothing or any other actions that can be identified through sense perception, but because of an intellectually perceived judgment of an intangible essence that pinpoints them as ruler-­ like. The prophet, although able to perceive the inner essence of divine things, also has the ability to translate what he or she perceives intellectually and instinctually using metaphoric language and images.

mutakhayyila) insofar as it serves (supplies) the intellect.” Lobel, Between Mysticism and Philosophy, 219n3. Al-Ghazzālı̄ (1058–1111) uses the metaphor of blindness to compare a person who is incapable of believing the veracity of prophecy to a blind person who does not understand what colour is. Ibn Ṭ ufayl (1105–1185) repeats this metaphor to describe a blind person who is gradually instructed about colour; when God grants him sight, he finds colour to be everything he had imagined, but now he can see colour with clarity and joy. Lobel, Between Mysticism and Philosophy, 105–106. 69  Al-Fārābı̄, al-Madı̄na al-fāḍila, in Lobel, Between Mysticism and Philosophy, 223n.29. 70  Rahman, Avicenna’s Psychology, 36. 71  Rahman, Avicenna’s Psychology, 37. 72  Halevi, Kuzari, 4:3.

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But there is a problem with this: even if the prophet “sees” the forms with his or her “inner eye,” how can he or she describe something they have never seen, like God? This refers back not only to the original question asked by the Khazar – “How do I identify someone as a particular individual who cannot even be referred to, but about whom inferences [of all sorts] have been drawn from His effects?” – but more specifically to the Ḥ aver’s refinement of that question – namely, “How can one refer to the spatial location of someone who has no spatial location and then believe what is being referred to is the First Cause?” Someone in possession of the “inner eye” can identify a divine being who can only be described through his actions or effects. But how can a person, even one possessed of the inner eye like the prophet, describe something ineffable and then claim that it is God? The Jewish sage acknowledges that “it is impossible for there to be anything like Him in the imagination except the form of the most exalted of men, from whom the order and hierarchical arrangement of other men proceeds according to levels, just as the hierarchical arrangement and order of the world derives from Him, exalted be He.”73 Human imagination can only draw from what it knows in creating likenesses, and in order to describe the most exalted divine being, human imagination must draw an analogy with the most exalted human being it knows, which is a king. When a prophet “sees” God’s “spatial location,” as Ezekiel did when describing God’s chariot (Ez. 10:15), then, says the sage, “all of this took place within the imagination, outside the place of prophecy.”74 This is problematic because if prophecy, as stated above, is the perfect congruence of reason and imagination – reason to tap into the forms and imagination to describe them – then how can any prophecy or perception of divine things occur “outside the place of prophecy?” And where is this place that is “within the imagination” but not in the place of prophecy? Islamic tradition locates two types of prophetic revelation: ilhām and waḥy. Ilhām occurs to the individual who has prepared and purified his or her heart in order to receive revelation. Unlike ‘ilm ‘aqlı̄, or rational knowledge, ilhām cannot be taught or rationally deduced; it merely occurs suddenly and unexpectedly.75 In Avicenna, this type of prophecy occurs effortlessly, however, only to one whose superior intellectual capacity is  Halevi, Kuzari, 4:3.  Halevi, Kuzari, 4:3. 75  “Ilhām,” Encyclopedia of Islam, s.v., “Ilhām”. 73 74

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intuitive rather than learned.76 Waḥy is traditionally understood as a prophetic message, conveyed by an angel, which must be communicated to humankind. Avicenna views this as a lesser form of prophecy, in which the compositive imagination of a person of lower intellectual capacity gains knowledge of future events (through the active intellect) and is able to convey these thoughts in the form of figurative images.77 Halevi does not distinguish between these two types of prophecy, as does Avicenna; nor does he rank human intellect like Alfārābi. Instead, to answer the problem of prophecy occurring “within the imagination” but “outside the place of prophecy,” Halevi draws upon Jewish tradition. A prophet who describes God’s spatial location draws upon “direct experience, through sight.” What direct experience does any person have with God’s spatial location? Halevi does not give a satisfying explanation to answer this problem, except to say that the prophet draws a parallel between God’s spatial location and the experience of the Jews wandering the Sinai desert after they left Egypt. Contrary to the answer given by the philosophers, who posit that the First Cause can only be apprehended through contemplating the divine, the sage says, “These things are not apprehended by reasoning.”78 In an answer that seems to exclude anyone not Jewish from becoming a prophet, the sage responds that a prophet can analogically describe God’s spatial location because, according to Jewish tradition, all Jewish souls were present when God revealed Himself at Sinai. This is why all Jewish prophets are “in agreement” about these forms, because all of them, no matter when or where they actually lived, experienced God’s revelation as souls at Sinai. As we see in this chapter, Halevi corresponds to Arabic Aristotelian philosophy up to a point. When this philosophy diverges from or becomes problematic for Jewish tradition, he favours an answer that adheres to his religious tradition. 76  In Alfārābı̄, prophetic reception is hierarchical: for the person of lower intellectual capacity, it enters the person’s imaginative faculty and allows him or her to foretell the future or to create a descriptive figuration of rational truths. For the person of a highly developed intellect, this revelation permits the person to undergo the same experience as the person of less developed intellect; however, this person’s human intellect conjoins with the active intellect, producing a direct intrinsic understanding of theoretical truths, unmediated by a reliance on figurative representation. Davidson, Alfarabi, Avicenna, and Averroes, 116. For Alfārābı̄ and Avicenna on prophecy, see Davidson, Alfarabi, Avicenna, and Averroes, 116–23, 185–86; McGinnis, Avicenna, 147–48. 77  “Ilhām,” Encyclopedia of Islam. 78  Halevi, Kuzari, 4:3.

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Kuzari 4:17 – “Savouring, Not Reasoning” In a forthright argument against philosophy, Halevi continues his explanation that only direct experience, as opposed to reason, can bring one in contact with the divine. Abraham, living amongst idol worshippers, came to the conclusion that there is one God and that the multiple divinities represented by idols are false. How did Abraham, alone amongst polytheists, come to this realization? “All that he experienced with respect to the divine order he experienced by savouring, not reasoning.”79 Abraham rejected his “earlier syllogistic arguments”80 in favour of direct experience, or “tasting.” God “ordered him to abstain from his scientific studies based on reasoning” and told him to experience the divine through sense perception. He told Abraham to “take upon himself the duty of obeying the One he had experienced by tasting, just as it says, ‘Taste and see how good God is (Ps. 34:9).’”81 If there is a choice between knowing God through syllogistic reasoning and philosophical arguments or through direct sensory experience, Halevi comes down on the side of experience. Abraham rejected philosophy (although there is no source to demonstrate that Abraham actually engaged in syllogistic reasoning and philosophy) and discovered God through experience, by tasting and seeing, using his senses. This kind of “vision” accepts tradition “on faith,”82 rather than through empirical demonstration. For Halevi, experience is a higher level of “knowing” than reasoning. Knowledge that comes through non-rational, sensory experience is truer than knowledge that comes through syllogistic reasoning.

Kuzari 5:12 – The Internal Senses In Kuzari 5:12, the sage reiterates the workings of the internal senses, as part of a lengthy discursus on human psychology according to (Arabic Aristotelian) philosophers. He lists the faculties that comprise the internal 79  Halevi, Kuzari, 4:17. In the Judeo-Arabic, “savouring, not reasoning” is: ‫דוקא לא קיאסא‬/ dhawq la qiyāsan. In Sufism, dhawq refers to an experiential type of knowledge that contrasts with theoretical knowledge. Al-Ghazzālı̄ writes of attaining a level of knowledge when he studied with the Sufis that was “attainable…not by oral instruction and study, but by taste (dhawq) and [actually walking] the mystical path.” Ibn Ṭufayl also describes the two stages of his spiritual journey as comprising “study and theory…and now…the taste (dhawq) that comes in witness.” Lobel, Between Mysticism and Philosophy, 95–96. 80  Judeo-Arabic: ‫אלקדימד קיאסאתא‬. Halevi, Kuzari, 4:17. 81  Halevi, Kuzari, 4:17. 82  Halevi, Kuzari, 4:17.

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senses: (1) The internal sense (the common sense) preserves “the forms of sensible objects,” which are perceived through experience. (2) The faculty of retention remembers these representations. (3) Next is the “imaginative faculty through which what has been erased from memory may be retrieved.” (4) The estimative faculty verifies “what is sound and what is faulty in anything that the imagination contrives, so that it may relay it to the memory.” (5) The final faculty is the “motive faculty,” which operates as a kind of instinct, allowing a being to attain what it needs and flee from what endangers it. All animal faculties are either perceptual or motive. The motive faculty acts by desiring: when it seeks out something agreeable, it is called the appetitive faculty, and when it tries to chase away something disagreeable, it is “the spirited one.” The perceptual faculty consists of the external and the internal senses. The most an animal can attain is the motive faculty acting at the command of the estimative faculty with help from the imaginative faculty,83 in order to help it move away from what is dangerous and towards what is safe and desired. In human beings, who are rational animals, this motive faculty moves them towards improving their rational faculties, allowing them to be practical and accomplish what they set out to do. The five senses84 are known [and their perceptual objects are also known]. Through their mediating role, shape, number, magnitude, movement and rest are also perceived. The existence of the common sense becomes clear from our judgment about honey, for example, when we have seen that it is sweet. This is the case only because we have a faculty common to the five senses. This is the representational faculty, which functions during both wakefulness and sleep. Next comes a faculty which combines the representations that have come together within the common sense and also distinguishes between them. It brings about differences of opinion concerning them without the forms even vanishing from the common [sense]. This is the imaginative [faculty], which is sometimes correct and sometimes misleading. As for the representational [faculty], it is always correct. Next comes the estimative faculty. It is a faculty of [immediate, instinctive] judgment, which determines that something ought to be sought after and that something else ought to be avoided. In both the representational faculty and the imaginative faculty, however, there is no judging and no deciding, but rather representation alone. Next comes the retentive faculty, which recollects  This describes wahmiyya as outlined by Avicenna.  Otherwise known as the internal senses.

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[certain] notions of what the senses have perceived; for example, that the wolf is hostile and the child is lovable. Accordingly, loving and harming, assenting and denying pertain to the estimative faculty. As for the retentive faculty, which recollects, it preserves what the estimative [faculty] has declared to be true. Now when the estimative faculty employs the imaginative faculty, it is called “imaginative.” But when the rational faculty employs it, it is called “cogitative.”85

Notwithstanding that Halevi seems to have mixed up his faculties, why does he feel the need to reiterate the five internal senses here in Book 5? What, if anything, does the sage add to what he mentioned before in 3:5? Is “movement” the same thing as “volition” there? These questions remain unanswered. Judah Halevi, in Kuzari, duplicates Avicenna’s psychology, albeit confusing some of the internal senses, their names and functions. While he presents the philosophical formula of how sense perception is a basis from which the rational soul can derive knowledge, Halevi diverges from Arabic Aristotelian philosophy in his insistence that experience, rather than rational contemplation, brings about conjunction with the divine. He utilizes the model of the internal senses (even though he mixes up the retentive and estimative faculties) to bolster his claim about the supremacy of sense perception over rational thought. This view enables Halevi to square Jewish theology with philosophical thought, by bringing Sinaitic revelation, which was experienced by Israelites standing at the foot of Mount Sinai, into the paradigm of prophetic experience. Given the choice between Arabic Aristotelian philosophy and Jewish theology, Halevi takes the side of Jewish theology.

Maimonides: Imagination and Cognition Maimonides concurs with Halevi on the primacy of the Sinaitic experience as a sensory experience that the Israelites saw and heard.86 For both thinkers, seeing the flames and hearing the voices at Sinai turns the Israelites into living witnesses to an experience that is meant to be passed down from generation to generation. But whereas for Halevi this type of sense experience is the most direct and effective way of experiencing the divine,  Halevi, Kuzari, 5:12.  Maimonides, Hilchot Yesodei HaTorah, 8:1. Compare the Israelites’ experience idem with Moses’ experience as described by Maimonides in Guide II:33. 85 86

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Maimonides deems philosophical contemplation and intellectual understanding to be the foremost method of knowing the divine. Both thinkers utilize the Arabic Aristotelian paradigm of human psychology for their own purposes. Halevi tries to reconcile Arabic Aristotelian psychology with religious Jewish thought, but where it does not square, he rejects philosophical thought in favour of direct sensory experience as a means of attaining connection with the divine. Maimonides, too, uses Avicennian psychology as a starting point, but then departs from the model. He accepts the role of imagination in human cognition, but posits pure intellection, sans imagination, as the pinnacle of human thought, attainable only by persons of superior intellect in their quest to understand metaphysics. Alfārābı̄, in his Treatise on Poetry, writes that the faculty of imagination is not only a major source for the production of poetry but also for abstract thought. It mixes and rearranges images in order to produce imaginative figurations in poetry and other representative arts. When illuminated by intellect, the images taken from our sense perception and manipulated by the faculty of imagination are used for abstract knowledge.87 Avicenna adds to this program the workings of the five external and five internal senses. According to him, sense images enter via the five external senses, and, through the faculties that comprise the five internal senses, these images become either imaginative or cogitative thought. Both Alfārābı̄ and Avicenna take as given the role of the imagination and sensory images in “abstractive,” “cogitative” or rational thought. Maimonides, in contrast to Alfārābı̄ and Avicenna, postulates rational thought as possible without the scaffolding of imagination. Given the assumption that Maimonides is bound by Arabic Aristotelian psychology, with the centrality of imagination as a source for abstract thought, this bracketing of reason is problematic. How can Maimonides suggest that an embodied human mind, which is fed sensory images from the outside world, can think without accessing the imaginative faculty? How can a person of superior intellect, whose theoretical faculty is capable of acquiring and receiving intelligibles, or a person who can acquire knowledge intuitively, bypass imagination altogether? According to medieval psychology, as outlined by Alfārābı̄ and Avicenna, rational thought builds upon the sensory images that our external senses experience. These images are then used by the internal senses in a process 87  In its cognitive capacity, the imaginative faculty will use images taken from the image store to “define and compare, analyze and create, thereby arriving at perceptive and abstractive knowledge.” Matar, “Alfārābı̄ on Imagination,” 104.

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that leads towards either imaginative thought or pure intellection, ­depending on which faculties act upon the images received. Halevi and his Arabic Aristotelian predecessors recognize the need for imagination in thought. Our imagination accepts and processes input from the outside world; we can only understand what we experience through our senses. As Aristotle writes, “Without imagination, intellectual activity is impossible.”88 By contrast, in a move that completely blocks the faculty of imagination, and radically departs from Arabic Aristotelian psychology, Maimonides bypasses the necessary step of the external senses informing the internal senses with sensory, experiential information, and postulates a scenario whereby the human mind is capable of thinking thoughts that have no match or basis in external reality. Avicennian psychology can only take Maimonides so far; in his desire to posit pure rational thought, freed from sensory images, as the ideal epistemological exercise, he drops the Avicennian model. This is not the first time Maimonides has departed from Arabic Aristotelian philosophy to serve his own philosophical ends. This exegetical move has its parallel in the way Maimonides views metaphor. In Part 1 of the Guide of the Perplexed, Maimonides instructs us on the correct way to interpret biblical language. His lexicon is meant to disambiguate metaphors that can be understood several ways, potentially leading the misguided reader to erroneous and idolatrous interpretations. Maimonides wishes us to bypass the multiple meanings of these metaphors, particularly when they are used to describe God’s attributes, in favour of the “correct” way that he instructs us to use them. When thinking about the divine, Maimonides wishes us to sidestep metaphoric polyvalence in favour of univocity, imagination in favour of reason. However, Maimonides is not guilty of positing reason as the enemy of imagination. While Maimonides does advance the notion that the ideal goal in life is for people of superior intellect to cognize upon the divine using reason alone (and, in truth, only Moses attains this level of abstract cognition), it is the goal of this section to present a more nuanced approach to the reason/imagination dichotomy. Rather than view imagination as the opposite of reason, Maimonides recognizes the role imagination plays in human psychology, using Avicennian terminology to distinguish 88  Aristotle, De Memoria et Reminiscentia 1, 449b31. As translated in Harry A. Wolfson, “Maimonides on the Internal Senses,” in Studies in the History of Philosophy and Religion, vol. 1, eds. Isadore Twersky and G. H. Williams (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1973), 349.

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between imagination as it is acted upon by reason and imagination as it is acted upon by the senses. His divergence from Arabic Aristotelian psychology does not challenge the system or its modus operandi; rather, it uses the system and its tools in a manner that defies its own internal logic. This section proposes that Maimonides’ argument is untenable within the Avicennian psychological model whereby human thought – both in its figurative and its rational iterations  – is predicated by imagination. Maimonides wishes to present an ideal view of human psychology that arrives at pure intellection without recourse to images. However, since the human mind is embodied and relies on images – even if these images are presented in a metaphorical manner  – for thought, pure intellection is impossible. This is a contradiction within Maimonidean thought that is not addressed by scholarship. Without the imagination, there is no rational thought. Maimonides’ rationalist point of view is exemplified in the way he explains biblical events, such as the story of Adam and Eve in Genesis. In Guide II:30, Maimonides presents an account of creation from both scriptural and aggadic perspectives. In retelling the story of how Eve is led astray, Maimonides writes that Eve is led astray by Satan himself, sitting atop the serpent. Sarah Klein-Braslavy, in explaining Guide II:12, equates the evil inclination/Satan with imagination/dimyon/al-khayāl.89 James Diamond agrees with Maimonides that Adam engaged in pure intellectual apprehension in Eden, but after Adam sinned, he succumbed to what 89  Sarah Klein-Braslavy, Perush ha-Rambam la-sipurim ʻal Adam be-farashat Be-reshit: Peraḳim be-torat ha-Adam shel ha-Rambam (Jerusalem: Ha-hevra le-heker ha-mikra be-Yisrael, 1986), 212–13. However, in Maimonides’ source, he specifies that those who imagine angels as embodied beings are following their evil inclination. The distinction between evil inclination and imagination is subtle, but makes all the difference in how we construe Maimonides’ attitude towards the imagination. Davidson, paraphrasing Klein-Braslavy’s interpretation of this aggadah, writes, “The most plausible interpretation of what [Maimonides] is suggesting is that Satan sitting astride the serpent represents the human imaginative faculty, which sits astride the soul’s faculties of sense perception, and the temptation of Eve, in its aggadic version, is an allegorical depiction of man’s psychological and moral condition: The imaginative faculty of the soul tempts the soul’s entire nonintellectual side, and if it succeeds in its blandishments, the nonintellectual side can seduce the intellect and deflect it from pursuing its natural goal.” Davidson’s use of the verbs “tempts,” “seduce” and “deflect” to describe the actions of the imaginative faculty implies a faculty that acts upon human rationality; like Satan, it entices reason and intellect in a manner that is difficult to withstand. Herbert A. Davidson, Moses Maimonides: The Man and His Works (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 346.

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Diamond describes as the “lure of the imagination,” again using the language of enticement.90 Imagination is the domain of the “masses,” writes Diamond, which is why rulers and judges use their imagination to come up with figurative language and rhetoric when they need to communicate with the common people, who are “incapable of digesting anything else.”91 As well, the Torah needs to use images, or “human language,” to convey its message because the masses are incapable of comprehending abstract ideas without images. “This is the rationale for the highly imaginative framework by which the Torah is communicable to the masses,” Diamond suggests.92 The coming section will demonstrate that this negative view of human imagination/sense perception is based on a misreading of Maimonides.93 The Judeo-Arabic terms that Maimonides uses to express the imagination will be analyzed in order to demonstrate that he understands human psychology in Arabic Aristotelian terms, and, within his own work, endeavours to differentiate between imagination that is a necessary component of reason and fallacious imagination, which is indeed a result of sense perception gone awry. Chapter 4 will expand this discussion by demonstrating that imprecise translation of Maimonides’ concept of the imagination has led to a view that imagination has a deleterious effect upon human intellect.94 90  James A.  Diamond, Maimonides and the Hermeneutic of Concealment: Deciphering Scripture and Midrash in The Guide of the Perplexed (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002), 74. Specifically, Diamond describes the “sons of Elohim” of Genesis as “those who deviate from the rational faculty and become disciples of the imaginative.” It is only within the prophet’s mind that reason and imagination “operate in tandem,” and this amalgamation calls forth the prophet to lead the people and to instruct them. In the ensuing pages of his book, Diamond devises a graph that posits intellect in opposition to the imagination. Diamond, Maimonides and the Hermeneutic of Concealment, 75–76. 91  Diamond, Maimonides and the Hermeneutic of Concealment, 74. 92  Diamond, Maimonides and the Hermeneutic of Concealment, 181n42. 93  In Chap. 4 of this book, I will show that this negative view comes out of a failure of translators of the Guide to fully render the nuances of Maimonides’ Judeo-Arabic text. 94  Here I am not arguing against the body/intellect or reason/passion dichotomy, which has a long history in philosophical thought. See Mark Johnson, The Body in the Mind: The Bodily Basis of Meaning, Imagination, and Reason (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 140. Rather, my argument takes issue with the oversimplification of the term imagination in Maimonides’ translators and interpreters. Part of the problem lies with the lack of synonyms for the concept of imagination in both Hebrew and English; part lies with the interpreters’ generalization of the particularities of imagination, as understood by the Arabic Aristotelians. This flattening of the term omits the full nuances of human psychology as understood by Andalusı̄ thinkers like Maimonides and, as I have shown above, Judah Halevi

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In the Guide, Maimonides does not give a detailed summary of Avicennian psychology in the same manner as Halevi; nor does he talk about the internal senses, either within human consciousness or within dreams, as Ibn Ezra does. In true Maimonidean style, he does not acknowledge any of his sources when he alludes to aspects of human psychology.95 However, it is clear from his statements about the senses and imagination that he is familiar with, and operating within, the Avicennian paradigm.96 Already in Guide I:2, we see Maimonides positing intellect in opposition to imagination, and according to him, this bifurcation came about the moment that Adam disobeyed God’s injunction and ate from the fruit of the forbidden tree. It seems, from the “clear sense of the biblical text” that man was created without intellect, the “noblest of characteristics existing in us,” which rendered him incapable of distinguishing good from evil.97 How could it be that as punishment for disobeying God’s commandment not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, man was endowed with the highest quality endowed to human beings – namely, the intellect? If you think this way, writes Maimonides, you are making a rash and erroneous assumption, the kind of conjecture that a person might arrive at while glancing “through a historical work or a piece of poetry.”98 God endowed Adam with intellect before he disobeyed, not afterwards, and this before him. As a result, subsequent interpreters of Maimonidean thought took up this oversimplification of imagination, dichotomized human psychology and posited reason and imagination against each other, with imagination – specifically sense perception – as a dangerous seducer ready to overwhelm intellectual thought within the psyche. This issue will be the primary focus of the next chapter. 95  Sarah Stroumsa discusses Maimonides’ transmission of the ideas of his predecessors despite the apparent lack of attribution in Maimonides in His World: Portrait of a Mediterranean Thinker (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009), 11ff. 96  For a summary of Maimonides on the internal senses, see Wolfson, Studies in the History of Philosophy and Religion, 1:291–92. Wolfson concludes that Maimonides uses the general term imagination to cover all aspects of the internal senses. 97  Maimonides, Guide, I:2. 98  For Maimonides’ attitude towards poetry, see James Monroe, “Maimonides on the Mozarabic Lyric: A Note on the Muwassaha,” La Coronica 17, no. 2 (1988–89): 18–32; Angel Sáenz-Badillos, “Maimonides y la poesia,” in Sobre La Vida y Obra de Maimonides, ed. Jesús Peláez del Rosal, 483–495. (Córdoba: Ediciones el Almendro, 1991) 483–95; Hayyim Schirmann, “Maimonides and Hebrew Poetry” [Hebrew] Moznayim 3 (1935): 433–36; Yosef Tobi, Between Hebrew and Arabic Poetry: Studies in Spanish Medieval Poetry (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 422–66; Yosef Yahalom, “Maimonides and Hebrew Poetry” [Hebrew], Pe’amim 81 (1999): 4–14.

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is the meaning of Adam having been created in God’s likeness. Prelapsarian man had the intellectual capacity to distinguish between truth and falsehood; postlapsarian man, after he acquired the ability to tell good from evil, gained the sense of moral discernment. Knowledge of truth and falsehood is a facet of the intellectual apprehension that was endowed to man from God; the ability to tell good from evil is a facet of natural law, or “things generally accepted as known.”99 Before Adam disobeyed, “he had no faculty that was engaged in any way in the consideration of generally accepted things, and he did not apprehend them.” Things that today we would deem objectionable, such as uncovering one’s genitals, did not even occur to him as abhorrent or as questionable. “However, when he disobeyed and inclined towards his desires of the imagination [al-khayāliyya] and the pleasures of his corporeal senses [al-ḥiss al-jismāniyya]– inasmuch as it is said: ‘that the tree was good for food and that it was a delight to the eyes’ – he was punished by being deprived of that intellectual apprehension.”100 Maimonides does not posit that imagination, in and of itself, is negative, because human psychology is as intrinsic to being human as are the parts of the human body, including human genitalia. In a purely intellectual state, when a human being is engaged in intellectual apprehension like Adam before he ate from the forbidden fruit, these aspects of the human condition exist but are neither bad nor good. They just are. However, people, being human, can be swayed by sense impressions to the detriment of intellect. The tree appeared as a “delight to the eyes” and its fruit seemed to be tasty and delicious, so Adam succumbed to “the desires of the imagination and the pleasures of the corporeal senses.” Adam allowed himself to be overcome by the sensuous aspects of the tree and its fruit – how it looked and tasted – and disobeyed God’s commandment not to eat from it. A question arises: if Adam in his purely intellectual prelapsarian state was created with physical senses, precisely how did they lead him astray? How was he able to avoid thinking about his sexual organs (something that often leads people astray) and yet fell hard for a fruit on a tree within a beautiful garden full of fruit trees? In other words, when faced with multiple aspects of life that appeal to the imagination and the five external senses, and given that Adam was engaged in purely intellectual thought, 99  Mefursamot/al-mashhūrāt/in Greek endoxa (value judgments). See Pines’ translation of the Guide (24n7). 100  Guide, I:2. The biblical verse is from Gen. 3:6.

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how did he come to be led astray by “desires” and “pleasures?” Is imagination a separate faculty, or is it a part of human perception?101 If intellect and imagination are bifurcated and completely separate aspects of human psychology, can one influence the other? Unless intellect is already functioning within the operating system of imagination and the external senses, it cannot be led astray by imagination and the external senses! There was no change in the human body or imagination after the sin in Eden. Maimonides himself acknowledges this. Even though Scripture says that Adam and Eve’s eyes were “opened,” neither of them undergo any physical change: “For what was seen previously was exactly that which was seen afterwards.”102 The only change is qualitative and “refers only to uncovering mental vision and in no respect is applied to the circumstance that the sense of sight has been newly acquired … Rather he entered upon another state in which he considered as bad things that he had not seen in that light before.”103 The transformation is a moral one, wherein one can distinguish between good and bad; judgment, or the ability to discriminate between truth and falsehood, is a function of reason.104 It seems, then, that the artificial bifurcation of intellect and imagination that is attributed to Maimonides by his interpreters is difficult to comprehend. Adam was a being created with intellect and imagination. Adam in the Garden of Eden “had been given license to eat good things and to enjoy ease and tranquility”  – this is impossible without exercising one’s external senses. “When, however, as we have said, he became greedy, followed his pleasure and his imaginings [khayāl] … God reduced him, with respect to his food and most of his circumstances, to the level of the beast.”105 On a mundane level, Adam was now forced to toil for his food. On an intellectual level, Adam was reduced to follow his communal senses and, as described by Aristotle, to follow only his perceptions, which is “false 101  Hamlyn speaks for other critics of Aristotle’s treatment of imagination when he writes that “imagination has an unsatisfactory halfway status between perception and the intellect and its exact position is never made clear.” Quoted in Wedin, Mind and Imagination, 45. 102  Guide, I:23. 103  Guide, I:23. 104  Whether or not imagination is a faculty independent of judgment is the subject of debate. Aristotle in De Anima iii 3, 428a1–4, writes, “If then imagination is that in virtue of which we say an image comes about in us and is not spoken of metaphorically, is it in one of those a faculty or disposition, in virtue of which we discriminate and are true and false? Such are perception, belief, knowledge and mind.” On this issue, see Kemal, Philosophical Poetics, 45; Wedin, Mind and Imagination, 47. 105  Maimonides, Guide, I:2.

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imagination.” Or, as described by Avicenna, his compositive i­magination as controlled by the estimative faculty, yields khayāl, imaginative thought. Imagination seems to be posited as the opposite of intellect, but according to the Arabic Aristotelian interpreters, the latter does not operate exclusively without the aid of the former. “Although imagination works at [a] pre-reflective and emotional level, it is still ratiocinative rather than irrational,” writes Selim Kemal.106 Imagination is a cognitive faculty, and the intellect needs to perceive using images received by the internal senses. Maimonides seems to recognize this problem. In Guide I:28, he writes, “The purpose of everyone endowed with intellect should be wholly directed to rejecting corporeality with respect to God, may He be exalted, and to considering all these apprehensions as intellectual, not sensory. Understand this and reflect on this.”107 Several pages later, Maimonides concedes that human intellect has limitations. Certain things are within its power to apprehend, while other things are out of the realm of human understanding. Even amongst members of the human species, the capacity to grasp certain concepts varies. Just as some people are stronger and thus better able to carry heavy weights than others, some people have greater intellectual capacity and can understand notions using their own speculation, while others cannot even grasp the notion no matter how hard they try. “This difference in capacity is likewise not infinite, for man’s intellect indubitably has a limit at which it stops. There are therefore things regarding which it has become clear to man that it is impossible to apprehend them.”108 Some things that are “impossible to apprehend,” such as the number of stars in the heavens and species of plants and animals on earth, in Maimonides’ opinion do not yield a great thirst for knowledge. Others “are things for the apprehension of which man will find that he has a great longing. The sway of the intellect endeavouring to seek for, and to investigate, their true reality exists at every time and in every group of men engaged in speculation.”109 Given that the longing to apprehend divine matters is something that human beings long to know but cannot because of their intellectual limitations, there is a lot of disagreement and ­perplexity about this “true reality.”110 Since we are embod Kemal, Philosophical Poetics, 45.  Maimonides, Guide, I:28. 108  Maimonides, Guide, I:31. 109  Maimonides, Guide, I:31. 110  Maimonides, Guide, I:31. Maimonides opines that there is less disagreement about natural science and none about mathematics, presumably because these subjects can be “known” and fully understood by human intellects. 106 107

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ied human beings, our intellects are limited and we can only apprehend true realities in varying degrees depending upon our intellectual capacities. For Maimonides, then, the qualitative difference is not between reason and imagination but between “imagination” and “false imagining.” Maimonides explains the difference between the two in Chapters 46 and 49 of the first part of the Guide. To facilitate belief in the existence of God in Tanakh, the average person needs to imagine that he is corporeal. And in order to believe that he is living, the average person needs to imagine that he is a God that acts.111 This is because the majority of people need to believe that something has a body in order to believe that it is true, for anything without a body cannot be said to exist. From the point of view of “imagination,”112 writes Maimonides, only an embodied thing can be represented within the human mind.113 We apprehend through the external senses, through our sense of hearing and sight. We communicate ideas to one another through speech, spoken by one person and heard by another. That is why, when speaking about abstract ideas communicated to us by God, we describe him as speaking to the prophets, and when describing God’s knowledge of human activities, he is described as hearing and seeing. And since most people cannot understand any action that is not carried out using parts of one’s body, God is described as performing actions using body parts such as the finger or the arm.114 For this reason, God has external senses and bodily parts “figuratively ascribed” (hush-alu lo/ isti‘ārāt li)115 to him in Scripture. According to Maimonides, proper apprehension of the divine means that one can imagine a being that is “pure of matter and absolutely devoid of corporeality.” It is an exercise of one’s imagination that can only take  “That He is capable of motion.” Guide, I:46.  Be-dimyono/al-takhayyul. Maimonides, Moreh ha-nebukhim: Dalālat al-ḥā‘irı̄n, trans. Joseph Kafiḥ (Jerusalem: Mosad ha-rav Kook, 1972), 100. 113  This is in accordance with the notion that imagination is divided into two faculties: retentive (which preserves images received from the external senses) and compositive (which combines these images and presents them to the intellect). However, can imagination create an image of something it has never seen? And what is represented in imagination if not disembodied ideas? And is a disembodied thing, from the point of view of imagination, always nonexistent? From the point of view of a human being, the only place that something without a body can exist is in the imagination – is this not true? 114  As in Exodus 3:20; 31:18. Maimonides, Guide, I:46. 115  Maimonides, Guide, I:46. Similarly, in Kuzari 4:3, Halevi writes that we need images and parables in order to understand divine matters because these things cannot be understood using our intellect alone. 111 112

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place after much “strenuous training.”116 However, most people do not differentiate between cognition (muskal/al-‘aql) and imagination (dimyon/al-mutakhayyila).117 This is very difficult to understand. Aristotle says that imagination feeds the intellect: “Without imagination intellectual activity is impossible” and “to the thinking soul images serve as present sensations.”118 In Avicenna’s model of human psychology, the imagination works by taking up sense information from the external senses, preserving these images in the retentive imagination, then combining these images in the compositive imagination and subsequently presenting them to the intellect. When the compositive imagination is illuminated by reason, this leads to cognition (al-mufakkira).119 Even if Maimonides does not present a schemata of human psychology, and essentially collapses all the internal senses into three internal faculties120 – imagination, cogitation and understanding121 – how can anyone “imagine” a being purely devoid of corporeality or any sensory material? What kind of intellectual leap must one make to cogitate on the divine in a purely incorporeal manner? Maimonides concedes that this is “particularly difficult for one who does not differentiate between that which is cognized by the intellect and that which is imagined and who tends mostly toward imaginative apprehension alone. For such a one everything that is imagined exists or can exist, whereas that which does not enter within the net of imagination is in his opinion non-existent and  Guide I:49, Pines 109.  Hebrew and Arabic from Moses Maimonides, Moreh ha-nevukhim: Dalālat al-ḥāʻirı̄n, trans. Joseph Kafiḥ (Jerusalem: Mosad ha-rav Kook), 111. 118  De Memoria et Reminiscentia 1, 449b31 and De Anima iii 7, 431a14–15. Quoted in Wolfson, “The Internal Senses,” 349. 119  Black, “Imagination and Estimation,” 60. Contrast this with Wolfson’s contention that Maimonides agrees with Averroes, who, unlike Avicenna, understood “fikr … in the sense of human thinking and not in the sense of compositive human imagination.” Wolfson, “The Internal Senses,” 289. 120  Wolfson, “The Internal Senses,” 291–92. 121  (a) Ra’ayon or dimyon/takhayyul, (b) histaqlut/tafakkur, and (c) hitbonennut/tafahhum. Wolfson writes that the first two of these terms correspond to the Greek concepts of: phantasia or imagination, cogitation, and intelligentia or intellectus. Maimonides’ third term is conventionally listed as “memory” rather than “understanding.” Wolfson contends that Maimonides collapses Avicenna’s five internal senses into the above three, so that the common senses convey sense perception to the imagination, the imagination conveys images to the intellect, which then transforms these notions into apprehension. Harry A. Wolfson, “Maimonides on the Internal Senses,” in Studies in the History of Philosophy and Religion, vol. 1 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1973–1977), 344–50. 116 117

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incapable of existing.”122 How can pure apprehension be attained by an embodied human being whose internal senses need to be fed images in order to apprehend in the first place? How can one imagine the unimaginable? This is not a question of proving the existence of a divine being, or the problem of describing such a being using images, metaphors and human language.123 Rather, this is a challenge as to whether any human being, given her or his human psychology as outlined by the Arabic Aristotelians, is at all capable of apprehending anything divine in a purely intellectual manner. Is such a thing possible? God, according to the philosophers as explained by Maimonides in Guide I:68, is “the intellect as well as the intellectually cognizing form.” When a human being, using his or her active intellect, cognizes the form of an object, he or she, as a cognizing subject, unites with the actual intellect. The cognizing subject and the object cognized become one: the “intellect is identical with the apprehension of what has been intellectually cognized.” While God is constantly engaged in cognizing himself – Thought thinking Itself – human beings can only achieve this union between human intellect and active intellect occasionally. “We, however, pass intellectually from potentiality to actuality only from time to time.”124 Unlike God, we human beings can sporadically cognize the Active Intellect, if at all, because of our impediments – namely, our material and changing nature, and our inability to constantly concentrate on the divine without distraction. Maimonides in this chapter does not acknowledge that the human mind needs to use imagination, in any form, in order to assist it in cogitating the divine. On the contrary, he warns his student not to “confuse intellectual representation with imagination and with the reception of an image of a sense object by the imaginative faculty, as this Treatise has been composed only for the benefit of those who have philosophized and have acquired knowledge of what has become clear with reference to the soul and all its faculties.”125 Intellectual representation is here posited by Maimonides as the absence of imagination. In Guide I:73, Maimonides presents the Tenth Premise of the Mutakallimun, in which the rational debaters assert that anything that can be pictured by human imagination is possible, whereas anything that  As quoted in Wolfson, “Maimonides on the Internal Senses,” 344–50.  This issue was dealt with in Chap. 2. 124  Maimonides, Guide, I:68. 125  Maimonides, Guide, I:68. 122 123

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c­ annot be imagined by human imagination cannot exist.126 To this Premise, Maimonides adds an excursus about imagination. Imagination (al-khayāl) exists in most living beings and has the same function in human beings and other living beings. The imagination can only apprehend what is perceived by the senses, because it is “not the act of the intellect but rather its contrary.”127 It can combine sensory, material images to create a picture of something that is not true, such as a human body with a horse’s head and wings. “This is what is called a thing invented and false, for nothing existent corresponds to it at all.”128 The intellect, on the other hand, is capable of absolute abstractions because it does not use material images grounded in sense perception as its launching point. The intellect, according to Maimonides, is able to perceive “true reality” in its purest, most abstract form. Thus, the intellect is uniquely positioned to perceive divine concepts, which cannot be seen, heard or perceived in any way by the senses. Thus Maimonides dismisses the kalamic assertion that anything that can be imagined must be true and what cannot be imagined must not be true. Maimonides disputes this claim because he wishes to prove that God and divine notions, which he asserts cannot be imagined, are true. To save divine concepts from the realm of false imaginings, like humans with horses’ heads and wings, Maimonides needs to remove divine apprehension from the faculty of imagination and position it entirely within the intellect. Only what can be perceived by pure intellect is “true reality.” The intellect, for Maimonides, has no grounding in imagination, nor does it use images to think. It does not receive images from the external senses, as we saw in the Avicennian model, nor does it combine these images as the compositive imagination does. How, then, does the intellect work according to Maimonides? “The intellect takes complex [composite] things apart [i.e., analyzes], makes its parts distinct, abstracts them and represents them as they truly are and through their causes.”129 Maimonides does not mention the existence of  Maimonides, Guide, I:73.  Maimonides, Guide, I:73. 128  Maimonides, Guide, I:73. 129  Aryeh L. Motzkin writes that Maimonides follows Aristotle’s Organon in his treatment of imagination, poetry and rhetoric in Part One of the Guide; Aristotle’s physical treatises, including De Anima in Part Two; and his Metaphysics and Politics in Part Three. In schematizing the Guide around the Aristotelian corpus, Motzkin downplays the philosophical contributions of the Arabic Aristotelians to medieval Jewish philosophy and the way in which 126 127

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the compositive imagination, which is capable of manipulating the images received and forming new images. These images can take the form of a fallacious creature like a human with a horse’s head if the compositive imagination is under the control of the estimative faculty, but it can also take the form of cogitation, or thinking, when it is controlled by reason. Instead, Maimonides bifurcates imagination and intellect. Imagination is the absence of intellect, and intellect is the absence of imagination. Why does Maimonides distance himself from the Avicennian model of human psychology? He does this because he wants cogitation of the divine to be a purely intellectual exercise. He does not want to welcome any physical conceptualization of the divine. Although he has spent most of Book One of the Guide dealing with metaphoric language that describes God in Scripture, and instructs his student on the proper understanding of these metaphors, one of the goals of the Guide as a whole is to try to move his student away from relying on metaphoric language to describe the divine, and towards pure cognition of divine concepts. Metaphoric language, in his opinion, is an inferior method of apprehending the divine; although it is a necessary step for the masses that need to use their imagination, with all its attendant risks of false imagining, to perceive the divine. Better, in Maimonides’ opinion, to cognize God in a purely rational manner, without using sense images or the compositive imagination as a steppingstone. In Avicennian psychology, which builds on Aristotle, there can be no apprehension, whether it is figurative or intellectual, without imagination. Thought, perception and imagination are symbiotically intertwined. In Maimonidean psychology, reliance on images leads to fallacious imagining. Therefore, Maimonides posits a psychology in which the only way to apprehend the divine or “true reality” is through pure, abstract reasoning or rational speculation, totally divorced from images. The Mutakallimun believe that only that which can be imagined by human imagination can exist, and that which cannot be imagined cannot be said to exist in reality. Maimonides disagrees. The divine, which cannot be imagined or pictured in human imagination, does indeed exist: “Accordingly it has been demonstrated that something that the imagination cannot imagine or appreMaimonides engages with these ideas in the Guide. (For an opposing view, see Davidson, Alfarabi, Avicenna, and Averroes, 207–09.) Aryeh L.  Motzkin, “Maimonides and the Imagination,” in Philosophy and the Jewish Tradition: Lectures and Essays by Aryeh Leo Motzkin, ed. Yehuda Halper (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 38, 43–44.

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hend and that is impossible from its point of view, can exist. It has similarly been demonstrated that something the imagination considers as necessary is impossible – namely, that God, may He be exalted, should be a body or a force in a body. For according to the imagination, there are no existents except bodies or things in bodies.”130 Maimonides insists that even though rational speculation on divine concepts does not build upon images, the divine can be said to exist. And even if, under normal circumstances, something that has no images to refer back to cannot be said to exist, this does not apply to God. Since the faculty of imagination cannot imagine divine concepts, these ideas can only be grasped by the intellect. That is why, for Maimonides, the intellect is not only the opposite but also the absence of the imagination. Is there a precedent for Maimonides’ imagination-less thinking? For Aristotle, thought is not possible without images: “That which can think, therefore, thinks the form in images.”131 Each level of human intelligence, according to the Aristotelian commentator Themistius, serves as scaffolding for the level above it, while the level above serves as a telos for the level below: “The several faculties of the soul, [Themistius] writes, make up a hierarchy in which each level has the status of ‘matter’ in respect to the level above it, while the level above is the lower level’s ‘form.’ The faculty of ‘sense perception’ serves as matter for the imaginative faculty, the ‘imagination’ as matter for the ‘potential intellect,’ and the potential intellect as matter for the ‘active [intellect].’”132 The goal of human intellect is to move beyond potentiality towards actuality, to acquire knowledge so that it can see beyond the material and cognize the forms of things. Its ideal purpose is to cognize the most abstract, immaterial thing, the divine. How does it do this? How can a human mind, grounded in a human body, think purely abstract thoughts? The question that engaged Maimonides engaged his Arabic Aristotelian antecedents. Aristotle sketched out the relationship between thought, perception and imagination,133 but Arabic commentators – most notably Avicenna with his system of the five internal 130  Guide, I:73. Motzkin translates the passage thus: “Furthermore, it has been demonstrated that something which the imagination posits with certainty, namely, that God is a body or a force in a body, is impossible. In the imagination there exist only bodies or bodily things.” Motzkin, “Maimonides and the Imagination,” 38. 131  Aristotle, De Anima, iii 7, 431b2. 132  Davidson, Alfarabi, Avicenna, and Averroes, 27. 133  In his notes to De Anima III, Hamlyn describes Aristotle’s approach as “disjointed” (129), “problematic,” lacking cogency, and accuses him of exhibiting “little consistency”

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senses, summarized above, fill in the gaps.134 Maimonides uses this system as scaffolding because he appreciates the importance of the imagination in receiving, processing and conveying images and metaphors; however, because he recognizes that “false imaginings” can lead to improper descriptions of the divine, he completely rejects the vital role of the imagination in apprehending the divine with his call for pure intellection. Greek philosophy views pure apprehension of the divine as the human intellectual telos. This goal is taken up by the Arabic Aristotelian commentators, who devise a human psychology based upon Aristotle’s foundations in De Anima. Halevi and Maimonides operate within this system and are in agreement that connection with the divine is the ultimate goal to which the thinking human ought to aspire. Both Halevi and Maimonides try to fit this telos, together with its methodology as outlined by the Arabic Aristotelians, into their theological beliefs. When they are unable to do so, each Jewish thinker falls back on his own preferred method of attaining divine knowledge. Halevi advocates experiential knowledge, based on “tasting and seeing,” or personal involvement encompassing the experience of the senses. In his view, the best way for a human being to understand the divine is to experience it through the senses, whether in actuality, as at Sinai, or through learned tradition, or retold in parables and metaphors that spark the imagination. Halevi maintains the paradigm, and its goal, but privileges sensory experience over rational contemplation. On the other hand, Maimonides prefers pure intellectual apprehension, devoid of any sense-based, metaphor-contingent, experiential occurrence. Ideally, he wishes to bypass the external senses, the parables and the metaphors, and have human beings of superior intellect ratiocinate in a manner that does not involve their imagination. He uses the Arabic Aristotelian paradigm, which views the imagination as one interconnected yet vital aspect of human psychology, but rejects the role of imagination within human psychology when it does not fit in with his goal of pure, unadulterated, imageless cognition.

(131). Hamlyn’s critique of Aristotle is unhelpful, and demonstrates that he is a better translator than interpreter of Aristotle. 134  For Arabic commentators on Aristotle’s psychology, see Black, “Imagination and Estimation”; Harvey, The Inward Wits; Michelle Karnes, Imagination, Meditation, and Cognition in the Middle Ages (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011); Simon Kemp, Cognitive Psychology; Wolfson, “The Internal Senses,” in Studies in the History of Philosophy and Religion.

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Bibliography Aristotle. 1997. Aristotle’s Poetics. Translated and with a Commentary by George Whalley. Eds. John Baxter and Patrick Atherton. Montreal/Kingston: McGill-­ Queen’s University Press. Avicenna. 2009. De Anima: Being the Psychological Part of Kitāb al-Shifā’. Trans. Deborah L.  Black. From the Arabic text edited by Fazlur Rahman. London, 1959. Barnes, Jonathan, ed. 1984. The Complete Works of Aristotle: The Revised Oxford Translation. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Beare, J.I. 1906. Greek Theories of Elementary Cognition from Alcmaeon to Aristotle. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bearman, P.J., et al., eds. 2000. The Encyclopedia of Islam. Leiden: Brill. Black, Deborah L. 1993. Estimation (Wahm) in Avicenna: The Logical and Psychological Dimensions. Dialogue 32: 219–258. ———. 2000. Imagination and Estimation: Arabic Paradigms and Western Transformations. Topoi 19: 59–75. Brentano, Franz. 1977. The Psychology of Aristotle: In Particular His Doctrine of the Active Intellect. Ed. and Trans. Rolf George. Berkeley/Los Angeles: University of California Press. Bundy, M.W. 1927. The Theory of Imagination in Classical and Medieval Thought. Chicago: University of Illinois Press. Cantarino, Vincente. 1975. Arabic Poetics in the Golden Age: Selection of Texts Accompanied by a Preliminary Study. Leiden: E. J. Brill. Dahiyat, Ismail M. 1974. Avicenna’s Commentary on the Poetics of Aristotle: A Critical Study with an Annotated Translation of the Text. Leiden: E. J. Brill. Davidson, Herbert A. 1992. Alfarabi, Avicenna, and Averroes, on Intellect: Their Cosmologies, Theories of the Active Intellect and Theories of Human Intellect. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ———. 2005. Moses Maimonides: The Man and His Works. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Diamond, James. 2002. Maimonides and the Hermeneutics of Concealment: Deciphering Scripture and Midrash in the Guide of the Perplexed. Albany: State University of New York Press. Everson, Stephen. 1997. Aristotle on Perception. New York: Clarendon Press. Gutas, Dmitri. 2006a. Imagination and Transcendental Knowledge in Avicenna. In Arabic Theology, Arabic Philosophy: From the Many to the One: Essays in Celebration of Richard M.  Frank. Leuven/Paris: Uitgeverij Peeters en Departement Oosterse Studies. ———. 2006b. Intellect Without Limits: The Absence of Mysticism in Avicenna. In Intellect et imagination dans la Philosophie Médiéval/Intelecto e imaginaçâo na Filosofia Médiéval: Actes du Xte Congrès International de Philosophie

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Médiévale de la Société Internationale pour l’Étude de la Philosophie Médiévale (S.I.E.P.M.), Porto, du 26 au 31 août 2002 (Rencontres de philosophie médiévale, 11), eds. Maria Cândida Pacheco and José Francisco Meirinhos, vol. 1. Turnhout: Brepols Publishers. Halevi, Judah. 1970. Sefer ha-Kuzari: ha-makor ha-‘aravi ve-targum R.  Y. ibn Tibbon al-pi kitve yad u-defusim rishonim mahadurat mada’it al-yedei H. Hirshfeld, 1887. Leipzig: Jerusalem. ———. 1994. Sefer ha-Kuzari le-rabbi Yehuda ha-Levi. Translated and Annotated by Yehuda Even Shmuel. Tel Aviv: Dvir Publishing Company Limited. ———. Forthcoming. The Kuzari: The Book of Refutation and Proof on Behalf of the Despised Religion. Trans. Lawrence V. Berman and Barry S. Kogan. New Haven: Yale University Press. Harb, Laura. 2013. Poetic Marvels: Wonder and Aesthetic Experience in Medieval Arabic Literary Theory. Dissertation, New York University, New York. Harvey, E. Ruth. 1975. The Inward Wits: Psychological Theory in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. London: The Warburg Institute University of London. Hughes, Aaron W. 2004. The Texture of the Divine: Imagination in Medieval Islamic and Jewish Thought. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Johnson, Mark. 1987. The Body in the Mind: The Bodily Basis of Meaning, Imagination, and Reason. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Karnes, Michelle. 2011. Imagination, Meditation, and Cognition in the Middle Ages. Chicago/London: The University of Chicago Press. Kemal, Salim. 2003. The Philosophical Poetics of Alfarabi, Avicenna and Averroes: The Aristotelian Reception. London/New York: Routledge Curzon. Kemp, Simon. 1997. Cognitive Psychology in the Middle Ages. Westport: Greenwood Press. Klein-Braslavy, Sarah. 1978. Perush ha-Rambam le-sipur beriat ha-‘olam. Jerusalem: Ha-hevra le-heker ha-mikra be-Yisrael. Kogan, Barry S. 2003. Judah Halevi and His Use of Philosophy in the Kuzari. In Cambridge Companion to Medieval Jewish Philosophy, 111–135. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Krinis, Ehud. 2013. The Arabic Background of the Kuzari. Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy 21: 1–56. Lobel, Diana. 2000. Between Mysticism and Philosophy: Sufi Language of Religious Experience in Judah Ha-Levi’s Kuzari. Albany: State University of New York Press. Maimonides, Moses. 1963. The Guide of the Perplexed. Trans. Shlomo Pines. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. ———. 1972. Moreh ha-nevukhim: Dalālat al-ḥāʻirı̄n. Trans. Joseph Kafiḥ. Jerusalem: Mosad ha-rav Kook. Matar, Nabil. 1996. Alfaˉraˉbī on Imagination: With a Translation of His Treatise on Poetry. College Literature 23 (1): 100–110.

