Between Philosopher and Philosophist

on a Non-Religious Trend in Medieval Jewish Philosophy

Abstract

In this article I will analyze the views of three Jewish philosophers of the fourteenth century regarding the Jewish “philosophists” (mitpalsefim). We will see that according to these philosophers, there was a rising movement of Jews who did not observe Jewish law (halakhah) for ideological reasons. These philosophists studied Aristotelian philosophy and concluded that both the traditional explanations of the commandments and the Aristotelian-Maimonidean ones were incorrect. They did not believe that the commandments had any political or social value, due to the Jewish philosophers' lack of proof for the contention that the practice of Jewish law led to social rewards. We will see that the Jewish philosophers were the only ones to mention this trend of non-religious Jewish philosophers because Jewish traditionalists did not distinguish between the Jewish philosopher and the philosophist. We will also suggest that the philosophists likely chose to convert to Christianity by the end of the fourteenth century, which explains why we no longer hear of them by the fifteenth century.