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McGinnis, Jon. 2010. Avicenna. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Monroe, James T. 1988. Maimonides on the Mozarabic Lyric: A Note on the Muwasshaha. La Coronica 17 (2): 18–32. Motzkin, Aryeh Leo. 2012. Philosophy and the Jewish Tradition: Lectures and Essays by Aryeh Leo Motzkin. Ed. Yehuda Halper. Leiden/Boston: Brill. Newman, Sara J.  2005. Aristotle and Style. Lewiston/Queenston: The Edwin Mellon Press. Nussbaum, Martha C., and Amelie O. Rorty, eds. 1992. Essays on Aristotle’s De Anima. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Rahman, Fazlur. 1952. Avicenna’s Psychology: An English Translation of Kitab al-­ Najat, Book II, Chapter VI, with Historico-Philosophical Notes and Textual Improvements on the Cairo Edition. London: Geoffrey Cumberlege: Oxford University Press. Sáenz-Badillos, Angel. 1991. Maimonides y la poesia. In Sobre La Vida y Obra de Maimonides, ed. Jesús Peláez del Rosal. Córdoba: Ediciones el Almendro. Scheindlin, Raymond P. 2008. The Song of the Distant Dove: Judah Halevi’s Pilgrimmage. New York: Oxford University Press. Schirmann, Hayyim. 1935. “Maimonides and Hebrew Poetry” [Hebrew]. Moznayim 3: 433–436. Schofield, Malcolm. 1978. Aristotle on the Imagination. In Aristotle on Mind and the Senses: Proceedings of the Seventh Symposium Aristotelicum, eds. G.E.R. Lloyd and G.E.L. Owen. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Shear, Adam. 2012. The Kuzari and the Shaping of Jewish Identity, 1167–1900. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Silman, Yochanan. 1995. Philosopher and Prophet: Judah Halevi, the Kuzari, and the Evolution of His Thought. Trans. Lenn J. Schramm. Albany: State University of New York Press. Stroumsa, Sarah. 2009. Maimonides in His World: Portrait of a Mediterranean Thinker. Paris/Oxford: Princeton University Press. Tobi, Yosef. 2010. Between Hebrew and Arabic Poetry: Studies in Spanish Medieval Hebrew Poetry. Leiden: Brill. Watson, Gerard. 1988. Phantasia in Classical Thought. Galway: Officina Typographica, Galway University Press. Wedin, Michael V. 1988. Mind and Imagination in Aristotle. New Haven/ London: Yale University Press. Wolfson, Harry Austryn. 1973–1977. Studies in the History of Philosophy and Religion. Eds. Isadore Twersky and George H. Williams. Cambridge/London: Harvard University Press. Wolfson, Elliot R. 1994. Through a Speculum that Shines: Vision and Imagination in Medieval Jewish Mysticism. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Yahalom, Joseph. 2009. Yehudah Halevi: Poetry and Pilgrimmage. Jerusalem: Hebrew University Magnes Press.

CHAPTER 4

Transmission

By reason and logic we die hourly, by imagination we live! —W. B. Yeats

The previous chapter discussed the Arabic Aristotelian concept of imagination, paying particular attention to the theories of Avicenna and Alfārābı̄. Select passages in Judah Halevi’s Kuzari and Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed: Part One were analyzed in order to tease out these Jewish thinkers’ views about imagination and its functions. The chapter concluded that imagination plays different, yet vital, roles in the psychology of Halevi and Maimonides. Yet despite the important role of imagination in cognition, few scholars have paid adequate attention to Maimonides’ psychology or how Maimonides incorporates imagination into his system of cognition.1 Furthermore, academic scholarship has tended to oversimplify the term “imagination,” resulting in a broad definition that fails to include the nuances found in the Judeo-Arabic. Part of the problem lies in the lack of appropriate synonyms in the languages of translation, and part of the 1  See Alfred Ivry, “Maimonides’ Psychology,” in Maimonides and His Heritage, eds. Idit Dobbs-Weinstein, Lenn E.  Goodman, James Allen Grady (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2009); Josef Stern, The Matter and Form of Maimonides’ Guide (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013).

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problem lies in the interpreters’ generalization of the particularities of imagination as it was understood by Arabic Aristotelians. At issue is the text(s) used by Maimonides’ interpreters: in some cases they are looking at the Judeo-Arabic original and in others they are reading a translation or even a translation of a translation. This chapter will return to passages in the original text in order to examine the exact Judeo-Arabic terms used by Maimonides to describe imagination in Part One of the Guide. It will determine whether the terms, viewed in their language of origin, lend themselves to a more nuanced definition of imagination. Through close investigation, this study will consider whether Maimonides’ own implementation of these terms leads to an evolution of his stance on imagination over the course of Part One of the Guide. Part of the issue of interpretation lies with translation, or the accretion of translations used by Maimonides’ interpreters. Both medieval and modern translation theory will be brought in to illuminate these issues. Medieval translations of Samuel Ibn Tibbon, Judah Alḥarizi and Shem Tov Ibn Falaquera will be looked at through the lens of these theories to determine whether their Hebrew translations capture the nuances expressed by the Judeo-Arabic original. Finally, the modern translations (also from the original Judeo-Arabic) of Michael Friedländer, Salomon Munk, and Shlomo Pines will be examined in order to determine whether their renditions of the Guide accurately express the notion of imagination presented by Maimonides. Translation, like its Latin cognate transferre, involves the transferring of words and their meaning from one language to another. Cicero, when speaking about the concept of translation, uses “the same verb for the activity of translation and the creation of metaphors,” thus establishing “the link in language between translating and writing.”2 To translate a text requires not only adapting words from one language into another language, but the creative conveyance, or transfer, of ideas from language to language. The transference of language in translation is akin to the transference of images in metaphor. In the Middle Ages, the link between translation and metaphor becomes even stronger. In medieval Latin, translatio designates a transfer of meaning; a likeness between a thing and

2  “To translate” entry in Barbara Cassin, Emily Apter and Jacques Lezra, eds., Translation/ Transnation: Dictionary of Untranslatables: A Philosophical Lexicon (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014), 1142.

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the object/concept/word used to signify it; in other words, metaphor.3 Both translation and metaphor involve the transference of ideas through words; by borrowing one concept to describe another, there is transference of meaning. In both acts, the idea of similitude is at work. In translation, words are chosen for their likeness; in metaphor, the resemblance is conceptual. When using either translated term or metaphor, no matter how much care is taken in choosing the exact terms, there is an element of the original concept that cannot be evoked in the transferred or translated term. This imprecision and ambiguity is characteristic of both translated work and metaphor; both lend themselves to multiple meanings, or polyvalence. Neither translation nor metaphor ought to be taken literally, but rather, decoded. Maimonides in Part One of the Guide warns against taking biblical metaphors literally, because human speech cannot capture the true essence of the divine but can only describe it through similitudes.4 Similarly, no translation can capture the essence of the original work in the language it was first written. For that reason, care must be taken when reading Maimonides in translation, and it is best to determine his literary intentions by examining what he wrote in its original language. Before turning to the text, it will be instructive to review the history of the translation of the Guide during Maimonides’ lifetime. The review will examine the goals of Samuel ibn Tibbon and Judah Alḥarizi in translating the Guide and their diverging modes of translation. Different approaches to translation are raised by Arabic theorists of translation al-Jāḥiẓ and his critics, Abū Hilāl al-‘Askarı̄ and ‘Abd al-Qāhir al-Jurjānı̄, who lived prior to Ibn Tibbon and Alḥarizi. These Arab theorists analyse the relationship of words and meaning and the nature of communication through language. Al-Jāḥiẓ’s questions about the limits of human expression open the door to later explorations of rhetoric, figurative language and how best to describe the divine through language. Contemporary translation studies augment these issues of translation and interrogate the relationship between the original text and its translation. * * *

 “To translate” s.v., Translation/Transnation: Dictionary of Untranslatables, 1146.  John Scotus Erigena (c. 815–c. 877) uses the terms translatio to denote the transfer of appellations to call God, and metaphora to represent qualities that resemble God’s qualities. “To translate” s.v., Translation/Transnation: Dictionary of Untranslatables, 1147. 3 4

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The story of the translation of Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed from Judeo-Arabic into Hebrew begins in Maimonides’ lifetime, when Maimonides enlists Samuel Ibn Tibbon, son of Judah and scion of a literary Andalusı̄ family that had settled in Provence, to translate his treatise. During the 1190s, in the last decade of Maimonides’ life, Jewish rabbinic scholars from southern France correspond with Maimonides about issues and queries they have regarding his halakhic opus, the Mishneh Torah.5 The Mishneh Torah is written in rabbinic Hebrew; however, the Guide, which is written in Arabic with Hebrew characters,6 is inaccessible to many scholars in southern France. The Provençal rabbinic scholars ask Maimonides for a translation of his Guide, along with other philosophical works, but he demurs, referring them to Samuel Ibn Tibbon, whose father Judah, an emigré from al-Andalus, was a well-known translator of Jewish philosophical works, such as Judah Halevi’s Kuzari, from the Arabic original into Hebrew. Samuel, who lives in Lunel and learned Arabic from his father, is enlisted as translator of Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed. Samuel corresponds with Maimonides about difficulties in the translation, and Maimonides instructs Ibn Tibbon on issues of translation, content, and suitable philosophical texts to study, in order to provide him with a good background to translate the text.7 In the end, Maimonides is satisfied with Ibn Tibbon’s translation, and writes to him: You are certainly qualified to translate from one language to another, for God has given you a perceptive mind for understanding “the words of the wise and their riddles.” I discern from your words that your mind has penetrated to the depths of the matter and has revealed hidden secrets. I rejoiced to find a wise son, and I was amazed how the nature of a son born among non-Arabic speakers could be such that he pursues the sciences 5  See Joel L.  Kraemer, Maimonides: The Life and World of One of Civilization’s Greatest Minds (New York: Doubleday Religion, 2010), 426–443. 6  While there is much speculation about why Maimonides, who wrote the Mishneh Torah in Hebrew, wrote the Guide and other philosophical treatises in Judeo-Arabic, Sarah Stroumsa states that Judeo-Arabic was Maimonides’ “default” language. He wrote in Hebrew when his correspondents did not know Arabic, and he chose “Mishnaic Hebrew” for the Mishneh Torah in order to follow the example of R. Judah ha-Nasi, compiler of the original Mishnah. Stroumsa, Maimonides in his World: Portrait of a Mediterranean Thinker (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009) 19–22. 7  See Steven Harvey, “Did Maimonides’ Letter to Samuel Ibn Tibbon Determine Which Philosophers Would Be Studied by Later Jewish Thinkers?” in Jewish Quarterly Review, Vol. 83, No. 1/2 (Jul.—Oct., 1992), 51–70.

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and is skilled in the Arabic language, which is undoubtedly a slightly distorted dialect of the Hebrew language, and further how he understands linguistic subtleties and profound matters.8

Even though he receives Maimonides’ vote of confidence regarding his translation, Ibn Tibbon recognizes the difficulties that his rendering of the Guide would pose to his Hebrew readers, due to the “paucity of our language and lack of philosophical works in our theology.”9 For example, Hebrew had no words for quality, essence or kalām, nor did it have terms to describe logic, matter, or the faculty of imagination. Ibn Tibbon coins new words in Hebrew to capture Arabic philosophical terms that have no Hebrew counterparts. He appends an alphabetical lexicon, “Perush hamilot ha-zarot be-ma-amar ha-rav zatza’l,” to his translation of the Guide, with detailed explanations of the etymology and meaning of each of these terms. Samuel ibn Tibbon is not the only contemporary translator of Maimonides’ Guide; Judah Alḥarizi, an Andalusı̄ contemporary of Maimonides and Ibn Tibbon and author of Takhkemoni, is the author of another translation, roundly disparaged by Ibn Tibbon. At the outset of his lexicon, Ibn Tibbon dismisses Alḥarizi’s translation as “full of vanities and errors and stumbling blocks.”10 Alḥarizi’s translation of the Guide is not literal or even faithful to the original text throughout. Rather, at times it breaks into metaphoric language and internal rhymes replete with biblical references and homiletic excursuses. Although Alḥarizi himself, in the introduction to his translation of the Guide, states that he was asked by the “nobles of Provence and her sages” to translate the Guide “in simple, clear words,”11 Alḥarizi clearly feels that his poetic translation “giv[es] order to

 Kraemer, Maimonides, 439.  Samuel Ibn Tibbon, “Perush ha-milot ha-zarot be-ma-amar ha-rav zatza’l,” in Sefer Moreh ha-Nevukhim le-rabenu Moshe ben Maimon be-targumo shel rabbi Shmuel ben rabbi Yehuda Ibn Tibbon, ed. Yehuda Even-Shmuel (Jerusalem: Mosad ha-rav Kook, 2000), Appendix 11. 10  Ibn Tibbon, “Perush ha-milot ha-zarot,” 12. 11  Judah Alḥarizi, “Introduction,” in Moses Maimonides, Sefer moreh ha-nebukhim be-targumo shel rabbi Yehuda Alḥarizi, trans. Judah Alḥarizi, eds. S. Sheir and S. Munk (Tel Aviv: Hotza-at makhbarot le-sifrut and Mosad ha-rav Kook,1952), 9–10. Of Samuel Ibn Tibbon, Alḥarizi writes, “Although a wise, learned man preceded me in translating the text, his intention was to hide and deepen [Maimonides’] ideas.” 8 9

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the topics, as one who clears the road of rocks.”12 He, too, provides a lexicon of terms, in some cases using the same words that Ibn Tibbon coins. Ibn Tibbon’s and Alḥarizi’s conflicting and opposing views and practices of translation are not new to late twelfth-century al-Andalus. A medieval translation theory contained in The Book of the Living, Kitāb al-Ḥ ayawān by ninth-century author al-Jāḥiẓ already deals with issues surrounding the translation of books and manuscripts. The Book of the Living is a book in praise of God’s creations, and within this magnum opus, al-Jāḥiẓ writes a short encomium on the benefits of books and writing, and how books have contributed to human social and intellectual development. He praises the excellence of pre-Islamic and Arabic verse, then cites an opinion that this poetry cannot be translated because it will lose its style, metre and beauty.13 The very essence of what renders Arabic poetry wonderful will be lost in translation. Some of this chauvinism can be traced to the Arabiyya/Shu‘ūbiyya dispute, wherein Arabs wishing to promote themselves and their culture over foreign culture look backwards to an idyllic and incomparable Arab past of which their ancestors – and not the ancestors of the foreign converts to Islam or immigrants to al-Andalus – were a foundational part. In this idyllic past, Arabic language and poetry has a stellar role, and so it is unsurprising that a ninth-century Arabic theorist would promote the ineffability of Arabic language and the limitations of foreign languages in their attempt to translate Arabic into their vernacular.14 According to al-Jāḥiẓ, no translation can ever fully capture all the nuances of the original, nor can any translator ever fully conceptualize what the author has written. In philosophy as well, writes al-Jāḥiẓ, the translator would have to be in complete sync with the author, knowing everything the author knows, in order to render a translation: “The translator never renders what the wise man says in the specificity of its meaning and its true doctrine. How can he convey the meaning accurately and truthfully unless his knowledge of it and the words used to express it and  Judah Alḥarizi, “Introduction,” 9.  Abdelfattah Kilito, “Thou Shalt Not Speak My Language,” trans. Waïl S.  Hassan (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2008), 27. 14  Moses Ibn Ezra agrees: “Poetry is the wisdom of the Arabs; Jews follow them in this art.” Kitāb al-muḥāḍara wa al-mudhākara, ed. and trans. by Avraham Shlomo Halkin (Jerusalem: Hotsa-at Mekitze Nirdamim, 1975), 223. In his treatise, Ibn Ezra states that while he illustrates his advice with examples from Arabic poetry, he also brings examples from Hebrew Scripture, lest people say the Hebrew language is impoverished and “Arabic is unique and completely different from other languages.” Muḥāḍara, 221. 12 13

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their nuances equal those of the author?”15 Even if the translator has mastered both the target and source languages, “he has committed injustice to each of them, for each of the two languages attracts the other, takes something from it, and impedes its function.”16 And if the area of study is conceptually difficult, the translation of these concepts will be so hard that the translator will make errors that hinder the understanding of what the original author intended to convey. Al-Jāḥiẓ’s (d. 868–9) theory of translation deals, in the words of Lale Behzadi, with “modes of understanding: the points at which the transmitter and the receiver meet one another, the exchange of signs and signals, and the possibility and consequences of decoding.”17 Through his gaze at modes of communication, and by differentiating between language and meaning in communication, al-Jāḥiẓ is participating in a scholarly discussion on the function of language by early Arabic literary theorists who drew a distinction between, writes Behzadi, “ma‘nā, connoting meaning or idea, on the one hand and lafẓ, connoting speech and wording, on the other.”18 Rather than dichotomize ma’nā and lafẓ, as some early Arabic literary theorists do, or essentialize speech as one or the other, al-Jāḥiẓ examines the core linguistic question behind both concepts, which is: How do we communicate? Al-Jāḥiẓ’s interest in translation goes beyond the aesthetic judgment of ugly and pleasing language in poetry or any other literary medium. He is curious about communication itself, the manner in which humans relate in order to make themselves understood to one another, writes Behzadi, “in communication gaps, as well as in communication mediums – including nonlinguistic signs.”19 In her article, Behzadi examines al-Jāḥiẓ through the lens of his respondents, Abū Hilāl al-‘Askarı̄ and ‘Abd al-Qāhir al-Jurjānı̄, two Arabic literary theorists who represent differing views on both al-Jāḥiẓ and rhetoric.

 Kilito, “Thou Shalt Not Speak My Language,” 26.  Sherman Jackson, “Al-Jāḥiẓ on Translation,” Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics, No. 4: Intertextuality (Cairo: American university in Cairo Press, 1984), 103. 17  Lale Behzadi, “Al-Jāḥiẓ and his Successors on Communication and the Levels of Language,” in Arnim Heinemann, ed., Al-Jāḥiẓ: a Muslim Humanist for Our Time (Wurzburg: Ergon Verlag in Kommission, 2009), 125. 18  Behzadi, “Al-Jāḥiẓ and his Successors on Communication and the Levels of Language,” 125. 19  Behzadi, “Al-Jāḥiẓ and his Successors on Communication and the Levels of Language,” 128. 15 16

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Al-‘Askarı̄ (d. 1005) is a critic of al-Jāḥiẓ, and views his writings as unsystematic. Al-‘Askarı̄ weighs in on the discussion about lafẓ (wording) and ma‘nā (meaning) by describing words as cover and meaning as body.20 Words act as the overt manifestation (cover) of the internal thought processes of the individual (body). This example does not take into account different modes of expression, such as verbal or non-verbal, available to human beings. Meaning is internal to the human mind and cannot be observed or understood unless a person uses some form of expression – such as words or gestures – to manifest what she or he is thinking.21 Nor does this example recognize that a cover, chosen by the individual within the body that uses it, both reveals and conceals the body. Similarly words, when carefully chosen, both reveal and conceal the inner thoughts of their speaker or writer.22 Al-‘Askarı̄ does not delve deeply into his metaphor of words/cover and meaning/body, or their relationship with one another, which may be why his pairing does not totally succeed on a philosophical level. Nevertheless, by juxtaposing this pair, al-‘Askarı̄ accepts the relationship between words and meaning, and thus, in spite of his critique of al-Jāḥiẓ, he concedes to the latter’s contribution to the study of rhetoric.23 Al-Jurjānı̄ (d. 1078), writes Behzadi, develops a system of literary theory that is based on his interpretation of al-Jāḥiẓ’s ideas. He views language as a system of relationships and interactions: between words within a sentence or phrase, and between speaker (al-qā’il) and listener (al-sāmi‘), between the act of understanding (fahm) and making something understood (ifhām).24 In the act of communication, each of the elements within these relationships – words and phrases, speaker and listener, understanding and making understood – is absolutely dependent upon one another. 20  Kuswa (cover) and badan (body). Behzadi, “Al-Jāḥiẓ and his Successors on Communication and the Levels of Language,” 127. 21  Similarly, in epistemic philosophy, the “concealed” inner meaning or bātin emerges from examination of the “revealed” external meaning or ẓāhir. Stern, The Matter and Form of Maimonides’ Guide, 37. 22  Maimonides uses the idiom “conceal and reveal” in his Introduction to the Guide. 23  Regarding the debate on plagiarism in poetic themes, al-‘Askari comes down on the side of the poet. He writes that it is not the poet’s fault if he reuses poetic themes and motifs, after all, they are popularized everywhere. The only critique of a poet who repeats a motif used elsewhere is if he uses it badly. Behzadi, “Al-Jāḥiẓ and his Successors on Communication and the Levels of Language,” 128. This assertion by al-‘Askari demonstrates that he views the role of words and meanings not as philosophical concepts, but rather as aesthetic criteria. 24  Behzadi, “Al-Jāḥiẓ and his Successors on Communication and the Levels of Language,” 129.

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The speaker’s task is to arrange words in a way and in an order that will be perfectly understood, a process that al-Jurjānı̄ called al-naẓm. The success of making one’s words or ideas understood, writes al-Jāḥiẓ, hinges on clear expression or al-bayān. Al-Jurjānı̄ takes this process one step further: in order to make one’s words completely understood to the listener, one must have the “intention (al-qaṣd) to build an image (ṣūra).”25 The act of communication is a system of relationships between words and meaning, speaker and addressee, in which the speaker must have the intention to communicate clearly and without obfuscation in order to have his or her words, images and ideas understood. Only in this way can the interface between words and meaning, and as a result speaker and addressee, succeed. The result of this interface is clear expression (al-bayān).26 Al-Jāḥiẓ’s concern with clear expression (al-bayān) is more than merely semantic. He moves from the demands of translating Arabic poetry to the translation of religious texts. Accurate translation is a theological issue as well. It gets to the core of our ability to authentically describe both the world we live in – a world that was created by God, and God himself – creation and Creator. He asks, “How can we make sure that [the translator] does not transgress the boundaries of what may or may not be said concerning God – as well as man?”27 The issue of “what may or may not be said concerning God” is a theological issue similar to the one Maimonides deals with in Part One of the Guide. There, Maimonides provides a lexicon of scriptural terms used anthropomorphically to describe God’s actions, and explains how they ought to be properly understood. Through his inquiry into the human ability to rightly describe creation, al-Jāḥiẓ suggests the following issue:28 How can words, analogies or even metaphors capture the essence of an infinite, ineffable divinity? Al-Jāḥiẓ’s question suggests a further dilemma, that of human responsibility in correctly naming divine concepts. Are there things that may not be said about God? Al-Jāhị ẓ is aware that in trying to describe the divine, all we have is words. He places considerable responsibility on the translator of these words to correctly convey the essence of the original writing. In addition, he worries about 25  Behzadi, “Al-Jāḥiẓ and his Successors on Communication and the Levels of Language,” 129. 26  Behzadi, “Al-Jāḥiẓ and his Successors on Communication and the Levels of Language,” 129. Note Abraham Ibn Ezra’s similar gloss on Job 5:21. 27  Jackson, “Al-Jāḥiẓ on Translation,” 104. 28  An issue similar to the one discussed in Chap. 2.

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the translator’s ability to know truth from falsehood, preposterousness from credibility. Not only does the translator have a responsibility to translate with accuracy, she or he must also be able to determine if and when the author of the text is credible and uses truthful expression. However, al-Jāhị ẓ also realizes that the translator must do his or her best to utilize the rhetorical devices that the original text employs to convey divine concepts: “And how should the translator be made aware of the workings of the rhetorical devices, simile and paranomasia? How will he be made to know what divine revelation is? What about metonymy?”29 These questions are not only about translation. Rather, they hint at the complicated nature of figurative language and metaphor and their ability to relate divine attributes through similitude, questions that were examined in the Chap. 2 of this book. Furthermore, these questions get to the essence of human expression, of our ability to capture the expanse of divine ideas with limited human speech. Al-Jāhị ẓ’s questions open the door to later writers’ exploration of literary theory, examination of theological expression, and questions about how best to describe the divine. The question of how to translate had been dealt with by Jewish scholars dwelling in foreign lands around the globe. In order for them to live and thrive, it was imperative that they learn the language of their host country. As a result, Naomi Seidman writes, “Jewish translation is the history of Jewish border crossings.”30 She describes the practice of translation among medieval Jews: “Not only have Jews often welcomed translation, translation has sometimes been seen as particularly characteristic of Jewish culture; this is not surprising, given the dispersion and mobility of Jews.”31 Jews, or Jewish converts to Christianity, were at the forefront of translation activity in medieval Spain. They were instrumental in translating Greek and Arabic philosophical texts into Hebrew, Arabic and Latin.32 A look at the translations of some of the most famous Jewish translators into Hebrew demonstrates that these translations employ a “sense-for-sense” approach that conveys the essence of the original rather than a word-for-

 Jackson, “Al-Jāḥiẓ on Translation,” 104.  Naomi Seidman, Faithful Renderings: Jewish-Christian Difference and the Politics of Translation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), 9. 31  Seidman, Faithful Renderings, 37. 32  Seidman, Faithful Renderings, 15–16. See also Steven Harvey, “Arabic into Hebrew: The Hebrew translation movement and the influence of Averroes upon medieval Jewish thought,” Cambridge Companion to Medieval Jewish Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 258–280. 29 30

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word rendering.33 Maimonides lays out the method for this approach in his letter to Samuel ibn Tibbon, the translator of his Guide for the Perplexed: Whoever wishes to translate (leha’atiq melashon lelashon), and tries to translate one word with another, and at the same time will keep to the order of words and sayings, will work very hard and his rendering will be very doubtful and distorted…This is not the right way to do it; instead the translator should first try to grasp the subject and then state the theme as he understood it in the other language. And this cannot be done without changing the order, putting a few words in place of one word, or one word instead of many words, adding or taking away words, so that the subject is arranged and understandable in the language in which he is writing.34

The “sense-for-sense” or paraphrastic translation allows for more freedom of translation because it does not require slavish loyalty to the words on the page. Rather, it requires that the translator, as both al-Jāḥiẓ and Maimonides instruct, take pains to initially grasp the subject and then commit his or her understanding of the text’s intentions to writing. Abraham ibn Ezra (Spain, 1089–1167) illustrates the importance of “sense-for-sense” translation, as opposed to one that translates word-for-­ word, by describing it figuratively; he expands upon al-‘Askari’s metaphor of words as cover and meaning as body, and incorporates al-Jāḥiẓ’s prescription that the translator use “intention to build an image:” Words are like bodies and meanings are like souls, and the body is like a vessel for the soul. Accordingly, as a rule, all scholars of any language will attend to the meaning and will not concern themselves with the differences between words when they are equivalent in meaning.35

Ibn Ezra here imparts a theological element to the act of written expression. Words, like the body, are the casing for meaning, which is like the soul. If written communication involves the interplay between words and their meaning, Ibn Ezra tells us that meaning is more important than the words themselves, which can be cast off just as the soul discards the body. Words should only be chosen if they convey the fitting meaning of the original, which is bound up in the intention of the author.  Seidman, Faithful Renderings, 47.  Seidman, Faithful Renderings, 47. 35  Seidman, Faithful Renderings, 48. 33 34

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Modern translation studies augment al-Jāḥiẓ’s issues with translation. Walter Benjamin writes that translations of an original work of art ensure its “afterlife,” its continued reading.36 The original text is closely connected to its translation: without the original there is no translation, however, without the translation, the original text stands in danger of being forgotten. Thus, the translation ensures that the original will continue to be disseminated and read long after it has been written and enjoyed by readers of the language of the original. To Waïl S.  Hassan, Benjamin’s comment implies that translation not only supplants the original – which may have been relegated to “oblivion” if it hadn’t been translated – but “finishes it off ” completely.37 “Translation tries to evict and displace the original, while the original ever tries to render translation impossible,” writes Hassan.38 This approach reflects the tension that co-exists between the original and the translation. If the original intends to continue to exist as a work of art or as a discourse that continues to be read and reflected upon, in other words, if it wants an “afterlife,” the original needs the translation as much as the translation needs the original. However, the translation, no matter how much it inhabits the original, no matter how well it conveys the language and meaning of the original, will always do “epistemic violence”39 to the place from whence it came. Hassan is the translator of Thou Shalt Not Speak My Language, a book about the ethics of translation written by Moroccan literary critic, Abdelfattah Kilito.40 In his introduction to Kilito’s book, Hassan explains that: Arabic has two words for “translation”: tarjamah means “biography” or “life,” an important genre in classical Arabic scholarship, as well as “explanation in another language” and “interpretation”…Tarjamah, therefore, carries connotations of alienated speech that has the flavour of falsehood, damnation, and death, but also possibilities of survival, narration, and 36  Walter Benjamin, “The Task of the Translator,” in Illuminations, trans. Harry Zohn; ed. & intro. Hannah Arendt (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1968), 71. 37  Hassan, “Translator’s Introduction,” in Kilito, Thou Shalt Not Speak My Language, xii. 38  Hassan, “Translator’s Introduction,” xiii. 39  Hassan, “Translator’s Introduction,” xvii. See Gayatri Spivak, “Can the Subaltern Speak?” in Cary Nelson, ed., Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1988). 40  For a critique of Kilito’s book, see Michael Cooperson and Waïl S. Hassan, “To Translate or Not to Translate Arabic: Michael Cooperson and Waïl Hassan on the Criticism of Abdelfattah Kilito,” Comparative Literature Studies, Vol. 48, No. 4 (2011), 566–571.

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understanding. The other word, naql, means “to transfer,” “to move,” “to put in different words,” and “to put into the words of another language.” The English word “translation,” which derives from Latin translatus, past participle of transferre, also means “to transfer,” “to move from one place to another,” and “to carry across.”41

Hassan points out that tarjamah shares a root with rajama, “to stone to death,” as well as kalam marjum, “uncertain or unreliable speech.”42 Hassan’s interpretation of the Arabic words for translation emphasizes the metaphoric qualities of those words, the way in which translation is a kind of transference, ending, and even finishing off of the original and replacing it with the translation.43 In this way, Hassan’s exegesis of the Arabic word tarjamah echoes Benjamin’s “afterlife” comment, but also has some parallels with the exploration of metaphor in Chap. 2. At its most minimal, translation is interpretation; like metaphor, it transfers or borrows from the source to produce the target. Writers like Hassan emphasize that translation cannot be entirely divorced from the original, because the translation is born from the original and the original needs the translation in order to continue to exist. Metaphors create new meaning; so do translations. However, translation can also differ from metaphor. Translation, as a separate entity from the original, can be said to supplant or even kill off the original, and thus it becomes the “afterlife” of the original. A translation  Hassan, “Translator’s Introduction,” Thou Shalt Not Speak My Language, x.  Hassan, “Translator’s Introduction,” Thou Shalt Not Speak My Language, x. 43  Hassan’s view of translation can be viewed as emerging from Jacques Derrida’s observation that translation “lets go of the materiality” of a word, because this materiality cannot be translated or transported into another language. Writes Derrida, “Laisser tomber le corps, telle est même l’énergie essentielle de la traduction. Quand elle réinstitue un corps, elle est poésie.” In Lawrence Venuti, “The translator’s unconscious,” in Translation Studies: Perspectives on an Emerging Discipline, ed. Alessandra Riccardi (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 216. Derrida emphasizes the “materiality” of the word on the physical page: how it looks and sounds, but also what it means and the layers of signification and intertextual implication it carries within its own cultural context. Translation lets go of, and subsequently loses, all of that materiality. Hassan, after Kilito, states that translation annihilates the words of the original. Annihilation suggests a complete break with the original, and implies that the translation supplants and supercedes the original. Derrida’s statement implies a loss, in contrast to the more radical view of Hassan and Kilito. For Derrida, translation is an interpretative or exegetical process. When translation “reinstates the materiality of the word” it becomes “poetry.” The parallel between a translated text and a poem makes sense if we understand poetry as a literary invention using figurative language to convey images and ideas. 41 42

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can stand alone; while it is created from and derives its life from an original, once completed, it is a viable, complete, and meaningful entity on its own. Unlike translation, metaphor weaves together both source and target in one phrase or sustained paragraph to convey meaning. When, in metaphor, a thing is “seen as” something else, the link creates a visual image that cannot be unhooked from its meaning. Source and target are symbiotic in metaphor; one cannot exist without the other.44 What of al-Jāḥiẓ’s bilingual translator? Has s/he annihilated the original or has s/he given it new life? Is the new work a cannibalization of the original45 or does it supplant the original with a figurative, literary invention? How should we view Samuel Ibn Tibbon, Maimonides’ chosen translator of the Guide, a man steeped in Arabic culture, fluent in the Arabic language, but living in a foreign country, needing his author’s approval, instruction and advice in order to proceed? Does a correspondence between author and translator produce the best possible translation, or should a translator use the original only as a starting point, infusing the translation with the flavour of the original but not remaining completely faithful to the source text?46 Does it matter if the original is a work of poetry, philosophy, sacred text, or even science47 – are the rules of translation different for each of these genres? And what of the reader – should his or her tastes, level of understanding, and reading requirements be taken into account? If Alḥarizi’s translation of the Guide was once more popular and widely-read than Ibn Tibbon’s translation, does that make it a better translation? Alḥarizi’s translation is not entirely faithful to the text, but it was a popular text in its time, which goes contrary to the original intent of the text of the Guide. Given that Maimonides did not address his opus to the masses, but rather to the few scholarly and learned students who were capable of comprehending the concepts within the treatise: does Alḥarizi’s translation do multiple injustices to the original?

44  See also Federica Scarpa, “Closer and closer apart? Specialized translation in a cognitive perspective,” in Riccardi, ed., Translation Studies, 142–146. 45  Hassan, “Translator’s Introduction,” xiii. 46  The concept of translation as interpretation is a foundational theory in translation studies, and examined in depth in Axel Bühler, “Translation as interpretation,” and Alessandra Riccardi, “Translation and interpretation,” both in Riccardi, ed., Translation Studies, 56–91. 47  Cognitive psychology views scientific language as employing metaphors to communicate scientific theories, discoveries and insights. Scarpa, “Closer and closer apart?” in Riccardi, ed., Translation Studies, 144.

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There may not be definitive answers to these questions, and justifications can be brought for all sides of the debate, but reflecting on these questions allows us to see that, as al-Jāḥiẓ and Hassan have indicated, translated texts ought to be approached with caution. No translation is perfect or can flawlessly render the original. The flaws in a mistranslation may lie with the translator, or with the language of the translation. Axel Bühler suggests three criteria for evaluating the success of a translation. The translation ought to: 1] communicate the intentions of the original author, 2] convey what the author has expressed, and 3] identify the meaning of the expressions used by the author.48 Bühler’s criteria imply that the translator has no agenda other than a faithful rendering of the original text, and that his or her translation be evaluated solely on the plain meaning of the text. Other critics of translation look beyond the text itself and challenge the motivations – conscious or unconscious – of the translator. Lawrence Venuti observes that mistranslations “represent another kind of verbal slip or misreading that sometimes occurs in translations, and depending upon the translator’s experience and the foreign text to be translated, they may reveal an unconscious desire.”49 Sometimes, Venuti claims, translators’ erroneous translations – which can be as simple as rendering a verb in the wrong tense, or as complex as using the wrong meaning  – reveal unconscious motivations. Sometimes, writes Venuti, “The error may be symptomatic of a desire, not simply to interrogate, but to challenge or resist the discourse that is unfolded in the foreign text. What may ultimately be at stake in the translator’s desire is the very social authority and cultural prestige of the foreign author, if not, more generally, a desire to achieve an authorial recognition for the work of the translation.”50 Venuti’s comment can be viewed as siding with Hasan, who is of the opinion that translation annihilates the original text. According to this outlook, the translator competes with the author of the original text for authority and prestige. He or she hopes the translation will supplant the original and attain the distinction that the original set out to accomplish. However, Venuti also presents a less extreme way of looking at mistranslations. A mistranslated word, phrase or idea might reveal a social, 48  Bühler, “Translation as interpretation,” Translation Studies, 73. Bühler adds a fourth criterion: the evaluation of the success of the translation by speakers of the target language. I have not included this above because I think this fourth criteria for evaluation is entirely subjective. 49  Venuti, “The translator’s unconscious,” Translation Studies, 230. 50  Venuti, “The translator’s unconscious,” Translation Studies, 232.

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political or cultural bias that the translator is not even aware of. The choice of language can be coloured by opinions and outlooks that the translator holds, or prior modes of understanding that the translator has learned. And, if the translation is a critical and literary achievement that succeeds in supplanting the original, this mistranslation might then be carried on through other translations, explanations, and scholarly studies, until the mistranslation becomes the lens through which readers look at the text. This mistranslation, although coherent, may be distant from the original meaning that the author intended. Kirsten Malmkjaer critiques theories of “relativism” in translation studies: the notion that the original and intended meaning of an author can never be fully understood in a translated text due to cultural, linguistic or ontological differences between the language of the original and the language of the translation.51 Rather than suggest that no two languages can accurately convey each other’s truths, thus emphasizing differences that cannot be surmounted, writes Malmkjaer, we ought to assume similarities and agreements between diverse speakers. There are basic human truths that span cultural, linguistic and ontological divides. “Meaning is more than [the] relationship between concepts and terms,” she writes. Malmkjaer acknowledges that even though translation can be a challenge, and the concepts and terms used in a translated text will not exactly mimic or mirror the original, nevertheless the essential truths and ideas depicted in an original text can be retained and even explained by its translation, thus making the original comprehensible to the reader – and to the translator. As Franz Rosensweig wrote to Margarete Susman about his translation of Judah Halevi’s poetry, “I myself understand a poem only when I have translated it.”52 51  Kirsten Malmkjaer, “The Nature, Place and Role of a Philosophy of Translation in Translation Studies,” in Antoinette Fawcett, Karla L. Guadarrama García and Rebecca Hyde Parker, eds., Translation: Theory and Practice in Dialogue (London: Continuum, 2010), 201–218. According to Malmkjaer’s argument, a person born in England, for example, can never fully understand the cultural references of someone from tribal Africa. Even if the words of an African text are translated into English, the English language cannot possibly represent the same social reality as exists in Africa, nor can the meaning of the original text ever be fully understood by the reader. Malmkjaer, “The Nature, Place and Role of a Philosophy of Translation in Translation Studies,” 208–210. 52  John Felstiner, “Kafka and the Golem: Translating Paul Celan,” quoted in Daniel Weissbort and Astradur Eysteinsson, eds., Translation  – theory and practice: a Historical Reader (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 570.

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What does all this mean for the translation of Maimonides’ Guide? Based on the discussion above, translated texts ought to be approached with a measure of caution. An attempt should be made to reveal the translator’s motive in order to reveal a conscious or unconscious bias. Most important of all, mistranslations must be identified so that the original meaning of the text can be uncovered. With these caveats in mind, we turn to the original Judeo-Arabic text of the Guide and its discussion of imagination.

KH – Y – L: The “Root” of Imagination Part One of the Guide presents a changing view of the role of imagination within human psychology that emerges from an examination of the Judeo-­ Arabic original text, but is not as clear in subsequent translations. At the beginning of Part One of the Guide, Maimonides posits imagination as neutral and responsive to the senses. Further on he describes an imagination that actively thinks up falsehood. Finally, imagination is posited as a faculty that is the opposite of intellect.53 This development is reflected in the choice of Judeo-Arabic terms that Maimonides uses to describe imagination and its tasks. Through his specific use of language, Maimonides in Part One of the Guide develops a theory that takes imagination from a faculty that functions within human psychology in tandem with reason, to a faculty that performs parallel to, but not independent of, reason, to a faculty that is markedly opposed to reason. This theoretical move cannot be perceived in translations of the Guide because Hebrew, English and French  – unlike Arabic  – have only one word to render “imagination.” It is only by going back to the Judeo-Arabic original and analyzing Maimonides’ choice of terminology and its grammatical forms, which will be explained in the next section of the chapter, that we can detect the subtle shift in Maimonides’ attitude towards imagination. But first let us look at the evolution of the Arabic term for imagination, takhyı̄l. Wolfhart Heinrichs, in his chapter “Takhyı̄l: Make-Believe and Image Creation in Arabic Literary Theory,”54 writes that the meaning of the term takhyı̄l has subtle differences depending on its hermeneutical usage. He  See Maimonides, Guide II:30 and 31.  Wolfhart Heinrichs, “Takhyı̄l: Make-Believe and Image Creation in Arabic Literary Theory,” in Geert Jan Van Gelder and Marle Hammond, eds., Takhyı̄l: The Imaginary in Classical Arabic Poetics (Exeter: Gibb Memorial Trust, 2008), 1–14. 53 54

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traces the use of the term takhyı̄l in philosophical poetics, rhetoric and Qur’ānic exegesis, among other usages. In philosophical poetics and rhetoric, takhyı̄l represents the poet’s creation of an image in the mind of the reader. Early on, the Greek concept of phantasia was transliterated into Arabic as fantāsiyā. Later, it was rendered into variations on the root w-hm, “to fancy, to suppose erroneously.”55 These earlier uses were dropped in favour of derivations of kh-y-l, to imagine.56 In the philosophical continuum between logic and imagination, apodictic statements were viewed by Greek thinkers as demonstrably true while figurative language associated with poetry became equated with falsehood. These binaries (reason versus imagination) and their ethical values (truth versus falsehood) were carried over into Arabic philosophy and poetics.57 Alfārābı̄ (d. 950), in Kitāb al-Shi‘r, explains that poetry uses figurative language to represent one thing by means of another. This imitative language, which utilizes similes and metaphors, is known as muhākāt. Alfārābı̄ , in his use of the root kh-y-l, uses the form takhyıˉl /‫ تخييل‬rather than khayāl / ‫ خيال‬when discussing the imaginative faculty. In this usage, takhyıˉl can be translated as “creative imagining,” “imagining of the thing itself,” or “evocation.”58 According to Alfārābı̄ , one’s faculty of imagination can manipulate images that it receives from one’s external sense perceptions, then actively reconfigure these images to “link…define and compare, analyze and create,” and ultimately arrive at “perceptive and abstractive knowledge.”59 55  Hans Wehr, Arabic English Dictionary, 4th edition. Wahm was later redefined by Avicenna as the estimative faculty. 56  Heinrichs, “Takhyı̄l: Make-Believe and Image Creation in Arabic Literary Theory,” 2 n. 4. 57  Heinrichs, “Takhyı̄l: Make-Believe and Image Creation in Arabic Literary Theory,” 3ff. Moses Ibn Ezra repeats the popular dictum “the best of poetry is its falsehood.” Ibn Ezra, Kitāb al-muḥāḍara wal-mudhākara, transl. and ed. by Avraham Shlomo Halkin (Jerusalem: Hotsa-at Mekitze nirdamim), 116. 58  Nabil Matar, “Alfārābı̄ on Imagination: With a Translation of His Treatise on Poetry,” College Literature. Vol. 23, No. 1, 100–110; Al-Fārābı̄, “The Book of Poetry,” in Geert Jan Van Gelder and Marle Hammond, eds., Takhyı̄l: The Imaginary in Classical Arabic Poetics (Exeter: Gibb Memorial Trust, 2008), 17. “Evocation” conjures the notion of seeing an image within the mind; for a distinction between taṣawwur (conception) and takhyı̄l (imagination), see Joep Lameer, Alfārābı̄ and Aristotelian Syllogistics: Greek Theory and Islamic Practice (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1994), 270–272. See also “Imagination” in Ilai Alon, Alfārābı̄’s Philosophical Lexicon, Vol. 1 – Arabic Text (Warminster: The E.J.W. Gibb Memorial Trust, 2002), 120–122. 59  Matar, “Alfārābı̄ on Imagination,” 104.

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Imagining, or takhayyul /‫ تخييل‬can be produced using a poetic syllogism, according to Avicenna (d. 1034). The poetic syllogism uses a similar deductive process as a logical syllogism.60 However, rather than utilize two truthful propositions to arrive at a logical deduction, as the logical syllogism does, the poetic syllogism uses two figurative statements, or “imageinvoking premises” (muqaddimāt mukhayyila) such as similes or metaphors, to initiate imagining or to evoke images in the listener or reader.61 In Qur’ānic exegesis of the twelfth century, takhyı̄l comes to mean “the visual, anthropomorphic, representation of an abstract notion like God’s omnipotence.”62 In this usage, first introduced by Qur’ānic commentator and philologist al-Zamakhsharı̄ (d. 1144), the idiom takhyı̄l has moved from its prior rendition as a figurative “falsehood” to epitomizing the ideal human expression of the divine. This usage by al-Zamakhsharı̄, a Persian predecessor of Maimonides, raises questions as to whether or not Maimonides had this definition in mind when composing the Guide. As we work through Maimonides’ Judeo-Arabic usage of the term in the Guide, and derivations on the root kh-y-l, we should keep in mind the various meanings of these conjugations: the earlier meaning of kh-y-l as “to fancy, to suppose erroneously;” the Arabic Aristotelian use of takhyı̄l as “image-evocation;” and the exegetical use of “to represent an abstract notion like the divine.”

KH – Y – L In The Guide and Its “Afterlife” Theories of translation explored in a previous section of this chapter have made us aware of issues that can arise when looking at translated texts. On the one hand, a translation can never fully capture the intent and meaning of the original text. Not only is a translation a pale imitation of the original, but it must “destroy” the earlier version in order to exist as an independent text. Moreover, a translator might infuse his or her own biases into words or phrases of the translated text. If the translation then becomes 60  For more on the poetic or “imaginative” syllogism, see Deborah L.  Black, Logic and Aristotle’s Rhetoric and Poetics in Medieval Arabic Philosophy (Leiden: E.J.  Brill 1990), 209–241. 61  Ibn Sı̄nā, “Al-Shifā,” in Van Gelder and Hammond, eds., Takhyı̄l: The Imaginary in Classical Arabic Poetics, 27. 62  Heinrichs, Introduction, in Van Gelder and Hammond, eds., “Takhyı̄l: Make-Believe and Image Creation in Arabic Literary Theory,” 2.

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standardized, or succeeds in supplanting the original, this mistranslated text could become the basis of how the original text is understood. On the other hand, in order to be comprehensible, translation utilizes ideas and realities that are common to readers of diverse cultures. Rather than disparage a translation, we ought to look at the rendered text as a significant contribution and source of information. Keeping these translation theories in mind, the remainder of this chapter will closely examine the use of the term kh-y-l in selected passages from Maimonides’ Guide, Part One. In general, these passages have been chosen because their discussion of imagination exposes Maimonides’ attitude towards Arabic Aristotelian psychology and epistemology. Specifically, these passages have been selected because each passage employs the Arabic term for imagination, kh-y-l (although these are not the only passages in the Guide in which this term is used). This investigation will analyse the way in which the grammatical structure of the term kh-y-l has been employed by Maimonides, how the term has been used in the phrase or sentence, and what the use of the term within the structure of the sentence means. By scrutinizing the term kh-y-l and its use in Maimonides’ Guide, the intent is to expose the nuances of meaning that were understood by speakers of Arabic who were versed in Arabic Aristotelian philosophy. We will then look at the way the term kh-y-l and its permutations have been translated, in order to determine whether or not these subtleties have been transmitted through the translation of the Guide into Hebrew, English and French. Finally, a conclusion will be drawn as to what these translations of the term kh-y-l have contributed to the discussion of imagination in Jewish thought, and the ramifications of this understanding in terms of the reason versus imagination debate.63 The following texts of Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed will be reviewed: the Judeo-Arabic transcription of Joseph Kafiḥ, itself a transcription from the original manuscript; an Arabic transliteration; Samuel Ibn Tibbon’s Hebrew translation; Judah Alḥarizi’s Hebrew translation; Shem Tov Ibn Falaquera’s Hebrew translation; Shlomo Pines’ and M. Friedländer’s English translations; Salomon Munk’s French translation; 63  The dichotomy between reason and imagination is historic and perhaps its earliest expression is Socrates’ statement in the tenth book of the Republic (607b): “Let us, then, conclude our return to the topic of poetry and our apology, and affirm that we really had good grounds then for dismissing her from our city, since such was her character. For reason constrained us.” Aristotle, in De Anima iii 3, 427b14-15, states that imagination is different from perception and thought.

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and Kafiḥ’s Hebrew translation.64 The full texts of these passages are found in the Appendix. Literary and philosophical sources, both primary and secondary, will assist in the investigation and understanding of the term kh-y-l. This approach will be literary and comparative.

Guide I:2 – Adam’s Agency In Guide I:2, Maimonides writes that Adam was in a relaxed state in the Garden of Eden, surrounded by beautiful and pleasurable things. Seemingly as a result of being in these sylvan surroundings, Adam allows the “desires of the imagination and the pleasures of his corporeal senses”65 to lead him astray, and he sins by disobeying God’s commandment not to eat from the Tree of Life. As a result of this sin, Adam is stripped of his ability to directly perceive rational matters in this world. In this excerpt, Maimonides sets up parallels between desire and pleasure, imagination and corporeal senses, with the implication that pleasures of the corporeal senses lead the imagination to desire. This construct is contrasted with reason, the faculty that Adam is deprived of once he sins. In this passage, Maimonides contrasts reason and imagination: reason allows human beings to directly perceive rational matters, while the desires of the imagination stimulate human beings to sin. In the phrase “desires of the imagination,” the Arabic definite noun Maimonides uses for “imagination” is: al-khayāliyya / ‫אלכ׳יאליה‬.66 “Imagination” is modified by shahwā / ‫שהוא‬, or “bodily desires.” Put 64  Moses Maimonides, Dalālat al-ḥāʻirı̄n: Sefer Moreh nebukhin le-rabbeinu Moshe ben Maimon. Dalālat al-ḥāʻirı̄n: (sefer Moreh nevukhim) / ha-maḳor ha-ʻarvi lefi hotsaʼat Shelomoh ben Eliʻezer Munḳ; be-tseruf ḥilufe nusḥaʼot, mafteḥot u-ḳeṭaʻim mi-Ketav-yado shel ha-Rambam (Jerusalem: Y. Yunovits/Azrieli Printing, 1930/1); The Guide of the Perplexed, trans. Shlomo Pines (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press,1963); Shem Tov Falaquera, Moreh ha-Moreh: Critical Edition, ed. Yair Shiffman (Jerusalem: World Union of Jewish Studies, 2001); Sefer moreh ha-nebukhim, trans. Judah Alḥarizi, eds. S. Scheier and S. Munk (Tel Aviv: Hotza’at makhbarot le-sifrut and Mosad ha-rav Kook, 1952/3); The Guide for the Perplexed, trans. M. Friedländer (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1956); Sefer Moreh ha-nebukhim le-rabbenu Moshe ben Maimon be-targumo shel rabbi Shmuel ben rabbi Yehuda ibn Tibbon, ed. Yehuda Even-Shmuel (Jerusalem: Mosad ha-rav Kook, 1981); Moreh ha-nevukhim: Dalālat al-ḥāʻirı̄n, trans. Joseph Kafiḥ (Jerusalem: Mosad ha-rav Kook, 1972); Moïse Maïmonide, Le Guide des Égarés, trad. Salomon Munk (Paris: Verdier, 1979). 65  All English translations are by Shlomo Pines unless otherwise stated. 66  See Appendix for Judeo-Arabic and translations of this and other passages discussed in this chapter.

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together, this phrase joins imagination with – depending on how one chooses to translate the word shahwā – desires, cravings, appetites or lusts, with the implication that physical appetites are a product of the imagination. However, an alternative translation, “When [Adam] rebelled and inclined towards the imagination’s bodily appetite,”67 imbues imagination with its own agency. In this rendition, we can understand that as a result of Adam’s choice to rebel, he inclines towards imagination’s physical desires and willingly allows his imagination to be led astray by the senses. In this reading, imagination can lead to sinful appetites. Or, an alternative reading is this: Adam, using his human agency, opts to follow the sensitive imagination (mutakhayyilah), which leads him to follow his bodily appetite, rather than following the rational imagination (mufakkirah), which would lead him to make an intellectual decision.68 Under the circumstances, he chooses to sin when he eats from a forbidden tree. Since he chooses appetite, Adam is punished by having his intellectual ability taken away. Imagination, in this passage, is not intrinsically negative, nor does it lead Adam to sin. However, when Adam uses his imagination in conjunction with the senses, as when the physical senses of, say, smell and sight and taste lead him to desire an aesthetically pleasing object, imagination becomes a vehicle that leads Adam to trespass God’s command. The Hebrew, English and French translations of this passage all note Adam’s loss of intellectual capability as a result of his sinful behaviour. However, only Ibn Tibbon and Al-Ḥ arizi’s Hebrew translations, Munk’s French and Friedländer’s English translations, present the complexity of the imaginative faculty. Ibn Tibbon and Al-Ḥ arizi translate the Judeo-­Arabic shahwata al-khayāliyya as ta’avvatav ha-dimyoniot, his imaginative desires (Kafiḥ follows this translation) and ta’avvatav ha-yetziriot, his conscience’s desires, respectively, both implying that imagination can be led astray by physical desires. Munk recognizes that “ses désirs venant de l’imaginative;” and Friedländer’s paraphrastic translation most accurately captures the complexity of the faculty of imagination: “when he began to give way to desires which had their source in his imagination.” According to these translations, desire originates in imagination, and one can choose to be enticed by these desires. There is a difference between Pines’ “desires of the imagination” and Friedländer’s “desires which had their source in… imagination.” In Pines’ translation, imagination itself grasps and desires and  Translation from Arabic mine.  “The faculty which is called ‘sensitive imagination’ in relation to the animal soul, and ‘rational imagination’ in relation to the human soul.’” Rahman, Avicenna’s Psychology, 31. 67 68

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leans towards the “pleasures of…corporeal senses.” In Friedländer, it is not imagination that is the source of desiring, but the active human  – who chooses to give way to those desires that originate within the imagination should one choose to incline towards them – who is the agent of desiring. Adam’s agency is further reinforced towards the end of I:2, when Maimonides writes that Adam sins by turning towards “his pleasures and imaginings/‫ותבע לד׳אתה וכ׳יאלאתה‬.” The noun used in this sentence is khayālāt, plural of khayāl.69 Adam is given permission to eat fruit from all the beautiful trees around him, yet his desire leads him to go after things he fancies to be more pleasurable than what he is permitted. The role of imagination in this process is to provide images to the human mind, and “imaginings” are a result of pictures produced by the imagination. In Adam’s case, being surrounded by all choice of sweet-smelling and visually-pleasing nature, he allows his senses to inform his imagination, leading him to crave what is forbidden, which ultimately leads him to sin. As a result, Maimonides writes, God punishes him measure for measure. Since Adam, while residing in leisure and taking whatever fruit he pleases, follows his appetite and eats what is forbidden to him, God punishes him to toil forever for his bread, a food that, Maimonides points out, does not exist in the garden.

Guide I:32 – “False Imaginings” Guide I:32 further elaborates the role the senses have on human psychology. A person can only cognize what she or he has the ability to cognize, not more. If people attempt to apprehend more than they have the intellectual capacity to apprehend, not only can they fall into sin and apostasy, like Elisha the Apostate,70 but they will be overcome by “imaginings” and the inclination towards imperfections and vices, due to the “extinguishing of the light” of intellect. Maimonides compares this with a person’s vision, or capacity to see. Just as a person with poor vision has trouble looking at very bright or very tiny objects, so too a person whose intellectual capacity has weakened has trouble seeing things as they really are and is prone to “false images” or “false imaginings.”71  It is translated into Hebrew as ‫ דמיונותיו‬/ dimyonotav in Ibn Tibbon, Kafiḥ and Schwartz.  BT Hagiga 14b. 71  Translation mine. Images/imaginings are the product of the faculty of imagination, al-mutakhayyila. 69 70

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For “false images/imaginings,” Maimonides uses the expression ‫ אלכ׳יאלאת אלכאד׳בה‬/ al-khayālāt al-kādhabat. Literally, ‫ אלכאד׳בה‬means “lying, deceptive, fallacious.”72 Used as an adjective to describe ‫אלכ׳יאלאת‬, the implication is that there are images that are untruthful and images that are not untruthful. In other words, images are not in and of themselves deceptive and fallacious. They are a product of the intellectual acumen of the person who is doing the imagining. It is important to emphasize this in order to repeat that in both I:2 and I:32, Maimonides does not paint imagination as a negative force within human psychology. Rather, in these passages, imagination appears to be neutral, and the product of its output is influenced by the agents or forces that act upon it. Ibn Tibbon and Kafiḥ’s Hebrew translations are literal translations of Maimonides’ “false imaginings”: they utilize the Hebrew root q-z-b, which means false, deceptive or lying, to translate the Judeo-Arabic k-dh-b, which is its cognate and has the same meaning. Pines’ “delusive imaginings,” Munk’s “vains fantômes” and Friedländer’s “unreal images” hew closely to Maimonides. Al-Ḥarizi bypasses straight translation of this passage in favour of telling the reader that children should first be educated by reading parables and stories in the books of the Prophets, and then, according to their intellectual acumen, moving on to the understanding of miracles and the rational understanding of the divine. Falaquera, whose Moreh ha-Moreh is a summary rather than a full translation of the Guide, specifies that one should not force oneself to try to understand more than is within one’s capabilities, otherwise one might weaken his or her power of thought. Falaquera treats the mind as a physical organ that can get exhausted by pushing it beyond its capabilities. He does not mention imagination at all. All of these translations speak to the role of the human agent in the act of understanding intellectual matters, and the importance of not pushing anyone beyond their powers of cognition. Moving beyond one’s intellectual capacity might make one prone to believing false imaginings (Ibn Tibbon, Pines, Munk, Friedländer), push them before they are ready (Al-Ḥarizi) or weaken their intellectual potential (Falaquera).

72  Hans Wehr, ‫ قاذب‬4th edition, http://ejtaal.net/aa/#hw4=971,ll=2690,ls=21,la=3833,s g=896,ha=659,br=825,pr=133,aan=562,mgf=748,vi=323,kz=2275,mr=584,mn=1194,uqw =1394,umr=933,ums=781,umj=705,ulq=1476,uqa=371,uqq=331,bdw=h756,amr=h550,a sb=h844,auh=h1367,dhq=h481,mht=h778,msb=h208,tla=h88,amj=h697,ens=h1,mis=h1, 958.

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Guide I:33, I:47, I:68 AND I:73 – (Mis)Conception Through Imagination Maimonides’ use of ‫ כ׳יאלאת‬/ khayālāt in Guide I:33 further reinforces the idea that imagination is a neutral faculty whose output is a result of forces or an agent that acts upon it. A person who after rigorous intellectual training has become fit enough to achieve intellectual perfection, will also have the ability to understand the secrets of the law.73 Such a person will be able to ascertain true principles, either through empirical evidence or logical arguments. Prior to this intensive training, one might have only understood ideas through images and parables,74 but now, by employing scientific and logical methods, one can perceive true realities and understand their essence: “In this way, he conceives these matters – that were for him imaginings and parables – in their true reality and he understands their essence.”75 In the Judeo-Arabic original, this passage reads: .‫וכד׳לך יתצור תלך אלאמור אלתי כאנת לה כ׳יאלאת ומת׳אלאת בחקאיקהא ויפהם מאהיתהא‬

The terms Maimonides chooses to employ for “conceives” (‫ יתצור‬/ yataṣ awwar) “imaginings” (‫ כ׳יאלאת‬/ khayālāt) “parables” (‫ מת׳אלאת‬/ mithālāt) and “true reality” (‫ חקאיקהא‬/ ḥaqā’qiha) have deep resonance within Arabic Aristotelian epistemology. In this short passage, Maimonides distinguishes between two types of knowledge: scientific and impressionistic. Or, according to Plato, the knowable (gnoˉston) – which is an understanding of the essence of the thing, and the ‘opinionable’ (doxaston) – which he describes as knowledge of the likeness of a thing.76 Alfārābˉ, ı writes Joep Lameer, expands on this distinction by describing two complementary modes of understanding: taṣ awwur and takhayyul. Taṣ awwur (root: ṣ -wr), follows Aristotle’s “grasping…the essence…of a thing said;”77 takhayyul  .‫ ונמסרו לו סתרי תורה‬/ Ve-nimseru lo sitrei Torah – Here Maimonides uses Hebrew.  ‫כ׳יאלאת ומת׳אלאת‬. Friedländer translates this as “similes and metaphors”. 75  Maimonides, Guide I:33. Translation mine. In other words, by observing empirical evidence and employing logical arguments, one can understand the secrets of the law as they really are. 76  Lameer, Alfārābı̄ and Aristotelian Syllogistics: Greek Theory and Islamic Practice, 261. 77  Lameer, Alfārābı̄ and Aristotelian Syllogistics: Greek Theory and Islamic Practice, 266. For a detailed philosophical discussion of the connection between taṣawwur (conception) and takhyı̄l (imagining), see Black, Logic and Aristotle’s Rhetoric and Poetics in Medieval Arabic Philosophy, 185–192. 73 74

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(root: kh-y-l), indicates knowing through images and reflections of the thing. For Alfārābı̄ , taṣ awwur indicates the true, philosophical grasp or conception of a thing, while takhayyul indicates a lesser form of understanding, through imitation, reflections (khayālāt), and similes (mithālāt).78 In Guide I:33, Maimonides uses the same terms as Alfārābı̄ : ‫יתצור‬ (yataṣ awwar) indicates a true grasp or “conception”; ‫( כ׳יאלאת‬khayālāt) indicates imaginings or “reflections”; ‫( מת׳אלאת‬mithālāt) indicates parables or “similes.” What Maimonides means is this: After undergoing rigorous intellectual training, a person will be able to grasp concepts that she or he previously viewed as imaginings and parables, in their true reality.79 In addition, Maimonides uses the term ‫( בחקאיקהא‬bi-ḥaqā’qiha) to indicate “in its true likeness/in its reality.” Ḥaqı̄ qa (true reality) should not be confused with ḥikāya (imitation). Regarding ḥikāya (imitation), or specifically the derivation muḥak̄ āh (root: ḥ-k-‘), Lameer writes: “In the ‘legal’ mode, muḥak̄ āh refers to one of the main characteristics of religious law as producing ‘doxastic’ takhayyul in the crowds …In the ‘prophetic’ mode, on the other hand, muḥak̄ āh relates to a specific activity of the souls’ faculty of imagination in the process of prophecy and divination, a phenomenon that must be seen as being naturally confined to a privileged few.”80 Muḥākāh-type imitation has two modes: legal and prophetic. In religious law, the goal of religious pronouncements is to get the masses to obey for the purpose of following the law. In order to get the masses – who are incapable of attaining philosophical truths using their own intellects – to understand and follow divine instruction, they need the assistance of religious leaders to illustrate scriptural truths through use of similes and parables. The similes and parables used by these leaders and prophets provide the masses with an “imitation (muḥākāh) of truth itself, resulting in the evocation of an image (takhyı̄l).”81 Takhyı̄l is the mental picturing, or image-evocation, that results in the minds of the masses. In the prophetic mode, writes Lameer, muḥākāh refers to the activity of the faculty of imagination that enables a prophet to come up with the figures of speech that can be communicated to the masses, thus producing in them a “doxastic” assent and subsequent acceptance of the prophetic vision. 78  Lameer, Alfārābı̄ and Aristotelian Syllogistics: Greek Theory and Islamic Practice, 270. Lameer calls takhayyul “a watered-down kind of ‘demonstrative’ taṣawwur.” 79  See also Maimonides, Guide, I:49. 80  Lameer, Alfārābı̄ and Aristotelian Syllogistics: Greek Theory and Islamic Practice, 270–271. 81  Lameer, Alfārābı̄ and Aristotelian Syllogistics: Greek Theory and Islamic Practice, 265.

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Ḥ aqı̄qa (true reality) is not the same as ḥikāya (imitation). Ḥ aqı̄qa refers to true reality. It can only become known through deep contemplation which, after rigourous intellectual training, may result in rational knowledge of true reality. Ḥ ikāya (imitation) refers to likeness, in the form of similes, metaphors, parables and other figurative uses of language, that evoke a mental picturing (takhyı̄l). Prophets have a unique imaginative ability to use figurative language, such as metaphors that describe God and his actions, in order to produce in their followers a mental picture. Using their imaginative faculty to come up with metaphoric language, prophets can then enable the masses to conjure up their own mental picture of the actions of the divine, in order to persuade them to comply with the divine purpose, which is to obey God’s word and follow the law.82 The image-evoking truths that these masses would attain as a result of prophetic image-making are not the same as the true reality (ḥaqı̄qa) that the select few, namely those who have trained their intellects, are capable of conceiving. Rather, the truths that the masses are able to understand are pale imitations or reflections of true reality, and can only be achieved through the use of similitudes and parables that stimulate their imagination and provide them with imaginative approximations of true reality.83 True reality is an exact likeness while mental pictures are imitative likenesses. Both result in a form of knowledge and understanding, but the understanding of true reality is a higher form of knowledge than the understanding of its approximation through likenesses. In his translation of this passage, Ibn Tibbon uses two new Hebrew words that he has coined: yetsayer and mahut. Yetsayer, literally he will conceive, is based on the Judeo-Arabic word taṣawwur (conception). Ibn Tibbon, in Perush ha-milot ha-zarot (“Dictionary of Foreign Words”) appended to his translation of the Guide, explains that he has coined the word tsura after the Arabic ṣ-w-r. Tsura, explains Ibn Tibbon, has two meanings: the first refers to the physical form experienced through the senses, and the second refers to the philosophical form that cannot be sensed using one’s physical senses, but gives a thing its ontological identity and separates one species from another. For example, he writes, tsura can refer to the intellectual soul of a human being, or to the animal soul of a bull. The inno82  On the prophetic imagination in Maimonides, see Howard Kreisel, Prophecy: The History of an Idea in Medieval Jewish Philosophy (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2008), 242, 305–306. 83  Lameer, Alfārābı̄ and Aristotelian Syllogistics: Greek Theory and Islamic Practice, 265.

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vation of the newly-minted Hebrew word tsura, explains Ibn Tibbon, comes about because he uses it to refer to something’s (or someone’s) defining quality or attribute.84 In its verbal form, tsiur, Ibn Tibbon declares that this new coinage refers to knowing a thing in its true reality, using one’s intellectual faculty, similar to the way one uses one’s imaginative faculty.85 The second Hebrew word Ibn Tibbon coins in this passage is mahut, or essence, which is based on the Judeo-Arabic concept of māhiya, or essence. It is a noun derived from the Arabic mā, “what,” plus hiya, “[is] it,” and asks the question: what is the true reality of a thing, its “whatness?” In other words, what is its essence? Ibn Tibbon’s coinage of new Hebrew words, based on their Judeo-Arabic counterparts, indicates the seriousness with which he takes his role as translator of Maimonides’ Guide. He is self-­ consciously creating a philosophical Hebrew treatise for elite readers; after all, who else but an intellectually-astute reader, steeped in Arabic Aristotelian philosophy, would ponder on the essence or true reality of things, or appreciate the difference between conceiving something intellectually and knowing something through the senses? His “word for word” approach does not assume, as Al-Jāḥiẓ said about Arabic poetry, that philosophical concepts are “untranslatable,” can never capture the nuances of the original text, or recreate what the author intended to convey. Rather, Ibn Tibbon is an intellectual heir to Al-Jurjānı̄, who views language as a system of relationships and interactions not only between words and meaning, but between the act of understanding and making something understood. The translator ought to have the “intention to build an image (ṣūra),” which Ibn Tibbon actually does by coining new words based on the Arabic. Compare Ibn Tibbon’s succinct translation of our passage in Guide I:33: .‫וכן יציר הענינים ההם אשר היו לו דמיונות ומשלים באמיתותיהם ויבין מהותם‬ And so he will conceive of those subjects – that were (in the past) images and parables – in their true reality and understand their essences

with Al-Ḥ arizi’s Hebrew translation: ‫ועל כן לא ישיג מה שיש ביכלתו להשיג או אפשר שישיג השגה משבשת מערבבת בין השגה וקצור‬ 84  “Ve-ḥidashnu shitufa le-‘inyan aḥer, ve-hu heyotah be-‘inyan tekhuna o derekh.” In Samuel ibn Tibbon, “Perush ha-milim ha-zarot” in Maimonides, Sefer Moreh ha-nebukhim, ed. Yehuda Even-Shmuel (Jerusalem: Mosad ha-rav Kook, 2000), 77–78. 85  Maimonides, Sefer Moreh ha-nebukhim, ed. Even-Shmuel, 78.

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‫ היו אלו הסבות ראויים ליחידים‬,‫ולפי אלה הסבות כלם‬. Therefore he will not grasp (yasig) what is in his capability to grasp, or it is possible that he will grasp an erroneous concept, mixed up between concept and shorthand; and for all these reasons, only a select few are worthy of these reasonings.

In the above passage, Al-Ḥ arizi, whose translation was done after Ibn Tibbon’s, does not use any of the latter’s new Hebrew coinages. Instead he chooses the word yasig, “he will grasp,” rather than Ibn Tibbon’s yetsayer, “he will conceive.” In spite of his claim that “I translate in most places word by word; but first and foremost, I strive for the meaning of what I’ve heard,”86 Al-Ḥ arizi’s translation is paraphrastic. Unlike Ibn Tibbon’s “word for word” approach, Al-Ḥ arizi uses a “sense for sense” approach that does not convey the essential meaning of philosophical concepts introduced by Maimonides in the Guide. Ibn Tibbon, in the Introduction to his Perush (Dictionary), derides Al-Ḥ arizi’s translation as full of errors and traps. Ibn Tibbon’s translation of the Guide, which was approved by Maimonides himself, strives for a “faithful rendering” by turning Maimonides’ Judeo-Arabic transliterations of Arabic Aristotelian philosophical terms into new Hebrew terms that replicate the Arabic, either etymologically, conceptually or both. We might assume that for the philosophically astute reader of Ibn Tibbon’s Hebrew translation of Maimonides’ Guide, words and concepts such as yetsayer (conceptualize), dimayon (imaginings), meshalim (parables), amitatam (their true reality) and mahutam (their essence) were markers that pointed the way to Alfārābı̄’s epistemology. Ibn Tibbon’s translation does not attempt to displace, or, in Hassan’s words, “finish off ” Maimonides’ original text. Rather, as Benjamin describes, Ibn Tibbon’s translation of the Guide can be seen as ensuring the “afterlife” of the text, its continued reading. Ibn Tibbon’s  – and not Al-Ḥ arizi’s – translation is the Hebrew translation that carries the day, and has become the source that future translators turn to in order to help clarify Maimonides’ text. The clarity, succinctness, and inventiveness of Ibn Tibbon’s translation can be seen in this and other passages, contrasted with Al-Ḥ arizi’s more freewheeling approach that articulates this and other passages the way that Al-Ḥ arizi understands, and interprets, them.

86  In Peter Cole, The Dream of the Poem: Hebrew Poetry from Muslim and Christian Spain 950–1492 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007), 14.

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Returning to the Guide, we see that the terms Maimonides has chosen to employ suggest a Fārābı̄an approach to the role of imagination in human understanding.87 Human understanding through images and parables (as they are conveyed through Scripture) is a step  – albeit an intellectually inferior one – in the trajectory from simple to complex ideas, or from basic comprehension to rational cognition. Human beings need images and parables as a mode of grasping difficult abstract concepts, and prophets employ these and other rhetorical figures in their prophesying in order to awaken the imagination of the masses, to help them understand what God wants from them. However, Maimonides, following Alfārābı̄, posits this mode of understanding as inferior to scientific proofs and logical arguments that bring the human mind closer to conceiving the essence of true realities. The ascription of imagination to God, however, is most definitely a negative. In Guide I:47, Maimonides tells us that just as you cannot say that God tastes or touches,88 you cannot metaphorically ascribe the term “opinion” / ‫רעיון‬89 to God. Having an opinion implies ambiguity, uncertainty, and the possibility of error – as in having an erroneous opinion – and God does not have opinions. To say that God has an opinion implies that he is mutable and thus imperfect. This cannot be true. He is absolute and his knowledge is unambiguous and true. Certainly the terms 90‫ מחשבה ותבונה‬can be figuratively ascribed to God, because these words mean thought and comprehension, ‫ אלפכרה ואלפהם‬in Judeo-Arabic, and God is a constantly cognizant and cognizing deity.91 Maimonides uses both the Hebrew terms maḥshava 87   Aryeh Leo Motzkin, in his lecture “Maimonides and the Imagination,” says, “Maimonides adopts Aristotle’s theory of imagination in toto.” (42) His lecture completely ignores the role of Arabic Aristotelian philosophers. Philosophy and the Jewish Tradition: Lectures and Essays by Aryeh Leo Motzkin, ed. Yehuda Halper (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 37–50. 88  Even though other senses, like sight, hearing and smell, are metaphorically attributed to God, and are human “imperfections,” Maimonides believes that taste and touch require close proximity to the subject, and that is why these two sense perceptions do not appear in the Hebrew bible as metaphorically ascribed to God. Maimonides, Guide, I:47. 89  Here Maimonides inserts the Hebrew term ‫( רעיון‬ra’ayon). 90  Here Maimonides inserts the Hebrew terms ‫( מחשבה ותבונה‬maḥshava u-tevuna). 91  This dialectic brings to mind Plato’s epistēmē (knowledge) and doxa (opinion), which Lameer parallels to Alfārābı̄’s idea of philosophy as an expression of true knowledge, and religion as an expression of popular knowledge. As seen above in the analysis of Guide I:33, Lameer equates taṣawwur with Aristotle’s “grasping (Alfārābı̄’s fahima) the essence…of a thing said” and takhayyul as an image or “reflection” of true knowledge. Lameer comments that “the object of opinion is to the object of knowledge as is the image (shadow or reflec-

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u-tvuna and the Judeo-Arabic al-fikra wal-fahm to denote thought and comprehension, and equates these terms in Guide I:47 by telling the reader they are the same thing. Maimonides here equates the term ‫ רעיון‬/ ra’ayon with ‫ אלתכ׳יל‬/ al-takhyıˉl and informs us that opinion is synonymous with imagination: ‫׳רעיון׳ אלד׳י הו אלתכ׳יל‬. Opinion/imagination admits of defective thinking, because a person can form an opinion without actually having used his or her rational faculties to arrive at the true reality, and once formed, a person can change his or her opinion, because humans are corporeal and all corporeal perceptions and reactions and states change.92 According to Maimonides, thought and comprehension are not defective. God’s thinking is not “contaminated by imagination”93 the way human thinking can be. Thought and comprehension utilize reason, logic and empirical judgments, modes of thinking that human beings ought to aspire to if they want to reach a higher level of cognition. Opinion and imagination are here contrasted with thought and comprehension, just as in I:33 imagination is contrasted with “true reality.” The contrasting of opinion and imagination with thought and comprehension can lead the reader to polarize imagination and reason, to the detriment of imagination and the benefit of reason. In I:47, Maimonides presents comprehension and reason as divine attributes, and emphasizes that God does not and cannot possess imagination, thereby relegating imagination to humans alone and implying that it is a lowly, imperfect human faculty. True, imagination is a human and not divine faculty, unlike intellect, which is possessed by both humans and divine intelligibles.94 The imagination may admit of deficiencies, and the way in which a person thinks or imagines can be defective and lead to erroneous opinions or defective imaginings or even sin, as we saw with the example of Adam. However, upon closer reading, imagination, in this iteration, is not in and of itself a negative or defective faculty.

tion) of a thing to the thing it is the image of.” In other words, true knowledge=grasping the essence of a thing=philosophy, while popular opinion=knowledge of the reflection of a thing=religion. Lameer, Alfārābı̄ and Aristotelian Syllogistics, 263, 269. 92  .‫אד׳ אלכל אדראכאת ג׳סמאניה ואנפעאלאת ואחואל מתגירה‬. Maimonides, Guide, I:47. 93  Alfārābı̄ writes: “The intellection by the soul is necessarily contaminated by imagination.” Ta’liqat 16,3, in Alon, Alfārābı̄’s Philosophical Lexicon, 120. 94  The faculty of imagination is also found in animals according to Arabic Aristotelian philosophy.

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In Ibn Tibbon’s translation of this passage, there is a sense that imagination signifies an inferior faculty. He writes: ‫כמו שיראה חסרון הדמיון ולא נראה חסרון ההסתכלות וההתבוננות ולא השאל לו ׳רעיון׳ אשר‬ ]‫הוא דמיון; והשאלו לו ׳מחשבה׳ ו׳תבונה׳ אשר הם ההסתכלות וההתבוננות… [פט‬ We see the absence (ḥisaron) of imagination [in God] but we do not see the absence (ḥisaron) of thought and comprehension [in God], and ‘ra’ayon’ which is imagination is not imaginatively ascripted to him [God]; and ‘maḥshava’ and ‘tvuna’, which is the same as reflection and comprehension, are imaginatively ascripted to Him.95

When it comes to the metaphorical attribution of actions or qualities to God, Scripture shows God thinking but never attributes imagination to God. Imagination is a human quality that admits of errors, as explained above. In his translation, Ibn Tibbon here uses the Hebrew word ḥisaron in juxtaposition with both imagination, thought and comprehension. God lacks imagination, but he does not lack thought and comprehension. However, Ibn Tibbon’s use of ḥisaron, which is a good translation of the Judeo-Arabic naqṣ, carries a negative connotation as well. Ḥ isaron is a lack or absence, which has a neutral connotation, but it can also signify a disadvantage or shortcoming, which has a negative implication. Thus, while Maimonides and Ibn Tibbon use the term naqs/ḥisaron to demonstrate how some qualities are contrasted in God, some future translators of the Guide pick up on the negative implications of possessing an imagination. Friedländer writes: “the defect of the imagination is easily seen, less easily that of thinking and reasoning.” Munk’s French translation says: “De même l’imagination apparaît comme une imperfection, tandis que dans la pensée et dans l’entendement, l’imperfection n’est pas manifeste (pour tous).” Both Friedländer and Munk specify that imagination is a “defect” and “imperfection,” qualities that are not implied in the original text of the Guide. These are mistranslations that, as Venuti reminds us, reveal a hidden bias on the part of the translators. Friedländer’s and Munk’s translations, by describing the imagination as a “defect” and “imperfection,” impose a negative connotation to imagination that is not seen in the original text of this passage. Maimonides contrasts reason and imagination as two aspects of human psychology, and insists that imagination, which is changeable like opinion, cannot be figuratively ascribed to God. Although  Guide I:47.

95

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imagination is not a divine quality, in humans it is not, in and of itself, a “defect” or an “imperfection.” Imagination is a necessary and vital – albeit inferior to reason – aspect of human psychology. It takes a highly trained intellect, and lots of rigorous intellectual training, to attain comprehensive knowledge of metaphysical concepts. As embodied human beings, we are grounded in the information that comes to us through our five senses. What we sense is what we know to exist, and what we sense leads us to imagine using our inner senses; we can imagine things based on what we have already seen, heard or experienced in the material world. However, what we cannot sense or experience is much harder to believe. Things that are immaterial, or that have no physical grounding in the material world, such as God or other immaterial beings, are very difficult to understand because we have no sensory experience of them. We can only apprehend them using our intellect, and even then this apprehension of the divine is only attainable by select people after much intellectual training. Maimonides explains this in Guide I:49: You know very well how difficult it is for men to form a notion of anything immaterial, and entirely devoid of corporeality,96 except after considerable training: it is especially difficult for those who do not distinguish between objects of the intellect and objects of the imagination, and depend mostly on mere imaginative power. They believe that all imagined things exist or at least have the possibility of existing: but that which cannot be imagined does not exist, and cannot exist.97

It is very difficult for humans, who are made of matter and corporeality, to perceive things beyond the material unless they have had a tremendous amount of intellectual training. This kind of abstract thinking is particularly difficult for those who cannot differentiate between that which is intelligible – a conclusion or thought arrived at through reason, and that which is imagined – a conclusion or thought arrived at through use of the senses. Such a person, writes Maimonides, relies mostly on his or her imagination to perceive and nothing else; this individual believes everything that he or she imagines to be real. Since these individuals believe imagined things to be reality, whatever does not fall into the “net of the  Literally “naked from corporeality:” ‫אלערי ען אלג׳סמאניה‬.  Maimonides, The Guide for the Perplexed, trans. Friedländer, 67.

96 97

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imagination”98 does not exist for them. In other words, if they cannot imagine it, it cannot exist. In this passage, Maimonides uses the term mutakhayyil /‫ מתכ׳יל‬to denote “that which is imagined” and the term al-khayāl/‫ אלכ׳יאל‬to denote “the [faculty of] imagination.” While both words are formed on the root kh-y-l/‫خ ي ل‬, one is an object and the other is a noun. This is similar to Ibn Tibbon’s Hebrew translation, where both “the thing that is imagined/ ha-medumeh / ‫”המדומה‬, and “the imagination /ha-dimyon/‫ ”הדמיון‬are formed on the root d-m-h/‫ה‬-‫מ‬-‫ד‬. In translating mutakhayyil – the thing that is imagined, or the product of the imagination – as medumeh, and al-khayāl – imagination – as dimyon, Ibn Tibbon picks up Maimonides’ distinctions between the faculty of imagination and its function or byproducts (“that which is imagined”), and brings these distinctions into the Hebrew language. In his Dictionary, however, these terms are defined differently. There, Ibn Tibbon explains that the faculty of imagination, or koaḥ ha-medameh, is the name given to the faculty that exists in all living beings, both humans and animals. In humans, this faculty “imagines all things, existent or non-existent,”99 either by employing attributes that she or he has grasped through the senses, or by combining various attributes constructed in one’s imagination. This faculty operates both during waking hours and sleep. Dimyon, writes Ibn Tibbon in the Dictionary, is the name of the function or operation of this faculty.100 This is not how these terms are translated in the Guide, where dimyon denotes the faculty of imagination and medumeh describes its activity, or those things that are imagined using the faculty of imagination. It is unclear why Ibn Tibbon exchanges these terms in his Dictionary when they are clearly distinguishable and lucidly translated into Hebrew in the Guide. Such distinctions do not exist in the English language, where the term “imagination” can be used both to describe the faculty and what the faculty produces. Friedländer’s English translation attempts a differentiation, using “objects of the imagination,” and “imagined things” to translate mutakhayyil, and “imaginative power” for al-khayāl; his translation is quite faithful to the original. Pines supplies the more accurate “that which is imagined,” and “imagined” for mutakhayyil; “imaginative apprehension” and “imagination” for al-khayāl. In the French translation,  ‫שבכה׳ אלכ׳יאל‬. Maimonides, Guide, I:49.  Ibn Tibbon, “Perush ha-milot ha-zarot,” 42. 100  Ibn Tibbon, “Perush ha-milot ha-zarot,” 43. 98 99

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Munk uses “l’imaginaire,” and “chose imaginée” for mutakhayyil, and “la perception de l’imagination” and “l’imagination” for al-khayāl. The following chart shows how Maimonides uses the terms al-khayāl and al-mutakhayyil101 in Guide I:49, along with the translation of these Judeo-Arabic terms into Hebrew (Ibn Tibbon), English (Friedländer, Pines) and French (Munk). Maimonides is consistent in distinguishing between al-khayāl and al-mutakhayyil, and Ibn Tibbon translates these terms consistently. However, Friedländer, Pines and Munk are unreliable in their translation of these terms. Maimonides

Ibn Tibbon

Friedländer

Pines

Munk

al-mutakhayyil

ha-medumeh ha-dimyon

mutakhayyil

medumeh

‘That which is imagined’ ‘Imaginative apprehension’ ‘Imagined’

‘l’imaginaire’

al-khayāl

al-khayāl

ha-dimyon

‘Objects of the imagination’ ‘ Imaginative power’ ‘ Imagined things’ ‘ Imagined’

‘Imagination’

‘L’imagination’

‘La perception de l’imagination’ ‘Chose imaginée’

In English and French, the translation of al-khayāl / dimyon – the faculty of imagination  – conveys its meaning in a clearer manner than the translation of mutakhayyil / medumeh – that which is imagined. Friedlander uses “imaginative power,” the literal translation of to al-quwwa almutakhayyila, to denote the faculty of imagination. Pines and Munk use “imaginative apprehension” and “la perception de l’imagination,” respectively, or simply “imagination” in the English and French. In the JudeoArabic original and Ibn Tibbon’s Hebrew translation, only one word – mutakhayyil / medumeh – stands for the byproduct of the imaginative faculty, and another word – al-khayāl / ha-dimyon – represents imagination. In English and French  – and in Ibn Tibbon’s Dictionary – the translations used to represent these terms are various and interchangeable and contribute to a sense of confusion within the passage. When a translated term cannot capture the grammatical tense or declension of the original, the meaning of that term is obscured. As a result, the reader’s confusion gives credence to Al-Jāḥiẓ’s claim that no translator can ever capture the shades of meaning of the original. He writes that there is 101  Although some words are preceded by the definite article al- in Arabic and ha- in Hebrew, this does not radically alter the meaning of the words.

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a difference between language and meaning, especially in philosophy where difficult concepts can hinder the translator’s ability to convey ideas.102 In Guide I:49, mistranslation does not reflect a bias on the part of the translator. Rather, it reflects the complexity of translating arcane details that are part of a philosophical system whose terms are unfamiliar to nonspecialists. This task is especially difficult when ideas or terms that are discernible by native readers in the source language are translated into a target language whose vocabulary does not possess similar terms or ideas, or for whom the nuances of the philosophical system have been ignored or lost. The developing confusion about imagination, its function and its role in human psychology, which is so carefully laid out in the Judeo-Arabic of the Guide, can be traced back to the fungible translations seen above. This distinction between imagination and the objects of imagination is also seen in Guide I:68, where Maimonides directly addresses his reader: I do not consider that you might confuse intellectual representation with imagination103 and with the reception of an image104 of a sense object by the imaginative faculty,105 as this Treatise has been composed only for the benefit of those who have philosophized and have acquired knowledge of what has become clear with reference to the soul and all its faculties.106

Recalling Guide I:33, Maimonides uses similar Arabic terms: ‫אלתצור‬ (al-taṣ awwur) to indicate intellectual representation, true grasp or conception;107 ‫( באלתכ׳יל‬bil-takhayyul) to indicate imagination; ‫מת׳ל‬ (mithāl) to indicate simile or likeness (Pines translates this as “image”); ‫( אלקוה אלמתכ׳ילה‬al-quwwa al-mutakhayyila) to indicate the imaginative faculty. Here, as in I:33, Maimonides contrasts taṣ awwur, grasping the true essence of a thing, with takhayyul, knowing something by way of a simile (mithāl) or likeness, which is a lesser, dimmer mode of understanding. 102  Sherman Jackson, “Al-Jāḥiẓ on Translation,” Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics, No. 4: Intertextuality (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 1984), 103. 103  Al-takhayyul/ ‫אלתכ׳יל‬. 104  Likeness. 105  Al-quwwa al-mutakhayyila / ‫אלקוה אלמתכ׳ילה‬. 106  Maimonides, Guide, I: 68. ]‫ מת׳אל‬.‫ומא אראך ישכל עליך אלתצור אלעקלי באלתכ׳יל ואכ׳ד מת׳ל [ב‬ ‫ אד׳ הד׳ה אלמקאלה מא אלפת אלא למן תפלסף וערף מא קד באן מן אמר אלנפס‬,‫אלמחסוס פי אלקוה אלמתכ׳ילה‬ .‫וג׳מיע קואהא‬ 107  Interestingly, Maimonides does not use the term ‫( בחקאיקהא‬bi-ḥaqā’qiha) to indicate “in its true likeness/in its reality,” as he did in Guide I:33.

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His reader, of course, would never confuse abstract representation of an idea with image representation. Maimonides here posits ‫ אלתכ׳יל‬/ altakhayyul / imagination, opposite ‫ אלתצור אלעקלי‬/ intellectual representation or mental picturing. On the surface, it is hard to distinguish between these two concepts. Both involve the capacity to reproduce a visual picture in the mind; both are modes of understanding. However, if we recall Alfārābı̄ ’s definitions, al-takhayyul indicates knowing something through images and reflections, while al-taṣ awwur indicates grasping the essence of something. In this passage, Maimonides remains faithful to Alfārābı̄ ’s definition of two modes of understanding. Al-taṣ awwur al-‘aqli / ‫אלתצור‬ ‫ אלעקלי‬is the capacity to understand something by reproducing an entirely abstract “picture” or evocation in the mind, one stripped and devoid of any connection to anything corporeal or tangible that is found in the real world, or the world we experience through our senses. Al-takhayyul / ‫ אלתכ׳יל‬enables us to know something by reproducing its likeness, either through similes or reflections of the thing. Maimonides is mildly apologetic to his reader, reiterating these metaphysical ideas because they are “exceedingly abstruse”108 and not because he thinks his reader is incapable of grasping conceptual ideas. The following is a chart comparing these terms in Guide I:68 in Judeo-­ Arabic, Hebrew, English and French: Maimonides

Ibn Tibbon

Friedländer

Pines

Munk

Al-taṣawwur al-‘aqli Al-takhyı̄l

Tsiur ha-sikhli Dimyon

Intellectual representation Imagination

La conception intellectuelle L’imagination

Mithāl

Mashal

Intellectual comprehension Representative faculty Reproduction of a material image

Une comparaison

Al-quwwa al-mutakhayyila

Koaḥ ha-dimyoni

Reception of an image of a sense object Imaginative faculty

Imagination

La faculté imaginative

Ibn Tibbon’s Hebrew translation maintains Maimonides’ distinction between intellectual representation or mental picturing and imagination, translating the former term as tsiur ha-sikhli / ‫ ציור השכלי‬and the latter as dimyon / ‫דמיון‬. Ibn Tibbon translates the Judeo-Arabic mithāl as ‫ משל‬/  Maimonides, The Guide for the Perplexed, trans. Friedländer, 103.

108

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mashal and  al-quwwa al-mutakhayyila as ‫ כח הדמיוני‬/ koaḥ ha-dimyoni, which departs from his use of medameh as translation of khayāl in Guide I:49, but maintains the d-m-h verbal root.109 The modern reader of this passage in translation, however, might have a hard time keeping these two concepts apart. Although the Hebrew and English translations in I:68 distinguish between imagination/ takhayyul / ‫ דמיון‬and the imaginative faculty/ al-quwwa al-mutakhayyila / ‫כח הדמיוני‬ (Ibn Tibbon),110 it is difficult to nuance the distinction between these capacities based on Maimonides’ use of the terms and their translations. At the beginning of this passage, Maimonides contrasts “intellectual representation” with “imagination.” This clearly maintains these two capacities in opposition. However, in the continuation of this passage, Maimonides does not seem to distinguish between ‫ אלתכ׳יל‬/ the imagination, and ‫ ואכ׳ד מת׳ל אלמחסוס פי אלקוה אלמתכ׳ילה‬/ reception of an image of a sense object by the imaginative faculty, which indicates the faculty of the imagination and its function. As explained in Chap. 3 of this book, the imaginative or compositive faculty takes data that is emanated by the active intellect, sorts it into intelligible data, and then retrieves it at will. As a storehouse of ideas that is capable of rational thought, it is a middle ground between human and divine intellect; however, since it is a physical faculty, it is prone to erroneous thinking. As we saw in Avicenna, the imaginative faculty, when illuminated by reason, can picture divine ideas, or metaphorically express divine concepts. On the other hand, when driven by the faculty of estimation, when moved by the senses and sense impressions, or when a person is asleep and his or her faculty is unguarded, the imaginative faculty can produce images and impressions that are, at best, figurative – like metaphoric and allegorical language that describes the divine, and, at worst, false and erroneous images. Translations of this passage further ambiguate these terms. All translations accurately use “intellectual” in their translation of al-‘aqlı̄, but variously translate taṣawwur, which Alfārābı̄ defined as a true, philosophical grasp of the essence of a thing, as “comprehension” (Friedländer), “representation” (Pines) or “conception” (Munk). Pines and Munk correctly 109  Ibn Tibbon’s choice to use ‫ כח הדמיוני‬/ koaḥ ha-dimyoni instead of ‫ כח המדמה‬/ koaḥ hamedameh (used by Kafiḥ) is consistent with his translation of other philosophical faculties such as the rational faculty, koaḥ divri. In the Dictionary, Ibn Tibbon defines ‫ כח‬/ koaḥ as potentiality. Ibn Tibbon, “Perush ha-milot ha-zarot,” 59. 110  ‫ כח המדמה‬in Kafiḥ.

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translate al-quwwa al-mutakhayyila as “imaginative faculty” and “la faculté imaginative,” respectively; however, Friedländer translates it as “imagination.” Takhayyul is correctly translated by Pines and Munk as “imagination” and “l’imagination,” but ambiguously translated by Friedländer as “representative faculty.” Only Munk correctly translates mithāl as “une comparaison,” while Friedländer and Pines employ the more cumbersome “reproduction of a material image” and “reception of an image of a sense object.” These modern translators struggle with accurate translations that clearly reference philosophical concepts understood by medieval scholars of human psychology. Arabic Aristotelian philosophy clearly distinguishes between the imaginative faculty and imagination. The imaginative faculty is the storehouse of ideas that is capable of both rational and imaginative thinking, depending upon whether it is moved by reason or by the senses. Imagination is the activity of the imaginative faculty when moved by the senses; cognition is the activity of the imaginative faculty when lluminated by reason. In Guide I:68, Maimonides does not distinguish between imagination and the imaginative faculty, but groups them both together as the opposite of “intellectual representation.” Rather than present intellect and imagination as two modes of human understanding, Maimonides juxtaposes imagination, the imaginative faculty and the image of a sense object with intellect, intellectual representation, the soul, and philosophy. This inability to distinguish between imagination and the imaginative faculty contributes to insufficient differentiation by Maimonides’ translators, a lack of explanation of this nuance in the Guide’s annotators, and contributes to the reader’s assumption that the imaginative faculty and imagination both stand in opposition to – and are inferior to – the intellect. Part of this dichotomy is explicit in Maimonides, but part of it is expressed by his translators and commentators. One of the difficulties of nuancing Maimonides’ terms, for example, between his use of: “the imagination” /altakhayyul, “intellectual representation” or mental picturing / al-taṣawwur al-‘aqli, and “the faculty of imagination” / al-quwwa al-mutakhayyila, arises because Maimonides never provides us with a comprehensive formulation of his psychology. Alfred Ivry describes Maimonides as generally “reticent” about detailing his epistemology. As Ivry has shown, any student of Maimonides must piece together his formulations about human psychology from passages in Eight Chapters, the introduction to his commentary on Tractate Avot, and the Guide. This, writes Ivry, is a puzzling phenomenon considering how much of the Guide relies on epistemology, and how often

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Maimonides reiterates that divine truth can be attained through use of one’s intellect.111 Eight Chapters makes no mention of how imagination contributes to the rational faculty. Explains Ivry: Maimonides follows Fārābı ̄ practically verbatim in declaring the imagination to be ‘the faculty that preserves the impressions of sensibly perceived objects…after they vanish from the immediacy of the senses…that perceived them.’ The imagination works with these impressions, combining and separating them. Fārābı̄ goes on to state that some imaginative acts are true and others false, that is, they represent reality truly or falsely. But Maimonides here mentions only the false actions of this faculty. It creates, he says, fantastic impressions that the senses never perceived and could not possibly perceive, presumably because of logical and physical constraints.112

Maimonides mentions the “false actions” of imagination, but does not mention imagination’s true acts, namely its ability to process images and impressions that enable a person to perceive true reality. The so-called “false action” of imagination mixes images to create “fantastic” and phantasmic conglomerations, which is a false representation of reality. However, this imaginative action is also responsible for creating figures of speech and  Alfred Ivry, “Maimonides’ Psychology,” in Idit Dobbs-Weinstein et. al, eds. Maimonides and His Heritage (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2009), 51–60. “Maimonides’ philosophical corpus contains no systematic discussion of the concept of knowledge,” writes Josef Stern in “Maimonides’ Epistemology,” in Kenneth Seeskin, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Maimonides (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 105. Ivry points out the omission of imagination’s role in cognition, while Stern indicates the lack of a methodical process of cognition. Ivry puts together some aspects of Maimonides’ psychology from his ethical writings; Stern pieces together Maimonides’ epistemology from his cosmology, metaphysics and accounts of prophecy. In my book, I present Maimonides’ psychology based on implicit parallels or divergences with Arabic Aristotelian philosophy, which I cull from chapters in the first part of the Guide. By choosing those passages that deal with imagination and imaginative function, I formulate an epistemology that reveals Maimonides’ evolving stance on imagination. By contrast, Ivry, Stern and other Maimonidean commentators concentrate on the soul and its function, giving little explanation of imagination’s or the senses’ role in human intellection. For example, see Ivry, “Maimonides’ Psychology,” 53–55; Stern, “Maimonides’ Epistemology,” 107–108. 112  Ivry criticizes Maimonides’ treatment of imagination: “Missing in Maimonides’… description of the imagination is any appreciation of its central cognitive role, in retaining and remembering sense impressions accurately, and providing the rational faculty with the intelligible forms latent in them.” Ivry, “Maimonides’ Psychology,” 53. 111

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metaphors that represent reality in a manner that represent a poetic reality. Metaphoric language is useful in helping human beings to create a mental picture that can lead them, if their intellect is highly developed, to the ultimate cognition of God without the aid of mental pictures. This is the truest representation of reality. Both true and false aspects are part of the workings of imagination, and would be clear to the reader had Maimonides provided a systematic outline of his epistemology.113 Not only does Maimonides neglect to present both functions of imagination, but he insists that imagination is the opposite of intellect. This attitude is reflected in the translations of I:73 as well. Ibn Tibbon translates ‫ ולא פעל אלכ׳יאל פעל אלעקל בל צ׳דה‬as: ve-ayn po’al ha-dimyon po’al hasekhel aval hefeḥo – “the action of imagination is not the same as the action of the intellect but its opposite.” Falaquera, Friedländer, Munk and Pines translate this passage similarly. Notwithstanding that human beings and their minds are embodied and grounded in the material world, and use their imagination to grasp ideas based on what they find in the sensible world, in Guide I:73 Maimonides presents his thesis that human perception of divine ideas is not at all predicated on human imagination. He completely ignores the role of human imagination in the intellectual process of reasoning and suggests that not only is imagination not a part of reason but indeed anathema to it. This attitude is reflected in the translations as well. Ibn Tibbon translates ‫ פלד׳לך לא אעתבאר באלכ׳יאל‬as: ve-lakhayn ayn beḥina be-dimyon, as does Falaquera. Pines translates: “there can be no critical examination in the imagination,” which is closest to the original. Friedländer translates: “Imagination yields therefore no test for the reality of the thing,” and Munk is equally emphatic: “Il ne faut point avoir égard a l’imagination.” These statements, which approximate the Judeo-Arabic original, taken together with Maimonides’ “reticence” to outline his epistemology, allow later translators to fill in the gaps with their own negative views of imagination and its functions. In a sense, these translators commit “epistemic violence” to the text by supplanting the original with translations – either ambiguous or explicit – that influence the reader’s understanding of imagination and its functions. Although Maimonides’ reticence might be construed as not wishing to give any credence to the claims of 113  In Guide I:73, Maimonides presents intellect as completely distinct from and in opposition to imagination, completely independent of imagination or any of its byproducts. This conceptual framework is predicated on, but not slavish to, the psychology of his Arab Aristotelian predecessors Alfārābı̄ and Avicenna.

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the Mutakallimun,114 who contend that anything that can be imagined is possible, or to his general style of not always providing sources for his propositions,115 it is puzzling as to why a treatise that is so dependent upon theories of cognition does not provide the reader with a detailed exposition on how the mind knows what it knows.116 In Part One of the Guide Maimonides makes the subtle shift from neutral to negative imagination in order to bolster his argument that the highest form of human cognition of the divine is through the faculty of reason alone. As we saw in Chap. 3, Maimonides downgrades and ultimately bypasses imagination in favour of demonstrating that a superior and welltrained intellect – and intellect alone – is capable of cognizing the divine without recourse to figurative language, pictorial representations or any other part of the imagination. It is not enough for Maimonides to present imagination as neutral, as he does in Guide 1:2, I:33, I:47, I:49 and I:68. In Guide I:73, he takes it one step further and presents imagination as the polar opposite of the intellect. In the chapters examined, Maimonides offers the following clues about imagination’s role in human psychology: imagination responds according to the way it is moved by the senses 114  The discussion about the Mutakallimun in Guide I:73, says Michael Schwartz, is about the principle of admissibility (wherein anything that can be imagined can be logically reasoned out by the intellect) by early Basri Mu’tazilites. For further reading on Maimonides’ kalām, see Schwartz, “Who were Maimonides’ Mutakallimun? Some Remarks on Guide of the Perplexed Part I, Chapter 73,” Maimonidean Studies 2 (1992): 159–209 and Maimonidean Studies 3 (1995): 143–172, ed. Arthur Hyman (New York: Michael Scharf Publication Trust of Yeshiva University Press); Alfred Ivry, “The Guide and Maimonides’ Philosophical Sources,” in Kenneth Seeskin, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Maimonides (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 71–75; Herbert A. Davidson, Moses Maimonides: The Man and His Works (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005) 87–91; and Stroumsa, Maimonides in his World, 26–38. 115  See Pines’ Introduction to the Guide. Josef Stern writes that perhaps Maimonides did not want to elaborate on the topic of epistemology because he did not want to explain all aspects of cosmology and metaphysics, preferring to keep some areas secret. Stern, “Maimonides’ Epistemology,” 106. 116  In Guide I:72, Maimonides speaks of a highly developed individual whose intellect is conjoined with the essence of the thing she or he cognizes, similar to Alfārābı̄ and Avicenna’s “acquired intellect.” This knowledge is purely intellectual and devoid of any physical manifestations or sense impressions. There is nothing that mediates this “conjunction” / ittiṣal. While Maimonides further elaborates on this and other qualities (such as immortality of the soul) of the ideal philosopher in the Third Part of the Guide, he does not systematize human cognition, nor does he outline the steps (stages of intellection) that an embodied human being must go through in order to separate the imaginative functions of the brain from its purely rational functions. Maimoindes, Guide I:72.

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(Guide I:2, I:33); imagination is not a character trait that can be figuratively ascribed to God (Guide I:47); there is a qualitative difference between what is perceived using the imagination and what is perceived by the intellect (Guide I: 49, I: 68); and imagination, a faculty that humans share with animals, does not perform any of the actions of the intellect (Guide I:73). Maimonides, following Alfārābı̄ and Avicenna, maintains that some people are capable of intuiting divine concepts by bypassing the imagination and using abstract reasoning alone. This ability to conceptualize is only arrived at by a select few who are of advanced intellectual capacity, who have either trained themselves or been instructed in this discipline, or come by this ability naturally. However, Maimonides departs from Alfārābı̄ and Avicenna by insisting that imagination is not a foundation for intellectual thought, has no part to play in abstract reasoning, and is even the opposite and enemy of cognition. This deprecatory attitude towards imagination is expressed in Maimonides’ choice of vocabulary. In Guide I:32 Maimonides uses the term khayālat to describe false imaginings, specifically the kind of thinking that results when a person tries to apprehend things that are beyond his or her capacity to apprehend, or before he or she is intellectually fit and practiced enough to conceptualize highly abstract concepts. The implication in Guide I:32 is that there is nothing fundamentally wrong with imagination, which is a faculty that is part of human psychology. What is objectionable is for a person to grasp beyond their intellectual reach; this can lead to khayālat or false imaginings. In Guide I:73, however, imagination is no longer neutral, nor does it perform according to the faculties that act upon or with it. In this chapter, imagination is completely divorced from reason; any vision it produces, no matter how abstract, is false. Because it is the opposite of reason, imagination is incapable of producing rational visions or images, and instead produces impossible images, like the body of a person with a horse’s head and wings. No matter how inventive these creations, or how much the mind strives to imagine something abstract that is predicated on physical sensations, these imaginative fancies are false because they do not correlate to anything in the real world. Although imagination can take things that it senses in the material world and recompose them into an original innovation, this invention is al-mukhatara‘ al-kādhiba / fallacious invention. Ibn Tibbon translates this phrase as ha-bidui ha-sheker, calling this innovation a “lie;” Munk follows him by translating the phrase “une invention

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mensongère.” Friedländer recognizes the creative aspect of this vision by calling it “a fiction, a phantasm;” Pines refers to this vision as both “invented and false.” However, Falaquera’s translation, ha-bidui ha-qozev, uses two Hebrew words  – bidui and qozev  – that are cognate with the Judeo-Arabic badi‘ (figurative language) and kādhiba (false). His choice of expression recalls the evaluation, in medieval Arabic and Hebrew poetics, that metaphor is a poetic falsehood. It is a creative invention that may not exist at all, but is strung together using sense imagery found in the real world. Falaquera continues, in his comment upon this translation, that imagination is only capable of building upon concrete images that exist in the real world, unlike intellect that is capable of abstract thinking, without a need for concrete imagery.117 His commentary ranks intellect as superior to imagination because, while imagination needs sense images in order to produce its output, intellect can think using abstractions. In Guide I:32, Maimonides uses the term khayālāt to describe false imaginings, and in I:73 he uses the term al-mukhatara‘ al-kādhiba, to describe fallacious invention. Is there a difference between false imaginings / khayālat and fallacious invention / al-mukhatara‘ al-kādhiba? Both adjectives, false and fallacious, point to something untrue. Is there a difference between something imagined and an invention? Why introduce a new term in Guide I:73 to describe a concept that seems to be the same? If kh-y-l carries a negative connotation, why not use it again in I:73? Which leads to the question: Is kh-y-l always negative? Al-mukhatara‘-al-kādhiba, is translated into Hebrew by Ibn Tibbon as ha-bidui ha-sheker, by Falaquera as ha-bidui ha-qozev, and by Kafiḥ as ha-motzar ha-qozev. Al-mukhatara‘, comes from the root ‫ خ—ر—ع‬, which in its eighth form means “to invent, devise, contrive something; to create, originate something.”118 Parsing the term in this way, we can try to understand the difference between imagination and invention and why Maimonides chooses one term – al-mukhatara‘ al-kādhiba – over the other – khayālāt 119 – to describe the false and inventive products of the imagination.120  Falaquera, Moreh ha-Moreh, 59.  Hans Wehr, s.v., kh-r-‘. 119  Used in Guide I:33 to describe “false imaginings.” 120  According to Arabic Aristotelian psychology, imagination receives images from the external senses, combines, stores and retrieves these images in the internal senses and then presents them to the intellect. When imagination is illuminated by reason, the human being is able to cognize, reason, and apprehend divine concepts. When imagination is moved by 117 118

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Imagination is a human cognitive faculty. It is experiential. We know the things we know through what we see, hear, smell, taste and feel. In the passages cited above, imagination is not bad or false in and of itself. It is a human faculty that is moved by, variously, reason or the senses. Imagination – the faculty – should not be confused with the inventions that it imagines – its byproduct. In contrast to imagination, which in its passive state receives and retains sense impressions and then actively composes images and ideas influenced either by reason or the senses, invention seems to be a fully active agent. It is a byproduct of the imagination, not imagination itself. In the context of Guide I:73, al-mukhatara‘ or invention is kādhiba or false. What Maimonides is telling us is that an invention produced by the imagination using disparate images from the outside, sensible world – such as human being, horse’s head, and wings – which are then combined to invent a new entity – a human with horse’s head and wings – is false and cannot be relied upon to depict reality truthfully. There is no truth to a man with a horse’s head and wings. No matter that the human mind can imagine such an entity, or that these fantastical images are the stuff of poetry; Maimonides emphasizes that just because something can be imagined does not make it real. This is where Maimonides chastises the Mutakallimun for believing that anything that can be imagined is true. This is ludicrous, writes Maimonides. Not every invention or product of the imagination is true; as a matter of fact, these inventions are often false and believing them can lead a person astray. However, there are things that a person can imagine that are not seen or sensed in the material world that are true. These are things that are cognized: ideas – and beings – that are immaterial and intellected by the soul. When a person, after much preparation, is able to cognize these metaphysical ideas or immaterial beings without recourse to material images, then a person is able to understand the true reality or essence of a thing.121 For if the imagination is characterized by its ability to invent the senses, a person can invent metaphors, poetry, and figurative images that can sway and influence other people, such as the sustained metaphors employed by prophets. These are creative and positive outcomes of the imagination moved by sense perception. However, the invention of a figurative idea based on sense objects is not always true  – as opposed to a rational concept that is always true  – and can sway a person to fallacious ideas or wrong actions. This is what happened to Adam in Guide I:2 when he allowed himself to be overcome by sense impressions and was ultimately led astray to sin. 121  This grasping of the essence of a thing – taṣawwur – can lead to conjunction with the Active Intellect – ittiṣāl.

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images based on composing what a person (or animal) senses in the material world, the intellect is the opposite of that. As we have seen, imagination has a vital function within human cognition. It is the faculty we use to turn our physical experiences of the outside world into thought. Partnered with reason, it is capable of achieving great heights of apprehension and understanding of metaphysical concepts. When the bible speaks in “human language,” using human terms to describe and depict divine actions and attributes, our imagination is needed to picture and make sense of these terms. When the bible uses metaphoric language to figuratively describe divine actions and attributes, our imagination is needed to decipher this language. In and of itself, imagination is neutral; it is not a negative faculty within human psychology. True, imagination sometimes conjures up unrealistic and nonsensical conglomerations of creatures, but human reason can prove that these images are untrue. True, imagination can be drawn towards sensual experiences and the appetites of the body, which can lead a person to sin, but the human being has the moral capacity to withstand these enticements, even when the temptation is great. Thus, imagination is a necessary part of human cognition. * * * Multiple translations of the Guide have ensured the philosophical treatise’s afterlife and continued survival into the modern era. However, whether they employ a sense for sense, paraphrastic approach or a word for word, so-called literal approach, these translations do not always capture the subtle nuances of the original text. The difficulty of translating Arabic Aristotelian philosophical concepts, which have very specific locutions in Arabic, has somewhat obscured the original intention of Maimonides’ treatise. Another complication that arises in the translation of the Guide is the lack of appropriate terminology in the target language, or language of translation, leading the translator to employ either simplified terms or complicated circumlocutions to translate from Judeo-Arabic; this is an issue that is an obstacle to wrestling Maimonides’ meaning from its source language. These difficulties are compounded by Maimonides’ own deliberate design to remain circumspect about the meaning of his text. As a result of these complications, later thinkers posit reason in opposition to imagination, without tracing through the steps Maimonides builds in Part One of the Guide. These thinkers incorporate Maimonides’ concluding

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remarks about imagination, reaffirming its opposition to intellect, without presenting the subtleties of the argument that characterizes his conclusion. The reading of passages from the Judeo-Arabic original of the Guide suggests that although Maimonides sides with the bifurcation of the human mind into intellect and imagination, he does so after moving through other options that demonstrate that imagination is a necessary and neutral aspect of human psychology. In these readings imagination, while the opposite of reason, is not negative in and of itself. What a person invents using her or his imagination is merely the composite of what she or he senses in the material world, and sometimes this composition yields false fabrications. Unlike intellect, which according to Maimonides does not need anything sense-related or grounded in the material world in order to conceptualize or perceive metaphysical ideas, imagination can never free itself from its perception of matter, even if a person abstracts an image to the furthest extent of its abstraction. Humans share this faculty of imagination with animals, and are only distinguished from them by their intellect. The intellect is the opposite of the imagination. It can grasp and understand abstract concepts without founding these ideas on what a person senses in the material world. Through Maimonides’ use of the term kh-y-l in Part One of the Guide, we see the move from an imagination that is a necessary and morally neutral aspect of human cognition to a faculty that is false, unreliable and contrasted with reason. This chapter raised the question if this complex view of human imagination has somehow been “lost in translation” or if, as Venuti suggests, it has become subject to a bias that made its way into a text that eventually supplanted the original and subsequently became the lens through which future readers understood the text.122 Perhaps it has fallen victim to the philosophical notion or “bias” that posits reason versus imagination and holds all imaginative reflection as fanciful and false and the polar opposite of rational thinking, which is viewed as empirically valid and intellectually truthful. In order to explore this “bias,” the following chapter will study Shem Tov ibn Falaquera, a thirteenth-century translator and scholar who, in addition to writing about poetics, was responsible for translating and systematizing Arabic Aristotelian philosophy into Hebrew. He will be situated as a mediator between rationalists and religious traditionalists, and shown how his poetics forges a new direction for thinking about imagination.  Venuti, “The translator’s unconscious,” 232.

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Through an examination of Hebrew, English and French translations of Maimonides’ Guide that have been made since Maimonides wrote his treatise in Judeo-Arabic, this chapter suggests that imprecise translations of Maimonides’ concept of the imagination have led to a view that imagination has a deleterious effect upon human intellect. These translations and commentaries on Maimonides’ Guide have contributed to the reason versus imagination debate in Jewish theology, and become a normative way of understanding Maimonides and his psychology. These translations and commentaries have continued to polarize and bifurcate the mind and the way it works, rather than delve into the complexities and ambiguities of human psychology. As a result, the evolution of Maimonides’ thoughts on imagination, and its impact on human psychology, have been neglected.

Bibliography Alon, Ilai. 2002. Alfārābı̄’s Philosophical Lexicon. 2 Vols. Warminster: The E.J.W. Gibb Memorial Trust. Behzadi, Lale. 2009. Al-Jahiz and His Successors on Communication and the Levels of Language. In Al-Jahiz: A Muslim Humanist for Our Time, ed. Arnim Heinemann et al. Wurzburg: Ergon Verlag in Kommission. Benjamin, Walter. 1968. The Task of the Translator. In Illuminations. Edited and Introduction by Hannah Arendt. Trans. Harry Zohn, 69–82. New  York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Black, Deborah L. 1990. Logic and Aristotle’s Rhetoric and Poetics in Medieval Arabic Philosophy. Leiden: E.J. Brill. Bühler, Axel. 2002. Translation as Interpretation. In Translation Studies: Perspectives on an Emerging Discipline, ed. Alessandra Riccardi, 56–74. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Cassin, Barbara, Emily Apter, and Jacques Lezra, eds. 2014. Translation/ Transnation: Dictionary of Untranslatables: A Philosophical Lexicon. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Cole, Peter. 2007. The Dream of the Poem: Hebrew Poetry from Muslim and Christian Spain 950–1492. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Cooperson, Michael, and Waïl S. Hassan. 2011. To Translate or Not to Translate Arabic: Michael Cooperson and Waïl Hassan on the Criticism of Abdelfattah Kilito. Comparative Literature Studies 48 (4): 566–571. Davidson, Herbert A. 2005. Moses Maimonides: The Man and His Works. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Falaquera, Shem Tob ben Joseph. 2001. Moreh ha-Moreh: Critical Edition. Introduction and Commentary by Yair Shiffman. Jerusalem: World Union of Jewish Studies.

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Felstiner, John. 2006. Kafka and the Golem: Translating Paul Celan. In Translation – Theory and Practice: A Historical Reader, eds. Daniel Weissbort and Astradur Eysteinsson, 569–581. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Harvey, Steven. 1992. Did Maimonides’ Letter to Samuel Ibn Tibbon Determine Which Philosophers Would Be Studied by Later Thinkers? Jewish Quarterly Review 83 (1/2): 51–70. ———. 2003. Arabic into Hebrew: The Hebrew Translation Movement and the Influence of Averroes Upon Medieval Jewish Thought. In Cambridge Companion to Medieval Jewish Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Heinrichs, Wolfhart. 2008. Takhyı̄l: Make-Believe and Image Creation in Arabic Literary Theory. In Takhyı̄l: The Imaginary in Classical Arabic Poetics, eds. G.J. Van Gelder and Marle Hammond, 1–14. Exeter: Gibb Memorial Trust. Ibn Ezra, Moses. 1975. Sefer ha-‘iyunim veha-diyunim al ha-shirah ha-‘ivrit [Kitāb al-muḥāḍara wa-l-mudhākara]. Ed. and Trans. Avraham Shlomo Halkin. Jerusalem: Hotsa-at Mekitze nirdamim. Ibn Tibbon, Samuel. 2000. Perush ha-milot ha-zarot be-ma-amar ha-rav zatza’l. In Sefer Moreh ha-Nevukhim le-rabenu Moshe ben Maimon be-targumo shel rabbi Shmuel ben rabbi Yehuda Ibn Tibbon, ed. Yehuda Even-Shmuel. Jerusalem: Mosad ha-rav Kook. Appendix 11. Ivry, Alfred. 2005. The Guide and Maimonides’ Philosophical Sources. In The Cambridge Companion to Maimonides, ed. Kenneth Seeskin. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2009. Maimonides’ Psychology. In Maimonides and His Heritage, eds. Idit Dobbs-Weinstein, Lenn E.  Goodman, and James Allen Grady. Albany: State University of New York Press. Jackson, Sherman. 1984. Al-Jahiz on Translation. Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics (4, Spring), Intertextuality. Cairo: American University in Cairo Press. Kilito, Abdelfattah. 2008. Thou Shalt Not Speak My Language. Trans. Waïl S. Hassan. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press. Kraemer, Joel L. 2010. Maimonides: The Life and World of One of Civilization’s Greatest Minds. New York: Doubleday Religion. Kreisel, Howard. 2001. Prophecy: The History of an Idea in Medieval Jewish Philosophy. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Lameer, Joep. 1994. Alfārābı̄ and Aristotelian Syllogistics: Greek Theory and Islamic Practice. Leiden: E.J. Brill. Maïmonide, Moïse. 1979. Le Guide des Égarés. Traduit de l’arabe par Salomon Munk. Paris: Verdier. Maimonides, Moses. 1930/1. Dalālat al-ḥāʻirı̄n: Sefer Moreh nebukhin le-rabbeinu Moshe ben Maimon. Dalālat al-ḥāʻirı̄n: (sefer Moreh nevukhim)/ha-maḳor ha-ʻarvi lefi hotsaʼat Shelomoh ben Eliʻezer Munḳ; be-tseruf ḥilufe nusḥaʼot, mafteḥot u-ḳet ̣aʻim mi-Ketav-yado shel ha-Rambam. Jerusalem: Y.  Yunovits/ Azrieli Printing.

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———. 1952. Sefer moreh ha-nebukhim be-targumo shel rabbi Yehuda Alḥarizi. Eds. S. Scheier and S. Munk. Trans. Judah Alḥarizi. Tel Aviv: Hotza-at makhbarot le-sifrut and Mosad ha-rav Kook. ———. 1956. The Guide for the Perplexed. Translated from the Original Arabic Text by M. Friedländer. London: Routledge/Kegan Paul. ———. 1959. Sefer moreh nebukhim. Trans. Samuel ibn Tibbon. Commentaries by Ephodi, Shem Tov Crescas, Isaac Abrabanel. Jerusalem: Kiryat Noar. ———. 1963a. The Guide of the Perplexed. Trans. Shlomo Pines. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. ———. 1963b. Mishnah ‘im perush rabbenu Moshe ben Maimon. Ed. Joseph Kafiḥ. Jerusalem: Mosad ha-rav Kook. ———. 1972. Moreh ha-nevukhim: Dalālat al-ḥāʻirı̄n. Trans. Joseph Kafiḥ. Jerusalem: Mosad ha-rav Kook. ———. 2000. Sefer Moreh ha-nebukhim le-rabbenu Moshe ben Maimon be-targumo shel rabbi Shmuel ben rabbi Yehuda ibn Tibbon. Ed. Yehuda Even-Shmuel. Jerusalem: Mosad ha-rav Kook. Malmkjaer, Kirsten. 2010. The Nature, Place and Role of a Philosophy of Translation in Translation Studies. In Translation: Theory and Practice in Dialogue, eds. Antoinette Fawcett, Karla L. Guadarrama García, and Rebecca Hyde Parker, 201–218. London/New York: Continuum. Matar, Nabil. 1996. Alfaˉraˉbī on Imagination: With a Translation of His Treatise on Poetry. College Literature 23 (1): 100–110. Motzkin, Aryeh Leo. 2012. Philosophy and the Jewish Tradition: Lectures and Essays by Aryeh Leo Motzkin. Ed. Yehuda Halper. Leiden/Boston: Brill. Rahman, Fazlur. 1952. Avicenna’s Psychology: An English Translation of Kitāb al-Najāt, Book II, Chapter VI, with Historico-Philosophical Notes and Textual Improvements on the Cairo Edition. London: Geoffrey Cumberlege: Oxford University Press. ———. 1959. Avicenna’s De Anima: Being the Psychological Part of Kitāb al-Shifā’. London: Geoffrey Cumberlege: Oxford University Press. Riccardi, Alessandra. 2002. Translation and Interpretation. In Translation Studies: Perspectives on an Emerging Discipline. Ed. Alessandra Riccardi, 75–91. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Scarpa, Federica. 2002. Closer or Closer Apart? Specialized Translation in a Cognitive Perspective. In Translation Studies: Perspectives on an Emerging Discipline, ed. Alessandra Riccardi, 133–149. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schwartz, Michael. 1992–1995. Who Were Maimonides’ Mutakallimun? Some Remarks on Guide of the Perplexed, Part I, Chapter 73. Maimonidean Studies 2 (1992): 159–209 and Maimonidean Studies 3 (1995): 143–172. Ed. Arthur Hyman. New York: Michael Scharf Publication Trust of Yeshiva University Press. Seeskin, Kenneth, ed. 2005. The Cambridge Companion to Maimonides. Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press.

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Seidman, Naomi. 2006. Faithful Renderings: Jewish-Christian Difference and the Politics of Translation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Spivak, Gayatri. 1988. Can the Subaltern Speak? In Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, ed. Cary Nelson. Chicago: University of Illinois Press. Stern, Josef. 2005. Maimonides’ Epistemology. In The Cambridge Companion to Maimonides, ed. Kenneth Seeskin, 105–133. Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2013. The Matter and Form of Maimonides’ Guide. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Stroumsa, Sarah. 2009. Maimonides in His World: Portrait of a Mediterranean Thinker. Princeton/Oxford: Princeton University Press. Van Gelder, Geert Jan, and Marle Hammond, eds. 2008. Takhyı̄l: The Imaginary in Classical Arabic Poetics. Exeter: EJW Gibb Memorial Trust. Venuti, Lawrence. 2002. The Translator’s Unconscious. In Translation Studies: Perspectives on an Emerging Discipline, ed. Alessandra Riccardi, 214–241. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wehr, Hans. 2015. A Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic. 4th ed. http:// ejtaal.net

CHAPTER 5

Shem Tov ibn Falaquera and the Iberian ‘Afterlife’ of Maimonides’ Guide

The previous chapter, with the help of modern translation theories, analyzed several passages of Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed that have been translated into Hebrew, English and French. These passages were chosen because they express, in whole or in part, Maimonides’ conception of imagination and its role in human psychology. The intent was twofold: first, to determine whether these translations accurately convey the idea of imagination as taught by Arabic Aristotelian philosophy; and second, to ascertain if these translations contribute to a perception that Maimonides favours reason and disadvantages imagination. By interrogating Maimonides’ own words in the language that he wrote them, the aim in Chap. 4 was to decipher Maimonides’ formulation of the goal of human psychology, which is implicit in the passages selected. This chapter moves beyond Moses Ibn Ezra, Judah Halevi and Moses Maimonides to look into thirteenth-century Iberian Jewish thought. Taken together, these three Andalusı̄ thinkers built the foundation of a Jewish poetics in which figurative language such as metaphor plays an immense role in how the human mind – specifically imagination – interprets abstract concepts. This chapter aims to examine how, after Maimonides, metaphor and imagination  – particularly as poetry  – and their relationship with philosophy are viewed in the Jewish thought of Shem Tov ibn Falaquera, the thirteenth-century poet and philosopher from northern Spain. Falaquera is an Iberian thinker who reflects on poetry and the role of imagination while instructed by Maimonidean © The Author(s) 2019 D. L. Roberts-Zauderer, Metaphor and Imagination in Medieval Jewish Thought, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29422-9_5

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thought. Throughout his writings, one can intuit the struggles of a poet steeped in philosophy, a prolific writer who values the contributions that both poetry and philosophy have made to human flourishing, but who, either because of cultural pressure or genuine influence, ultimately puts aside poetry in favour of philosophy and Jewish theology. This chapter examines how Falaquera’s work intervenes in the bitter divide that arose between rationalists and pietists after Maimonides’ death, and analyzes Falaquera’s own sense of conflict between Maimonidean rationalism on the one hand and poetic expression on the other. The Maimonidean debate will be reviewed for two reasons: first, to demonstrate the controversial influence of Greek philosophical and scientific thought – so-called “Averroism”  – amongst Western Europe’s Jewish intelligentsia after Maimonides’ works were translated into Hebrew1; and second, to situate Falaquera in his historical, geographical and intellectual context. In addition to his response to the Maimonidean controversies, Falaquera, as translator and compiler of Arabic Aristotelian philosophy into Hebrew, is part of a thirteenth-century Iberian literary phenomenon. Thus, it is important to further contextualize Falaquera within this contemporary modality of translation and compilation of academic texts as a preface to an examination of his works. Shem Tov ibn Falaquera (c. 1224–c. 1291) was a prolific poet and author of theological, scientific and ethical treatises who wrote a commentary on Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed called Moreh ha-moreh (Guide to the Guide) and a book on psychology2 titled Sefer ha-nefesh (Book of the Soul).3 He lived in Northern Spain.4 It was a time of great duress for 1  For more on the translation of Arabic philosophy and science into Hebrew, see Steven Harvey, “Arabic into Hebrew,” 258–80; idem., “Avicenna’s Influence on Jewish Thought: Some Reflections,” in Avicenna and His Legacy: A Golden Age of Science and Philosophy, ed. by Y. Tzvi Langermann (Turnhout: Brepols Publishers, 2009), 326–40; and Irene Zwiep, Mother of Reason and Revelation: A Short History of Medieval Jewish Linguistic Thought (Amsterdam: J.C. Gieben, 1997). 2  ‫חכמת הנפש‬. 3  Raphael Jospe, Torah and Sophia: The Life and Thought of Shem Tov ibn Falaquera (Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 1998), 1. Falaquera wrote, “Although I composed over 20,000 poetic stanzas, only about 10,000 of them were actually written in permanent form.” Book of the Seeker, 7. For a full list of Falaquera’s works, see Jospe, Torah and Sophia, 31–76; and Levine, Book of the Seeker, xl–xlvi. To view Sefer ha-Nefesh in Hebrew and English, see Jospe, Torah and Sophia, 275–350. 4  Yitzhak Baer situates Falaquera in Tudela, where his family was one of the leaders and office-holders (mukademin) of the Jewish community there. Yitzhak Baer, A History of the

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Jewish communities in Christian Spain, due to loss of property and rights, physical attacks by violent gangs, and religious intolerance. In 1264, Falaquera wrote, “The time is one of stress and danger … Troubles aplenty beset us, and every man is poverty-stricken by the wrathful rod of fate and must wander through the land in search of sustenance; hardship closes in on every side and misfortune approaches from every direction … There is no righteous man left in the land,5 and transgressions are legion.”6 Furthermore, Jewish intellectual life in Western Europe during the thirteenth century was rent by the Maimonidean controversy,7 which pitted those who supported the inclusion of Maimonidean philosophy in the yeshiva curriculum against those who opposed its inclusion on the grounds that Jewish philosophy based on gentile philosophy might lead to heretical thinking.8 The Maimonidean controversy of the 1280s was preceded and mirrored by the so-called “Averroistic controversy” of the 1260s and 1270s. In 1255, students at the University of Paris were required to study Aristotelian philosophy in addition to their Christian theological studies. As a result of this introduction of philosophy into scholastic studies, a conflict arose between philosophical and theological views on religious Jews in Christian Spain trans. Louis Schoffman (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1992), 1:203, 1:220. 5  Ecc. 7:20. 6  Baer, History of the Jews, 1:203. 7  Maimonidean controversy is the overriding term that describes the series of disputes over Maimonidean rationalism and his ideas about resurrection, which erupted during his lifetime and continued throughout the thirteenth century. For a detailed depiction of the earlier Maimonidean controversy, see Bernard Septimus, Hispano-Jewish Culture in Transition: The Career and Controversies of Ramah (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982), 61–74; and Daniel J.  Silver, Maimonidean Criticism and the Maimonidean Controversy 1180–1240 (Leiden: Brill, 1965). 8  For more on the Maimonidean controversy, see Baer, History of the Jews, 1:96–110; Idit Dobbs-Weinstein, “The Maimonidean Controversy,” in History of Jewish Philosophy, eds. Daniel H.  Frank and Oliver Leaman (New York: Routledge, 1997), 331–349; Steven Harvey, “Falaquera’s Epistle of the Debate and the Maimonidean Controversy of the 1230s,” in Torah and Wisdom: Studies in Jewish Philosophy, Kabbalah, and Halacha: Essays in honor of Arthur Hyman, ed. Ruth Link-Salinger (New York: Shengold Publisher, 1992), 75–86; Aaron W. Hughes, The Art of Dialogue in Jewish Philosophy (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008), 52–54; and Gregg Stern, “Philosophy in Southern France: Controversy over Philosophic Study and the Influence of Averroes upon Jewish Thought,” in The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Jewish Philosophy, eds. Daniel H.  Frank and Oliver Leaman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 281–303.

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topics such as resurrection, the eternity of the world, and the immortality of the human soul. The Averroistic controversy also positioned theologians against philosophers in discussions on Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, especially the issues of what qualities are found in the most perfect human being, and what is the ideal path in the pursuit of wisdom.9 In Jewish intellectual circles, the latter half of the thirteenth century saw a surge of Aristotelian thought and science transcribed from Arabic translations into Hebrew. Scientific works that had not previously been translated were now becoming accessible in Hebrew translations.10 Falaquera, through his Hebrew writings, helped to disseminate Arabic Aristotelian science and philosophy to Jewish intellectuals in the thirteenth century. Falaquera composed a philosophic trilogy  – Reishit Ḥ okhmah (The Beginning of Wisdom), Sefer ha-nefesh (The Book of the Soul), and De’ot ha-­filosofim (Opinions of the Philosophers)  – in Hebrew that summarized ethics, sciences and philosophy based on – but without direct attribution to – Islamic falāsifa.11 The study of philosophy was controversial in traditional Jewish study houses. In the 1230s, Maimonides’ philosophical works were banned by 9  C.H. Lohr, “The Medieval Interpretation of Aristotle,” in The Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy: From the Rediscovery of Aristotle to the Disintegration of Scholasticism 1100–1600, eds. Norman Kretzmann, Anthony Kenny, and Jan Pinborg (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 87–88. 10  Moses ibn Tibbon translated the first work of Aristotelian science, Meteorology, followed by his translations of Averroes’ commentaries on Aristotle’s works on human psychology and philosophy (Epitome of On the Soul in 1244; Epitome of Parva Naturalia in 1254; and Epitome of the Metaphysics in 1258). This was followed by Solomon ibn Ayyub’s translation from Arabic into Hebrew of the Middle Commentary on the Heavens in 1259; another translation of On the Soul by Shem Tov ben Isaac of Tortosa in 1261; Zerah. yah ben Isaac H . en’s translations of Aristotle’s Physics and Metaphysics in 1284; Jacob ben Makhir’s translation of Averroes’ Epitome of the Logic in 1289 and Epitome of the Book of Animals in 1302; and Kalonymus ben Kalonymus’ translation of Physics, On Generation and Corruption, Meteorology, and Metaphysics, completed in 1316–1317. Steven Harvey, “Arabic into Hebrew: The Hebrew Translation Movement and the Influence of Averroes upon Medieval Jewish Thought,” in The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Jewish Philosophy, eds. Daniel H. Frank and Oliver Leaman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 260–61, and 275n18. 11  Harvey, “Arabic into Hebrew,” 265–67. According to Harvey, Falaquera saw no need to attribute these writings because he viewed them as “true” science and philosophy – in other words, as philosophical truths discernible to someone interested in seeking wisdom (266). Whatever his motivations, by not attributing his sources, Falaquera was following in the footsteps of Maimonides, who in his Guide did not reveal the sources of many of the philosophical ideas he garnered from Arabic Aristotelian thinkers.

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rabbis in southern France.12 Fifty years later, Solomon ibn Adret (c. 1233–1310) spoke out against philosophical readings of the Tanakh that might contradict Jewish tradition and rabbinic interpretation. Adret was the influential rabbi and leader of the Barcelona Jewish community whose halakhic counsel was sought by scholars throughout northern Spain and beyond. His proclamation against reading Tanakh philosophically came in response to entreaties from Northern European rabbinic scholars asking him to ban the study of Maimonides, but he refused to discredit any of Maimonides’ works.13 The Maimonidean controversy flared up again at the turn of the fourteenth century in the province of Languedoc, in the south of France, where Jewish philosophers were accused of reading biblical miracles as allegorical, amongst other offences: “These men preach homilies full of blasphemy, and even compose books in science and in philosophy, drawn from Averroes and based upon Aristotle.”14 Unable to find support within his own community, Abba Mari of Montpellier, France, turned to Solomon ibn Adret of Barcelona looking for an ally to provide a definitive ruling banning this practice, but Adret refused to intervene in the affairs of a foreign Jewish community. He resisted the pressure to issue a halakhic ruling and repeatedly asked the sages of Languedoc to resolve their own issues. Adret suggested to Abba Mari that he excommunicate anyone who studies Greek philosophy before becoming proficient in Torah learning. In a letter to Abba Mari, Adret admonished those allegorists who were “worse than the gentiles who differ with us in their interpretation of a few verses,” for not even a gentile would say that “Abraham and Sarah stand for matter and form.”15 In 1304, the Barcelona community considered issuing a ban on anyone studying philosophy before the age twenty-five, when a person traditionally reached Torah maturity. Members of the Ibn Tibbon family, who were responsible for translating many Arabic and Judeo-Arabic philosophical classics – including Maimonides’ Guide – into Hebrew, appealed to Adret not to issue the ban.16 However, in spite of the Ibn Tibbon entreaties and  See Septimus, Hispano-Jewish Culture.  Baer, History of the Jews, 1:288. 14  From a letter written by Abba Mari, author of Minḥat Kenaoth (A Zealous Offering), to Solomon ibn Adret in 1303. Baer, History of the Jews, 1:291. See also Stern, “Philosophy in Southern France,” 281–303. 15  Baer, History of the Jews, 1:294. 16  Baer, History of the Jews, 1:296. 12 13

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his own prior hesitations, on Tisha B’Av in the year 1305, Adret issued a fifty-year ban on the study of Arabic Aristotelian works on physics and metaphysics before age twenty-five.17 The interdiction was met with an angry reaction by some French sages, who considered Adret’s ban an infringement on their own rabbinic autonomy and a denunciation of the centrality of philosophy in Maimonidean thought and hence an attack on Maimonides’ legacy.18 After much infighting amongst the Jewish sages, the controversy came to an abrupt end when all Jews were expelled from the kingdoms of Paris and Montpellier.19 While the resolution of the Maimonidean controversy takes place after Falaquera’s death (he died circa 1291), the many works that Falaquera produces in Hebrew for a Jewish audience make him a purveyor of Averroeist Greek philosophy.20 As an author who translates, summarizes and regenerates Arabic philosophical ideas into Hebrew philosophical and literary texts, Falaquera is a participant in medieval Iberia’s intellectual culture, a “literary system” similar to one that Itamar Even-Zohar defines as “a network of relations … between a number of activities called ‘literary.’”21 Falaquera’s translations, commentaries and original works are part of a relation of interconnected literary activities – writing, translating, publishing, reading – that take place in the broader cultural and political context of thirteenth-century Iberia. David A. Wacks argues that it is not productive to divide medieval Iberian literature into language categories 17  Stern, “Philosophy in Southern France,” 281, 292. For more on Adret’s ban, see Marc Saperstein, “The Conflict over the Rashba’s Herem on Philosophical Study: A Political Perspective,” Jewish History 1, no. 2 (1986): 27–38; and Dov Schwartz, “Changing Fronts in the Controversies over Philosophy in Medieval Spain and Provence,” Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy 7, no. 1 (1997): 61–82. 18  Maimonides had written that through the study of metaphysics, one can attain union with divine thought, and hence immortality. Stern, “Philosophy in Southern France,” 294, 303n71. 19  Stern, “Philosophy in Southern France,” 295. 20  For a “reconstruction” of Arabic titles in Falaquera’s library according to Arabic sources he quotes and translates in his writings, see Mauro Zonta, “Hebrew Transmission of Arabic Philosophy and Science: A Reconstruction of Shem Tov ibn Falaquera’s ‘Arabic Library,’” in L’Interculturalità dell’Ebraïsmo, ed. M. Perani (Ravenna: Publisher, 2004), 121–37. 21  David A. Wacks, Framing Iberia: Maqāmāt and Frametale Narratives in Medieval Spain (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 87. Rina Drory makes a similar point about medieval Hebrew literature – under which she includes Midrash and halakhic responsa amongst other literary activities – and how it must be viewed as part of an interrelated system of literary texts produced within the medieval period. Rina Drory, Models and Contacts: Arabic Literature and its Impact on Medieval Jewish Culture (Leiden: Brill, 2000), 128–29.

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(Hebrew, Arabic, Latin, Romance) because this separation “ignores aspects of literary activity that cross linguistic and cultural boundaries.”22 Rather, he views medieval Iberia as a place that “foster[s] various types of literary production, transmission and reception (writing, reading, copying, listening, discussion, etc.) that [is] meaningfully interconnected at various points … a system that [is] the site of literary activity in several languages, Latin, Romance, Hebrew and Arabic.”23 Owing to the co-­ existence of Muslims, Christians and Jews in Castile from the time of the reconquest in late eleventh century, these cities become centres for the study and translation of Arabic literature and philosophy into Latin, Hebrew and Romance vernacular. This translation activity is boosted by the influx of Jews – among them members of the intellectual elite – into Christian Spain in the mid-twelfth century, following the fundamentalist Almohad conquest of al-Andalus.24 Some of these Jewish intellectuals are engaged in the process of translating Arabic philosophical and scientific works from Arabic into the Romance vernacular and then, with the help of Christian scholars, into Latin.25 These translated texts become part of the dissemination and “afterlife” of Arabic Aristotelian philosophy in Iberian culture. Falaquera’s fluency in Arabic and Hebrew and his encyclopedic knowledge of philosophy allow him to become a translator and author of works that summarize and transmit Arabic Aristotelian philosophy. In addition to his own treatises and original works, he translates and compiles Arabic Aristotelian philosophy into Hebrew. The practice of compilation (compilatio) in medieval literary culture was a common way of putting academic

 Wacks, Framing Iberia, 87.  Wacks, Framing Iberia, 13. 24  For a summary of Jewish intellectual life in thirteenth-century Iberia, after Jews moved from Muslim al-Andalus to Christian Iberia, see Jonathan Decter, “Subduing Hagar: The Hebraization of Arabic Writing in the Thirteenth Century,” in Language of Religion  – Language of the People: Medieval Judaism, Christianity and Islam, eds. E. Bremer, J. Jarnut, M. Richter, and D.J. Wasserstein (Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 2006), 155–70; Jonathan Ray, “Between the Straits: The Thirteenth Century as a Turning Point for Iberian Jewry,” Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies 4, no. 1 (2012): 101–05. 25  In Toledo, scholars who were learned in both Hebrew and Arabic were employed as translators by Archbishop Raymond. Under his direction, and together with Christian scholars, they translated the commentaries on Aristotle by Alfārābı̄ and Avicenna from Arabic into the Romance vernacular and then into Latin. Wacks, Framing Iberia, 94. 22 23

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texts together.26 The compiler is responsible for the arrangement and division of texts into logical parts, such as books, chapters and headings,27 which are comprehensible and easily accessible to readers. Compilers themselves compare the literary activity of compilation to the activity of bees who go from flower to flower to pluck nectar and produce honey.28 The organization and division of topics requires the compiler to “pluck” texts from their context and rearrange them in a meaningful manner; this includes summarizing key concepts and translating texts from other languages. All of this is done in a logical and seamless manner in order to help the reader navigate difficult subject matter. Writes Malcolm Beckwith Parkes, “Compilation was not new … What was new was the amount of thought and industry that was put into it, and the refinement that this thought and industry produced. The transmission of these refinements on to the page led to greater sophistication in the presentation of texts.”29 Thus, compilatio is both a mode of writing and a way of making academic material easily accessible. At the outset of the literary work, the redactor of the text typically admits to being the compiler but not the author of the book. In his introduction to De‘ot ha-filosofim (Opinions of the Philosophers), Falaquera writes that “there is not a thing in this entire composition that I say of my own; rather all that I write are the words of Aristotle as explained in the commentaries of the scholar Averroes, for he was the last of the commentators and he incorporated what was best from the [earlier] commentaries.”30 Here Falaquera employs what Alistair J.  Minnis calls the “discourse of compilatio,” the compiler’s disclaimer that he is not the author of any original text, but rather the conveyer and organizer of the material of 26  See Neil Hathaway, “Compilatio: From Plagiarism to Compiling,” Viator 20 (1989): 19–44; Alastair J.  Minnis, “‘Nolens auctor sed compilator reputari’: The Late Medieval Discourse of Compilation,” in La Méthode critique au Moyen Age, eds. Mireille Chazan and Gilbert Dahan (Turnhout: Brepols, 2006), 47–63; Malcolm Beckwith Parkes, “The Influence of the Concepts of Ordinatio and Compilatio on the Development of the Book,” in Medieval Learning and Literature: Essays Presented to Richard William Hunt, eds. J.G. Alexander and M.T. Gibson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976), 115–41. 27  This division of the text is called the forma tractatus. Parkes, “Concepts of Ordinatio and Compilatio,” 120. 28  Macrobius (fifth c.) “borrowed” the “flowers” of others to instruct; he compares himself to bees who “pluck” nectar from flowers in order to make honey. Hathaway, “Compilatio,” 42. 29  Parkes, “Concepts of Ordinatio and Compilatio,” 127. 30  Harvey, “Arabic into Hebrew,” 267.

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­ thers.31 Falaquera maintains that his translations have been done to colo lect in one place and disseminate Aristotelian teachings for anyone who is inclined to study them: I endeavoured to translate these opinions [of the philosophers] from Arabic to Hebrew, and to compile32 them from the books that are scattered there, so that whoever wishes to grasp these [opinions] will find them in one book, and will not need to weary himself by reading all the books [on these subjects], for all the opinions [of the philosophers], general and particular, on natural and divine science are included in this composition.33

Consequent to his own assertions that he is a compiler of other people’s material, Falaquera has been characterized as an unoriginal poet and theologian working during a century of imitative literature.34 He is labelled an “epigone” – a less distinguished follower and imitator of great medieval philosophers such as Solomon ibn Gabirol, Alfārābı̄, Avicenna, Maimonides and Averroes, whose works he quotes and comments upon.35 One of the strongest critiques comes from Gad Freudenthal, who criticizes medieval Hebrew translations of “fairly elementary Arabic works” by Alfārābı̄, Avicenna and Ibn Rushd. He states that medieval Jewish scholars did not advance scientific inquiry36; nor did Jewish scholars move “beyond what 31  Minnis, “‘Nolens auctor,’” 49. Both Hathaway and Minnis discuss the negative early medieval view of compilation as theft and the compiler as plunderer of texts. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, when it becomes necessary not only to translate but also to logically organize Greek and Latin texts for academic and ecclesiastic use, the attitude towards the compiler becomes more neutral, and compilation is viewed as a legitimate literary activity. 32  Here I am relying on Harvey’s translation of this passage in De’ot ha-filosofim, cited in his article “Arabic into Hebrew,” 267. 33  Harvey, “Arabic into Hebrew,” 267, emphasis mine. 34  Steven Harvey, Falaquera’s Epistle of the Debate: An Introduction to Jewish Philosophy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987), xivn14, and for another viewpoint Harvey, Falaquera’s Epistle, xivn15; Jospe, Torah and Sophia, 5–7; Falaquera, Book of the Seeker, ed. M. Herschel Levine (New York: Yeshiva University Press, 1976), xxv; and Henry Malter, “Shem Tob ben Joseph Palquera: Thinker and Poet of the Thirteenth Century,” Jewish Quarterly Review 1 (1910–1911): 152. Falaquera himself, quoted above, insists that his philosophical observations are not original but are merely collected and brought together from various sources. Malter, “Shem Tob ben Joseph Palquera,” 163n21. 35  See Steven Harvey, “Shem-Tov Falaquera, a Paragon of an Epigone, and the Epigone’s Importance for the Study of Jewish Intellectual History,” Studia Rosenthaliana 40 (2007–2008): 61–74. 36  Within “science” he includes – as did the medieval scholars he critiques – astronomy, alchemy, natural sciences and metaphysics. Freudenthal excepts Gersonides (1288–1344)

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they had received through translations; they did not venture to make contributions of their own … Some scientific disciplines were not at all appropriated, and to those that were appropriated, astronomy excepted, the Hebrew-writing scholars made few original contributions.”37 Freudenthal makes no mention at all of Falaquera in his article; he does not reference any of his translations or original works. Nor does Freudenthal’s critique take into account the literary activity of translation and compilation that was prevalent throughout Iberia during this era, a critical initiative that built an important bridge between Greek philosophy written in Arabic and translations into Hebrew, Latin and vernacular Romance languages. Freudenthal poses the following question: Given the number of translations of philosophical works into Hebrew in the thirteenth century, why were there no original contributions to science and philosophy made by Jews in the fourteenth century?38 He responds that, within Jewish circles, the study of science and philosophy was mostly theoretical and, as prescribed by Maimonides, undertaken as preparation for the study of metaphysics.39 Writes Freudenthal, “The Jewish scholar’s primary purpose was to illuminate the revealed truth of the Scriptures or to discuss subjects of theological import such as creation, providence, God’s justice, or the reasons of the commandments, drawing to this end on established philosophy. The Jewish philosophers’ interest for science was limited to such subjects as had a theological bearing.”40 For example, natural sciences such as mathematics and physics are viewed as a good basis for the eventual study of metaphysics because they reflect God’s creation and his workings in the sublunar world. As a result of this attitude towards the sciences, scientific study both expands and limits the scope of what a Jewish scholar can study. On the one hand, the Jewish scholar can read a selection of Arabic Aristotelian philosophical texts translated into Hebrew, thus expanding his or her worldview. On the other hand, and Hasdai Crescas (c. 1340–1410/11) from his critique: Gersonides on Logic, Mathematics and Physical Sciences (including metaphysics), and Crescas on the Physical Sciences. Gad Freudenthal, “Science in the Medieval Jewish Culture of Southern France,” History of Science 33 (1995): 29–30. 37  Freudenthal, “Science in the Medieval Jewish Culture,” 30. 38  Freudenthal, “Science in the Medieval Jewish Culture,” 29. 39  Freudenthal, “Science in the Medieval Jewish Culture,” 32. See Maimonides’ Guide, I:34. 40  Freudenthal, “Science in the Medieval Jewish Culture,” 33, emphasis in original.

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these texts are cherry-picked by their authors with the intent that they are beneficial only as scaffolding for an education whose goal is the theoretical knowledge of the divine. According to this perspective, scientific study (with the exception of medicine and logic, presumably because they have practical applications independent of the other sciences)41 should always be undertaken as a basis for religious studies, with the goal of reaching knowledge of the divine. There are socio-cultural reasons as well for why there was little original contribution to philosophy in Jewish circles during the thirteenth century in Western Europe. Freudenthal points out that the ongoing Maimonidean controversies of the thirteenth century made the study of philosophy go underground; unlike traditional Jewish subjects studied in the yeshiva, such as Scripture, exegesis, Talmud and halakhah, philosophy was taught privately.42 The teaching of science was not “institutionalized” the way it was at the medieval academy. Contrary to the attainment of knowledge in university, academic knowledge was not passed down from teacher to student, there was a dearth of discussion and scholarly debate, and serious academic study of science and philosophy was not an end-in-itself the way it was in a university setting.43 These factors, states Freudenthal, are vital for the efflorescence of original thought. While Freudenthal makes valid points, it is unfair to admonish Jews for what they did not do in an environment that was inhospitable to co-­ existence between Jews and Christians, excluded them from scholastic circles, was rife with internecine conflict, and did not readily lend itself to scientific or other scholarly flourishing. It would be more instructive to recognize the contributions they did make to the circulation of medieval Arabic Aristotelian scientific texts amongst their coreligionists. Falaquera’s stated goal in his translations was not to make an original contribution to scientific inquiry in the manner of Alexander of Aphrodisias’ or Averroes’ commentaries on Aristotle. Rather, Falaquera wanted to provide an encyclopedic text of natural and physical science to the student of physics and metaphysics, thus aligning himself – either consciously or unconsciously – with contemporary Iberian translators and compilers. Steven Harvey reminds us that Falaquera’s work De‘ot ha-filosofim (Opinions of the  Freudenthal, “Science in the Medieval Jewish Culture,” 35, 39.  Astronomy and medicine, the “practically useful sciences,” were exempted from the ban of 1305. Freudenthal, “Science in the Medieval Jewish Culture,” 44. 43  Freudenthal, “Science in the Medieval Jewish Culture,” 46. 41 42

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Philosophers) is the first accessible Hebrew work to provide a detailed ­survey of all of Aristotelian science in one single volume.44 All this, in an era when hostility towards scientific knowledge was gaining allies within the Jewish community and excommunication was a looming, but not yet actual, threat. Michael Van Dussen suggests that during periods of crisis in the Middle Ages, the compilation of religious and philosophical texts becomes a sort of “project of forming consensus.”45 This act of compilation is a mode of bringing together disparate texts into one cohesive, unified whole. The resulting text is aspirational: “The text becomes not so much a record of past events as a document that looks forward to a consensus; it is a kind of ‘potential literature’ that enables historiography by inventing its own documentary foundation.”46 Falaquera’s compilation is a material gathering-­ together of philosophical texts written in the past, which he as compiler has decided are crucial for study. The ideas he brings together suggest a model for future consensus during a time of crisis and hostility within the Jewish community, looking ahead towards a time in the future when scientific knowledge will be valued rather than undermined by the community. The labels “epigone” and “unoriginal” ignore Falaquera’s own stated purpose for translating and collecting scientific and philosophic works. The Jews of northern Spain, France and Germany in his day were generally not conversant in either written or spoken Arabic. Falaquera views himself as a disseminator of Aristotelian knowledge, and takes it upon himself to provide an encyclopedic survey of Arabic Aristotelian philosophy in Hebrew, which he does in the three-volume De‘ot ha-filosofim. He also distills Maimonides’ philosophical ideas in the single volume text Moreh ha-moreh. As a result of the intermittent Maimonidean controversies, Jews become negatively disposed towards what their rabbinic leaders tell them are harmful, dangerous ideas that must be avoided, or only approached 44  Falaquera’s De‘ot ha-filosofim was preceded by Judah ben Solomon ha-Kohen of Toledo’s Midrash ha-Ḥ okhmah (1247), a concise yet impenetrable Hebrew work that similarly summarizes Aristotelian science through Averroes’ commentaries. Harvey, “Arabic into Hebrew,” 267–68. 45  His article examines the schism of 1378, but a similar application might be made to Falaquera’s De‘ot ha-filosofim. Michael Van Dussen, “Aristotle’s Tetragon: Compilation and Consensus during the Great Schism,” in Religious Controversy in Europe, 1378–1536: Textual Transmission and Networks of Readership, eds. Michael Van Dussen and Pavel Soukup (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), 201. 46  Van Dussen, “Aristotle’s Tetragon,” 201.

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after one has reached an age of intellectual and physical maturity. Anyone wishing to familiarize himself or herself with Maimonidean philosophy would encounter barriers in both language and the prevailing opinion. By translating and providing a commentary to Maimonides’ Guide, Falaquera in Moreh ha-moreh hopes to expose students to the philosophical ideas of the great Jewish thinker. As Yair Shiffman, who published a critical edition of Falaquera’s Moreh ha-moreh in 2001, writes: Falaquera knew all Maimonides’ sources directly from the original source, and was expert in the writings of Ibn Rushd [Averroes], whom Maimonides did not read.47 Surely one cannot view Falaquera as a philosopher on the level of Maimonides. However, one can deem him one of the greats of the history of the philosophy of the Middle Ages in general and of Maimonides in particular. Regarding the important conclusions reached by modern scholarship [about Maimonides], one can find a foundation in the works of Falaquera. He was most certainly acquainted with a wider variety and richness of sources than have reached us today.48

Falaquera himself is an important link in the chain of the dissemination of Arabic Aristotelian philosophy from Arabic into Hebrew, where it was read and embraced by Jewish intellectuals. While Falaquera’s primary goal is to make the ideas of the Guide more accessible to students of philosophy, Shiffman recognizes a secondary effect: as one of the earliest commentaries on Maimonides’ Guide, Falaquera’s Moreh ha-moreh helps to establish Maimonides as a pre-eminent Jewish philosopher whose ideas are worthy of comment. Furthermore, Falaquera demonstrates his own deep immersion and proficiency in Arabic Aristotelian thought by revealing Maimonides’ philosophic sources, something Maimonides himself seldom does throughout his treatise: “Disclosing his sources seemed secondary to [Maimonides’] presenting his thought. Falaquera labours to rectify this lack. He demonstrates that Maimonides read, evaluated, compared and made philosophic decisions. [Falaquera’s] disclosure of Maimonides’ thought presents Maimonides as an important link in the birth of 47  For a contrary position demonstrating that in some instances Maimonides reacted to Ibn Rushd, see Sarah Stroumsa, Maimonides in His World: Portrait of a Mediterranean Thinker (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009), 73n86, 73n88. 48  Yair Shiffman, “Introduction: Falaquera as a Historian of Philosophy,” [Heb.] in Moreh ha-moreh: Critical Edition by S.T. ibn Falaquera (Jerusalem: World Union of Jewish Studies, 2001), 98. Translations from Hebrew are mine.

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philosophy.”49 Against the background of the Maimonidean controversies, Moreh ha-moreh’s summarizing translations into Hebrew of the Guide’s philosophic sources allows any informed reader to go straight to the sources and explore them on his or her own. As such, Falaquera takes an unequivocal stand on the controversies. He sides with Maimonides and Jewish educators who believe in the value of Greek thought and its contributions to Jewish thought. His contribution can be seen as a disseminator of a range of Arabic Aristotelian philosophy and science to date, written in clear and approachable Hebrew. “[Falaquera’s] book is the philosophic work of a historian of philosophy,” writes Shiffman.50 The following section will examine Falaquera’s engagement with Maimonides’ Guide in Moreh ha-moreh. It will look specifically at the same passages examined in Chap. 4, passages that comment on imagination and the senses. For most but not all of those passages, Falaquera provides his own translation. In the following section, key terms that Falaquera uses will be presented in order to determine, first, whether his translation utilizes Ibn Tibbon’s terms or whether he provides his own; second, how he deals with the issue of reason and imagination; and finally, whether his language expands upon or critiques Maimonides’ attitude towards reason and imagination, as investigated in Chap. 4.

Moreh ha-Moreh: Falaquera and Maimonidean Philosophy Falaquera engages directly with Maimonidean philosophy in his work Moreh ha-moreh, a translation, commentary and reference to the Guide of the Perplexed.51 In his introduction, Falaquera states that the reason he has 49  Presumably Shiffman here means that the disclosure of Maimonides’ philosophical sources presents Maimonides as an important link between ancient Greek and medieval Jewish philosophy. Shiffman, “Introduction,” Moreh ha-Moreh, 99. Freudenthal presents a contrary opinion of Maimonides’ and other Jewish philosophers’ contribution to philosophy: “Maimonideanism in its canonical form, that is, as a religious philosophy in which science and philosophy are the ‘handmaiden’ of religious revelation, marks the limit of what the Jewish community in its entirety (that is, including the traditionalist camp) could tolerate. This, I believe, is a fundamental reason why medieval Jewish philosophy remained essentially a philosophy of Judaism.” Freudenthal, “Science in Medieval Jewish Culture,” 44. 50  Shiffman, “Introduction,” Moreh ha-Moreh, 98. 51  Falaquera’s Moreh ha-Moreh was completed in the year 5040 (1280 CE). Jospe, Torah and Sophia, 62. Jospe uses the Bishlikhis edition (published in Pressburg in 1837), which was the first printed version of Falaquera’s work. Bishlikhis’ edition, writes Shiffman, is based on

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written this work is to review the philosophical ideas written in the Guide. He critiques Jewish theologians who have never read works of philosophy yet claim that philosophy contradicts Jewish thought, which for them is the only true wisdom; he admits that some Jewish theologians recognize the value of studying philosophy and realize that philosophy need not contradict the Torah and Jewish tradition.52 Falaquera then lists people of varying degrees of wisdom. There are some people who know “the truth” because they see it with an “inner eye and without any human investigation.”53 These people are chosen by God for their superior intellect, and they have been given this knowledge as a gift. They are able to hold God in their minds at all times, without any distraction. This is the highest level of wisdom.54 The next level of wisdom comes to those who use human investigation to arrive at divine truths. Falaquera brings the example from the Talmud of Rabbi Meir who studied with Aḥer the apostate (Elisha ben Abuya). Although it is considered controversial to study with an apostate, Rabbi Meir responds to his critics by saying that learning with Aḥer is like eating a pomegranate and throwing away the peel. He is able to consume the essential wisdom and discard what is unnecessary. Falaquera comments, “Scientific wisdom is like to the nectar of the pomegranate.”55 Science – both natural and metaphysical – is not the peel that needs discarding, but rather the sweetest, most vital part of wisdom. By using a Talmudic narrative to justify the importance of the study of philosophy, Falaquera engages with and disputes Maimonides’ critics on their own terms. He positions himself as an expert in the written and oral Torah, the very sources that he claims one must be expert in before one delves into the study of philosophy.56

a manuscript that is full of errata. See Falaquera, Moreh ha-moreh: Critical Edition [Heb.], ed. Yair Shiffman (Jerusalem: World Union of Jewish Studies, 2001), 106–08. I will be using Shiffman’s critical edition of Moreh ha-moreh. 52  Falaquera, Moreh ha-moreh, 112. 53  ‘Ayin be-‘ayin be-lo ḥakirah enoshit. Shiffman, “Introduction,” Moreh ha-Moreh, 112. See also Judah Halevi’s discussion in Kuzari 4:3 regarding the “inner eye”: “He has given those of His creatures whom He has honoured an inner eye, which sees things in themselves without [any] disparity, and from which the intellect may seek proof through inference about the [true] concept of those things as well as their inner nature.” 54  Shiffman, “Introduction,” Moreh ha-moreh, 112. 55  Shiffman, “Introduction,” Moreh ha-moreh, 113. 56  This is the same message he conveys in Book of the Seeker (which I will discuss in Chap. 6 of this book), where Torah study is one of many levels of education for a person of wisdom.

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Falaquera, in the introduction to Moreh ha-moreh, states three conditions that the reader must meet before reading his treatise: One must be at least forty years old, which is considered the age of wisdom; one must continue to study Torah and keep its lessons close to one’s heart; and one must spend a long time in the study of philosophy. Anyone who fails to meet any of these three criteria and reads his treatise is like a non-swimmer who dives into deep waters and drowns.57 Falaquera does not fully explain why he named his treatise Moreh ha-moreh, which is a play on the Hebrew title of Maimonides’ Guide, Moreh ha-nebukhim. The word Moreh in both titles is derived from the root y-r-h, which in its most common conjugation (hif’il) means to teach or instruct, and is the root of the word Torah. Falaquera cryptically offers only two prooftexts and leaves the reader to figure out what he may have meant by naming his treatise Moreh ha-moreh. The first prooftext comes from Exodus 15:25 where Moses, reacting to the Israelites’ thirst for water, cries out to God for help. God shows him a piece of wood,58 which Moses casts upon the water, and the water becomes sweet and potable. Falaquera here implies that his contemporaries are as thirsty as the Children of Israel in the desert. With God’s guidance their Moses, Maimonides, has presented them with the Guide, a book that can quench their thirst for knowledge, and which he, Falaquera, is expanding upon. The second prooftext uses the root in a reverse, negative manner. In Lamentations 1:18, the narrator writes, “The Lord is righteous and I have rebelled59 against his word.” There, the root m-r-h, is used in the conjugation (pa’al kal) that means to rebel.60 The same conjugation, in adjectival form, is used to describe the stubborn and rebellious (moreh) son of Deuteronomy 21:18. By presenting these two opposing prooftexts, Falaquera suggests that Moreh ha-moreh, like its predecessor Maimonides’ Moreh ha-nebukhim, and indeed like science or philosophy, can be a double-­edged sword. It can instruct the person who is of the proper age and prior erudition, bringing her or him the sweet waters of philosophical wisdom. Conversely, it can negatively impact people who do not meet these criteria,

 Shiffman, “Introduction,” Moreh ha-moreh, 115.  .‫ויוריהו‬. “Va-yorehu.” Lit. – “instructed him [regarding] a piece of wood.” 59  .‫מריתי‬. “Mariti.” 60  With thanks to Prof. Laura Wiseman of York University for assistance with the Hebrew conjugations. 57 58

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leading them to drown in lessons they do not understand, which will then lead them to rebel against traditional Jewish values.61 Falaquera’s intent for writing the treatise is both universal and personal. Moreh ha-moreh is written in Hebrew so that it will be read widely, since Hebrew is the lingua franca of educated Jewish readers. The book is not a complete, literal translation of the whole of the Guide. Steven Harvey refers to Falaquera’s style of translation as an “abridged paraphrastic translation.”62 Like his encyclopedic work of philosophy, De’ot ha-­filosofim, Falaquera’s Moreh ha-moreh is a selective and abridged translation of Maimonides’ Guide, in which he intersperses comments from other philosophical sources, most frequently Averroes or Aristotle. For himself, personally, Falaquera hopes the treatise will be a “book of remembrance,” sefer zikaron, that he can refer back to when he is an old man.63 It is made up of translations and summaries of a selection of passages that he deems will best serve him as an aide-mémoire for when he is old.64 Falaquera’s book is thus written both for himself and for the educated reader. The following section will examine these passages in Moreh ha-moreh that deal with imagination: I:2, I:47 and I:73, and III:15. The purpose of looking at these chapters is to examine whether Falaquera’s translation of the Guide follows Maimonides’ theoretical move. Chapter 4 of this book traced the subtle but decisive shift that Maimonides makes in the Guide regarding imagination. Maimonides first presents imagination as a neutral faculty that responds to the stimuli it receives from the senses. Later, he describes imagination as a faculty that actively concocts falsehoods. Finally, Maimonides posits imagination as the polar opposite of intellect. This 61  A further explanation might be that Falaquera’s treatise can instruct the rebellious. However, the author makes it clear that his work is only meant for the reader of great erudition and maturity, and that anyone who picks up his book without meeting the three aforementioned criteria will not benefit at all  – and may even be harmed  – from its lessons. Falaquera, “Introduction,” Moreh ha-moreh, 115. 62  Harvey, “Shem-Tov Falaquera,” 64. 63  Falaquera, “Introduction,” Moreh ha-moreh, 117. 64  Falaquera’s text does not follow the sefer zikaron/book of remembrance or chronicles of persecution genre of medieval Ashkenaz, with books of remembrance commemorating the martyred during the First and Second Crusades. See Mark R. Cohen, Under Crescent and Cross: The Jews in the Middle Ages (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994), 178–79. Nor does Falaquera utilize discernible mnemonic techniques, other than ordering his chapters in correspondence with Maimonides’ Guide. In calling his text a “sefer zikaron,” it is unknown whether Falaquera is referencing any genre or merely using the phrase to demonstrate his intent for future reference.

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subtle theoretical and literary move can be detected through a careful examination of the Judeo-Arabic psychological and philosophical terms that Maimonides employs to describe imagination and its functions. Few scholars, with the exception of Yair Shiffman and Raphael Jospe, have mined Falaquera’s resource, either on its own or as a window into Maimonides’ Guide.65 Moreh ha-moreh I:2 corresponds to Maimonides’ Guide I:2, which deals with Adam’s sin when he disobeys God’s injunction not to eat from the Tree of Knowledge. By eating from the fruit of the forbidden tree, Adam gives in to his appetite, which tells him the fruit is desirable, rather than obeying his intellect, which would have him obey God’s command. As a result of inclining towards his bodily appetites rather than his intellectual capacities, he is punished by having his intellectual perception – the very thing he ignores – diminished. In the previous chapter, I suggest that by joining together and modifying the noun imagination with bodily desires in the Judeo-Arabic phrase shahwa al-khayāliyya, Maimonides introduces imagination’s dual function. There are two capacities to imagination: when influenced by the senses, imagination is led to creative imaginings; when acted upon by the intellect, imagination is led to intellectual apprehension. For Maimonides, imagination – when influenced by sensual desires  – can lead a person to sin. In Guide I:2 Maimonides explains that because Adam chooses to follow his appetites, he is punished by having his cogitative abilities taken away from him. According to the reading of this passage in Chap. 4, imagination is not an intrinsically negative faculty that leads a person to sin. It is a neutral faculty that is receptive to the external senses; it presents external impressions to the intellect, which then interprets these data. However, for Maimonides, since imagination is responsive to the input of the external senses, it is open to the influence of what it sees, hears, feels, tastes, touches and smells. Hence, imagination can be swayed by physical sensations and bodily appetites. This influence may lead to creative imaginings, or worse; for Maimonides, the influence of external physical stimuli and cravings leads a person to sin. This dual function of imagination is original to Maimonides and is not explicit in Avicennian psychology, nor does Avicenna imply that imagination leads a person to sin.66 Maimonides’  See Falaquera, Moreh ha-moreh; and Jospe, Torah and Sophia.  Avicenna’s five internal senses consist of (1) the common sense (al-ḥiss al-mushtarak), which receives sense impressions from the external senses; (2) imagination (al-khayāl), which 65 66

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reading of the role of imagination in leading a person to sin fits into his explanation of Adam’s sin in the Genesis story. Ibn Tibbon’s translation67 closely follows Maimonides original68; in particular, it places desire within human imagination, and explains Adam’s disobedience and rebellion as his allowing himself to be pulled by his senses towards the “desires” of the imagination. Falaquera treats our passage in Guide I:2 rather shortly: “When his [Adam’s] desires overcame him and he was pulled towards his desires and his imaginings.”69 Unlike Ibn Tibbon, who mentions that Adam “rebels” and is pulled towards his “imaginative desires and the pleasures of his bodily senses,” Adam has no agency in Falaquera’s translation. Adam is “overcome” by desire and he is “pulled toward” his desires and imaginings. For Falaquera, “imaginative desires and pleasures” do not emerge from one’s imagination, as they do for Maimonides and Ibn Tibbon, but rather they arise from the bodily senses.70 stores both the sense images received by the common sense from the external world and the abstract impressions received by the internal senses from the supernal world; (3) the imaginative faculty (al-mutakhayyila), which combines and separates images to form new images; when used by the rational soul to combine and separate concepts to form new concepts, it is called the cogitative faculty (al-mufakkira); (4) the estimative faculty (al-wahm), which judges the consequences of things perceived and then decides how to respond to them; and (5) memory (al-ḥafi ̄ ẓa) or recollection (al-mutadhakira), which stores the perceptions and judgments made by the estimative faculty so that it can be drawn upon at other times. Dmitri Gutas, “Intellect without Limits: The Absence of Mysticism in Avicenna,” in Intellect et imagination dans la Philosophie Médiévale / Intelecto e imaginaçâo na Filosofia Médiéval: Actes du Xte Congrès International de Philosophie Médiévale de la Société Internationale pour l’Étude de la Philosophie Médievale (S.I.E.P.M.), Porto, du 26 au 31 août 2002, (Rencontres de philosophie médiévale, 11), vol. 1, ed. M.C. Pacheco and J.F. Meirinhos (Turnhout: Brepols Publishers, 2006), 356–57. See also Fazlur Rahman, Avicenna’s De Anima: Being the Psychological Part of Kitāb al-Shifā’, (London: Geoffrey Cumberlege: Oxford University Press, 1959), 165–72. 67  ‫ וכאשר מרה ונטה אל תאוותיו הדמיוניות והנאות חושיו הגשמיות… נענש בששולל ההשגה ההיא השכלית‬. Sefer Moreh ha-nebukhim le-rabbenu Moshe ben Maimon be-targumo shel rabbi Shmuel ben rabbi Yehuda ibn Tibbon, ed. Yehuda Even-Shmuel (Jerusalem: Mosad ha-rav Kook, 1981), 22. 68  .‫לך אלאדרך אלעקלי‬′‫סמאניה…עוקב באן סלב ד‬′‫את חואסה אלג‬′‫יאליה ולד‬′‫פלמא עצא ומאל נחו שהואתא אלכ‬. Moreh ha-nevukhim: M. Maimonides, Dalālat al-ḥāʻirı̄ n, trans. Joseph Kafiḥ (Jerusalem: Mosad ha-rav Kook, 1972), 28. Pines’ translation: “However, when [Adam] disobeyed and inclined towards his desires of the imagination and the pleasures of his corporeal senses.” Maimonides, The Guide of the Perplexed, trans. Shlomo Pines (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963), 25. 69  ‫ושגברה עליו התאוה ונמשך אחר תאוותיו ודמיוניו‬. Falaquera, Moreh ha-moreh, 127. 70  For a discussion of imagination’s ability to move a person to action, according to Aristotle, Alfārābı̄ and Avicenna, see Deborah Black, Logic and Aristotle’s Rhetoric and Poetics in Medieval Arabic Philosophy (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1990), 231–35.

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Falaquera deals with appetite and desire in Book of the Soul, or Sefer ha-­ nefesh, chapter 17, “On the Faculty of Appetite which is called Desire.” There he explains that the faculty of appetite “is the faculty by which the animal desires what is fit for it, and flees from the harmful.71 The appetite for that which is fit is called desire, whereas if it is for revenge, it is called passion; and if it pertains to the intellect, it is called choice and will.”72 Appetite, or desire, can result in several outcomes. When one’s appetite is moved by something it imagines to be fit or appropriate, this results in desire. When one’s appetite is moved by passion, one might seek revenge. However, in the best scenario, when appetite is driven by intellect, this results in reasoned choice, or will. Passion is a function of imagination; will is a function of intellect. Falaquera in Book of the Soul continues: “The will is moved according to what the intellect necessitates, and the desire according to what the imagination necessitates, and this is what is truly called desire. Every function which is of the intellect is proper and correct. But the functions arising from desire and imagination are sometimes proper and sometimes not [proper].”73 Appetite is moved by what is imagined, or perceived through imagination. When something painful or repugnant is imagined, one responds by avoiding the harmful or repulsive thing; when something pleasurable is imagined, one wants to draw closer and have more of that sensation. This type of judgment is not based on reasoned deliberation but rather on emotional impulse. As such, when appetite is moved by intellect, its choices are “proper and correct,” but when moved by desire, its choices are “sometimes proper and sometimes not.”74 As we shall see later in our examination of Book of the Seeker, imagination has an important role to play in ethical behaviour. One can be moved to right (proper) or wrong (improper) action through figurative or poetic speech that either excites or inflames the emotions.75 Turning again to Falaquera’s explanation of Guide I:2, Adam’s appetite, which we now understand is responding to imaginative input  – or emotional responses triggered by imaginative sensations  – overwhelms  This very similar to wahm, the estimative faculty.  Jospe, Torah and Sophia, 341 and Ibid., 398n1. 73  Jospe, Torah and Sophia, 341 and Ibid., 400n3. 74  Deborah Black discusses poetry’s ability to instigate action by arousing the imagination. Black, Logic and Aristotle’s Rhetoric, 238–41. 75  Judson Allen, The Ethical Poetic of the Later Middle Ages: A Decorum of Convenient Distinction (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1982), 15–16. 71 72

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him with desire and pulls him towards disobedience and sin. In Scripture, Adam is punished by having to eat the least desirable of foods after great toil. He is compared to animals that eat plants of the fields,76 writes Falaquera in Moreh ha-moreh, because he fails to act as one who is created in the image of God. The “image of God” is a reference to the intellectual ability to cogitate, aided by “divine intellect,”77 without recourse to aids or sense perceptions. Here Falaquera weaves in Maimonides’ idea of unadulterated intellectual knowledge of the divine, but he quickly adds that only a person schooled in human psychology can fully comprehend the functions of intellect and the other faculties.78 In the third appendix to Moreh ha-moreh, Falaquera critiques Ibn Tibbon’s (and occasionally Al-Ḥ arizi’s) Arabic translations. In Moreh ha-­ moreh, Falaquera has taken pains to translate Maimonides precisely so that the author’s intention is not lost. The Guide includes many words that hint at a deeper meaning, he notes, and only one who is schooled in philosophy and science will understand this complexity. If these words are not translated properly, explains Falaquera, their deeper meaning will be lost.79 In his comment in the appendix on Guide I:45,80 Falaquera corrects Ibn Tibbon’s translation of the Judeo-Arabic phrase ‫סמאניה‬′‫וד בתכ׳יל אלג‬′‫מוג‬.81 Ibn Tibbon’s Hebrew translation is: ‫נמצא בדמיון הגשמות ושהוא חי בדמיון התנועה‬.82 Falaquera translates the Judeo-Arabic phrase in this way: ‫בדמות הגשמות‬ ‫ובדמות התנועה‬.83 He explains that takhyı¯ l is an Arabic term; when Maimonides uses the term takhyı¯ l here, he is describing the activity of the imagination when it imagines something sensory and physical. For this activity, Falaquera coins the Hebrew term damot. This activity is not to be confused with the faculty of imagination, which Falaquera calls dimyon after

 Genesis 3:18.  Falaquera, Moreh ha-moreh, 126. 78  Falaquera, Moreh ha-moreh, 126. 79  Falaquera, Moreh ha-moreh, 341. Maimonides himself hints at the resonance of certain terms when he writes that it is not enough to understand the general ideas explained in the Guide but rather to understand the meaning of every word within it. See Guide, Introduction. 80  This seems to be the wrong location in the Appendix for this comment; however, this is where it appears in Shiffman’s edition. 81  Mujūd bi-takhyı̄l al-jismāniyya – existing in the physical imagination. 82  Nimtzah be-dimyon ha-gashmut ve-she-hu ḥai be-dimyon ha-tenuah – found in the physical imagination and existing in the motive imagination. 83  Be-damot ha-gashmut u-ve-damot ha-tenu’ah – in the physical imagination and in the motive imagination. Falaquera, Moreh ha-moreh, 347. 76 77

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Ibn Tibbon.84 In other words, as Shiffman notes, Falaquera differentiates between the faculty of imagination, for which he uses the term dimyon, and the activity of the imagination, which he translates as damot.85 As pointed out in Chap. 4, this distinction follows Maimonides’ own use of the term al-takhyı̄l to denote imagination, and al-quwwa al-­mutakhayyila to denote the imaginative faculty.86 The distinction between faculty of imagination and activity of imagination is not made by Ibn Tibbon; nor is the faculty of imagination distinguished from its activity by subsequent translators into Hebrew, English and French – except by Falaquera in his appendices to Moreh ha-moreh. Chapter 4 detailed the difficulties that arise from lack of differentiation between the faculty of imagination and the product or activity of this faculty in Maimonides’ Guide. This difficulty is further compounded by ambiguous translations, particularly by using one word  – dimyon in Hebrew and imagination in English – to describe both functions. Now Falaquera, in the third appendix to Moreh ha-moreh, in which he challenges Ibn Tibbon’s translation of terms and phrases from the Guide, further parses Maimonides’ use of the root kh-y-l. When Maimonides uses the term takhyı̄l al-jismānı̄, explains Falaquera, he is referring to the activity of imagination when it pictures or forms images of physical sensations.87 Falaquera translates this faculty into Hebrew as damot. This activity is separate from the faculty, which is the “storehouse” of these images, the faculty of imagination, or dimyon.88 In Avicenna, these two distinct 84  In De’ot ha-filosofim, Falaquera explains that “there is a big difference between dimuy (‫ )דמוי‬and dimyon (‫)דמיון‬. Dimuy is a verbal noun that, in truth, is an actual verb because it represents the action of the faculty of imagination. And that which is like something else in any of its facets is called its dimyon, as we say, ‘His likeness is like a lion.’” Gabriella ElgrablyBerzin, Avicenna in Medieval Hebrew Translation: Ṭodros Ṭodrosi’s Translation of Kitāb al-Najāt, On Psychology and Metaphysics (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 150. 85  Falaquera emphasizes that ‫( דמות‬damot) be vocalized like ‫( צוות‬tzavot). Falaquera, Moreh ha-moreh, 347n116, 353–54. 86  As explained in Chap. 4, in Guide I:68, Maimonides uses the term al-takhyı̄l to denote “imagination,” and al-quwwa al-mutakhayyila to denote the “imaginative faculty.” While this is translated by Ibn Tibbon as dimyon/imagination and koaḥ ha-dimyoni/imaginative faculty, it is easy to conflate the two, given that Maimonides himself never goes into detail about imagination and its role in human cognition. 87  This corresponds with the activity of al-mutakhayyila in Avicenna, the faculty that separates and combines images perceived in the external world. 88  This corresponds with the activity of al-khayāl in Avicenna, the faculty that stores sense images perceived by the external senses.

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f­aculties  – imagination (al-khayāl)89 and the faculty of imagination (al-­ takhayyul, al-mutakhayyila)90 – belong to the five internal senses that are instrumental in storing, receiving and processing knowledge.91 Avicenna’s al-khayāl corresponds with Falaquera’s dimyon to describe the faculty that is the storehouse of images perceived in the sensible world. Al-takhayyul/ al-mutakhayyila in Avicenna corresponds with Falaquera’s damot; this faculty actively takes the sense data stored in al-khayāl or damot (as well as abstract concepts found in the faculty of memory), separates and puts these images together to create imaginative figurations.92 In addition, imagination has a role to play in cognition. Imagination acts as a type of intermediary by receiving abstract concepts from the intellect and converting those abstractions into images based on things sensed in the material world.93 Writes Avicenna, “[Imagination] represents what [the intellect] sees in images, in the form of a visible and audible object of the senses.”94 In this capacity, when its images are illuminated by the intellect, the faculty of imagination is called “cogitative,” or in Arabic, al-mufakkira. Falaquera returns to Avicennian psychology to translate Maimonides’ use of the term imagination in Guide I:2 and other chapters. No other translator of the Guide transmits this nuance; nor do Maimonides’ interpreters and commentators pick up on the distinction he makes between imagination and the faculty of imagination and how this distinction refers back to Avicenna’s psychology. This failure to shine light on the difference between imagination – the storehouse of images received from the external world – and the activity of the faculty of imagination – the faculty that shuffles images (and, at other times, concepts) – is a distinction reflected 89  Kemp calls this faculty “image store” rather than imagination, to reflect its role as a warehouse of images. Simon Kemp, Cognitive Psychology in the Middle Ages (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1997), 52–53. Gutas calls this faculty “imagery,” perhaps as a parallel to the term menagerie that is the storehouse of animals. Dmitri Gutas, “Imagination and Transcendental Knowledge in Avicenna,” in Arabic Theology, Arabic Philosophy: From the Many to the One: Essays in Celebration of Richard M. Frank, ed. J. E. Montgomery (Leuven: Uitgeverij Peeters en Departement Oosterse Studies, 2006), 338. 90  Also called “compositive” imagination. Jospe, Torah and Sophia, 200. 91  For a more detailed description of the role of the internal senses in human epistemology, see Chap. 3. 92  For more on the apprehending power of imagination, see Black, Logic and Aristotle’s Rhetoric, 195–204. 93  This is also the process through which visions are transmitted to a prophet, who converts these visions and abstractions into images that the common people can understand. 94  Gutas, “Imagination and Transcendental Knowledge,” 339.

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in Maimonides’ choice between using the terms al-khayāl or al-­ mutakhayyila (or, in other instances, takhyı̄l). The failure to convey this distinction and its implication leads translators and commentators of the Guide to misrepresent Maimonides’ epistemology, and the ways in which this epistemology either embraces or turns away from Arabic Aristotelian psychology. Falaquera is far more precise: he returns to Maimonides’ Arabic sources – which Maimonides himself does not reveal – to nuance his own reading and translation of the Guide, and to better transfer the subtleties of Maimonides’ terminology. The faculty of imagination and its activities are not divine phenomena. Unlike human beings, who have a suggestive imagination and change their opinions, God is pure intellect, absolute and unchanging. In Moreh ha-moreh I:47, Falaquera follows Ibn Tibbon’s Hebrew translation of this passage in the Guide rather closely.95 Imagination as ascribed to God is a defect because God has absolute knowledge and comprehension. Therefore, any description of God cannot admit of equivocation or mutable qualities such as imagination because God is perfect. A subsequent chapter in Moreh ha-moreh deals with imaginative activity, specifically the false images that can be conjured up by imagination. The corresponding chapter, Guide I:73 gives a specific example of a person who imagines a man with a horse’s head and wings. This imaginative picture is false because it has no basis in reality. One’s imagination puts together such imaginings by combining what it senses in the material world into a fantastical image. Because it needs to use material images that it sees, hears, tastes, smells or feels in the outside world to surmise, imagination cannot free itself from matter in the way that intellect does. And because it is tied to material images, imagination can conjure up “false imaginings,” or fallacious inventions. As such, imagination is dissimilar to contemplation, which engages in purely abstract thought and has no need of sensory or material images. Falaquera clarifies these ideas with his own commentary while closely following Maimonides. The faculty of imagination, writes Falaquera, can only function by using the particular and material, or physical, object as its basis. For example, it cannot imagine a colour without a body. Intellect, on the other hand, can extrapolate the essential idea from the material; it abstracts intelligibles from material forms. Imagination is acted upon; it needs “instruments” such as an image, a sense impression, or a body to  Falaquera, Moreh ha-moreh, 341–65.

95

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stimulate its activity. The intellect needs no such assistance or mediating tools to help it operate. It can cognize on its own, without images.96 In this passage Falaquera, like Maimonides, bifurcates imagination and intellect. Falaquera arrives at this conclusion in Moreh ha-moreh not only because he agrees with Maimonides but because he has already explored the roles of imagination and intellect in human psychology in Sefer ha-­ Nefesh (Book of the Soul). In Chapter 13 of Sefer ha-Nefesh, Falaquera describes the faculty of imagination (which I have translated with the help of Jospe): This faculty [imagination] constructs forms that have been combined by the communal senses, and separates them while they are still in the communal senses. There is no doubt that this faculty is not the informative,97 for the informative faculty contains only the correct form as acquired from sense perception. And it is possible that this faculty comprises the opposite of this; it can create something frivolous and false, which it did not draw from the [communal] sense. Therefore it [imagination] is not a sense, because often we are deceived by this faculty; but when we use the faculty of the senses, we are correct [undeceived].98

The senses do not lie: what feels hot is hot. But what our imagination construes or puts together from these sensations can be false and these  Falaquera, Moreh ha-moreh, 199.  Qoaḥ ha-meẓayyer. In an effort to clarify which faculty Falaquera is referring to when he names the informing faculty (Qoaḥ ha-meẓayyer), Jospe turns to Wolfson: “Wolfson listed Falaquera’s fivefold classification of the internal senses as: (1) common sense (mishtattef); (2) compositive animal imagination (ha-dimmayon ve-ha-meẓayyer); (3) compositive human imagination (medammeh, meḥashev); (4) estimation (wahm); and (5) retention and memory (shomer ve-zokher). He thus equates the informing faculty (meẓayyer) with the second faculty listed, namely compositive animal imagination.” But in other places in Sefer ha-Nefesh, Falaquera equates the informing sense with the common sense. The complication arises because Avicenna, writes Jospe, uses the term mutaṣ awwirah, which is cognate with the Hebrew meẓayyer, to describe both imagination and common sense. Jospe, Torah and Sophia, 220, 223. See also Alfred Ivry, “Arabic and Islamic Psychology and Philosophy of Mind,” in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta, http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2012/entries/arabic-islamic-mind/ (Summer: 2012). 98  .‫זה הכח מרכיב מה שהתקבץ בחוש המשתתף מהצורות ויפריד ביניהם מבלתי שיסורו הצורות מהחוש המשתתף‬ ‫ ואפשר שיהיה הדבר‬.‫ואין ספק כי זה הכח אינו הכח המצייר כי הכח המצייר אין בו אלא הצורה הצודקת הקנויה מהחוש‬ ‫ ואינו כמו כן חוש כי פעמים רבים נכזב בזה הכח‬.‫בזה הכח בהפך זה ותצייר דבר בטל וכזב ומה שלא לקח אותו מהחוש‬ .‫ונצדק בכח החוש‬. Jospe, Torah and Sophia, 334. 96 97

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fallacious imaginings can be dangerous if they are believed to be true. Within the “compositive” imagination,99 the mind can produce images that are confused and deceptive. These are the “frivolous and false” creations that Falaquera describes above. Falaquera clarifies the dual function of the compositive imagination in Sefer ha-Nefesh: “After this is the faculty called imagination [in relation to the animal soul, and it is called cognition] in relation to the human soul.”100 When the compositive imagination is moved by the estimative faculty, or wahm, its activity is imaginative thought. When the imagination is illuminated by reason, its activity is cognition, al-mufakkira.101 Falaquera describes what can happen when the compositive imagination combines with the estimative faculty: Using this faculty [imagination] we construct things that we did not sense, such as a goat-ram and the like – things which do not exist outside the soul, but which are constructed by this faculty.102 This [communal] sense is among those things that are necessary for us. This is not the case with imagination, because sometimes we imagine and at other times we do not imagine.103 This faculty [imagination] is not intellect, because we are accurate concerning most intelligibles, but we are deceived by this faculty. [This is] the difference between the intellect and the imagination; even though we may be correct or deceived by either one, [within the imagination] we conceive the imagined [forms] as particular and material. Therefore, we cannot imagine colour without a body, even though it may appear to us as the most excellent of particular qualities.104

Within the compositive imagination, there is a constant interplay of images or material forms and concepts or abstract forms. The compositive 99  Or, more specifically, the compositive animal imagination. Wolfson explains that there are two aspects to the faculty of imagination: the “compositive animal imagination” (almutakhayyila), which combines imagination and estimation (wahm), and the “compositive human imagination” (mufakkirah), which combines imagination and cognition. Jospe, Torah and Sophia, 220. 100  Jospe, Torah and Sophia, 221. 101   Deborah Black, “Imagination and Estimation: Arabic Paradigms and Western Transformations,” Topoi 19 (2000): 60. 102  See a similar formulation in Maimonides’ Guide I:73 where he describes one possible byproduct of “false imaginings” as a human with a horse’s head and wings. 103  It is unclear why Falaquera writes this, since the faculty of imagination is always “on,” even during sleep. 104  Since colour cannot be imagined on its own, but only as it appears on a physical body, it is a “particular and material” characteristic. Jospe, Torah and Sophia, 334.

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imagination, which combines both images perceived by the senses and concepts cognized by the intellect, is always active; it even provides us with the images we see in our dreams, while we are asleep. The material forms within the compositive imagination are random and unfiltered, which is why this faculty can construct false and deceptive images that do not exist in reality, like a goat with a ram’s head. However, to apprehend something intellectually, the intellect extracts material forms from imagination and abstracts them in order to produce intelligibles, or purely theoretical thought: “When we speculate on how the intelligibles reach us, especially those intelligibles which are empirical propositions, it can be seen that when they reach us we first need to sense (them) and then to imagine, and then we are able to grasp the universal.”105 In this quote, Falaquera admits to the necessity of sense and imaginative thought as a basis for abstract intellectual thought. For a person to engage in rational thinking, she or he must first “sense” and then “imagine” material forms. Only then can the individual abstract intelligibles, or “grasp the universal.” Sense and imagination are foundational for intellectual thought. This blueprint accords with Avicenna’s system of internal senses, but veers from Maimonides’ postulation that intellect can think abstract thoughts or understand intelligibles without recourse to imagination. Although knowledge of intelligibles is located within a person’s immortal rational soul, these intelligibles must have a way to come down from the supernal world and enter into mortal minds so that human beings can understand these abstract, intellectual concepts. How does the material human intellect come into contact with the immaterial active intellect so that humans can cognize these abstract concepts? Avicenna explains that this knowledge becomes known to humans through their imagination, which receives knowledge from the intellect, which receives it, in turn, from the active intellect. This immaterial knowledge is stored in imagination (al-khayāl) in the form of images, which the faculty of imagination (al-mutakhayyila) then combines and translates into a form that is then re-stored in imagination (al-khayāl), the storehouse of images.106  Jospe, Torah and Sophia, 238, emphasis added.  Gutas explains the process in this way: “This stage of knowledge can be disclosed by the faculty of imagery [al-khayāl] which … is the storage area of forms coming either from the sense or from the imagination. In this case, the knowledge clearly is coming from the imagination, and the imagination got it from the intellect which in turn received it from the active intellect … Imagination can concoct its own images or, when it gets intelligibles from the intellect, it transforms them into images … Only the imagery can disclose the various grades 105 106

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Maimonides, on the other hand, views the imagination’s ability to concoct “false imaginings” as dangerous, and thus eliminates imagination from the intellectual process, especially Mosaic revelation. In Guide II:36, Maimonides states that the prophecies of Moses are purely intellectual, untouched by any imaginative process. Based on the above quote, Falaquera, contra Maimonides, agrees with Aristotle107 that “intellect functions with the aid of imagination.”108 Imagination is foundational to cognitive thought. It provides intellect with material, sensible forms from which to extract and abstract intelligibles, thereby allowing a person to achieve the highest level of cognition. However, there is a problem with imagination. Guide I:73 identifies a problem that can occur when people believe that whatever they imagine must be the way things are and confuse the product of their imagination with reality. This is especially dangerous if people are misled into believing that the product of their imagination, which is based on what they sense in the material world, is an accurate depiction of immaterial or divine beings. As a result, these people cannot distinguish between what is impossible and false and what is possible and true. Falaquera connects this chapter with Guide III:15, which he considers one of the most important in the treatise and thus translates in its entirety. Because imagination plays such a vital role in cognition, it is not entirely clear even to Maimonides, when it comes to assumptions that are possible or impossible, where the work of the imagination ends and cognition begins. In Guide III:15 Maimonides writes, “By what can one differentiate between that which is imagined and that which is cognized by the intellect? … Is there something that permits differentiation between the imaginative faculty and the intellect? And is that thing something altogether outside both the intellect and the imagination, or is it by the intelof ‘arrival’ i.e., the contact of the human intellect with the active intellect. This is so because the intelligible that is thought at the time of contact, and the experience that accompanies that perception, cannot be stored in the intellect after it has ceased thinking it. Only that faculty of imagination can translate both the intelligible and the experience into a form which is then stored in the imagery. Thus, in order later to have access to that experience (i.e., to the knowledge of the universal in a particular way), the only means available (other than actually reinstating the contact with the active intellect) is to have recourse to the form stored in the imagery (al-khayāl)  – hence the statement that only the imagery can disclose that state.” Gutas, “Intellect without Limits,” 367, 371–72. 107  Aristotle, De Anima iii 3, 427b8–429a9. 108  Jospe, Torah and Sophia, 238n187.

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lect itself that one distinguishes between that which is cognized by the intellect and that which is imagined?”109 Maimonides acknowledges that imagination is related to intellect, and that there is an ongoing and perhaps even symbiotic relationship between what is imagined and what is cognized intellectually. What bothers him in this passage is this: How does one know whether what one has imagined is possible and true or impossible and false? Which faculty determines the veracity of these imaginings – the faculty of imagination or the faculty of intellect or something outside both? Josef Stern calls these questions “rhetorical” because embodied human beings do not possess a “criterion” by which to distinguish between thoughts that are products of either their imagination or intellect, or a way to “decide whether any particular notion is really possible or merely imaginable.”110 Writes Stern, “If their [human beings’] matter prevents their intellects from apprehending that which is separate from matter, the same matter will prevent them from clearly distinguishing the actualized intellect – which is separate from matter – from bodily faculties like the imagination.”111 It is a person’s very materiality that prevents him or her from possessing the “criterion” that can discern the difference between what we know is possible and true and what we imagine is impossible and false. The “problem” with imagination, writes Stern, is this: because imagination can only represent things as “a body or a force in a body,”112 it “inevitably misrepresent[s] anything immaterial … It also misleads us, through its deceptive images, into believing that we have explained something when in reality we have not.”113 The problem occurs when we think the images we see in our minds can help us understand immaterial beings. This is especially true if we try to 109  Maimonides, Guide III:15. Maimonides’ questions pose a challenge to Avicenna’s suggestion that knowledge can be mediated through the imaginative faculty. Writes Avicenna, “Imagination … represents what [the intellect] sees in images, in the form of a visible and audible object of the senses … When the active intellect radiates upon [the prophet’s] [rational] soul and illuminates it with the intelligibles … The imagination then begins to represent these intelligibles and depict them in the common sense at which time the senses perceive an indescribable grandeur and power that belongs to God. Such a person then possesses both perfect rational and perfect imagination.” Gutas, “Intellect without Limits,” 366–67. 110  Josef Stern, The Matter and Form of Maimonides’ Guide (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013) 316, 242. 111  Stern, Matter and Form, 242. 112  Maimonides, Guide, II:12. 113  Stern, Matter and Form, 277.

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imagine God. No human being can have absolute knowledge of divine beings because his or her faculty of imagination – what Stern says is the “veil of matter” referred to in Guide III:9114  – does not allow them to form purely theoretical thoughts that are not tied down to images. The act of thought is an embodied act. Our embodied state is tied to matter, and our imagination is housed in our brains. Who we are and what we know is tied to matter. Because of that, as Maimonides recognizes in III:15, not only can we not accurately cognize abstract intelligibles, or determine the veracity of these thoughts, but we cannot even know what divide we need to overcome in order to apprehend those intelligibles. There is one way to approach the divine using human terms and that is through metaphor. Metaphor, as Moses Ibn Ezra states in Chap. 2 of this book, uses figurative language to bridge the divide between the known and the unknown. The language of metaphor brings together disparate sense images to create a mental picture that turns the unknowable into something that can be imagined. Judah Halevi and Maimonides warn us that the language we use is not representational and the comparisons we make do not provide us with absolute knowledge of God. As long as we keep this in mind, metaphor can be an apt and even beautiful way to describe the divine. Falaquera does not weigh in on the issue of the expressiveness of metaphoric and figurative language or its utility in describing unknowable concepts either in his encyclopedic compilation of philosophy and science, De‘ot ha-filosofim, or in his translation and commentary Moreh ha-moreh. In the former, Falaquera provides a compilation of philosophic opinions on imagination; in the latter, he hews closely to Maimonides’ guidelines – even as they develop throughout Part One of the Guide – on the role of imagination in human psychology. And while Falaquera does not introduce anything new to Maimonides’ discussion of imagination, he singles out various issues of contention for attention. Falaquera could have chosen to bypass the importance of imagination and its role in human cognition completely, and posited imagination as antithetical to intellectual thought and prone to producing false imaginings, as other translators such as Ibn Tibbon do.115 However, as a poet and a translator of philosophical  Stern, Matter and Form, 388.  Modern translators, such as Shlomo Pines, continue Ibn Tibbon’s tradition of failing to express the nuanced operations of imagination in their translation. See Chap. 4 of this book for a detailed look at how translators depict Maimonides’ approach to imagination in their translations into Hebrew, French and English. 114 115

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treatises, perhaps Falaquera feels the need to highlight the role of imagination, which plays such a major role in both poetic expression and intellectual reasoning. Falaquera’s commentary draws particular attention to the role of imagination for anyone – poet or intellectual or both – who wishes to study it and struggle with it more deeply.

Bibliography Allen, Judson. 1982. The Ethical Poetic of the Later Middle Ages: A Decorum of Convenient Distinction. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Aristotle. 1993. De Anima: Books II and III (with Passages from Book I). Translated with Introduction and Notes by D. W. Hamlyn. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ———. 1997. Aristotle’s Poetics. Translated and with a commentary by George Whalley Eds. John Baxter and Patrick Atherton. Montreal/Kingston: McGill-­ Queen’s University Press. Baer, Yitzhak. 1961. A History of the Jews in Christian Spain. 2 Vols. Trans. Louis Schoffman. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America. Black, Deborah L. 1990. Logic and Aristotle’s Rhetoric and Poetics in Medieval Arabic Philosophy. Leiden: E.J. Brill. ———. 2000. Imagination and Estimation: Arabic Paradigms and Western Transformations. Topoi 19: 59–75. Brann, Ross. 1991. The Compunctious Poet: Cultural Ambiguity and Hebrew Poetry in Muslim Spain. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Cohen, Mark R. 1994. Under Crescent and Cross: The Jews in the Middle Ages. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Decter, Jonathan P. 2007. Iberian Jewish Literature: Between al-Andalus and Christian Europe. Bloomington/Indiana: Indiana University Press. Dobbs-Weinstein, Idit. 1997. The Maimonidean Controversy. In History of Jewish Philosophy, eds. H. Frank and Oliver Leaman, 331–349. New York: Routledge. Drory, Rina. 2000. Models and Contacts: Arabic Literature and Its Impact on Medieval Jewish Culture. Leiden: Brill. Elgrably-Berzin, Gabriella. 2015. Avicenna in Medieval Hebrew Translation: Ṭ odros Ṭ odrosi’s Translation of Kitāb al-Najāt, On Psychology and Metaphysics. Leiden: Brill. Falaquera, Shem Tob ben Joseph. 1837. Sefer Moreh ha-moreh: bo ḳubats me-ḥabro deʻot ha-filosofim ha-ḳadmonim … beʼur le-divre ha-Rambam be-sifro Moreh nevukhim … hekhino ṿe-gam ḥaḳaro Shem Ṭ ov Falaḳira, ed. Mordekhai Leib ben Rabi Mosheh Bislikhis. Pressburg: Druḳ und Verlag von Anton Edlen von Schmid. ———. 1969–1970. Sefer Reishit Ḥ okhmah. Ed. Moritz David. Jerusalem: Sifriyat Mekorot.

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———. 2001. Moreh ha-Moreh: Critical Edition. Introduction and Commentary by Yair Shiffman. Jerusalem: World Union of Jewish Studies. Freudenthal, Gad. 1995. Science in the Medieval Jewish Culture of Southern France. History of Science 33: 23–58. Gutas, Dmitri. 2006a. Imagination and Transcendental Knowledge in Avicenna. In Arabic Theology, Arabic Philosophy: From the Many to the One: Essays in Celebration of Richard M.  Frank. Leuven/Paris: Uitgeverij Peeters en Departement Oosterse Studies. ———. 2006b. Intellect Without Limits: The Absence of Mysticism in Avicenna. In Intellect et imagination dans la Philosophie Médiéval/Intelecto e imaginaçâo na Filosofia Médiéval: Actes du Xte Congrès International de Philosophie Médiévale de la Société Internationale pour l’Étude de la Philosophie Médiévale (S.I.E.P.M.), Porto, du 26 au 31 août 2002, (Rencontres de philosophie médiévale, 11), eds. Maria Cândida Pacheco and José Francisco Meirinhos, vol. 1. Turnhout: Brepols Publishers. Harvey, Steven. 1987. Falaquera’s Epistle of the Debate: An Introduction to Jewish Philosophy. Cambridge, MA/London: Harvard University Press. ———. 1992a. Did Maimonides’ Letter to Samuel Ibn Tibbon Determine Which Philosophers Would Be Studied by Later Thinkers? The Jewish Quarterly Review 83 (1/2): 51–70. ———. 1992b. Falaquera’s Epistle of the Debate and the Maimonidean Controversy of the 1230s. In Torah and Wisdom: Studies in Jewish Philosophy, Kabbalah, and Halacha: Essays in Honor of Arthur Hyman, ed. Ruth Link-­ Salinger. New York: Shengold Publisher, Inc. ———. 2003. Arabic into Hebrew: The Hebrew Translation Movement and the Influence of Averroes Upon Medieval Jewish Thought. In Cambridge Companion to Medieval Jewish Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2007–2008. Shem-Tov Falaquera, a Paragon of an Epigone, and the Epigone’s Importance for the Study of Jewish Intellectual History. Studia Rosenthaliana 40: 61–74. Hathaway, Neil. 1989. Compilatio: From Plagiarism to Compiling. Viator 20: 19–44. Hughes, Aaron W. 2008. The Art of Dialogue in Jewish Philosophy. Bloomington/ Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. Ivry, Alfred. 2012. Arabic and Islamic Psychology and Philosophy of Mind. In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward N.  Zalta. http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2012/entries/arabic-islamic-mind/ Jospe, Raphael. 1988. Torah and Sophia: The Life and Thought of Shem Tov ibn Falaquera. Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press. Kemp, Simon. 1997. Cognitive Psychology in the Middle Ages. Westport: Greenwood Press.

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Lohr, C.H. 1982. The Medieval Interpretation of Aristotle. In The Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy: From the Rediscovery of Aristotle to the Disintegration of Scholasticism, 1100–1600, eds. Norman Kretzmann, Anthony Kenny, Jan Pinborg, and Eleonore Stump, 80–98. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Maimonides, Moses. 1963. The Guide of the Perplexed. Trans. Shlomo Pines. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. ———. 1972. Moreh ha-nevukhim: Dalālat al-ḥāʻirı̄n. Trans. Joseph Kafiḥ. Jerusalem: Mosad ha-rav Kook. ———. 2000. Sefer Moreh ha-nebukhim le-rabbenu Moshe ben Maimon be-targumo shel rabbi Shmuel ben rabbi Yehuda ibn Tibbon. Ed. Yehuda Even-Shmuel. Jerusalem: Mosad ha-rav Kook. Malter, Henry. 1910–1911. Shem Tob ben Joseph Palquera: Thinker and Poet of the Thirteenth Century. The Jewish Quarterly Review 1: 451–501. Minnis, Alastair. 2006. Nolens Auctor Sed Compilator Reputari: The Late-­Medieval Discourse of Compilation. In La Méthode Critique au Moyen Âge, eds. Mireille Chazan and Gilbert Dahan, 47–63. Turnhout/Belgium: Brepols Publishers. Parkes, Malcolm Beckwith. 1976. The Influence of the Concepts of Ordinatio and Compilatio on the Development of the Book. In Medieval Learning and Literature: Essays Presented to Richard William Hunt, eds. J.J.G. Alexander and M.T. Gibson. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Rahman, Fazlur. 1959. Avicenna’s De Anima: Being the Psychological Part of Kitāb al-Shifā’. London: Geoffrey Cumberlege: Oxford University Press. Ray, Jonathan. 2012. Between the Straits: The Thirteenth Century as a Turning Point for Iberian Jewry. Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies 4 (1): 101–105. Saperstein, Marc. 1986. The Conflict Over the Rashba’s Herem on Philosophical Study: A Political Perspective. Jewish History I: 27–38. Schwartz, Dov. 1997. Changing Fronts in the Controversies Over Philosophy in Medieval Spain and Provence. Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy 7: 61–82. Septimus, Bernard. 1982. Hispano-Jewish Culture in Transition: The Career and Controversies of Ramah. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Shiffman, Yair. 1999. The Differences Between the Translations of Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed by Falaquera, Ibn Tibbon and Al-Harizi, and Their Textual and Philosophical Implications. Journal of Semitic Studies XLIV (1): 47–61. Silver, Daniel J. 1965. Maimonidean Criticism and the Maimonidean Controversy 1180–1240. Leiden: Brill. Stern, Gregg. 2003. Philosophy in Southern France: Controversy Over Philosophic Study and the Influence of Averroes Upon Jewish Thought. In The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Jewish Philosoph, eds. Daniel H.  Frank and Oliver Leaman, 281–303. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Stern, Josef. 2013. The Matter and Form of Maimonides’ Guide. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Stroumsa, Sarah. 2009. Maimonides in His World: Portrait of a Mediterranean Thinker. Paris/Oxford: Princeton University Press. Van Dussen, Michael. 2013. Aristotle’s Tetragon: Compilation and Consensus During the Great Schism. In Religious Controversy in Europe, 1378–1536: Textual Transmission and Networks of Readership, eds. Michael Van Dussen and Pavel Soukup. Turnhout: Brepols. Wacks, David A. 2007. Framing Iberia: Maqāmāt and Frametale Narratives in Medieval Spain. Leiden/Boston: Brill. Zonta, Mauro. 2004. Hebrew Transmission of Arabic Philosophy and Science: A Reconstruction of Shem Tov ibn Falaquera’s ‘Arabic Library.’ In L’interculturalita dell’ebraïsmo, ed. M. Perani, 121–137. Ravenna: Longo Editore. Zwiep, Irene E. 1997. Mother of Reason and Revelation: A Short History of Medieval Jewish Linguistic Thought. Amsterdam: J. C. Gieben.

CHAPTER 6

“No Share in Poetry:” The Ethics of Figurative Language

Falaquera’s Book of the Seeker: A Position for Poetry If Moreh ha-moreh is Falaquera’s philosophical response to Maimonides’ Guide, then Book of the Seeker (Sefer ha-Mevakesh) is the text in which Falaquera makes a claim about poetic language. In Moreh ha-moreh, Falaquera grapples with the role of imagination and the faculty of imagination in human epistemology. In Seeker, when the eponymous protagonist interrogates the Poet, Falaquera turns his attention to two of the byproducts of the faculty of imagination – poetry and figurative language – and postulates a position for poetry in the quest for wisdom. In Seeker, Falaquera weighs in most explicitly on the role of poetry and figurative

‫ ולא נחלה בזמירות‬,‫ומהיום הזה והלאה אין לי חלק בשירות‬. Although Falaquera does not speak of Muses, Brann and Levine have opted to translate this verse as the narrator’s “divorcement” (Ross Brann, The Compunctious Poet: Cultural Ambiguity and Hebrew Poetry in Muslim Spain [Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University, 1991], 134); or “dispatch” (Hershel M. Levine, trans. and ed., The Book of the Seeker [Sefer Ha-Mebaqqesh] by Shem Tob ben Joseph ibn Falaquera [New York: Yeshiva University Press, 1976], xxx) of the Muse(s), perhaps echoing Philosophy’s banishing of the Muses of poetry from the presence of the narrator in Boethius’ (d. 524) The Consolation of Philosophy. A.M.S. Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy, trans. by David R. Slavitt (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008), 3–4. © The Author(s) 2019 D. L. Roberts-Zauderer, Metaphor and Imagination in Medieval Jewish Thought, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29422-9_6

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language. Ostensibly a rebuke of poetry in favour of philosophy, Seeker demonstrates that certain types of poetry can teach moral lessons using beautiful language and are thus essential steps towards one’s ultimate intellectual goal, philosophical knowledge. In addition, Seeker can be viewed as a response to the Maimonidean controversies, an ethical treatise and a maqama-like quest for true wisdom. Falaquera completed Seeker in 1263,1 after Epistle of the Debate (Iggeret ha-vikuah.), a defence of philosophy. Epistle is a short volume that presents a debate between the Pietist and the Scholar, both “men of truth and heaven-fearing.”2 It is a defence of philosophy that presents an idealistic truce between Torah and philosophy and introduces us to two protagonists who will reappear in the Seeker. In Epistle, the Pietist engages in Torah study day and night, and is scrupulous in his performance of the commandments. The Scholar augments his Torah study with the study of “science,” or philosophy. Now for a long time these two would look upon each other with enmity, and there was always trial and contention between them. The Pietist used to proclaim to the multitude that the Scholar denied the religion and pursued falsehood and deceit. The Scholar used to make known to all that the man of the Law did not understand what he read and that his intellect was deficient. After some days the Scholar resolved to debate with the Pietist about these things and to make known to him that he [the Pietist] had been entertaining a suspicion against the worthy, and to verify to him that he [the Scholar] was the one who took the [middle] path in binding the tent of the Law to the tent of Wisdom and Knowledge.3 1  Written in Ḥ eshvan 5024 (October–November 1263). Raphael Jospe, Torah and Sophia: The Life and Thought of Shem Tov ibn Falaquera (Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 1988), 46. 2  Steven Harvey, Falaquera’s Epistle of the Debate: An Introduction to Jewish Philosophy (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 1987), 16. In his article “Falaquera’s Epistle of the Debate and the Maimonidean Controversy of the 1230s,” Harvey claims that the Scholar and the Pietist are based on R.  David Kimḥi (1160–1235) and R. Solomon ben Abraham of Marseilles (c. 1170–1234), two of the major protagonists in the Maimonidean controversies. Harvey, “Falaquera’s Epistle of the Debate and the Maimonidean Controversy of the 1230s,” in Torah and Wisdom: Studies in Jewish Philosophy, Kabbalah, and Halacha: essays in honor of Arthur Hyman, ed. Ruth Link-Salinger (New York: Shengold Publisher, Inc., 1992), 76. See also Aaron Hughes, The Art of Dialogue in Jewish Philosophy (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2008), 57–69. 3  In other words, the Scholar wishes to demonstrate that his approach, rather than the Pietist’s, takes the “middle path” between Law (Torah study) and Wisdom/Knowledge (natural science and philosophy). Harvey, Falaquera’s Epistle, 16.

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In pitting the Pietist versus the Scholar, Epistle of the Debate is Falaquera’s response to the Maimonidean controversies. According to Steven Harvey, no Jewish writer had written a defence of philosophy until this work appeared.4 Although Falaquera presents both sides of the debate between scholars of philosophy and religious pietists, his stated purpose in writing the Epistle is “to explain that the study of the true sciences by whoever is worthy of them and whom God in His mercy has favoured with an intellect to discover their depths is not prohibited from the point of view of our Law, and that the truth hidden in them does not contradict a word of our belief (as the fools think who are void of truth and disagree with this).”5 At the end of Epistle of the Debate, the Pietist is won over by the Scholar and realizes that he is wrong to view scholars of philosophy as “heretics and Epicureans.”6 Although Falaquera resolves the debate in Epistle with a harmonious understanding between the Pietist and the Scholar, in reality the Maimonidean controversy ended with the public burning of Maimonides’ books in Montpellier in 1232.7 R. Solomon of Marseilles, the man whom Harvey claims is the model for the Pietist, informed upon his fellow Jews to the Franciscans with these words: “See how most of our people are heretics and infidels, for they have been seduced by Maimonides, who wrote books of heresy.”8 The characters of the Pietist and the Scholar make their appearance again in the Book of the Seeker, but now they are merely two in a cast of seventeen interlocutors who are interviewed by the Seeker in his quest for true wisdom.9 Seeker is a “frametale,” which David Wacks defines as “a type of prose narrative in which a series of unrelated tales or episodes is narrated by characters in an overarching story that provides a context and a pretense for the narration of the tales.”10 As the Seeker meets and interrogates expert  Harvey, “Falaquera’s Epistle,” 75.  Harvey, Falaquera’s Epistle, 16. 6  Harvey, Falaquera’s Epistle, 48. 7  Harvey, “Falaquera’s Epistle,” 76. Maimonides’ Guide and the first book of the Mishneh Torah, Sefer ha-Madda, were denounced to church authorities in Montpellier, and likely these were the books that were burned. Hughes, The Art of Dialogue, 186n22. 8  Harvey, “Falaquera’s Epistle,” 80. 9  In order of appearance, the seventeen interlocutors are, in Part One, the Rich Man, the Soldier, the Craftsman, the Doctor, the Pietist, the Grammarian, the Poet; in Part Two, the Believer, the Scholar, the Mathematician, the expert in Gematria, the Optician, the Astrologer, the Musician, Rhetorician/Logician, the Scientist, and finally the Philosopher. 10  David Wacks, Framing Iberia: Maqāmāt and Frametale Narratives in Medieval Spain (Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2007), 5. 4 5

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after expert, his journey is the story of his search for the lifestyle or discipline that will lead him to true wisdom. For Wacks, “the frametale is a series of textually encoded performances that portray characters in the act of storytelling.”11 By contrast, Seeker does not aim to be a performative text. Although its overall structure is a series of conversations between student and teachers, a conversation that is characteristic of other frametales,12 Seeker is not meant to be recited aloud or performed in front of an audience as an entertaining narrative with a lesson to be learned. Rather, the text is aimed at the educated, inquisitive reader, a reader who is on a quest for knowledge rather than entertainment or simple moral lessons. Now that Falaquera has harmonized religion and philosophy in Epistle of the Debate, his Book of the Seeker attempts to answer the following questions: What is the best approach to attaining wisdom? Which individuals, by way of their vocations and the disciplines they work in, come closest to true knowledge? Indeed, what is the best way for a person to behave? In his preface to the Book of the Seeker, Falaquera writes that he hopes his work will “teach men the proper path, to distinguish between holy and secular, sacred and profane, and bring intellectual thought [maḥshava] to light.”13 The content of this work, which “accords with the teachings of the Torah,” have been written in a poetic style as a mnemonic tool to assist the reader in remembering.14 The book is written in two parts using two different styles of writing: the first part is written in rhymed prose or saj,15 maqama-style “in the poetic language of versifiers and tellers of parables,” interspersed with poetry.16 The second part is written in prose and utilizes the “maxims and parables of the sages.”17 In the second half of the book, the Seeker leaves behind poetry, both stylistically and as a means to attain knowledge. Falaquera’s stated purpose in writing the book, “to teach the proper path,” implies an ethical component from the outset. Book of the Seeker  Wacks, Framing Iberia, 44.  Such as Kalı̄la wa-Dimna by al-Saraqust ̣ı̄. Wacks, Framing Iberia, 64. 13  Falaquera, Book of the Seeker, ed. Levine, 3. 14  Falaquera, Book of the Seeker, ed. Levine, 3. 15  Levine, “Introduction,” Book of the Seeker, xxxiv–xxxv. 16  Ross Brann opines that The Book of the Seeker is not a maqama because it is a didactic work that does not entertain the reader in the manner of other maqamat such as Yehuda Alḥarizi’s Taḥkemoni. Brann, The Compunctious Poet, 123. On the other hand, Aaron Hughes writes that rhymed prose “is an important feature of didactic and pedagogical works,” and that Falaquera intersperses poetry throughout Seeker in order to entertain and hold the reader’s interest. Hughes, The Art of Dialogue, 67. 17  Falaquera, Book of the Seeker, ed. Levine, 3. 11 12

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aims not only to instruct and entertain but to teach its reader the correct way to behave. The reader, like the title character, is a “seeker,” a designation that echoes the Arabic ṭālib al-ʿilm, or “searcher after knowledge.”18 Indeed, the cast of characters that Falaquera’s Seeker meets in his quest is analogous to the stages of knowledge that the adı̄b, or man of letters, must study and master in order to become an expert in culture and proper manners. In Arabic culture, adab describes the general knowledge of a wide range of literature, the mastery of which allows one to develop into a person of culture and exemplary ethical behaviour. The Encyclopedia of Islam, in its entry on “Adab,” writes about Al-Jāḥiẓ, the linguist and polymath we met in Chap. 4 of this book: Al-Jāḥiẓ embodied the ideal of an adı̄b more in his oeuvre than in his definitions: “Was he a theologian, philosopher, civil servant, man of letters, ethnologist, zoologist, historian, feuilletonist, psychologist, linguist, moralist, legal scholar, traditionist [sic], theorist of poetry or a literary critic? His transmitted works provide an answer: he was all of these at the same time and none of them exclusively.”19

Similar to the adı̄b, the Seeker explores many different fields of knowledge by interviewing experts in each field. He spends long periods of time with each specialist, studying their vocation or craft with them. To each expert he poses several probing questions. The expert defends his vocation or craft to the Seeker, whose questions become more and more challenging. When the specialist cannot answer a question, the Seeker moves on to the next person, but not before asking each specialist to advise him. Every exchange ends with a pithy piece of advice from the expert to the Seeker. The following section will examine the final encounter in Book One, which occurs between the Seeker and the Poet. Falaquera’s treatment of poetry in Seeker parallels his treatment of imagination in Moreh: the Seeker charges that figurative language is deceitful, and yet his dialogue with the Poet demonstrates that poetry is a necessary step on the path towards  Hughes, The Art of Dialogue, 68.  Jaakko Hämeen-Anttila, “Adab a) Arabic, Early Developments,” in Encyclopaedia of Islam, Three, eds. Kate Fleet, Gudrun Krämer, Denis Matringe, John Nawas, and Everett Rowson, accessed January 19, 2016, https://doi.org/10.1163/1573-3912_ei3_ COM_24178. See also S.A. Bonebakker, “Adab and the Concept of belles-lettres,” in ‘Abbāsid Belles-Lettres, ed. Julia Ashtiany et al. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 7–34. 18 19

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philosophical wisdom. Similarly, in Moreh, Falaquera’s treatment of imagination demonstrates that the faculty of imagination is a vital participant in cognition. The encounter between the Seeker and the Poet is especially relevant, as Falaquera in the introduction has resolved to give up writing love poetry, satirical poetry and panegyric.20 My aim in examining this section of the Book of the Seeker is to investigate Falaquera’s attitude towards poetry, determine his motivations for giving up poetry, and evaluate whether or not he has succeeded in his stated goal. Just as he sought out experts in all his other meetings, the Seeker looks for a Poet who is an expert in his field: “Determined to understand maxims and parables, to learn wisdom and the moral teachings of poetic seers, the Seeker sought out a bard who was ten times more talented than any other, a master of string music and expert composer of love poetry, one who had been trained from his youth to speak glorious things about the honoured men of the earth.”21 The Seeker seeks a veteran poet, trained from his youth to compose panegyrics, who is not only expert in composing music and love poetry, but can infer meaning from maxims and parables, and deduce knowledge and ethics from poems. Poetry described this way refers not only to the entertaining expression of rhymed verse, but also to the vehicle used to disseminate wisdom and moral lessons. It is a poetry whose goal is to teach proper behaviour through engaging yet instructive verse.22 The Seeker finds a poet who is a gifted and famous orator and wise interpreter of maxims: “His melodies were like honey and butter; his lips dropped sweet words and honey flowed from his poems … and oil gushed as from an oil press when he spoke.”23 Falaquera’s Hebrew borrows freely from Psalms, Proverbs, Isaiah and Song of Songs to praise the talent of the Poet. In a paraphrase of Song of Songs I:3, Falaquera describes the Poet: “His ointments have a good fragrance; his name is like poured oil; therefore maidens do love him.”24 “His name is like poured oil” suggests that  Falaquera, Book of the Seeker, ed. M. Herschel Levine, 2.  Falaquera, Book of the Seeker, 79. 22  On the instructive and ethical goals of poetry, see Allen, Ethical Poetic. 23  Falaquera, Book of the Seeker, 79. 24  ‫ריח שמניו טובים שמן תורק שמו על כן עלמות אהבוהו‬. Falaquera, Sefer ha-Mevaḳesh: ve-hu nahar le-hashkot kol tsame me zehav ha-ḥokhmah (Bnei Brak: Keren K.L.H., 1990), 87, translation mine. M. Herschel Levine’s translation of this verse is neither word-for-word nor sense-forsense: “Rare was the fragrance of his perfumed words and the sound of his name wafted like scent; no wonder girls admired him.” Elsewhere, Levine translates ‫ למען יעשה בשיר פלאים‬as 20 21

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the poet has a good reputation; “therefore maidens do love him” because his good name and deeds have earned their love. By paraphrasing the verse in Song of Songs, Falaquera describes a dignified poet who has mastered his craft, and that is the reason why young women are drawn to him. The Poet is also able to bring about the reversal of people’s status using only his words: “By virtue of his poems the princes of his people and their wealthy men were exalted, while knavish men and those who emulated them were humbled.”25 Is this darker side of poetry implicit in Falaquera’s text? After copiously complimenting the Poet for his beautiful, lyrical compositions – “Indeed, all your words are pure music and you are a sweet singer”26 – the Seeker continues: You order your words properly to express your grasp of wise teachings for training in right conduct. Inasmuch as the Lord has graciously granted you knowledge, it is incumbent on you27 to occupy yourself with the secret lore of wisdom, for the faculty of reason shapes the image and form of man. It is unseemly for you to devote your time to the vanities of the poets with lies upon their lips and whose tongues speak falsehood (Ps. 144:8). To men who call good evil and evil good (Is. 5:20), who fashion their poems on the foundation of deceit while truth is never to be seen (Is. 59:15), who devour with their mouths and pen orders that oppress (Is. 10:1). These men maintain lies bred by the imagination and attract worthless fellows to their circles.28

The Seeker’s attitude towards poetry is very ambivalent. On the one hand, he recognizes the Poet’s brilliance and acknowledges his contribution to adab and ethical training (“wise teachings for training in right conduct”). On the other hand, he berates the Poet for wasting his time with poets who deal in deceitful praise poetry, and for squandering his wisdom and talent on telling lies to noblemen. The primary reason why “Verily, a sorcerer is he [the poet].” Levine’s translation communicates a more negative attitude towards poetry than is expressed, either explicitly or implicitly, by Falaquera in The Book of the Seeker. Levine, The Book of the Seeker (Sefer Ha-Mebaqqesh) by Shem Tob ben Joseph ibn Falaquera (New York: Yeshiva University Press, 1976). 25  Falaquera, Book of the Seeker, 80. 26  Falaquera, Book of the Seeker, 80. 27  ‫ ;חובה עליך‬Lit. – you have an obligation. 28  Emphasis in original. Falaquera, Book of the Seeker, 80–81. The final sentence in Hebrew reads: ‫ובכזבי הדמיון מחזיקים…פיהם דבר שוא ולשונם תהגה שקרים…משוררים הבלים‬. Falaquera, Sefer ha-Mevaqqesh, 87.

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the Seeker chooses the Poet is his expertise in encomiums, and now he reproaches him for that very skill! It is uncertain if the Seeker’s rebuke is reserved for praise poets alone, because the Seeker then continues to insult poets and poetry, calling poetry “crooked,” “lying,” “deceit,” and “explicit falsehood.”29 He says, “Those who practice it use only figurative and metaphorical terms, which are far from the truth.”30 Judging from these excerpts, it seems that there is a darker side to poetry that is explicit in the Book of the Seeker: albeit upon careful inspection, this is an attack upon the lies that are emitted from the lips of poets who busy themselves with praise poetry. Thus ends the first part of Seeker; from here on, until the end of the second part of the book, Falaquera ceases to write in verse, to demonstrate that he no longer wants anything to do with poetry. In his attack on poetry, the Seeker is reiterating the trope that poetry is falsehood.31 This trope, according to Joseph Dana, is a pseudo-­Aristotelian saying repeated often by Arab poets and poetic theorists.32 Moses Ibn Ezra argues that “the best of poetry is its falsehood … and without falsehood there is no poetry.”33 This is similarly expressed by Ibn Rashiq (b. 1000) in Kitāb al-‘umda: “Another of the excellent characteristics of poetry is that in it the lie, about whose ugliness everybody agrees, is beautiful.”34 According to Ibn Ezra, a poet’s speech must be as truthful as possible; however, the impulse to tell the truth should not impede the poet from using figures of speech such as hyperbole (exaggeration), simile (compari Falaquera, Book of the Seeker, 81; Falaquera, Sefer ha-Mevaqqesh, 87–88.  .‫ולא ישמשו בעליה אלא בשמות המושאלים והמועתקים‬.‫ אשר הם מהודות על האמת רחוקים‬. Falaquera, Book of the Seeker, 81–82, translation mine. 31  Lactantius, in the fourth century, postulated that poets are “licensed” to deviate from the truth in creating poetry and poetic figures of speech: “Something is perhaps transferred (traductum) and obscured by oblique figuration in which an enfolded truth is hidden.” Rita Copeland and Ineke Sluiter, eds., Medieval Grammar and Rhetoric: Language Arts and Literary Theory, AD 300–1475 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 35. The language of “transfer” echoes Aristotle’s formulation of metaphor as transfer, as explained in Chap. 2. 32  “The Best Poem is that which Contains the Greatest Falsehood” in Joseph Dana, Poetics of Medieval Hebrew Literature according to Moshe ibn Ezra [Heb.] (Tel Aviv: Dvir Company Limited, 1992), 95–105. Ibn Ezra attributes this to Aristotle: “Lies are what poets compose according to their craft, but they are not the essence of their speech.” Moses Ibn Ezra, Sefer ha-‘iyunim veha-diyunim al ha-shirah ha-‘ivrit [Kitāb al-muḥāḍara wal-mudhākara] ed. and trans. by Avraham Shlomo Halkin (Jerusalem: Hotsa-at Mekitze nirdamim, 1975), 119. 33  .‫אטיב אלשער אכד׳בה…ולו ערי אלשער מן כד׳ב לם יכן שערא‬. Ibn Ezra, Muḥāḍara, 116. 34  In Vincente Cantarino, Arabic Poetics in the Golden Age: Selection of Texts Accompanied by a Preliminary Study (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1975), 145. 29 30

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son) and, the “best of poetry,” metaphor.35 These figures of speech, and others like them that are often used in poetry, can be construed as “falsehoods” because they do not represent reality in the starkest literal sense. Instead, these figures of speech use words to describe things impressionistically, using substitutions, and not as they actually are. When a poet writes a praise poem, argues Ibn Ezra, it is full of fabrications because the composition requires it. We, as the audience, are aware that figurative language – the hyperboles and similitudes – used in these encomia are all lies: “A poet is like a painter who paints the perfect picture: looking at it takes one’s breath away, but there is really nothing there.”36 It is not the poet’s choice of words, or the veracity of figurative language, that is a fabrication. Rather, a poet tells lies when he does not believe what he says, and the deception occurs when a poet speaks words of praise to a person who is undeserving of such praise. This, according to Ibn Ezra, is not poetic falsehood but implicitly untruthful and it is a practice to be avoided.37 This critique of poetry is not based on its use of figurative language, but on the truthfulness of its likenesses or lack thereof. “Since poetic language is the language of likening and imagination,”38 it then follows that the degree and accurateness of likeness expressed by poetic language is crucial to the efficacy of poetry. Averroes comments that an analogy or likening is well done if it is accurately described, by which he means that there is a relationship between the thing and its description.39 This relationship need not be between two things that are similar; it need only be a relation35  For an extensive discussion of metaphor in medieval Hebrew poetry and thought, see Chap. 2 of this book. 36  Ibn Ezra, Muḥāḍara, 119. 37  Dana, Poetics of Medieval Hebrew Literature, 98–99. 38  From Bartholomew of Bruges’ 1307 lecture on the Averroistic Poetics in Allen, Ethical Poetic, 183. 39  In the Latin translation of Averroes, a likening or assimilatio is well made when the relationship between a res (thing) and its representatio (resemblance) is convenientia. Allen prefers to translate convenientia as “active reciprocity” rather than “accuracy.” In other words, the relationship between the thing and its likeness is dynamic and moves back and forth between the two. Allen, Ethical Poetic, 196. This definition harkens back to Heinrichs’ definition of “new” metaphor, which he describes as an “imaginary ascription” in which the thing and its analogue borrow from one another to create a new figurative concept. Wolfhart Heinrichs, The Hand of the Northwind: Opinions on Metaphor and the Early Meaning of Isti‘āra in Arabic Poetics (Wiesbaden: Deutsche Morgenlandische Gesellschaft, 1977), 32–33. For more on this see Chap. 2, section on Moses Ibn Ezra.

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ship between aspects, qualities or actions of two things. For instance, as we saw in Chap. 2, Aristotle writes that a metaphor can be made by transferring or borrowing a quality or qualities between species to create an analogy,40 or as al-Jurjānı̄ describes, by collapsing the subject and its analogue into one imaginative figuration.41 In both cases, the bringing together of disparate characteristics into one metaphoric figuration generates a new entity or mental image that requires decipherment. Moses Ibn Ezra wrote: “Metaphor is a word for something unknown taken from something known. This is all; if you examine it deeply and logically and weigh it on the scales of investigation, it will reveal to you its praiseworthiness.”42 When the poet creates a metaphor, she or he juxtaposes subject and analogue by arranging something “known” with something “unknown.” Deciphering the metaphor is an act of imagination and intellect: the figurative language of metaphor uses words to paint pictures that are presented to the inner senses, then received and stored in the imagination. The disparate images must then be decoded in order to find similitude between them. The reader must “examine” the metaphor “deeply and logically” to decipher the analogy. In this way, understanding a similitude is an “investigation,” an act of thinking. In medieval Arabic and Hebrew poetics, a metaphor is understood to be a poetic falsehood. It is the best and most beautiful of falsehoods and a valuable ornament of poetry.43 Metaphor is a necessary aspect of poetry, and used properly, its finest ornament. But when it is used improperly, it is the worst kind of lying. A poet must be careful to match his intention to his words. Moses Ibn Ezra recounts the story of a poet delivering an encomium to a great man. The poet goes on and on, copiously praising the 40  “Metaphor consists in giving the thing a name that belongs to something else; the transference being either from genus to species, or from species to genus, or from species to species, or on the grounds of analogy.” Aristotle’s Poetics, 1457b 7–9, in The Complete Works of Aristotle: The Revised Oxford Translation, ed. Jonathan Barnes (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984), 2332. See also Aristotle, Poetics, 1459a 5–8 and Rhetoric iii 2, 1405a 8–11, 35–37, The Complete Works of Aristotle. 41  Heinrichs, The Hand of the Northwind, 12. 42  ‫ והדא כלה‬,‫ומעני אלאסתעארה אלכלמה בשי לם יערף בשי קד יערף‬. “Wa-ma’ani al-isti‘āra al-qalimat bi-shay lam yu’araf bi-shay qad yu’araf, wa-hada qulah.” Ibn Ezra, Muḥad ̄ a ̣ ra, 229. For a deeper examination of metaphor, and a discussion of “new” and “old” metaphors, see Chap. 2. 43  Moses Ibn Ezra writes: ‫מיטב השיר הכוזב שבו‬, “Meitav ha-shir ha-qozev she-bo” “The best of poetry is its falsehood.” He continues: ‫ולו היה השיר ריק מן הכזב לא היה שיר‬, “Ve-lu haya ha-shir rayk min ha-khazav lo haya shir.” “And if poetry is empty of falsehood, it is not poetry.” Ibn Ezra, Muḥāḍara, 117.

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benefactor’s wonderful attributes. But the poet’s intentions do not match his words, and the benefactor, who does not believe a word of the accolade, tells him, “I am less than what you say, and more than what is in your heart.”44 In this anecdote, the poet’s heart is clearly not in sync with the words he expresses, so the praise that emerges from his mouth is essentially false. This is a form of lying: when intentions do not match words. There is a difference between poetic falsehood and false comparison. The former, which is a stylistic ornament and includes metaphor, is admirable; the latter, which involves a false description that is considered a lie, is reprehensible. Although Ross Brann opines that in the thirteenth century all poetry was viewed as “duplicitous content” produced by a “poetic imagination guilty of deliberate dishonesty,”45 I would argue that it is the latter category of poetry, the deliberate lie, and particularly the false descriptiveness involved in panegyric and/or satire, that Falaquera attacks in the meeting between the Seeker and the Poet. Returning to the text of the Book of the Seeker, the Seeker asks the poet four questions. First, what is poetry and what makes people admire it? The Poet answers, “A poem can be best defined as a composition made up of metaphors, divided into equal patterns or meter … However, a poem is superior when its subject is inherently valuable [lit. – when its objective surpasses the letters themselves] and when the poet beautifies his material with the gold of eloquence.”46 The Poet’s definition is technical: poetry is comprised of metaphors (figurative language), rhyme and metre. Falaquera here nods to Ibn Ezra’s dictum that “the best of poetry is its falsehood” – meaning, its metaphor – “…and without falsehood there is no poetry,”47 without alluding to Ibn Ezra’s language or weighing the ethics of using poetic falsehoods. Instead, Falaquera’s Poet suggests an aesthetic telos for poetry: the best of poetry is any figure of speech, pattern or metre that is beautifully crafted, and whose beauty transcends the material. The phrase “gold of eloquence” echoes the verse in Proverbs 25:11: “A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in settings of silver.” In addition, “gold of 44  “.‫“ ”אני פחות משאמרת ויותר מאשר בלבך‬Ani pah.ot mi-she-amarta ve-yoter me-asher be-libekha.” Ibn Ezra, Muḥāḍara, 193. 45  Brann, The Compunctious Poet, 125. 46  .‫ ובפיות המשורר אותו בזהב הצחות‬.‫“ אבל יהיה השיר יותר מעולה כשיהיה תכליותיו מאותיות בעצמם‬Aval yihiyeh ha-shir yoter me’uleh qe-she-yihiyeh takhliyotav me-otiot be-‘atzmam. U-be-fiyot ha-meshorer oto be-zahav ha-tzaḥut.” Falaquera, Book of the Seeker, 88; Falaquera, Sefer ha-Mevaqqesh, 92. 47  Ibn Ezra, Muḥāḍara, 117.

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eloquence” reminds the reader of Maimonides’ use of the same verse in the Guide as he describes figurative language in Scripture as “apples of gold in settings of silver.”48 There, Maimonides alludes to the ability of scriptural language to operate simultaneously at different levels of meaning, with the “silver” materiality of words and their plain meaning encasing the “gold” of inner meaning, the significance of which often needs to be decoded with imaginative effort. The Seeker then asks why poetry has such a persuasive effect on the masses, and why prophets use poetic language to exhort or sing praises. The Poet answers that poetry utilizes imitation,49 and people are drawn to comparisons or figurative language. Poetry, or beautiful speech, is an effective means of persuasion for a person who is deficient in understanding his or her actions. Figurations and images can be used to issue warnings against improper behaviour, with the goal of habituating a person to take proper action. For such a person, “imagination takes the place of understanding.”50 Here Falaquera approaches imagination from a very different angle than in Moreh, where he stresses imagination’s role in understanding. In his answer to the second question of the Seeker, the Poet highlights a didactic role for poetry and its aptitude for persuading one to engage in right action. The Poet’s response echoes Maimonides’ assertion that it is absolutely necessary for prophets to use figurative terms when conveying complex matters to their community. Since the masses cannot understand abstract concepts using their intellect, the prophet needs to use figurative language that concretizes these concepts in order to persuade the people to obey God’s directives.51 In Seeker, the Poet sets out a theory of audience response to the persuasive powers of poetic lan Pines, Introduction to Guide, 11.  The phrase ‫“ השיר בנוי על הדמוי‬ha-shir banui ‘al ha-dimui” can also be translated as “poetry is built upon images.” 50  ‫“ ויקום לו הדמיון במקום העיון‬Ve-yakum lo ha-dimyon bi-mkom ha-‘iyun.” Falaquera, Book of the Seeker, 88; Falaquera, Sefer ha-Mevaqqesh, 93. 51  See Guide, I:17. Alfārābı̄ differentiates between the philosopher who receives revelation in the form of ideas from the Active Intellect and the prophet who receives revelation in the form of images from the same source: “Through that which emanates from the Active Intellect to the passive intellect, [an individual] is a wise man and a philosopher and an accomplished thinker who employs an intellect of divine quality, and through that which emanates from the Active Intellect to his imaginative faculty, he is a prophet [nabı̄yyan].” Jeffrey Macy, “Prophecy in Alfārābı̄ and Maimonides: The Imaginative and Rational Faculties,” in Maimonides and Philosophy: Papers Presented at the Sixth Jerusalem Philosophical Encounter, May, 1985, eds. Shlomo Pines and Yirmiyahu Yovel (Dordrecht and Boston: M. Nijhoff Publishers, 1986), 185–201. 48 49

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guage in addition to echoing Maimonides’ explanation for why prophets need to use allegorical language to maximize the reception of their message. When the Seeker next asks why poets use metrical language, the Poet answers, “This is to increase their metaphorical power and elegance, to feed man’s imagining soul52 which yearns to see beautiful things. In similar fashion, an artisan draws a figure with a compass and decorates it with various colours and gold.”53 For his fourth question, the Seeker asks why poetry leads people to err when they mistake the imaginary object for the real thing, but the poet cannot answer him. The Seeker then asks the poet a fifth question, “Who are the skilled poets whose poems are sweet and verses pleasant?”54 The Poet replies that there are three categories of poems: (1) the “highest degree” contains biblical poems that are related by prophets through prophecy; (2) the next category, biblical “poems composed with the aid of the Holy Spirit”; and (3) the “lowest order” consists of liturgical poems that praise God’s deeds. The liturgical poetry of Andalusı̄ poets falls into this category.55 But lowest of all is praise or reproof poetry, which “wise men abstain from reciting … except for immediate and temporary purposes.”56 The Poet agrees with the Seeker’s reproach of praise poetry, but admits that sometimes, perhaps if one needs remuneration or has been ordered to do so (by a king or official), a poet must resort to reciting paeans and reproofs. This type of poetry is not what the poet should ideally busy himself with, but sometimes it is necessary or even incumbent to do so. Falaquera disparages poetry while simultaneously writing in poetic verse.57 Brann describes this contradictory attitude towards poetry as “compunction.”58 It is not uncommon for medieval Hebrew poets once they reach middle or old age – Moses Ibn Ezra and Judah Halevi included – to rue the lighthearted and sometimes concupiscent poetry they wrote in  ‫הנפש המדמה‬. “Ha-nefesh ha-medameh.” Falaquera, Sefer ha-Mevaqqesh, 93.  Falaquera, Book of the Seeker, 89. 54  Falaquera, Book of the Seeker, 89. 55  Falaquera includes Solomon ibn Gabirol, Samuel Hanagid, Judah Halevi, Moses Ibn Ezra, and Abraham ibn Ezra in this list. Falaquera, Book of the Seeker, 89. 56  Falaquera, Book of the Seeker, 89. 57  Similarly, Sir Thomas Aquinas, Falaquera’s contemporary, calls poetry “the most inferior of sciences” (infima inter omnes doctrinas) while he authors liturgical hymns. Aurora Salvatierra Ossorio, “Shem Tov ibn Falaquera: From Logic to Ethics,” Comparative Literature Studies 45, no. 2 (2008): 173. 58  Brann, The Compunctious Poet, 19–22. 52 53

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their youth and publicly promise to cease writing this kind of poetry. However, when these Hebrew poets announce their compunction, the reason given for the turn away from poetry is often due to its secular nature, frivolity and eroticism, and not to its lying nature. Their compunction signals a change in direction away from love poetry and towards more serious endeavours, such as liturgical poetry, Torah study or philosophical inquiry. In contrast, the reason Falaquera proclaims compunction towards poetry is not because poetry is a manifestation of the passion of youth and its frivolities. What Falaquera specifically targets is the lying aspect of poetry, its falsehood. Aurora Salvatierra Ossorio calls this “topos … the description of poetry as a ‘great lie.’”59 Brann writes that from the thirteenth century onward all poetry, not just satire or panegyric, was viewed as deliberately deceitful.60 Perhaps now we can understand Falaquera’s seemingly contradictory attitude towards poetry. When the Seeker lauds poets and poetry, he is referring to the Poet’s excellent ability to use figurative language. When he disparages poets and poetry, he is referring to poets who debase themselves by praising people who are unworthy of praise. The former produces delightful and original expression; the latter produces falsehood and lies: What people demand of him and seek in his words is explicit falsehood [ha-­ qazav meforash] … Poets heed the arrogant and fill their stanzas with lies [sheker] and treachery [qazavim]. The content of their verse is inferior [garu’a] and degraded [shafel] … They daub their poetry with whitewash [tefel] … Poetry has no brightness, only darkness, cloud and gloom (Deut. 4:11) … It is devoid and barren of all truth. Those who practice it use only figurative and metaphorical terms [shemot ha-mushaalim ve-ha-mu’atakim], which are far from the truth, since they refrain from enlightening us in those conventional terms [shemot ha-musqamim] which sincerely wise men employ.61

 Ossorio, “Shem Tov ibn Falaquera,” 173.  Brann, The Compunctious Poet, 125. 61  Falaquera, Book of the Seeker, 81–82. ‫ ופונים‬.‫והמבוקש מדבריו והנדרש להיות בם הכזב מפורש ומלואו‬ ‫ מאסו הבונים ביסוד האמת והנה טחים אותו תפל‬.‫ חומר הבתים גרוע ושפל‬.‫ ומלאו בתיהם שקר ושטי כזבים‬.‫אל הרהבים‬ ‫ לא ישמשו‬.‫ ורוח שקר בפי נביאיה ומהאמת נעורה ורקה‬.‫…אין נוגה לו כי אם ובעבור כי חכמת השיר מהאמת רחוקה‬ ‫ ולא ישמשו בשמות המוסכמים בשמות המושאלים והמועתקים‬.‫ מהודות על האמת רחוקים‬.‫בעליה אלא חושך ענן וערפל‬ .‫אשר תשמרם פי חכמים‬. Note the internal rhyme of this passage, which is exemplary of the rhymed prose of the first half of the book. Falaquera, Sefer ha-Mevaqqesh, 88. 59 60

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The Seeker begins his polemic by inveighing against poets who write praise poetry, but seems to end by including all poets. The visual image of poetry/falsehood as darkness is contrasted with truth that “enlightens.” Poets utilize “figurative and metaphorical terms” that are “far from the truth,” and engage in hypocrisy by masking their poetic lies with “whitewash.” Meanwhile, “wise men” use “conventional terms,” which, by apposition, convey the truth. Falaquera here engages in translation and coinage of terms. The terms he uses for metaphor and figurative language are shemot ha-mushaalim and (shemot) ha-mu’atakim. These Hebrew terms diverge from the terms for metaphor used by Ibn Tibbon in his translation of the Guide. Ibn Tibbon translates Maimonides’ three categories of figurative language as used in Scripture as (shemot) meshutafim, (shemot) mushaalim, and (shemot) mesupakim.62 Of those terms, only shemot mushaalim – literally, borrowed terms – are used by both Ibn Tibbon and Falaquera to denote metaphors. Metaphoric language is deemed false and dishonest because it contains multiple meanings and therefore does not convey truths unequivocally. Multivalent expressions stand in contrast to shemot ha-musqamim, or “conventional terms,” which the Seeker deems “enlightening” words that “sincerely wise men employ.” These words are “true” because they contain only one accepted (musqam) meaning; they cannot be misinterpreted or injected with meanings they do not convey. In this denunciation of poetry, Falaquera exposes an ethical aspect of poetry that is implicit in Ibn Ezra’s expression “the best of poetry is its falsehood.” He critiques poetry for its lies, its darkness, and its inability to enlighten or teach the truth. In this telling, writes Ossorio, “poetry is denied any function or usefulness whatsoever:” “Here, verse does not persuade by encouraging the imagination or beautifying reality in order to dominate weak men … but rather it invariably deceives. The inherently false figurative language used by poets is contrasted with that used by wise men.”63 Poetry has a rhetorical function: it persuades through beautiful language. Ossorio identifies in Falaquera’s critique an added criterion for poetry: usefulness. Below, we will examine how contemporary scholastic theories required poetry’s rhetoric to function as an ethical tool to persuade the reader to behave properly. But first, let us to examine Falaquera’s critique regarding the falsity of figurative language in light of the poetic theories of his scholastic contemporaries, who were also engaged in the intellectual activity of compiling, translating and composing philosophical texts (albeit in Latin).  For an explanation of these terms, see Chap. 2 of this book.  Ossorio, “Shem Tov ibn Falaquera,” 171.

62 63

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“No Share in Poetry”: The Ethics of Figurative Language Medieval Hebrew poets such as Moses Ibn Ezra deal in detail with the critique of poetry’s veracity. In Falaquera’s Seeker, poetry and figurative language come under evaluation again, but for different reasons than in Ibn Ezra’s treatise. If, for Hebrew poets such as Ibn Ezra and Halevi, poetry’s role is descriptive, for Falaquera the role of figurative language is prescriptive. Ibn Ezra revels in the knowledge that poetry contains necessary falsehoods or figures of speech: this is its defining characteristic and beauty. In Seeker, poetry is no longer valued for the efficacy of its figurative speech, as it was in the classical Hebrew poetry of Moses Ibn Ezra, Judah Halevi, Solomon ibn Gabirol and their peers, although that quality is still laudable. In the move from al-Andalus to Christian Spain, Hebrew poetry takes on an added, ethical role. It is useful because it can instruct people on proper, moral behaviour. The Poet states, “Poetry is their [the poets’] way of giving a word of caution to people, of urging them to acquire ethical teachings and wisdom and to seek out the valued possession of a wise soul and every noble quality.”64 If poetry can teach wisdom and ethics, then it can justify its existence. In late medieval scholastic literature there is a similar justification for poetry.65 Scholastic opinion maintains that poetry belongs to ethical literature and acts as a call to action. Giles of Rome (1243–1316), whose Latin Mirror for Princes, De regimine principum, adapts ideas from Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, Rhetoric and Politics, emphasizes that the object of ethical thinking is action, not knowledge: We do not undertake a moral work for the sake of contemplation, nor that we might know, but that we might be made good. The purpose of this science therefore is not knowledge of its material, but action; not truth, but the good. Therefore since precise reasoning more illuminates the intellect, subject matter drawn from what appears to be, and what is approximate more moves and inflames the affections: in speculative fields, whose principal object is the illumination of the intellect, one proceeds strictly and by demonstration; in moral matters, whose object is right will, and that we might be made good, one proceeds by persuasion and figurally.66  Falaquera, Book of the Seeker, 82.  See Judson Allen, The Ethical Poetic of the Later Middle Ages: A decorum of convenient distinction (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1982), 12. 66  Allen, Ethical Poetic, 15–16. 64 65

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The goal of ethical literature is right conduct. It instructs people on how to behave and what is the best way to live a good, meaningful life. Ethical thinking is not the same as intellectual reasoning. Intellectual thought requires precise, logical reasoning in order to arrive at the “truth,” and is undertaken as an exercise in speculation in order to sharpen and “illuminate” the intellect. Moral thinking requires practice and habituation, as per Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, in order to transform someone into a “good” person; it is stimulated by rhetoric and figurative speech. Giles informs us that “what is approximate more moves and inflames the affections”  – meaning that figurative language, which, when contrasted with precise, scientific language is “approximate” and analogous – stimulates the emotions.67 We may illustrate the contrast between contemplation and moral matters in this way: Practice

Process undertaken

Contemplation Precise reasoning by demonstration Moral matters Approximation by persuasion and “figurally”

Leads to

To achieve goals 1 & 2

Illuminates the intellect Moves and inflames the affections

1.  Knowledge and 2. Truth 1.  Right action/will and 2.  The good

Giles formulates the goal of ethical thinking as right action, which leads to the good, versus the goal of contemplation, which is knowledge that leads to truth. In positing contemplation versus moral matters, Giles formulates the process undertaken as “precise reasoning,” which “illuminates the intellect,” as opposed to “approximation … figurally,” which “moves and inflames the affections.’” Another way of expressing this dichotomy is by saying that contemplation is undertaken by one’s intellect, while moral

67  Although we do not know to what extent Falaquera was aware of the scholastic discussion around poetry and ethics, we do know that his contemporary Hillel ben Samuel of Verona (c.1220–1295) translated philosophical texts from Latin into Hebrew, thus introducing numerous scholastic ideas into Hebrew philosophical discourse. Judah ben Moses of Rome (c. 1292 – after 1330), known as Judah Romano, was another Jewish scholar who translated many philosophical texts from Latin into Hebrew. Caterina Rigo, “Hillel ben Samuel of Verona (c. 1220–95),” 1998, in Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, https://www.rep. routledge.com/articles/biographical/hillel-ben-samuel-of-verona-c-1220-95/v-1.

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action is undertaken by the imagination.68 Here again we recognize the reason versus imagination dichotomy.69 However, in this postulation, imagination is not derided and its importance is not negated. Imagination has a vital role to play in achieving the goal of ethical behaviour. Poetry, rhetoric and other figurative expressions paint vivid mental pictures that move the emotions and persuade the listener to act. Contemplation cannot move a person to right action because its goal is knowledge attained through reasoning. Contemplation can lead to truth, but not to the good.70 For late medieval Christian poets, Aristotelian ethics is an important guide on how to live a moral, happy life. Even though Aristotle in Nicomachean Ethics concludes that the contemplative life is the summum bonum, his book also preaches that finding happiness and enjoyment in this life is vital. From this, late medieval scholastic poets reasoned that if 68  Josef Stern has a similar reading of Maimonides’ Guide I:2: Adam was created in a perfect state, in which the intellect was engaged in a constant “contemplation of truth.” Stern writes, “The task of the intellect is not to distinguish good or fine from bad or ugly; this is a matter of ‘generally accepted’ or conventional moral ‘knowledge’ that is grasped by the imagination, the faculty that stores and composes the sensible images or representations derived from sense impression, by means of which we negotiate our bodily needs and desires. Rather the task of the intellect is to assent by demonstration to the necessarily true and to refute the necessarily false.” Stern, The Matter and Form of Maimonides’ Guide (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013), 65–66. 69  The dichotomy between reason and imagination becomes more fungible in thirteenthcentury Latin scholasticism. In his article “Medieval Imagination and Memory,” Alastair J. Minnis traces the metamorphosis of the classical concept of imitation (mimesis) into “imagination (imaginatio) or imagistic ‘likening’ (assimilatio)” in thirteenth-century rhetoric. Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) recognizes the role of imagination in cognition; he states, “Whenever the intellect actually regards anything there must at the same time be formed in us a phantasm, that is, a likeness of something sensible.” For Hermannus Allemanus (d. 1272), a monk who translated Arabic Aristotelian philosophical texts  – including Averroes’ Poetics – into Latin, poetry seeks to move the emotions and thus persuade its readers, unlike reason, that uses logical arguments and empirical observations to prove its arguments. Bartholomew of Bruges (d. 1356), in his 1307 commentary on Hermann’s Averroistic Poetics, writes, “we cannot ascend to the contemplation of unseen things unless we are led by contemplation of things that are seen,” thus emphasizing the role of the senses in ratiocinative thought. Minnis, “Medieval Imagination and Memory,” in Cambridge History of Literary Criticism: The Middle Ages, eds. Alastair Minnis and Ian Johnson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 239–274. 70  To lead a life contemplating truth and divine matters is, for Aristotle, the best and most virtuous kind of life, leading to the greatest happiness. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics x 7, 1177a13–19. Maimonides discusses the difference between truth and goodness in his discussion of Adam’s expulsion from Eden in Guide, I:2.

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happiness is to be enjoyed in this life, and not deferred to the afterlife, then it follows that the pursuit of happiness, even if it comes from courtly love and earthly pleasures, is a worthwhile endeavour. Jessica Rosenfeld, who studies the relationship between ethics and poetry in medieval literature, writes, “the philosophy and poetry of the later Middle Ages together formed a thriving ethical discourse, particularly in response to the challenges of defining pleasure and love, usefulness and enjoyment, need and desire, lack and fulfillment.”71 Falaquera, in the Book of the Seeker, weaves poetry and philosophical ideas to form an ethical discourse. However, unlike late medieval Christian poets and scholastics, he does not struggle with the role of happiness and the enjoyment of earthly pleasures. Pleasure and love are not a source of anxiety for Falaquera; poetry and imaginative thought are. Poetry, verse and rhetoric can and should move a person to want to behave ethically to do good. When these literary genres lead to these ethical goals, the outcome is good. If they fail to arouse a person to do good, they are useless. For Falaquera, the greatest good is not right action but knowledge of the divine through philosophical thought. The process one needs to undertake to achieve this goal is laid out in the way he has ordered the text of the Book of the Seeker and the progression of experts that the Seeker encounters. The Seeker embarks upon a quest, beginning with his interview with the wealthy and then the heroic interlocutor, moving through other experts and then on to his exploration of poetry, wisdom and astronomy, and finally arriving at the highest form of knowledge, philosophy. In his examination of medieval ethical treatises, Judson Allen looks at the way authors have divided and ordered their texts. He instructs us to do the same, so that we as readers can discover “the mental procedure through which the authorial intentions discover themselves.”72 He continues, “Behind all the artificialities of texts, there is an intention of parts that is naturally ordered and paradigmatic, in terms of which both the meaning and the unity of a given text may be explained.”73 The way the material is divided into sections represents the thought processes of the author as he or she contemplates the progression of the text. In addition, the order of 71  Rosenfeld comments that in some late medieval Christian poetry, contemplation is viewed as a self-absorbed, narcissistic activity. This is contrasted with ethical behaviour, which is active and outward-looking. Jessica Rosenfeld, Ethics and Enjoyment in Late Medieval Poetry: Love after Aristotle (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 6. 72  Allen, Ethical Poetic, 90. 73  Allen, Ethical Poetic, 91.

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the text speaks to the way the author wants the text to be read, contemplated and then acted upon by the reader. Giles of Rome calls this the “double form” of the text: “It is customary to distinguish a double form, namely the form of the treatment, which is the mode of doing, and the form of the treatise, which is the ordering of the chapters one after the other.”74 According to Giles of Rome, this “double form” involves both the way in which the text is ordered by the author [“the form of the treatise”] and the way in which it is to be read and acted upon by the reader [“the mode of doing”]. Together, authorial intent and reader response constitute not only the meaning of the text, but also a process of knowing.75 Allen adds that text, and the way the reader assimilates into the text and submits to its lessons, is an active process. The act of reading is the act of knowing.76 In the act of writing and ordering the text, the author develops as a thinker as the text progresses. By reading the text, the reader develops alongside the writer, so that the reader’s response to the text is an active and progressive process of attaining knowledge. This insight into both the author’s and reader’s development as active participants in the text is relevant to Falaquera’s Seeker. Falaquera has ordered his text so that the Seeker meets and studies with seventeen experts. We have already commented that many of these disciplines represent the fields of education that a person would study to become an adı̄b, a person of refined civility. In light of Giles of Rome’s and Allen’s comments, we can examine the way Falaquera has divided and ordered his text. By presenting these seventeen experts in this order, Falaquera informs us of the progressive stages of behaviour and knowledge that a person must pass through to reach the final stage of true knowledge, philosophy. The Seeker meets, questions, studies with each expert for a period and then passes through each stage of education. We, too, as readers of the text, encounter, query, learn from and then move on to the next expert (although we are not privy to the tutelage that the Seeker receives while living with each expert for a period). As we travel with the Seeker, we assimilate the knowledge that he is taught, until finally we, too, come to the recognition that the highest form of knowledge is philosophy. As we  Allen, Ethical Poetic, 92.  Modern literary criticism also uses reader response and similar terms to describe the act of reading. See Jane P.  Tompkins, ed., Reader-Response Criticism: From Formalism to PostStructuralism (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980). 76  Allen, Ethical Poetic, 93. 74 75

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close the book, the text and the Seeker remain static. But we, the readers, as a result of assimilating into the text and submitting to its lessons, have actively attained knowledge. The Seeker realizes that not one of the sixteen interlocutors he has interviewed thus far has answered all his questions satisfactorily: After these things, when the Seeker recognized that all the people that he had argued with did not reach the pinnacle of what he sought, and they fell short of answering all his queries; that there were some amongst them who heard from the king but did not enter the courtyard of the palace or see the face of the king. Some of them stood in the courtyard, some of them stood at the gates of the king,77 and some of them were smitten with blindness (Gen.19:11) and couldn’t find the door. Then his soul sought to speak with the man who was morally perfect and who inquired into all intelligibles and attempted to withstand their truths: who separated from other human beings in order to attain [knowledge of] his Creator and to cleave to Him. He is the one called in Greek “the Philosopher,” in other words, the lover of wisdom.78

Falaquera views the attainment of philosophical knowledge as the pinnacle of human education. This knowledge is rooted in Greek philosophy and the study of human psychology as understood by the Arabic Aristotelians. However, it is also solidly wedded to Jewish theology because it concludes, as Maimonides does in Part Three of the Guide, that the ultimate goal of a human being is to know God and cleave to him.79 The message is straightforward, and the Seeker’s meeting with the Philosopher is one of the shortest sections of the book. Perhaps this section is as short as it is because Falaquera expects that any reader curious about philosophy, or who has had her or his interest piqued by following the Seeker’s quest, will turn to one of his other books that survey philosophy. He presumes his reader is familiar with Maimonides’ parable of the palace from the philosophically challenging final chapters of the third part of the Guide, and understands how Falaquera has referenced the parable in order to describe the various levels of wisdom that his previous interlocutors achieved. Perhaps this expectation explains why Falaquera does not go into detail about the subject of philosophy, and does not present  See the parable of the palace in Maimonides’ Guide, III:51.  Falaquera, Sefer ha-Mevaqqesh, 155–56, translation from Hebrew mine. 79  Falaquera, Sefer ha-Mevaqqesh, 156. 77 78

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challenging questions to the Philosopher as he had the Seeker do with the other experts in the book. Falaquera expects his reader to have a substantial knowledge of philosophy, which will serve as a good foundation for turning to his other surveys of philosophy, such as Falaquera’s encyclopedic work, De’ot ha-filosofim. The Philosopher assures the Seeker that all his previous time spent with the other experts has not been a waste of time: “You have done well to scrutinize the categories [lit. – natures] by asking and exploring. Know that you will not find your desired goal in all those other people. However, their opinions are steps in reaching that end.”80 The Philosopher affirms that there is much value in the process of seeking wisdom. He informs the Seeker that while none of the experts or wisdom purveyors that he has engaged with until now could ever provide him with the ultimate truth, they nonetheless have been necessary stages in reaching the pinnacle of wisdom. The ultimate wisdom is knowing God and cleaving to him, and this is the mark of a successful life. The Seeker next asks the Philosopher to answer his questions about metaphysics, but the Philosopher demurs: “I will not do so, because the metaphysicians [lit. – “philosophers of the divine”]81 commanded [us] not to reveal the secrets of this science.”82 Then the Seeker asks the Philosopher how to attain this knowledge, and he tells the Seeker to go and read books of philosophy to understand the metaphysical realities of this world.83 When asked why this wisdom ought to remain secret, the Philosopher answers, “Not all minds can tolerate these [wisdoms] and not all who inquire into them are ready to understand their truths, how much more so the average person.”84 This is an interesting exchange because Falaquera himself is the author of philosophical works that explain metaphysical and psychological truths. Why does he have the Philosopher say that this knowledge should be kept secret? Could this be a response to the anti-­Maimonideans and a concession to those who wished to ban the study of philosophy before the age of twenty-five?85 Falaquera here is demonstrating ambivalence: on the one hand, as the author and compiler of books on philosophy, he is responsible  Falaquera, Sefer ha-Mevaqqesh, 156.  Ha-filosofim ha-elohiyyim. 82  Falaquera, Sefer ha-Mevaqqesh, 157. 83  Falaquera, Sefer ha-Mevaqqesh, 157. 84  Falaquera, Sefer ha-Mevaqqesh, 158. 85  In 1305, after Falaquera’s death, Rabbi Solomon ibn Adret of Barcelona banned the study of philosophy before age twenty-five. 80 81

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for disseminating these “secrets” to the broader population; on the other hand, his comment shows him to be of the same opinion as those who say that the study of philosophy should not be open to all. Philosophic inquiry is a goal that can only be arrived at after much study in many disciplines, and not everyone who goes in search of wisdom can reach the level of studying philosophy. The search for wisdom is a quest, like the one the Seeker embarks upon, and it involves deep inquiry into many wisdoms, culminating in the science of philosophy. Many may embark upon this quest, and many may learn from all the sciences, but not all will be ready to understand the ultimate science, philosophy. The Seeker remains with the Philosopher for three years, during which time the Philosopher – unlike the other interlocutors, who invariably cannot answer at least one of the Seeker’s questions – answers all his questions. When it comes time for them to part, the Philosopher says, “I command you to make time for study, separate yourself so that you can study; the majority of your study should be in psychology [ḥokhmat ha-­ nefesh]  – the senses and the things sensed [ha-ḥush ve-ha-muḥash]; the intellect and things intellected [ha-sekhel ve-ha-musqal] … but the ­majority of concepts you ought to study should be in divine knowledge, for this is the ultimate … Everything I have said regards the lower world, as opposed to attaining [knowledge of] the Creator and cleaving to Him.”86 The Philosopher commands the Seeker to study two streams of philosophy: human psychology and metaphysics (“divine knowledge”). He describes human psychology as a combination of sense and intellect, “the senses and the things sensed; the intellect and things intellected.” The study of the way we think involves an understanding of both sense and intellect; knowledge requires the use of both imagination and reason. At this point, after the Seeker parts ways from the Philosopher and ends his quest, Falaquera reintroduces rhyme with this address to the reader/ seeker: “Always study the epistle Guide.87 Walk the straight path … This is the conclusion of my words. Termination of my hymns. End of my poems. And thus my poem [shirai] is sealed.”88 Now, at the end of the second part of the Book of the Seeker, in which there has not been a single verse of 86  ‫ והשכל והמושכל…אבל רוב‬.‫ והחוש והמוחש‬.‫ ותתבודד רב למודך בחכמת הנפש‬.‫אצוך שתקבע מקום ללמודך‬ .‫ כנגד השגת הבורא ית׳ ויתברך והדבקות בו‬.‫השגתך תהיה בחכמת האלהיות שהן התכלית…כל דברי זה העולם השפל‬ Falaquera, Sefer ha-Mevaqqesh, 158. 87  The Guide of the Perplexed was written for Maimonides’ student Joseph. 88  .‫ ובה שירי נחתם‬.‫ ותכלית שירותי‬.‫ וקץ לזמירותי‬.‫ לך דרך ישרה…והוא סוף דברותי‬.‫הגה תמיד באגרת מורה‬ Falaquera, Sefer ha-Mevaqqesh, 158.

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poetry, Falaquera reintroduces rhyme. It is as though the author has been holding back since the Seeker’s meeting with the Poet at the end of the first part, when he declared, “from now on I will have no share in poetry,”89 and now his verse bursts forth again. The book ends with rhymed verses that summarize the Seeker’s quest. Poetry here is an effective means of expression, able to wittily and pithily sum up the views of its author. In a treatise that explores and then seems to reject poetry, Falaquera ends the book with an epigram in which he calls the treatise “my poem.”90 Calling his work a poem suggests Falaquera’s ambivalent attitude towards poetry, the genre he has equivocally rejected at the end of the first part of Seeker. What Falaquera has left behind, or “divorced,” is the Andalusı̄ view of poetry as a choice vehicle for the expression of love, reflection and praise. Instead, Falaquera, writing his various works of Jewish thought in the “literary polysystem” of Iberia,91 embraces the literary practices and genres of his cultural milieu: compilation of philosophical sources, the frametale structure and the use of poetry as an ethical guide. In Seeker, poetry is a step on the path to wisdom, useful for its ability to teach the proper way to behave; but it is not the final wisdom. The ultimate wisdom is philosophy, attained through “reason and analogy” and not “sensual perception.” * * * The Maimonidean controversies of the thirteenth century pit rabbinic sages against one another. Religious traditionalists argue that the philosophic interpretation of the Bible endanger traditional Jewish interpretation of biblical texts. Rationalists argue that Arabic Aristotelian science and metaphysics enhance their understanding of the world and the divine realm.  “Ve-lo naḥalah be-zemirot.” Falaquera, Sefer ha-Mevaqqesh, 96.  Falaquera presumably means this figuratively, for although the first part of Seeker is written in rhymed prose, and poetic verses are interspersed throughout both parts of the treatise, Brann says that the book is not a maqāma. Maqāmāt are written to entertain while teaching a lesson, while Seeker is a didactic treatise. Brann, The Compunctious Poet, 214n37. Jonathan Decter comments that Jefim (Hayyim) Schirmann includes polemical writing written in rhymed prose in his definition of the various categories of maqāmāt. Decter, Iberian Jewish Literature: Between al-Andalus and Christian Europe (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007), 247n98. 91  Wacks, Framing Iberia, 13. 89 90

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Shem Tov ben Joseph Falaquera, poet and scholar, is one of the most prolific scholars working on a defence of philosophy during this period. Although Falaquera boasts of having written thousands of poems, his intention is not to reconcile poetry, an expression of the imagination, with philosophy, an expression of reason. In Moreh ha-moreh, his Hebrew translation and commentary of Maimonides’ Guide, Falaquera does not have much to contribute to a nuanced understanding of imagination and its contribution to human thought. Falaquera has more to say about imagination and its functions in his other works, particularly in Chapter 13 of Sefer ha-Nefesh, an encyclopedic work that summarizes the Arabic Aristotelian views on human psychology.92 In Moreh ha-moreh, Falaquera does not struggle with the usefulness of imagination in a way that is similar to his struggles with the usefulness of figurative expression, most notably poetry, in the Book of the Seeker. In the lengthy encounter between the Seeker and the Poet, Falaquera engages with and then dismisses poetry in favour of philosophic study. However, the structure of Seeker indicates that poetry is a necessary step on the Seeker’s quest to true wisdom. In Moreh ha-moreh, Falaquera echoes Maimonides’ ambiguity towards imagination, sometimes separating and denigrating its functions, and sometimes admitting its usefulness. Like Maimonides in Guide III:15, he accepts that the workings of the intellect are inextricably linked with the workings of the imagination. This expression is the closest that the two thinkers get to granting imagination an unequivocally essential role in human cognition.

Bibliography Allen, Judson. 1982. The Ethical Poetic of the Later Middle Ages: A Decorum of Convenient Distinction. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Aristotle. 1999. Nicomachean Ethics. 2nd ed. Translated with Introduction, Notes, and Glossary by Terence Irwin. Indianapolis/Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company Inc. Boethius, Anicius Manlius Severinus. 2008. The Consolation of Philosophy. Trans. David R.  Slavitt. Cambridge/London: Harvard University Press. Online Resource http://site.ebrary.com.myaccess.library.utoronto.ca/lib/utoronto/ reader.action?docID=10309081. Bonebakker, S.A. 1990. Adab and the Concept of belles-lettres. In Abbāsid Belles-­ Lettres, ed. Julia Ashtiany et al., 1990. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.  Jospe, Torah and Sophia, 334.

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Brann, Ross. 1991. The Compunctious Poet: Cultural Ambiguity and Hebrew Poetry in Muslim Spain. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Cantarino, Vincente. 1975. Arabic Poetics in the Golden Age: Selection of Texts Accompanied by a Preliminary Study. Leiden: E. J. Brill. Copeland, Rita, and Ineke Sluiter, eds. 2009. Medieval Grammar and Rhetoric: Language Arts and Literary Theory, AD 300–1475. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Dana, Joseph. 1992. Poetics of Medieval Hebrew Literature (According to Moshe ibn Ezra) [Hebrew]. Tel Aviv: Dvir Company Limited. Decter, Jonathan P. 2007. Iberian Jewish Literature: Between al-Andalus and Christian Europe. Bloomington/Indiana: Indiana University Press. Falaquera, Shem Tob ben Joseph. 1976. The Book of the Seeker (Sefer ha-Mebaqqesh). Ed. and Trans. M. Herschel Levine. New York: Yeshiva University Press. ———. 1990. Sefer ha-Mevaḳesh: ṿe-hu nahar le-hashḳot kol tsame me zehav ha-ḥokhmah. Bnei Brak: Keren K.L.H. Hämeen-Anttila, Jaako. ADAB. The Encyclopedia of Islam, Three. ADAB. http:// referenceworks.brillonline.com/entries/encyclopaedia-of-islam-3/adab-a-arabic-early-developments-COM_24178?s.num=5&s.f.s2_parent=s.f.book.encyclopaedia-of-islam-3&s.q=adab. Accessed 19 Jan 2016. Harvey, Steven. 1987. Falaquera’s Epistle of the Debate: An Introduction to Jewish Philosophy. Cambridge/London: Harvard University Press. ———. 1992. Falaquera’s Epistle of the Debate and the Maimonidean Controversy of the 1230s. In Torah and Wisdom: Studies in Jewish Philosophy, Kabbalah, and Halacha: Essays in Honor of Arthur Hyman, ed. Ruth Link-Salinger. New York: Shengold Publisher, Inc. Heinrichs, Wolfhart. 1977. The Hand of the Northwind: Opinions on Metaphor and the Early Meaning of Isti’āra in Arabic Poetics. Wiesbaden: Deutsche Morgenlandische Gesellschaft. Hughes, Aaron W. 2008. The Art of Dialogue in Jewish Philosophy. Bloomington/ Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. Ibn Ezra, Moses. 1975. Sefer ha-‘iyunim veha-diyunim al ha-shirah ha-‘ivrit [Kitāb al-muḥāḍara wa-l-mudhākara]. Ed. and Trans. Avraham Shlomo Halkin. Jerusalem: Hotsa-at Mekitze nirdamim. Jospe, Raphael. 1988. Torah and Sophia: The Life and Thought of Shem Tov ibn Falaquera. Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press. Levine, M.  Herschel. ed. and trans. 1976. The Book of the Seeker (Sefer Ha-Mebaqqesh) by Shem Tob ben Joseph ibn Falaquera. New York: Yeshiva University Press. Macy, Jeffrey. 1986. Prophecy in Alfārābı̄ and Maimonides: The Imaginative and Rational Faculties. In Maimonides and Philosophy: Papers Presented at the Sixth Jerusalem Philosophical Encounter, May, 1985, eds. Shlomo Pines and Yirmiyahu Yovel, 185–201. Dordrecht/Boston: M. Nijhoff Publishers.

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Maimonides, Moses. 1963. The Guide of the Perplexed. Trans. Shlomo Pines. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Minnis, Alastair. 2004. Medieval Imagination and Memory. In The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism: The Middle Ages, eds. Alastair Minnis and Ian Johnson, 239–274. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://wwwcambridge-org.myaccess.library.utoronto.ca/core/books/the-cambridge-history-of-literary-criticism/C35D50C38E52BED199518808BA085288#fn dtn-information Ossorio, Aurora Salvatierra. 2008. Shem Tov ibn Falaquera: From Logic to Ethics; A Redefinition of Poetry in the Thirteenth Century. Comparative Literature Studies 45 (2): 165–181. Rigo, Caterina. 1998. Hillel ben Samuel of Verona (c. 1220–95). Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://www.rep.routledge.com/articles/biographical/hillel-ben-samuel-of-verona-c-1220-95/v-1. Rosenfeld, Jessica. 2011. Ethics and Enjoyment in Late Medieval Poetry: Love After Aristotle. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Stern, Josef. 2013. The Matter and Form of Maimonides’ Guide. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Tompkins, Jane P., ed. 1980. Reader-Response Criticism: From Formalism to Post-­ Structuralism. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Wacks, David A. 2007. Framing Iberia: Maqāmāt and Frametale Narratives in Medieval Spain. Leiden/Boston: Brill.

CHAPTER 7

Afterword

Throughout this book, my primary goal has been to focus on how medieval Andalusı¯ and Iberian Jewish thought understood the language of metaphor and the activity of human imagination. I paid special attention to how metaphor and imagination work in tandem to enable human beings to picture and comprehend abstract concepts. My project examined how medieval Jewish poetic theorists such as Moses ibn Ezra, and philosophers such as Moses Maimonides, conceptualized and problematized the role of metaphor in describing the divine. This venture led me to an investigation of how figurations of an immaterial God could be understood by embodied human beings. In medieval Arabic Aristotelian psychology, both imagination and cognition work together to facilitate human understanding of abstract ideas. Judah Halevi engaged with this psychology in order to scaffold his thesis that the best way to perceive the divine is through sensory experience and imagination. Maimonides, on the other hand, believed that intellect, and not imagination, enabled proper apprehension of the divine. As such, he separated the functions of imagination and cognition and reiterated a role for imagination that operated independently of, and sometimes in opposition to, cognition. This bifurcation had several ramifications. Maimonides’ interpreter, Shem Tov ibn Falaquera, tried to reconcile Arabic Aristotelian and Maimonidean psychology. Maimonides’ translators into Hebrew, French and English transferred what they viewed as Maimonides’ condemnation of imagination into their Hebrew, French and English translations of the Guide of the Perplexed. © The Author(s) 2019 D. L. Roberts-Zauderer, Metaphor and Imagination in Medieval Jewish Thought, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29422-9_7

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Moses ibn Ezra connected metaphoric language with human psychology when he enigmatically described metaphor as “a word for something unknown taken from something known.” The only way one can begin to delineate and understand divine actions is through similitudes: human minds can fathom what God – the “unknown” – is and does is by comparing him and his actions to something “known” and experienced in the natural world. This is done by borrowing an image from the material world and transferring this image onto something the reader does not know or understand, such as the metaphysical world. Metaphor was understood by Aristotle as the linguistic “transference” of an image from one genus or species to another. By connecting metaphor with what is or is not known, Ibn Ezra placed figurative language into the domain of epistemology, giving metaphor an important role in human cognition. The linguistic transference of a term from known to unknown created an association that provided the reader with a new, original way of understanding something that was previously unknown. This juxtaposition must be imaginatively unpacked in order to comprehend the analogy and then to achieve an understanding of the new linguistic figuration. Maimonides continued the discussion about metaphor and cognition by defining biblical metaphors as one way to describe the divine using human language. On a superficial level, the entire first part of Maimonides’ Guide is an instructive lexicon about how to understand scriptural terms (metaphors) used to describe God. But if one chooses to look deeper, as I did in the first chapter of this book, the first part of Maimonides’ Guide is the continuation of a discussion in medieval Arabic and Jewish thought about the role of metaphor in human thought. Scriptural terms describing God in human terms can have a multiplicity of meanings, so Maimonides took it upon himself to instruct his reader on how to understand such figurations. For every biblical term he listed, he told the reader how to understand the term according to its literal or conventional meaning, and then provided his own philosophical explanation for its metaphorical meaning. Modern theories of metaphor, when applied to the Guide, provided me with an interpretive lens through which to view evocative and polyvalent language and the role of metaphor in human cognition. My emphasis on the cognitive aspect of metaphor was intended to set the stage for a more nuanced understanding of imagination’s role in rational thought. If metaphor enables the author to describe God using images taken from the senses, and further on in the Guide Maimonides claimed that the only way to truly know God is through pure intellectual thought, then metaphor must have a role to play in rational thought. I

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have suggested that metaphor bridges the divide between imaginative and rational thought. If this is true, then how could Maimonides suggest that there is such a thing as pure intellectual thought, devoid of imagination? How does imagination, according to medieval psychology, operate within human cognition? If metaphor uses images that appeal to the senses, taken from the “known” world, to describe something “unknown” in a manner that can be comprehended using one’s imagination, how does this process work? How are images taken up by imagination? What is imagination and how does it contribute to thought? There is a lack of scholarship on Maimonidean epistemology or how Maimonides incorporated imagination into his philosophical system.1 Maimonides did not provide his reader with a systematic psychology, so my query into Maimonidean epistemology began by looking at passages in the Guide in which he discussed imagination. My primary goal in this endeavour was to read relevant passages in the text in the Judeo-Arabic original, paying particular attention to the vocabulary used by Maimonides to describe imagination and its functions. Over the course of my reading, I discerned that the Arabic language not only distinguishes between the faculty of imagination and its output, but also between philosophically positive and negative aspects of imaginative output. As I translated and defined these terms according to medieval Arabic Aristotelian psychology, I found that Maimonides was very attentive to his use of vocabulary and carefully selected his words. The choices he made in terminology have ramifications that have not been explored. By analysing Maimonides’ selection of terms, I revealed that Maimonides’ position on imagination undergoes a metamorphosis over the course of Part One of the Guide. Previous commentators on Maimonides had understood imagination as a separate aspect of intellect, one that can go as far as destabilizing the rational process, contributing to a black-and-white reading of the role of imagination in knowledge. My close reading of the text in Judeo-Arabic has shown that imaginative function is far more complex: in the Guide, it evolves from a faculty that can either contribute to rational thought or creative imaginings, to a faculty whose product – desire and false imaginings – can lead a person astray, to a faculty that is neutral yet opposite of intellect. 1  With the exception of: Alfred Ivry, “Maimonides’ Psychology,” in Idit Dobbs-Weinstein et  al., eds. Maimonides and His Heritage (Albany: 2009), 51–60; and Josef Stern, “Maimonides’ Epistemology” in Kenneth Seeskin, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Maimonides (Cambridge and NY: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 118–126.

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D. L. ROBERTS-ZAUDERER

In order to determine how imagination contributed to cognition, it was necessary for me to examine intellectual trends in Arabic Aristotelian psychology and to determine how these currents were adapted by medieval Jewish thinkers. Research into medieval psychology allowed me to challenge the assumption that reason and imagination exist on separate and competing planes in human epistemology. This investigation uncovered a symbiotic relationship between reason and imagination that was ignored by those interpreters who wished to view reason as the antithesis of imagination. By taking the vantage point that imagination contributes to reason, rather than viewing imagination as separate from and antithetical to reason, I questioned whether there is any possibility of rational thought without imagination. Maimonides veered from Arabic Aristotelian epistemology by imbuing imagination with agency, and establishing the imaginative faculty as an actor within the workings of human psychology. He developed a view of imagination that was transferred forward to his translators, who viewed imagination as an unreliable, negative influence upon reason. Yet the particulars of this process are far more complex and the boundaries between reason and imagination are far more porous than was attributed by these interpreters. When imagination was defined as the opposite of reason, this bifurcation failed to take into account the contribution that imagination necessarily made to the rational process. Once the Judeo-Arabic terms for imagination and its functions were examined and analysed in the Guide, I turned to an investigation of how these terms were translated into Hebrew, French and English. My analysis found that nuances in the Arabic language were not conveyed in the target languages of Guide translations. Consequently, the variegated functions of imagination were not communicated in translation, causing a one-sided and largely negative attitude towards imagination to be carried forward. Part of the blame for this scholarly oversight lay in translations of the Guide, where shades of meaning were not transferred from Judeo-Arabic into the target language. Furthermore, without access to these subtleties of language, scholars were not attuned to the Maimonidean narrative within the Guide, in which Maimonides imbued imagination with agency. The ramification of this oversight was that readers of the Guide in translation were not made aware of the necessity of sense impressions in the initial stages of knowledge, or of imagination’s vital function in human psychology and its fundamental contribution to all cognition. If one read the Guide as a treatise in which imagination was depicted as the seat of desire, with the ability to sway a person to sin, then this was viewed as an

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indication that imagination was detrimental – and opposed  – to human reasoning. This attitude did not take into account the Arabic Aristotelian psychological model in which the imaginative faculty had an important function within cognitive reasoning. My exploration of the translation of passages in the Guide from Judeo-­ Arabic to target languages was guided by translation theory, which provided a conceptual framework for the philosophy of translation and cautioned against an uncritical acceptance of the accuracy of translation. Theories of translation opened up the complex interplay of motives – both conscious and unconscious – that were at play when a translator engaged in his or her endeavour. Medieval Arabic translation theories viewed the task of translation as a lesson in communication whose goal was the clarity of communication; ideas that were clearly and aptly conveyed could be more readily understood by the reader. Modern literary theories of translation helped to explain the ethics of translation (or mistranslation) and the challenges of rendering the source text into a target language. I contended that, due to the paucity of synonyms for imagination in the target languages of Hebrew, French and English, and because of a bias towards imagination that prevented these translators from coining verbiage that would reflect the subtleties of the Judeo-Arabic, the nuanced development of imagination was not reflected in translations of the Guide. I argued that this one-sided reading of imagination as unreliable, detrimental and ignoble was not the intended reading. As a result, I recognized that those interpreters who only read Maimonides in translation did not benefit from the nuances that inhere in the Arabic terms chosen carefully by Maimonides to convey differing aspects of imaginative thought. Although the subtleties of the original have been lost in translation, in this project I have sought to retrieve them. If translation is, famously, the “afterlife” of a text, then in this study I viewed Shem Tov ibn Falaquera as an “afterlife” and intellectual heir of Maimonides. Falaquera’s intellectual contribution straddled Muslim al-Andalus and Christian Iberia. As a translator of the Guide he acted as a linguistic bridge between Judeo-Arabic and Hebrew; as a disseminator of Arabic Aristotelian philosophical ideas he acted as a link in the chain of transmission of Maimonidean rationalism. Falaquera’s translation and commentary upon the Guide, Moreh haMoreh, followed Maimonides’ developing attitude towards imagination. However, my research into that text found that Falaquera nuanced imagination by demarcating between the faculty of imagination, dimyon, and its function or activity, which he called damot. This distinction was

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not picked up by translators of the Guide, nor did scholars of Maimonides contend with this differentiation. Had this distinction been noticed, along with Maimonides’ developing perspective on imagination in the Guide, perhaps scholarly discourse about imagination and its functions would have taken a different, more balanced approach. Falaquera’s contribution to medieval Jewish philosophy is often overlooked; when he is mentioned at all, he is disdained as derivative and unoriginal, someone whose only contribution, if it can be called that at all, is as a transcriber of Arabic Aristotelian ideas into Hebrew. Rather than view Falaquera as an epigone, I have highlighted that he conscientiously recast Andalusı¯ philosophy and literature using some of the cultural and intellectual trends of Christian Spain. He reflected on the role of poetry and the role of imagination while steeped in Maimonidean thought. He engaged in the literary activity of compilation, purposefully selecting texts and passages from Averroes, Avicenna and others and reorganizing them into a conceptually coherent order. He utilized the literary genre of maqama to frame the quest of a seeker of wisdom in an intellectual treatise that explored and then rejected poetry while utilizing poetic language. In Book of the Seeker, Falaquera ostensibly repudiated poetry and bypassed theology as fonts of higher learning; philosophy alone provided the ultimate wisdom. Scholars of this text viewed Falaquera’s position on poetry as a “divorcement” and abandonment of poetry in toto. I have read into the Hebrew text a subtler approach. The poetry he renounced is praise poetry and grossly exaggerated encomiums, which he viewed as false. Poetry has a role to play in our lives: because of its persuasive ability to move the emotions using beautiful language, it is a useful genre for imparting lessons on ethical behaviour, a view also favoured by Christian Scholastics of the era. The results of this study suggest that a fuller treatment can be made of how Maimonides’ Guide has been translated, paying specific attention to how other Judeo-Arabic philosophical terms were presented. More research can be undertaken into the role of imagination in medieval Jewish thought, allowing for a more nuanced look at imagination’s contribution to cognition, and how imagination’s role in cognition developed in the Middle Ages and beyond. It would be instructive to examine Hebrew poetry of the period to see how metaphoric language presented the link between sensory images and the divine, what type of language was used to describe God, and how poetry linked philosophy and imagination through language. Finally, a formulation of a medieval Jewish aesthetic, predicated upon philosophical ideals of beautiful expression, would be an interesting next step in this study.

Appendix to Chapter 4

Guide I:2 Maimonides (Judeo-Arabic) ‫פלמא עצא ומאל נחו שהואתה אלכ׳יאליה ולד׳את חואסה אלג׳סמאניה…עוקב באן סלב ד׳לך‬ ]‫ [כח קאפח‬.‫אלאדראך אלעקלי‬ Pines (English) However, when [Adam] disobeyed and inclined towards his desires of the imagination and the pleasures of his corporeal senses…he was punished by being deprived of that intellectual apprehension. (25) Friedländer (English) After man’s disobedience, however, when he began to give way to desires which had their source in his imagination and to the gratification of his bodily appetites…he was punished by the loss of part of that intellectual faculty which he had previously possessed. (16) Munk (French) Mais lorsque, désobéissant, il pencha vers ses désirs venant de l’imaginative et vers les plaisirs corporels de ses sens…il fut puni par la privation de cette compréhension intellectuelle. (33)

© The Author(s) 2019 D. L. Roberts-Zauderer, Metaphor and Imagination in Medieval Jewish Thought, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29422-9

223

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‫ ‪224‬‬

‫)‪I bn Tibbon (Hebrew‬‬ ‫וכאשר מרה ונטה אל תאוותיו הדמיוניות והנאות חושיו הגשמיות…נענש בששולל ההשגה ההיא‬ ‫השכלית‪[ .‬כב]‬ ‫)‪Al-Ḥ arizi (Hebrew‬‬ ‫וכאשר חטא ונטה אחרי תאוותיו היצריות ותענוגי הרגשות הגשמיות…נענש‪ ,‬כי הוסר ממנו‬ ‫ההשגה ההיא השכלית‪]54[ .‬‬ ‫)‪Falaquera (Hebrew‬‬ ‫וכאשר מרה ונטה אחר תאותיו הדמיוניות‪ ,‬ותענוגות חושיו הגופניות…נענש בששולל אותה‬ ‫ההשגה השכלית‪]11[ .‬‬ ‫)‪Kafiḥ (Hebrew‬‬ ‫וכאשר מרה ונטה אל תאוותיו הדמיוניות ותענוגות חושיו הגופניים…נענש שנשללה ממנו אותה‬ ‫ההשגה השכלית‪[ .‬כח]‬

‫‪Guide I:32‬‬ ‫)‪Maimonides (Judeo-Arabic‬‬ ‫אעלם יא איהא אלנאט׳ר פי מקאלתי‪ ,‬אנה יעתרי פי אלאדראכאת אלעקליה מן חית׳ להא תעלק‬ ‫באלמאדה שי שביה במא יעתרי ללאדראכאת אלחסיה‪ ,‬וד׳לך אנך אד׳א נט׳רת בעינך אדרכת מא‬ ‫פי קוה׳ בצרך אן תדרכה…ואן רמת אדראכא פוק אדראכך…ומא הו אן לא תכון כאמלא פקט‪,‬‬ ‫בל תציר אנקץ כל נאקץ‪ ,‬ויחדת׳ לך חיניד׳ תגליב אלכ׳יאלאת ואלמיל נחו אלנקאיץ ואלרד׳איל‬ ‫ואלשרור אלשתגאל אלעקל ואנטפא נורה ‪,‬כמא יחדת׳ פי אלבצר מן אלכ׳יאלאת אלכאד׳בה‬ ‫אנואע ענד צ׳עפ אלרוח אלבאצר פי אלמרצ׳א‪ ,‬ופי אלד׳ין ילחון באלנט׳ר ללאמור אלנירה או‬ ‫ללאמור אלדקיקה‪[ .‬עא קאפח]‬ ‫)‪Pines (English‬‬ ‫‪You who study my Treatise, know that something similar to what happens‬‬ ‫‪to sensory apprehensions happens likewise to intellectual apprehensions in‬‬ ‫‪so far as they are attached to matter. For when you see with your eye, you‬‬ ‫…‪apprehend something that is within the power of your sight to apprehend‬‬ ‫‪If, on the other hand, you aspire to apprehend things that are beyond‬‬ ‫‪your apprehension….you will not only not be perfect, but you will be the‬‬ ‫‪most deficient among the deficient; and it shall so fall out that you will be‬‬ ‫‪overcome by imaginings and by an inclination toward things defective,‬‬ ‫‪evil, and wicked – this resulting from the intellect’s being preoccupied and‬‬ ‫‪its light’s being extinguished. In a similar way, various species of delusive‬‬

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225

imaginings are produced in the sense of sight when the visual spirit is weakened, as in the case of sick people and of such as persist in looking at brilliant or minute objects. (68) Friedländer (English) You must consider, when reading this treatise, that mental perception, because connected with matter, is subject to conditions similar to those to which physical perception is subject. That is to say, if your eye looks around, you can perceive all that is within the range of your vision: if, however, you overstrain your eye, exerting it too much by attempting to see an object which is too distant for your eye, or to examine writings or engravings too small for your sight, and forcing it to obtain a correct perception of them, you will not only weaken your sight with regard to that special object, but also for those things which you otherwise are able to perceive: your eye will have become too weak to perceive what you were able to see before you exerted yourself and exceeded the limits of your vision… If, on the other hand, you attempt to exceed the limit of your intellectual power, or at once to reject things as impossible which have never been proved to be impossible, or which are in fact possible, though their possibility be very remote, then you will be like Elisha Aḥer; you will not only fail to become perfect, but you will become exceedingly imperfect. Ideas founded on mere imagination will prevail over you, you will incline toward defects, and toward base and degraded habits, on account of the confusion which troubles the mind, and of the dimness of its light, just as weakness of sight causes invalids to see many kinds of unreal images, especially when they have looked for a long time at dazzling or at very minute objects. (43) Munk (French) Sache, Ô lecteur de mon traité! qu’il arrive dans les perceptions intelligible; en tant qu’elles se rattachent à la matière, quelque chose de semblable à ce qui arrive aux perceptions sensibles. Ainsi, lorsque tu regardes avec ton oeil, tu perçois ce qu’il est dans ta faculté visuelle de percevoir… Mais si tu aspires à une perception au-dessus de ta faculté perceptive, (ou que tu te hâtes de déclarer mensonge les choses dont le contraire n’est pas démontré, ou qui sont possibles)...non seulement tu ne seras pas parfait, mais tu deviendras tout ce qu’il y a de plus imparfait: il t’arrivera alors de laisser prendre le dessus aux imaginations et d’être entraîné au vice; à la dépravation et au mal; parce que l’esprit sera préoccupé et sa lumière

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‫‪éteinte, de même qu’il se présente à la vue route espèce de vains fantômes‬‬ ‫‪lorsque l’esprit visuel s’affaiblit chez les malades et chez ceux qui fixent le‬‬ ‫)‪regard sur des objets brilliants ou sur des objets très subtils. (72–3‬‬ ‫)‪I bn Tibbon (Hebrew‬‬ ‫דע‪ ,‬אתה המעין במאמרי זה‪ ,‬שהנה יקרה בהשגות השכליות‪ - ‬מפני שהן נתלות בחמר‪ - ‬דבר‪,‬‬ ‫ידמה למה שיקרה להשגות החושיות‪ .‬והוא‪ - ‬שאתה‪ ,‬כשתעין בעיניך‪ ,‬תשיג מה שבכח ראותך‬ ‫שתשיגהו…ואם תשתדל להשיג למעלה מהשגתך…שלא תהיה שלם לבד‪ ,‬אבל תשוב יותר חסר‬ ‫מכל חסר‪ ,‬ותתחדש לך אז תגברת הדמיונים ונטות אחר החסרונות והמדות המגנות והרעות‪,‬‬ ‫לטרידת השכל ולהכבות אורו‪ .‬כמו שיתחדש בראות מן הדמיונים המכזבים מינים רבים‪ ,‬עם‬ ‫חלשת הרוח הרואה בחולים ובאשר יפצרו בעיון לדברים המאירים או לדברים הדקים‪[ .‬נט]‬ ‫)‪Al-Ḥ arizi (Hebrew‬‬ ‫דע‪ ,‬כי ההתחלה בזאת החכמה תזיק מאד‪ ,‬רצוני לומר‪ ,‬החכמה האלהית ‪ ,‬וכן באור עניני משלי‬ ‫הנביאים ולעורר על הסמיכות המרגלות במליצת אשר ספרי הנביאים מלאים מהם‪ ,‬אך צריך‬ ‫לחנך הקטנים וללמד המקצרים כפי השגתם‪ ,‬ומי שנראה מהם שלם בשכלו‪ ,‬מוכן לזאת המדרגה‬ ‫העליונה‪ ,‬והיא מדרגת העיון המופתי והראיות השכליות האמתיות‪ - ‬ינהלוהו ראשון ראשון עד‬ ‫אשר יגיע אל שלמותו‪ ,‬או בסיוע מעיר יעירהו‪ ,‬או מכח נפשו‪]123-4[ .‬‬ ‫)‪Falaquera (Hebrew‬‬ ‫דע אתה המעיין במאמרי זה שיקרה בהשגת השכליות מצד שיש להן תלייה בחומר‪ ,‬דבר דומה‬ ‫במה שיקרה להשגות החושיות‪ .‬כי אתה כשתעיין בעיניך תשיג מה שבכח ראותיך‪ ,‬ואם תכריח‬ ‫עיניך ותפליג בעיון ותשתדל להביט במרחק גדול יותר ארוך ממה שיש בכח ראותיך להביט‬ ‫אליו…אלא יחלש עוד מהשיג הדבר מה שבכחך תשיגהו ויחלש ראותיך‪ ,‬ולא תראה מה שהיה‬ ‫יכול להשיגו קודם שתכריח ראותיך‪ ,‬וכן עניו המעיין בחכמה‪ ,‬כי אם ירצה לחשוב ויכריח‬ ‫המחשבה תחלש מחשבתו‪ ,‬ואז לא יבין אפי[לו] מה שבכחו שיבינהו כי ענין הכחות הגופניות‬ ‫כלם באיזה הענין ענין אחר‪ ,‬והדומה לזה יקרה לך בהשגות השכליות‪]16[ .‬‬ ‫)‪Kafiḥ (Hebrew‬‬ ‫דע‪ ,‬אתה המעיין במאמרי‪ ,‬כי יארע בהשגות השכליות מחמת שיש להן קשר עם החומר דבר‬ ‫הדומה למה שיארע להשגות החושיות‪ ,‬והוא‪ ,‬כאשר אתה משיג מה שיש בכח ראייתיך להשיגו…‬ ‫ואם תחשוב להשיג למעלה מהשגתך…‪.‬ואין זה רק שלא תהיה גרוע מכל גרוע‪ ,‬ויארע לך אז‬ ‫התגברות הדמיונות והנטיוה כלפי המגרעות והמדות המגונות ומעשה הרע מחמת טרדת השכל‬ ‫וכביון אורו‪ ,‬כפי שיארע בראייה כמה מיני דמיונות כוזבים כאשר יחלש הרואה בחולים‪ ,‬באותם‬ ‫המתאמצים להסתקל בדברים הנוצצים או בדברים הדקים‪[ .‬עא]‬

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Guide I:33 Maimonides (Judeo-Arabic) .‫וכד׳לך יתצור תלך אלאמור אלתי כאנת לה כ׳יאלאת ומת׳אלאת בחקאיקהא ויפהם מאהיתהא‬ ]‫[עד קאפח‬ Friedländer (English) (When a man attains to perfection, and arrives at a knowledge of the “Secrets of the Law,” either through the assistance of a teacher or by selfinstruction, being led by the understanding of one part to the study of the other, he will belong to those who faithfully believe in the true principles, either because of conclusive proof, where proof is possible, or by forcible arguments, where argument is admissible;) he will have a true notion of those things which he previously received in similes and metaphors, and he will fully understand their sense. (45) Pines (English) (When, however, a man grows perfect and the mysteries of the Torah are communicated to him either by somebody else or because he himself discovers them…he attains a rank at which he pronounces the above mentioned correct opinions to be true; and in order to arrive at this conclusion, he uses the veritable methods, namely, demonstration in cases where demonstration is possible or strong arguments where this is possible.) In this way he represents to himself these matters, which had appeared to him as imaginings and parables, in their truth and understands their essence. (72) Munk (French) Et de même il se représent dans leur réalité ces choses (idéales), qui étaient pour lui des choses d’imagination et des figures, et il comprend leur (véritable) être. (76) I bn Tibbon (Hebrew) ]‫ [סא‬.‫וכן יציר הענינים ההם אשר היו לו דמיונות ומשלים באמיתותיהם ויבין מהותם‬ Al-Ḥ arizi (Hebrew) ‫מערבבת בין השגה‬- ‫ועל כן לא ישיג מה שיש ביכלתו להשיג או אפשר שישיג השגה משבשת‬ ]136[…‫ היו אלו הסבות ראויים ליחידים‬- ‫ ולפי אלה הסבות כלם‬,‫וקצור‬

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APPENDIX TO CHAPTER 4

Falaquera (Hebrew) No translation. Kafiḥ (Hebrew) ‫וכן ישכיל אותם הדברים שהיו אצלו דמיונות ומשלים כפי אמתתם‬ .‫ויבין מהותם‬

Guide I:47 Maimonides (Judeo-Arabic) ‫ יסתעאר] לה‬.‫ק‬.‫ פלם יסתער [ב‬,‫כמא ט׳הר נקץ אלתכ׳יל ולם יט׳הר נקץ אלתפכר ואלתפהם‬ ‫׳רעיון׳ אלד׳י הו אלתכ׳יל ואלאסתעאיר לה ׳מחשבה ותבונה׳ אלתי הי אלפכרה ואלפהם וקיל‬ ]‫׳ [קז קאפח‬.‫׳אשר חשב י׳י׳ ׳ובתבונתו נטה שמים‬ Pines (English) Therefore ‘fancy,’ which word means imagination, is not figuratively ascribed to Him, whereas thought [maḥshabah] and comprehension [tebunah], which words mean reflection and understanding, are figuratively ascribed to him. (105) Friedländer (English) In a similar manner the defect of the imagination is easily seen, less easily that of thinking and reasoning. Imagination (ra‘ayon) therefore, was never employed as a figure in speaking of God, while thought and reason are figuratively ascribed to Him. (65) Munk (French) De même l’imagination apparaît comme une imperfection, tandis que dans la pensée et dans l’entendement, l’imperfection n’est pas manifeste (pour tous); c’est pourquoi on n’a point employé métaphoriquement, en parlant de Dieu, le mot ra’ayôn, qui désigne l’”imagination”, tandis qu’on a employé les mots ma’haschabâ et tebounâ, qui désignent la “pensée” et l’”entendement.” (106–7) I bn Tibbon (Hebrew) ‫כמו שיראה חסרון הדמיון ולא נראה חסרון ההסתכלות וההתבוננות ולא השאל לו ׳רעיון׳ אשר‬ ]‫הוא דמיון; והשאלו לו ׳מחשבה׳ ו׳תבונה׳ אשר הם ההסתכלות וההתבוננות… [פט‬

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229

Al-Ḥ arizi (Hebrew) No translation of this passage. Falaquera (Hebrew) ‫ ולא נראה חסרון ההסתכל וההתבונן ולא הושאל לו רעיון‬,‫כמו שיראה חסרון הרעיון והדמוי‬ ]24[ ‫׳‬.‫׳ ׳ובתבונתו נטה שמים‬,‫ ואמר ׳אשר חשב‬,‫ והושאל לו מחשבה ותבונה‬,‫שהוא הדמוי‬ Kafiḥ (Hebrew) ‫ ולפיכך לא הושאל לו‬,‫כמו שניכרת מגרעת הדמיון ואינה ניכרת מגרעת המחשבה והתבוננות‬ ‫ והושאל לו מחשבה ותבונה שהם ׳אלפכרה ואלפהם׳ ונאמר אשר חשב ה׳‬,‫רעיון שהוא הדמיון‬ ]‫ [קז‬.‫ובתבונתו נטה שמים‬

Guide I:49 Maimonides (Judeo-Arabic) ‫וקד עלמת אן אדראך אלברי נו אלמאדה אלערי ען אלג׳סמאניה אצלא עסר ג׳דא עלי אלאנסאן‬ ‫ ובכ׳אצה למן לא יפרק בין אלמעקול ואלמתכ׳יל ואכת׳ר אעתמאדאתה‬,‫אלא בעד ארתיאץ׳ עט׳ים‬ ‫ ומא‬,‫ ויכון כל מתכ׳יל ענדה מוג׳ודא או ממכן אלוג׳וד‬,‫אעתמאדה] עלי אדראך אלכ׳יאל פקט‬.‫[ב‬ ]‫קיא קאפח‬-‫ [קי‬.‫לא יקע פי שבכה׳ אלכ׳יאל ענדה מעדום וממתנע ען אלוג׳וד‬ Pines (English) Now you already know that it is very difficult for man to apprehend, except after strenuous training, that which is pure of matter and absolutely devoid of corporeality. It is particularly difficult for one who does not differentiate between that which is cognized by the intellect and that which is imagined and who tends mostly toward imaginative apprehension alone. For such a one everything that is imagined exists or can exist, whereas that which does not enter within the net of imagination is in his opinion nonexistent and incapable of existing. (109) Friedländer (English) You know very well how difficult it is for men to form a notion of anything immaterial, and entirely devoid of corporeality, except after considerable training: it is especially difficult for those who do not distinguish between objects of the intellect and objects of the imagination, and depend mostly on the mere imaginative power. They believe that all imagined things exist or at least have the possibility of existing: but that which cannot be imagined does not exist, and cannot exist. (67)

230 

APPENDIX TO CHAPTER 4

Munk (French) Tu sais que la perception de ce qui est exempt de matière et entièrement dénué de corporéité est très difficile pour l’homme, – à moins que ce ne soit après un grand exercice, – et particulièrement pour celui qui ne distingue pas entre l’intelligible et l’imaginaire, et qui, la plupart du temps, ne s’appuie que sur la perception de l’imagination, de sorte que, pour lui, toute chose imaginée existe ou peut exister, et ce qui ne peut être saisi par l’imagination n’existe pas et ne peut pas exister. (110) I bn Tibbon (Hebrew) ‫ כבדה מאד על האדם אלא אחר‬,‫ הערם מן הגשמות לגמרי‬,‫וכבר ידעת כי השגת הנקי מן החמר‬ ‫ ויהיה‬,‫ ורב השענו על השגת הדמיון לבד‬,‫למוד רב; ובלבד למי שלא יבדיל בין המשכל והמדומה‬ ‫ ומה שלא יפול ברשת הדמיון אצלו נעדר ונמנע‬,‫כל מדומה אצלו נמצא או אפשר המציאה‬ ]‫ [צב‬.‫המציאה‬ Al-Ḥ arizi (Hebrew) No translation of this passage. Falaquera (Hebrew) No translation Kafiḥ (Hebrew) ,‫ המעורטל מן הגשמיות לגמרי קשה מאד על האדם‬,‫וכבר ידעת כי השגת המנוקה מן החומר‬ ‫ ובפרט אצל מי שאינו מבחין בין מושכל לדמיון ורוב הסתמכיותיו‬,‫זולתי לאחר הכשרה ממושכת‬ ‫ ומה‬,‫ ויהיה אצלו כל מה שהמדמה מדמהו מצוי או אפשרי המציאות‬,‫על השגת הדמיון בלבד‬ ]‫קיא‬-‫ [קי‬.‫שלא נתפש ברשת הדמיון הוא אצלו נעדר ונמנע המציאות‬ Ha-menukeh: Kafiḥ’s note [101] says that one can also translate “the clean” but he translated it this way because it is clearer.

Guide I:68 Maimonides (Judeo-Arabic) ‫ מת׳אל] אלמחסוס פי אלקוה‬.‫ומא אראך ישכל עליך אלתצור אלעקלי באלתכ׳יל ואכ׳ד מת׳ל [ב‬ ‫ אד׳ הד׳ה אלמקאלה מא אלפת אלא למן תפלסף וערף מא קד באן מן אמר אלנפס‬,‫אלמתכ׳ילה‬ ]‫קעח‬-‫ [קעז‬.‫וג׳מיע קואהא‬

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Pines (English) I do not consider that you might confuse intellectual representation with imagination and with the reception of an image of a sense object by the imaginative faculty, as this Treatise has been composed only for the benefit of those who have philosophized and have acquired knowledge of what has become clear with reference to the soul and all its faculties. (166) Friedländer (English) I do not apprehend that the reader will confound intellectual comprehension with the representative faculty – with the reproduction of the material image in our imagination, since this work is designed only for those who have studied philosophy, and who know what has already been said on the soul and its faculties. (103) Munk (French) Je ne pense pas qu’en toi la conception intellectuelle puisse être troublée par l’imagination, et que tu puisses, dans ta faculté imaginative, établir à sujet une comparaison avec les choses sensibles; car ce traité n’a été composé que pour ceux qui ont étudié la philosophie et qui connaissent ce qui a été exposé au sujet de l’âme et de toutes ses facultés. (165) I bn Tibbon (Hebrew) ‫ שזה‬- ,‫ואיני רואה אותך מי שיתערב לו ציור השכלי בדמיון ולקיחת משל המוחש בכח הדמיוני‬ ]‫ [קמג‬.‫המאמר לא חבר אלא למי שנתפלסף וידע מה שכבר התבאר מענין הנפש וכל כחותיה‬ Al-Ḥ arizi (Hebrew) No translation of this passage. Falaquera (Hebrew) Falaquera translates portions of this chapter, but not our passage. Kafiḥ (Hebrew) ‫ כי מאמר זה‬,‫ ותפישת משל המוחש בכח המדמה‬,‫ואיני חושב שיתחלף לך הציור השכלי בדמיון‬ ]‫קעח‬-‫ [קעז‬.‫לא נתחבר אלא למי שכבר נתפלסף וידע מה שכבר נתברר מענין הנפש וכל כחותיה‬

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APPENDIX TO CHAPTER 4

Guide I:73 Maimonides (Judeo-Arabic) ‫ אמא אלחיואן אלכאמל כלה אעני אלד׳י לה‬,‫פקד עלמת אן אלכ׳יאל מוג׳וד לאכת׳ר אלחיואנאת‬ ‫ ולא פעל אלכ׳יאל פעל‬,‫ ואן אלאנסאן לם יתמיז באלכ׳יאל‬,‫קלב פאן וג׳וד אלכ׳יאל לה בין‬ ,‫אלעקל בל צ׳דה…כמא יתכ׳יל אלמתכ׳יל שכ׳ץ אנסאן וראסה ראס פרס ולה אג׳נחה ונחו ד׳לך‬ ‫והד׳א הו אלד׳י יסמי אלמכ׳תרע אלכאד׳ב לאנה לא יטאבקה מוג׳וד אצלא…פלד׳לך לא‬ ]‫רכח‬-‫ [רכז‬.‫אעתבאר באלכ׳יאל‬ Pines (English) You already know that imagination exists in most living beings. As for the perfect animal, I mean the one endowed with a heart, the existence of imagination in it is clear. Accordingly, man is not distinguished by having imagination; and the act of imagination is not the act of the intellect but rather its contrary. (For the intellect divides the composite things and differentiates their parts and makes abstractions of them, represents them to itself in their true reality and with their causes…It is by means of the intellect that the universal is differentiated from the individual, and no demonstration is true except by means of universals. It is also through the intellect that essential predicates are discerned from accidental ones. None of these acts belongs to the imagination. For the imagination apprehends only that which is individual and composite as a whole, as it is apprehended by the senses….) Thus someone using his imagination imagines a human individual having a horse’s head and wings and so on. This is what is called a thing invented and false, for nothing existent corresponds to it at all. (In its apprehension, imagination is in no way able to hold itself aloof from matter, even if it turns a form into an extreme of abstraction.) For this reason there can be no critical examination in the imagination. (209–210) Friedländer (English) Mark, O reader, that if you know the nature of the soul and its properties, and if you have a correct notion of everything which concerns the soul, you will observe that most animals possess imagination. As to the higher class of animals, that is, those which have a heart, it is obvious that they have imagination. Man’s distinction does not consist in the possession of imagination, and the action of imagination is not the same as the action of the intellect, but the reverse of it. For the intellect analyses and divides the

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233

component parts of things, it forms abstract ideas of them, represents them in their true form as well as in their causal relations, derives from one object a great many facts, which  – for the intellect  – totally differ from each other, just as two human individuals appear different to the imagination: it distinguishes that which is the property of the genus from that which is peculiar to the individual,  – and no proof is correct, unless founded on the former; the intellect further determines whether certain qualities of a thing are essential or non-essential. Imagination has none of these functions. It only perceives the individual, the compound in that aggregate condition in which it presents itself to the senses; or it combines things which exist separately, joins some of them together, and represents them all as one body or as a force of the body. Hence it is that some imagine a man with a horse’s head, with wings, etc. This is called a fiction, a phantasm; it is a thing to which nothing in the actual world corresponds. Nor can imagination in any way obtain a purely immaterial image of an object, however abstract the form of the image may be. Imagination yields therefore no test for the reality of a thing. (131) Munk (French) Tu sauras que l’imagination appartient à la plupart des animaux; que, du moins pour ce qui est des animaux parfaits, je veux parler de ceux qui ont un coeur, il est évident qu’ils possèdent tous l’imagination, et que ce n’est pas par celle-ci que l’homme se distingue (des autres animaux). L’action de l’imagination n’est pas la même que celle de l’intelligence, mais lui est opposée…Ainsi, par exemple, on peut concevoir dans l’imagination un individu humain ayant une tête de cheval et des ailes, et d’autres (créations) semblambles; et c’est là ce qu’on appelle une invention mensongère, car il n’y a absolument aucun être qui lui sont conforme…c’est pourquoi il ne faut point avoir égard a l’imagination. (208) I bn Tibbon (Hebrew) ‫ אשר‬,‫ רצוני לומר‬- ‫ אמנם בעלי החיים השלמים כלם‬,‫הנה תדע כי הדמיון נמצא לרב בעלי חיים‬ ‫ ואין פועל הדמיון פועל‬.‫ מציאות הדמיון להם מבואר; ושהאדם לא הובדל בדמיון‬- ‫להם לב‬ ‫ וזהו‬,‫ ולו כנפים וכיוצא בזה‬,‫השכל אבל הפכו…כמו שידמה המדמה איש אדם וראשו ראש סוס‬ ]‫קפג‬-‫ [קפב‬.‫ שלא ישוה לו נמצא כלל… ולכן אין בחינה בדמיון‬,‫הנקרא הבדוי השקר‬ Al-Ḥ arizi (Hebrew) Does not translate past the seventh chapter of Guide I:73.

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‫ ‪234‬‬

‫)‪Falaquera (Hebrew‬‬ ‫דע אתה המעייו בזה המאמר! כי אתה אם היית ממי שידע הנפש וכחותיה וידעת כל דבר על‬ ‫אמתת מציאותו‪ ,‬כבר ידעת כי הדמיון נמצא לרוב בעלי חיים‪ ,‬אבל בעל חי השלם‪ ,‬כלומר שיש‬ ‫לו לב מציאות הדמיון מבואר לו‪ ,‬ושהאדם לא נכר מזולתו ולא פעל הדמיון פעל השכל אבל‬ ‫הפכו…כמו שמדמה המדמה איש מבני אדם וראשו ראש סוס בעל כנפים והדומה לו‪ ,‬וזה הוא‬ ‫הנקרא הבדוי הכוזב‪ ,‬ולא ישוה לו נמצא כלל…ועל כן אין בחינה בדמיון‪]59[ .‬‬ ‫)‪Kafiḥ (Hebrew‬‬ ‫הרי כבר ידעת כי הדמיון מצוי לרוב בעלי חיים‪ ,‬בבעל חי השלם כולו‪ ,‬כלומר שיש לו לב‪ ,‬הרי‬ ‫מציאות הדמיון לו ברור‪ ,‬ושאין ייחודו של אדם בדמיון‪ ,‬ושאין פעולת הדמיון פעולת השכל אלא‬ ‫הפכו…כמו שמדמה המדמה אדם וראשו ראש סוס ויש לו כנפים וכיוצא בכך‪ ,‬וזה הנקרא‬ ‫׳המוצר הכוזב‪,‬׳ לפי שאינו תואם שום מציאות כלל…ולפיכך אין להתחשב במדמה‪[ .‬רכז‪-‬רכח]‬

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Index1

A Abraham, 76, 82 Acquired intellect, 70, 144n116 Active Intellect, 61, 70, 71, 81, 81n76, 95, 140, 147n121, 181, 181–182n106, 183n109, 200n51 Act of understanding (fahm) in communication, 110 Adab, 2, 19, 23, 33, 33n70, 193, 195 adı̄b, 193, 208 Adam his desires, 86, 90, 125, 173, 173n68, 223 his imaginings (khayāl), 91, 173 moral transformation of, 91 sin of, 123–125, 133, 147n120, 148, 172, 173 Adret, Solomon ibn, 159, 160 Aesthetics, see Aesthetic theory Aesthetic theory, 13, 14 Al-Andalus, 1, 2, 4, 10, 14, 19, 20n4, 23n21, 35, 36, 40, 41, 106, 108, 161, 161n24, 204, 221

See also Muslim Spain Al-‘Askarı̄, Abū Hilāl, 105, 109, 110, 110n23, 113 Al-bayān (clear expression), 111 Alfārābı̄ on ambiguity in language, 132 on the creation of an image (takhayyul), 66, 127, 128, 132n91 on creative imagining (takhyı̄l), 4, 65, 66, 120 on the faculty of imagination (al-quwwa al-mutakhayyila), 66, 69, 137, 138 poetry and, 65, 85, 120 on prophecy, 81, 81n76 psychology and, 8, 14, 72, 85 takhayyul, 127–128 taṣawwur, 127–129, 132n91, 138, 140 Treatise on Poetry, 63n4, 65, 85 Al-Ghazzālı̄, 79n68, 82n79

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

1

© The Author(s) 2019 D. L. Roberts-Zauderer, Metaphor and Imagination in Medieval Jewish Thought, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29422-9

253

254 

INDEX

Alḥarizi, Judah, 104, 105, 107, 108, 116, 122 translation of Maimonides’ Guide, 119, 171 Al-ḥiss al-mushtarak (communal senses or sensus communis), 67, 68, 172n66 Al-Jāḥiẓ as adı̄b, 193, 208 bilingual translator, 116 Kitāb al-Ḥ ayawān (The Book of the Living), 108 on metaphor, 111 on translation, 105, 108, 109, 114 Al-Jurjānı̄, ‘Abd al-Qāhir on clear expression (al-bayān), 111 on describing the divine, 105 al-naẓm, 111 on translation, 105 Al-khayāl (imagination), 67–69, 87, 96, 136, 137, 172n66, 177, 178, 181, 181–182n106 Allegory, 10, 11, 11–12n28, 48, 53, 55 Allemanus, Hermannus, 206n69 Allen, Judson, 207, 208 Al-mufakkira (cognition), 68, 94, 173n66, 177, 180 Al-mukhatara‘-al-kādhiba (fallacious invention), 145, 146 Al-qā’il (the speaker), 110 Al-quwwa al-mutakhayyila (imaginative faculty), 140 Al-sāmi‘ (the listener), 110 Al-Zamakhsharı̄, 121 Ambiguity, 53, 105, 132, 150, 213 misinterpretation and, 53 Analogical reasoning, 4 Andalusı̄ thought, 9, 217 Angels, 77, 81, 87n89 Apprehension, intellectual, 4, 45, 87, 90, 99, 224 ‘Aql (intellect), 74

Aquinas, Thomas, 206n69 Arabic Aristotelian, ix, 4–9, 12, 14, 15, 40, 41, 62, 66, 72, 74n53, 75, 77n64, 81, 82, 84–88, 88n94, 92, 95, 96n129, 98, 99, 103, 104, 121, 122, 127, 130, 131, 141, 142n111, 146n120, 148, 149, 156, 158, 161, 164–168, 178, 206n69, 209, 212, 213, 217, 219–222 Arabic poetics, see Poetics Arabiyya/Shu‘ūbiyya dispute, 2, 108 Aristotle, 63n3, 98 De Anima, 62, 63, 63n2, 63n4, 64n6, 65, 66, 70n39, 91n104, 96n129, 99, 122n63 on imagination, 8, 63, 63n4, 91n101, 94, 96n129, 97 on intellect, 70n39, 94, 97 on metaphor, 26, 27, 29, 34, 35, 63n4, 198 name transfer, 35 Nicomachean Ethics, 204–206, 206n70 Organon, 33n70, 96n129 Poetics, 25, 26, 33, 34, 43n104, 63n4, 66 psychology and, 67n26 On Rhetoric, 33, 33n70, 34, 38 Averroes “Averroism,” 156 Averroistic controversies, 13, 157, 158 Ibn Rushd, 163, 167 Avicenna, 62 acquired intellect, 70, 144n116 Active Intellect, 70, 71, 81, 181, 183n109 five external senses, 67, 85 five internal senses, 85, 94n121, 98, 172n66, 177 on imaginative faculty, 68, 69, 71, 74, 140

 INDEX 

Kitāb al-Najāt, 69 man of intuition, 79 al-mutakhayyila (imaginative faculty), 176n87, 177, 178, 181 passive intellect, 70 on poetry or imaginative speech (mukhayyil), 66 on prophecy, 71, 80, 81, 81n76 psychology, 7, 8, 10, 14, 65, 66, 69, 70, 72, 84–86, 89, 94, 97, 172, 177 Al-Shifā’, 121n61, 173n66 wahm (estimative faculty), 69, 71, 180, 180n99 B Badı̄‘ (figurative speech), 30, 31, 33 Barcelona, 159 Bartholomew of Bruges, 206n69 Behzadi, Lale, 109, 110 Benjamin, Walter, 114, 115, 131 on “afterlife” of a text, 114, 115, 121–123, 131 Bid‘a (innovation), 31 Black, Max, 27n47 Book of the Seeker, The ethics and, 192 poetry and, 189–203, 213 Borrowing, see Metaphor Brann, Ross, 2n1, 3n3, 192n16, 199, 201, 202, 212n90 Bühler, Axel, 116n46, 117, 117n48 C Christian Spain, 2, 12, 23n21, 35, 157, 161, 204, 222 See also Iberia, medieval Cognition imagination and, 6, 7, 12, 14, 103, 133, 141, 142n111, 148, 176n86, 177, 180n99, 182,

255

184, 194, 206n69, 213, 217, 222 al-mufakkira, 94, 180 Cohen, Mordechai Z., 32, 35, 46–49, 46n116, 46n117, 48n123, 51, 52 on ibn Ezra, 32 on Maimonides, 32, 47–49 on metaphor, 32, 47, 52 Common senses (sensus communis), 61, 67, 69, 73, 83, 94n121, 172–173n66, 179n97, 183n109 Communication, 53n139, 54, 105, 109–111, 113, 221 Compilation compilatio, 161, 162 compilation theory, 15 Compunction, 201, 202 Concept, see Metaphor Contemplation, 72, 84, 85, 99, 129, 178, 204–206, 206n69, 207n71 of divine, 72, 84 Corporeality, 92–94, 135, 229 D Dana, Joseph, 24n25, 28, 29, 196, 196n32 Davidson, Herbert A., 74n53, 81n76, 87n89 Alfarabi, Avicenna, and Averroes, on Intellect: Their Cosmologies, Theories of the Active Intellect, and Theories of Human Intellect, 9n18, 11n25, 53n140, 67n23 Dead metaphors (nomina appellativa or shemot mefursamot), 32, 46–49, 46n116, 51 De Anima Aristotle and, 62, 63, 63n2, 63n4, 64n6, 65, 70n39, 91n104, 96n129, 98n133, 99, 122n63 Avicenna and, 62

256 

INDEX

Decter, Jonathan, x, 212n90 Derrida, Jacques, 115n43 Desire, 74, 75, 86, 90, 91, 117, 123–125, 172–175, 173n68, 206n68, 207, 219, 220, 223 Diamond, James A., 11n28, 52n136, 87, 88, 88n90 Dimyon (imagination) medumeh, 136, 137 translation of, 9, 88, 98n130, 119, 120, 124, 126, 134, 136, 137, 139–141, 140n109, 143, 146, 155, 173, 176, 176n86, 179, 181, 182n106, 184n115, 217, 220, 221 Divine cogitation or contemplation of, 72, 84, 85, 97 concepts, 56, 73, 74, 96–98, 111, 112, 140, 145, 146n120 description through metaphoric language, 76, 97, 148, 222 knowledge of (metaphysics), 160n18, 211, 212 Divine order (al-amr al-ilāhı̄), 74, 76, 82 Dreams, 11, 11n25, 11n26, 24, 36, 45, 68, 72, 89, 181 E Eden, Garden of, 87, 91, 123, 206n70 Efros, Israel, 45, 45n113, 46, 48 Embodied, human beings, 10, 85, 87, 92–93, 95, 135, 144n116, 183, 217 Epistemology, ix, 5, 7, 8, 12, 14, 15, 69, 72, 73, 122, 127, 131, 141, 142n111, 143, 144n115, 178, 189, 218–220 Maimonidean, 142n111, 219 Estimative, faculty of cogitative, 68, 84, 173n66

imaginative, 68, 74, 75, 83, 84, 97, 180 See also Wahm (estimative faculty) Eve, 87, 87n89 Ezekiel, 26, 80 F Fahm (act of understanding) in communication, 110 Falaquera, Shem Tov ibn and Arabic Aristotelian thought, 149, 156, 158, 158n11, 165–168, 213, 217, 222 Book of the Seeker (Sefer ha-Mevakesh), 189–203, 207, 211, 213 Book of the Soul (Sefer ha-Nefesh), 156, 158, 174, 179, 179n97, 180, 213 as compiler, 15, 156, 162, 163, 165, 166, 210 critique of poetry, 204 defence of philosophy, 190, 191, 213 De‘ot ha-filosofim (Opinions of the Philosophers), 162, 165, 166, 166n44, 166n45, 184 as “epigone,” 163, 166, 222 Epistle of the Debate (Iggeret ha-Vikuah.), 190–192 Falaquera, Shem Tov ibn, 126 on imagination, 13, 15, 146, 155, 173, 175–182, 184, 185, 189, 193–194, 207, 221 and Maimonides, 12, 15, 155–185, 189, 213, 217, 221 Moreh ha-moreh, 156, 167, 168, 189, 213, 221 poetics of, 15, 156, 185, 189, 203 poetry of, 155, 189–204, 207, 212, 213, 222

 INDEX 

translation of Arabic Aristotelian science and philosophy, 158 translation of Maimonides’ Guide, 155–185, 189, 213 False imaginings, 75, 93, 96, 97, 99, 125–126, 145, 146, 178, 180n102, 182, 184, 219 al-khayal̄at̄ al-kad̄habat, 126 Figurative language, 4–6, 12–15, 19, 22, 33, 40, 41, 62, 88, 105, 112, 115n43, 120, 129, 144, 146, 155, 184, 189–213, 218 falsity of, 15, 203 Figure of speech, 14, 28, 45, 47, 48, 76, 199 al-majāz, 76 Five internal faculties cogitative (al-mufakkira), 68, 85, 173n66, 177 common senses (sensus communis; al-ḥiss al-mushtarak), 69, 83, 94n121, 172n66, 179n97 estimative (wahm), 69, 71, 179n97, 180 imagination (al-khayāl, image store, al-khayāl al-muṣawwira, imaginative al-mutakhayyila), 69, 73 memory (al-ḥafiẓa, recollection, al-dhākira), 69 Five senses, 67, 83, 135 five external faculties, 67, 85 Frametale, 191, 192, 212 France, Southern, 13, 106, 159 Freudenthal, Gad, 163–165, 168n49 Friedländer, Michael, 104, 122, 124–126, 134, 136, 137, 140, 141, 143, 146, 223, 225, 227–229, 231–233 translation of Maimonides’ Guide, 122

257

G Giles of Rome, 208 “double form” of text, 208 God, 3n3, 5, 6, 7n11, 11n28, 20, 22, 37–40, 45, 45n113, 47, 47n121, 48, 51–56, 52n136, 53n139, 56n150, 61, 62, 72, 76, 78, 79n68, 80–82, 86, 89–93, 95–98, 98n130, 105n4, 106, 108, 111, 121, 123–125, 129, 132–135, 132n88, 143, 145, 164, 169, 170, 172, 175, 178, 183n109, 184, 191, 200, 201, 209, 210, 217, 218, 222, 228 Active Intellect, 70, 71, 81, 81n76, 95, 140, 147n121, 181, 181–182n106, 183n109, 200n51 contemplation of, 129, 206n68 First Cause, 76, 80, 81 Golden calf, sin of, 39 Gorgias, 38 Plato, 38 Granada, 22, 23n17, 33 Guide of the Perplexed (Moreh ha-nebukhim) Alḥarizi’s translation of, 122 Falaquera’s translation of, 156, 168, 170 Friedländer’s translation of, 122 Ibn Tibbon’s translation of, 106, 168, 173n67 Judeo-Arabic terms used to describe imagination in the Guide, 5, 106, 122 Kapah’s translation of, 122 Maimonides and, 5, 20, 69, 86, 103, 106, 155, 156, 217 and Moreh ha-moreh, 156, 168, 189 Munk’s translation of, 122 Part One of, 5, 103 Pines’ translation of, 122

258 

INDEX

Guide of the Perplexed (Moreh ha-nebukhim) (cont.) Samuel ibn Tibbon and, 122 translations of, 155, 217 Gutas, Dmitri, 61, 181n106 H Halevi, Judah al-amr al-ilāhı̄ (divine order), 74, 76n60 on appetitive faculties, 75 Arabic Aristotelian psychology and, 6, 62, 72, 75, 85, 217 argument against philosophy, 82 Avicennian psychology and, 69, 72, 74n53, 85, 89 confusion of Avicennian psychology, 84 divergence from Arabic Aristotelian psychology, 87, 142n111 on imagination, 7, 8, 11n24, 12, 62, 63, 69, 72–75, 79, 86, 103 medical analogy in Kuzari, 38, 39 poetic imitation (mu’arada), 22n17 Sefer ha-Kuzari, Kuzari, 6, 8, 36, 56, 69, 72, 73, 74n53, 75, 77n64, 84, 103, 106, 169n53 sensory experience and, 72, 82, 84, 85, 99, 217 “tasting and seeing” in Kuzari, 82, 99 Haqı̄qa (true or obvious) metaphor and, 15, 27, 28, 105 of philosophical propositions, 56 true reality in Guide, 127–129 Harvey, Steven, 165, 166n44, 171, 190n2, 191 Hassan, Waïl S. on “epistemic violence” of translation, 114 Thou Shalt Not Speak My Language, 114

Ḥ aver, 36, 72, 73, 76–78, 80 Hebrew Bible, 3, 3n3, 20, 51, 132n88 See also Scriptures Heinrichs, Wolfhart Hand of the Northwind, 197n39 on metaphor, 29, 31–33, 35, 197n39 on takhyı̄l (imagination), 119 Ḥ ikāya (imitation), 128, 129 Hillel ben Samuel of Verona, 205n67 Hughes, Aaron, x, 10, 10n22, 192n16 Human expression, 105, 112, 121 limits of, 105 Human language, 19–56, 88, 95, 148, 218 Human understanding, 56, 62, 92, 132, 141, 217 and metaphor, 56, 62 I Iberia, medieval, 12, 13, 15, 160, 161, 161n24, 164, 212 See also Christian Spain Ibn al-Mu‘tazz, 33 Ibn Ezra, Abraham, 111n26, 113, 201n55 on translation, 113 Ibn Ezra, Moses, 1–3, 3n3, 5, 7, 11, 12, 14, 19, 20, 20n4, 22–35, 23n17, 23n21, 24n25, 24n27, 28n49, 37, 40, 41, 54, 56, 62, 89, 108n14, 120n57, 155, 184, 196–199, 196n32, 201, 201n55, 203, 204, 217, 218 on Arabic poetry, 24, 24n25, 25, 108n14 cognitive definition of metaphor, 35 Kitāb al-muḥāḍara wa-l-mudhākara (Sefer ha-‘iyunim veha-­ diyunim), 5, 20, 23

 INDEX 

on metaphor, 6, 14, 20, 22–35, 28n49, 37, 40, 56, 62, 184, 198, 199, 218 on ornamentation, 25 on poetic falsehood, 197, 199 Ibn Janakh, Jonah, 46 Sefer ha-shorashim, 46 Ibn Rashiq, 20, 196 Ibn Tibbon, Judah, 36, 46n117, 73n49, 73n51 Ibn Tibbon, Samuel, 44, 45, 104–108, 113, 116, 122, 124, 126, 129–131, 134, 136, 137, 139, 140, 140n109, 143, 145, 146, 159, 168, 173, 175, 176, 176n86, 178, 184, 184n115, 203, 224, 226–228, 230, 231, 233 critique of Alḥarizi’s translation of the Guide, 107, 116 Hebrew translation of Maimonides’ Guide, 44, 45, 131, 178 Perush ha-milot ha-zarot (Dictionary of Foreign Words), 107n10, 129, 136n99, 136n100, 140n109 Ifhām (making something understood), 110 in communication, 110 Ilhām and prophecy, 80, 81 Images, 6, 10n22, 11n26, 20, 27, 30, 33, 39, 45, 47–49, 56n150, 62–69, 63n4, 64n9, 67n26, 71, 73, 75, 79, 81, 85–88, 85n87, 91n104, 92, 93n113, 93n115, 94–99, 94n121, 111, 115n43, 116, 120, 121, 125–128, 125n71, 130, 132, 132–133n91, 138–142, 145–149, 146–147n120, 173n66, 176–178, 176n87, 176n88, 177n89, 177n93, 180, 181,

259

181n106, 183, 183n109, 184, 195, 198, 200, 200n49, 200n51, 203, 206n68, 218, 219, 222, 225, 231, 233 store, 67n26, 69, 85n87, 177n89 ṣūra, 111, 130 thought and, 64, 65, 69, 81, 85, 86, 98, 178, 184 Imagination Alfārābı̄ and, 65, 72, 79, 85, 120, 145 Aristotle and, 8, 63, 63n3, 65, 86, 91n101, 94, 132n87 Avicenna and, 69, 72, 74, 81, 85, 92, 94, 103, 145, 172, 177, 181, 183n109 compositive (al-khayyāliya), 68n32, 69, 71, 78n66, 81, 92, 93n113, 94, 94n119, 96, 97, 179n97, 180, 180n99, 181 damot, 175–177, 221 defect of, 134 different from perception and thought, 63, 122n63 dimyon, 87, 94, 136, 137, 139, 175–177, 176n84, 176n86, 221 dual function of, 172 faculty of (al-quwwa al-mutakhayyila), 66 Falaquera and, 15, 146, 176, 178–180, 184, 185, 189, 193, 200, 213, 221 false imaginings, 75, 93, 96, 97, 99, 125–126, 145, 146, 178, 180n102, 182, 184, 219 Halevi and, 7, 8, 11n24, 62 images and, 62–66, 67n26, 69, 85, 94–97, 94n121, 125, 125n71, 142, 146–148, 146n120, 176–178, 181, 183n109, 219, 231, 233

260 

INDEX

Imagination (cont.) imaginative faculty (al-mutakhayyila), 68, 74, 178, 180n99, 181 as an inferior faculty, 134 intellect and, ix, 5, 8, 9, 48, 48n123, 61–99, 68n32, 119, 135, 141, 143, 146, 149, 171, 177–183, 181n106, 183n109, 219, 232 intellectual aspects of, 6 al-khayāl, 68, 69, 87, 96, 136, 137, 172n66, 181 Maimonides and, ix, 6–9, 14, 15, 84–99, 103, 104, 119, 123, 134, 138, 142–145, 142n112, 147, 148, 150, 155, 171, 172, 176n86, 182, 184, 184n115, 213, 217, 219–222 al-mufakkira, 68, 94, 173n66, 177, 180 objects of, 70, 138 as opposite of reason, 87, 145, 149, 220 perception, 63, 94n121, 97, 98, 149 phantasia, 63n3, 63n4, 120 problem with, 182, 183 role in human psychology, ix, 138, 144, 155 senses and, 73, 87, 97, 119, 124, 125, 134, 145, 146, 147n120, 179 sensory aspects of, 62, 63 takhayyul, 66, 73n51, 121, 127, 128, 132n91, 140, 141 takhyı̄l, 4, 65, 65n16, 66, 119–121, 120n58, 128, 129, 175, 178 wahm and, 69, 71, 174n71, 180, 180n99 Imaginative faculty, 10, 11n26, 68, 69, 71, 74, 78, 79, 81n76,

83–85, 85n87, 87n89, 95, 98, 120, 124, 129, 130, 137, 138, 140, 141, 173n66, 176, 176n86, 182, 183n109, 200n51, 220, 221, 231 al-quwwa al-mutakhayyila, 78n68, 137, 138, 141, 176, 176n86 Imaginings, false, 75, 91, 93, 96, 97, 99, 125–126, 145, 146, 178, 180n102, 182, 184, 219 Imitation, 4, 22n17, 26, 65, 66n21, 121, 128, 129, 200, 206n69 Immaterial beings, 6, 135, 147, 183 Imru’ al-Qays, 33 Inner eye (‘ayn bātị na), 76–81, 169, 169n53 Intellect (‘aql) actions of, 74 divine, 48, 71, 95, 97, 135, 140, 175 human, 69, 71, 77, 81, 81n76, 88, 92, 92n110, 95, 98, 181, 182n106 Intellectual thought, 62, 89n94, 90, 145, 181, 184, 192, 205, 218, 219 Intention (al-qaṣd), 5, 12, 15, 31, 69, 72, 105, 107n11, 111, 113, 117, 130, 148, 175, 198, 199, 207, 213 Internal sense, 66n23, 67, 68, 72, 73, 78, 82–86, 89n96, 92, 94, 94n121, 95, 98, 146n120, 172–173n66, 177, 177n91, 179n97, 181 Intuition, Avicenna’s man of, 79 Ism (name), 34 Isti‘āra, see Metaphor Ivry, Alfred, 3n3, 11n28, 141, 142, 142n111, 142n112, 144n114, 219n1

 INDEX 

J Jews, Andalusı̄, 3 Jospe, Raphael, 13n33, 156n3, 168n51, 172, 179, 179n97, 180n99 Judeo-Arabic, ix, 5–7, 9, 15, 19, 23n21, 36n80, 40, 41n93, 44, 48, 73n49, 73n51, 74n53, 82n79, 88, 88n93, 103, 104, 106, 106n6, 119, 121, 122, 123n66, 124, 126, 127, 130–134, 137–139, 143, 146, 148–150, 159, 172, 175, 219–224, 227–230, 232 Judgment instinctive, 83 intellectually perceived, 79 K Kafiḥ, Joseph, 122–124, 123n64, 125n69, 126, 140n109, 146, 173n68 Hebrew translation of Maimonides’ Guide, 123, 126 Kemal, Salim, 4n5, 68n31, 68n32, 92 Khayāl (imaginative faculty) “to fancy, to suppose erroneously,” 120, 121 khayālāt, 125 kh-y-l, 120, 121, 136 translation of, 140 See also Imagination Khazar king, 72, 73, 76 dream vision, 72 Kilito, Abdelfattah, 108n13, 114, 114n40, 115n43 Kitāb al-muḥāḍara wa-l-mudhākara [Sefer ha-‘iyunim veha-diyunim al ha-shirah ha-‘ivrit], 5, 11n25, 20, 23, 23n19, 108n14, 196n32

261

Kittay, Eva, 49–52, 50n132 Klein-Braslavy, Sarah, 87, 87n89 koaḥ ha-dimyoni (imaginative faculty), 140, 140n109, 176n86 Kuzari, Sefer ha-/Kuzari, 6, 8, 36, 37, 40, 56, 69, 72, 73, 73n49, 74n52, 74n53, 75–84, 93n115, 103, 106, 169n53 L Lactantius, 196n31 Lafẓ (wording), 109, 110 Lakoff, George, 26, 26n43 Lameer, Joep, 127, 127n77, 128, 128n78, 132–133n91 Language, figurative, 4–6, 15, 33, 40, 41, 88, 105, 115n43, 120, 144, 146, 184, 218 human, 13, 19, 21, 22, 53–56, 88, 95, 148, 218 metaphoric, 6, 12, 14, 22, 62, 112, 129, 155, 184, 198, 199 target, 15, 109, 117n48, 138, 148, 220, 221 Lashon bnei adam, see Human language Latin, 1–3, 13, 43n103, 67n23, 74n52, 104, 112, 115, 161, 161n25, 163n31, 164, 197n39, 203, 204, 205n67, 206n69 Latin scholasticism, 206n69 Likeness (tamthı̄l; tashbı̄h), 4, 20, 30, 31, 34, 35, 39, 43n106, 46n117, 47, 54–56, 55n145, 62, 65, 66n21, 80, 90, 104, 105, 127–129, 138, 138n107, 139, 176n84, 197, 197n39, 206n69 human imagination and, 80 Literary (poly)system, 15, 110, 160, 212

262 

INDEX

Liturgical poetry (piyyutim), 3n3, 201, 202 Logical syllogism, 121 Lunel, 36, 106 M Macrobius, 162n28 Maimonidean controversy, 12, 156, 157, 157n7, 159, 160, 165, 166, 168, 190, 190n2, 191, 212 Maimonidean philosophy, 9, 157, 167–185 Maimonides, Moses on Adam, 87, 89–91, 123–125, 133, 147n120, 172–175, 206n68, 206n70 on Adam’s corporeal senses (al-ḥiss al-jismāniyya), 90 on Adam’s imagination (al-khayāliyya), 90, 123 and Avicennian psychology, 7, 69, 85–87, 89, 172, 177 bifurcation of reason and imagination, 89, 91, 149, 217, 220 dead metaphors, 47–49, 51 departure from Arabic Aristotelian philosophy, 86 Eight Chapters, 141, 142 on false imaginings, 93, 96, 99, 125, 126, 145, 146, 180n102, 182 Fārābı̄an approach to imagination, 132 on figurative language, 14, 203 Guide of the Perplexed, 5, 22, 41, 69, 86, 103, 106, 122, 155, 156, 168, 217 on human intellect, 88, 92, 92n110 on how to understand biblical metaphors, 6

on images, 96, 177 on imagination, 6–9, 14, 15, 62, 69, 85, 86, 88–91, 89n96, 93, 96–98, 103, 104, 123, 126, 132, 135, 139–144, 142n112, 147, 149, 150, 155, 168, 171–173, 176n86, 182, 217 interpreters of, ix, 13, 88–89n94, 91, 104, 177, 217, 221 magination vs. reason, 7, 93, 123, 168 on metaphoric language, 203 Mishneh Torah, 40, 106, 106n6, 191n7 Mutakallimun, 95, 144, 147 on poetry, 12, 96n129, 155 psychology, 7, 103, 142n111 on pure intellection, 85, 87, 99 on reason, 7, 41, 86, 93, 105, 123, 133, 134, 155, 168 and role of external senses in rational thought, 85 and scriptural language, 52, 200 translations of the Guide, 9, 217 Treatise on Logic, 42, 43, 46n114, 47, 48 See also Terms Majāz (figurative) metaphor, 27, 28, 34 Malmkjaer, Kirsten, 118, 118n51 Ma‘nā (concept or meaning) in communication, 109 in metaphor, 34 Maqama, 192n16, 212n90, 222 Mari, Abba, 159 Matter, 10, 11, 25, 41, 47, 53, 61, 63, 64, 72, 81, 92, 93, 93n115, 98, 105–107, 114, 116, 123, 126, 127, 135, 145, 147, 149, 159, 162, 178, 183, 184, 200, 204, 205, 206n68, 206n70, 224, 225, 227, 229, 232

 INDEX 

Meaning, multiplicity of, 49, 51, 52, 218 Medicine, 37–39, 165 Metaphor analogue, 30–32, 198 as analogy, 5, 14, 30, 39, 198 Aristotle and, 26, 27, 34, 35, 63n4, 196n31 Aristotle’s definition of, 27, 29 as “best of poetry,” 197, 199 as borrowing, 27, 30, 35, 198 as cognitive expression, 5, 19 Cohen and, 32, 35, 46–48, 46n116, 51 concept, 5 dead, 32, 46–49, 46n116, 51 “double-faced,” 31 Falaquera and, 155, 203 figurative language, 5, 6, 12, 14, 19, 22, 62, 112, 129, 155, 184, 198, 203, 218 Halevi and, 14, 19, 35–40, 62 hash-alah, 26, 27 Heinrichs and, 29–33, 35, 52, 197n39 and human understanding, 56, 62 Ibn Ezra and, 14, 19, 22–35, 62, 184, 198, 217, 218 Ibn Ezra’s definition of, 33, 35 “imaginary ascription,” 31, 35, 197n39 isti‘āra, 4, 26, 29, 31, 32, 46n116 Maimonides and, 5, 6, 14, 19, 40–56, 155, 217, 218 name transfer, 33, 35 new, 29–32, 34, 35, 197n39 old, 29, 31–33, 35 poetic, 5, 29, 52n136 as poetic falsehood, 146, 198, 199 Qur’ānic, 32 scriptural/biblical, 6, 14, 20, 24, 28, 32, 35, 40, 41, 52, 53, 56, 105, 218

263

shemot mushaalim, 203 topic, 30–33 as transference, 26, 29, 34, 35, 43, 43n106, 104, 105, 115, 198n40, 218 Metaphoralogy, ix, 6 Mimesis (muḥākāh)/imitation, 4, 22–23n17, 26, 65, 66n21, 92, 108, 121, 128, 129, 200, 206n69 Minnis, Alastair J., 162, 163n31, 206n69 Mithāl (simile), 128, 138, 139, 141 Moreh ha-moreh, 15, 126, 156, 166–168, 189, 213, 221 as a book of remembrance, 171 Moreh ha-nebukhim, 5, 170 Moses, 11n26, 11n28, 45, 48, 84n86, 86, 170, 182 Motive faculty, 83 Muḥāḍara (Kitāb al-muḥāḍara wal-mudhākara), 5, 20, 23, 23n21, 24, 24n25, 35, 56 Muḥākāh (in legal and prophetic mode), 4, 128 Muhākāt (imitative language), 65–66n16, 120 Munk, Salomon, 104, 122, 124, 126, 134, 137, 140, 141, 143, 145, 223, 225–228, 230, 231, 233 translation of Maimonides’ Guide, 104, 137 Muslim Spain, al-Andalus, 1, 2, 4, 10, 14, 19, 20n4, 23n21, 35, 36, 36n80, 40, 41, 106, 108, 161, 161n24, 204, 221 Golden Age of, 19 Mutakallimun, 97, 144, 144n114, 147 Tenth Premise in the Guide, 95 Mutakhayyil (what is imagined), 124, 136, 137 translation of, 137

264 

INDEX

N Newman, Sara, 34, 64n6 O Organon (Aristotle), 33n70, 96n129 Ossorio, Aurora Salvatierra, 202, 203 P Parable hidden meaning of, 55 rabbinic, 12n28 Parkes, Malcolm Beckwith, 162 Passive intellect, 70, 200n51 Perception imagination and, 48, 63, 65, 66, 80, 88, 91, 91n101, 94n121, 97, 98, 147n120, 149, 155 originating in an image, 62 Phantasia (Ar. – fantāsiyā), 63n4, 94n121, 120 Philosophy/philosophers Arabic Aristotelian, 14, 15, 81, 84, 86, 122, 130, 133n94, 141, 142n111, 149, 155, 156, 161, 166–168 Greek, ix, 9, 37, 38, 99, 159, 160, 164, 209 Jewish, 8n15, 8n16, 10, 11n26, 96n129, 157, 168n49, 222 metaphysics, 142n111, 164, 211 Muslim, 33n70, 63n4 Pietists, 156, 190, 190n2, 190n3, 191, 191n9 Pines, Shlomo, 41n93, 44, 104, 122, 124, 126, 136–138, 140, 141, 143, 146, 173n68, 184n115, 200n51 Plato, 38n87, 39, 40, 127, 132n91 Gorgias, 38, 38n87 Poetic falsehood, 146, 197–199

Poetics Andalusı̄, 15, 155 Arabic, 4, 24, 24n25, 29, 30, 32, 33, 44, 48, 56 Christian Scholastic, 15 Falaquera’s, 15, 149, 156, 185, 201, 203 Hebrew, 3n3, 5, 10, 14, 24n25, 146, 198 poetic expression, 14, 15, 66n21, 156, 185 Sa’adia’s, 3n3 Poetics, Aristotle, 4n5, 34, 43n104, 63n4, 66, 198n40 Poetic syllogism, 121 Poetry Arabic, 2–3n3, 24, 24n25, 25, 108, 108n14, 111, 130 Christian, 23n21, 204, 207, 207n71 critique of, 15, 197, 203, 204 ethical role for, 15, 204 Falaquera’s attitude towards, 194 falsity of, 15, 203 Hebrew, 3n3, 5, 22n17, 23, 23n21, 24, 32, 197n35, 204, 222 as imitation, 4, 200 as lie, 24, 196, 199, 202, 203 liturgical, 3n3, 201, 202 love, 194, 202, 207, 212 praise (encomia) or panegyric, 195, 196, 200, 201, 203, 212, 222 relationship to philosophy, ix, 4, 9, 116, 155, 156, 190, 207, 222 rhetorical function of, 203 Poet, the, 1, 24, 25, 27, 30, 31, 32n67, 33, 35, 110n23, 120, 189, 191n9, 193–202, 194n24, 204, 212, 213 Polysemy, 49, 53 Polysystem, literary, 212 Praise poetry, see Poetry Prophecy

 INDEX 

Ilhām, 80 and imagination, 11n28, 71, 80, 81, 128 revelation, 182 Waḥy (prophetic message), 71, 81 Prophet, 3n3, 11n26, 11n28, 24, 38–40, 76, 78–81, 78n68, 88n90, 93, 126, 128, 129, 132, 147n120, 177n93, 183n109, 200, 200n51, 201 Provence, 23n21, 106, 107, 160n17 Proverbs, 29, 194, 199 Psychology Arabic Aristotelian, 6–9, 62, 72, 75, 85–87, 122, 146n120, 178, 217, 219, 220 Avicennian, 7, 10, 69, 72, 74n53, 85, 86, 89, 97, 172, 177 Falaquera and, 13, 15, 155, 156, 177, 178, 184, 217 Halevi and, 7, 63, 69, 72, 75, 84, 85, 89, 103, 217 imagination’s role in, 7, 142n111, 144 Maimonides and, 6–8, 13, 15, 69, 72, 85–87, 88n94, 89, 90, 94, 97, 99, 103, 122, 126, 134, 141, 142n111, 144, 150, 155, 156, 172, 175, 177, 217 Q Qur’ān, 1, 2, 2n3, 24, 26, 30 Qur’ānic exegesis, 120, 121 R Rahman, F., 70 Avicenna’s Psychology, 70 Rational imagination (mufakkirah), 124, 124n68

265

Rational thought and imagination, 62, 85, 87, 218, 219 Maimonides on, 62, 85, 87, 218 role of sensory images in, 7, 84–86, 218 Reader response, 208 Reason, see Analogical reasoning Retention, faculty of, 68, 71, 83 On Rhetoric, Aristotle, 33, 34, 38, 204 Rhetoric al-Jaḥiẓ and, 105, 109, 110, 112 Falaquera and, 203, 207 rhetorical devices, 4, 112 rhetorical function of metaphor, 10 rhetorical ornament, 14, 26 Ricoeur, Paul, 26, 26n42, 49, 50, 50n131, 52n136, 56n150 Romano, Judah, 205n67 Rosenfeld, Jessica, 207, 207n71 Rosensweig, Franz, 118 S Sa’adia Gaon, 2n3, 23 Sefer ha-egron, 23, 24 Satan, 87, 87n89 Scholasticism, 206n69 scholastics, 157, 165, 203, 204, 205n67, 206, 207 Scriptures Jewish, 2, 3, 5, 23, 25, 33, 164, 165 Muslim, 1, 3, 33 scriptural metaphors, 6, 14, 20, 28, 32, 35, 40 Seeker, the as adı̄b, 193, 208 and poetry, 189–204, 207, 212, 213, 222 and the Poet, 189, 193–196, 199–203, 212, 213

266 

INDEX

Sefer ha-Kuzari/Kuzari, 6, 8, 36, 36n82, 37, 40, 56, 69, 72, 73, 73n49, 74n53, 75–84, 75n57, 77n64, 82n79, 93n115, 103, 106 Sefer ha-shorashim, 46, 46n117 Seidman, Naomi, 112, 112n30, 112n32 Faithful Renderings: Jewish-­ Christian Difference and the Politics of Translation, 112n30, 112n32 on Jewish translation, 112 Semantics, 54, 56, 62, 111 Sense data, 65, 177 Sense perception, 34, 48, 66, 73, 76, 77, 79, 82, 84, 85, 87n89, 88, 89n94, 94n121, 96, 98, 120, 132n88, 147n120, 175, 179 Senses communal (Sensus communis or al-ḥiss al-mushtarak), 67, 69, 73n51, 91, 172n66, 179, 180 corporeal (al-ḥiss al-jismāniyya), 90, 123, 125, 173n68 external, 65, 67, 85, 86, 90, 91, 93, 93n113, 94, 96, 99, 146n120, 172, 172n66, 176n88 internal, 66n23, 67, 68, 72, 73, 78, 82–86, 89, 89n96, 92, 94, 94n121, 95, 99, 146n120, 172–173n66, 177, 181 Sensitive imagination (mutakhayyilah), 68, 124, 124n68 Sensory experience, 72, 82, 84, 85, 99, 135, 217 Shahwā (desires), 123, 124 Shem Tov ibn Falaquera, see Falaquera, Shem Tov ibn Shiffman, Yair, 167, 167n48, 168, 168n49, 168–169n51, 172, 175n80, 176

Simile, 4, 28, 29, 31, 34, 35, 54, 55n145, 65, 112, 120, 121, 128, 129, 138, 139, 196, 227 Similitude, 6, 47, 55, 56, 105, 112, 129, 197, 198, 218 Sinai, 39, 40, 81, 84, 99 sinaitic revelation, 54, 84 Socrates, 38, 122n63 Solomon of Marseilles, 191 Song of Songs, 34, 194, 195 Spain, Christian, 2, 12, 23n21, 35, 157, 161, 204, 222 Iberia, 12, 161n24, 221 Stern, Josef, 7n11, 10, 12n28, 110n21, 142n111, 144n115, 183, 184, 206n68 on imagination, 7n11, 142n111, 183, 184, 206n68 The Matter and Form of Maimonides’ Guide, 7n11, 110n21, 183n110, 206n68 Stroumsa, Sarah, 42n98, 89n95, 106n6 Sūra (image), 3, 111, 130 Susman, Margarete, 118 Syllogistic reasoning, 82 T Takhayyul (understanding through images and reflections), 66, 121, 127, 128, 132n91, 138, 140, 141 Alfārābı̄’s definition of, 139 Takhyı̄l (imagination) abstract notions and, 121 creative imagining, 65, 65n16, 120, 172, 219 as “image-evocation,” 121, 128 Al-khayāl (compositive imagination), 67–69, 87, 96, 136, 137, 172n66, 176n88, 177, 178, 181, 181–182n106

 INDEX 

Mutakhayyil, 136, 137 phantasia, 63n3, 63n4, 94n121, 120 Al-quwwa al-mutakhayyila (faculty of imagination), 66, 75, 79, 85, 86, 96, 98, 107, 120, 124, 128, 133n94, 136, 137, 141, 149, 175–179, 176n84, 180n99, 180n103, 181, 182n106, 183, 184, 189, 194, 219, 221 Tamthı̄l (analogy or likeness), 30, 31, 35, 46n117, 55n145 Tanakh, 93, 159 Taqlı̄d (tradition), 76 Taṣawwur (conception), 120n58, 127–129, 127n77, 132n91, 138, 140 Alfārābı̄’s definition of, 127, 128, 132n91, 140 Tashbı̄h (simile), 31, 35, 46n117, 47, 54, 55n145 Terms ambiguous (meshutafim), 42, 43, 51 amphibolous (mesupaqim/mushakkik or mashkūk), 41 anthropomorphic, 34, 39, 53 derivative (mushaalim/musta‘ar), 41 equivocal (shem meshutaf/mushtarak or nirdafim), 41, 42, 44, 55 Judeo-Arabic, 6, 9, 48, 74n53, 88, 104, 119, 137, 220 polyvalent, 50–52 univocal (nivdalim), 42 Tha’lab, 33, 35, 43 Themistius, 98 Tobi, Yosef, 2n3, 3n3 on poetry, 2n3, 3n3, 24n22 Topic, 11, 31–34, 108, 122n63, 144n115, 158, 162

267

See also Metaphor Torah, 11n28, 22, 51, 53–55, 88, 159, 169, 169n56, 170, 190, 192, 202, 227 human language in, 22, 53–55, 88 Transference of images, 3, 104 of language, 104 of meaning or ideas, 105 metaphor and, 3, 26, 29, 34, 35, 104, 105, 218 in translation, 104, 105, 115 of words, 3, 105, 115 Translation (transferre or translatio) ambiguity in, 105 Arabic, 158, 175 “epistemic violence” of, 114, 143 of Maimonides’ Guide, ix, 106, 119, 131, 150, 171, 178, 220 of meaning, 15, 104, 115 paraphrastic, 113, 124, 131 “sense-for-sense,” 113 target language, 148 theory, 9, 15, 104, 108, 121, 122, 155, 221 “word-for-word,” 112–113, 194n24 U Understanding bi-ḥaqā’qiha (in its true likeness), 128, 138n107 takhayyul as a lesser form of, 66, 121, 127, 128, 128n78, 132n91, 138, 140, 141 taṣawwur (conception), 120n58, 127–129, 127n77, 128n78, 132n91, 138, 140 theory of, 50

268 

INDEX

V Van Dussen, Michael, 166, 166n45 Venuti, Lawrence, 115n43, 117, 134, 149 on bias in translation, 115n43, 117, 149 on mistranslation, 117, 134 W Wacks, David A., 160, 160n21, 191, 192

frametale, 191, 192 literary system, 161 Wahm (estimative faculty), 68, 69, 69n36, 71, 75, 83, 84, 92, 97, 120n55, 173n66, 180, 180n99 Wolfson, Harry Austryn, 41n94, 43n103, 43n106, 67n23, 86n88, 89n96, 94n119, 94n121 on the internal senses, 86, 86n88, 89n96, 94n119, 94n121, 179n97 on Maimonides, 43n106, 86n88, 89n96, 94n119, 94n121