The Long ConversationA timeline of world philosophy

Philosopher

Abraham Ibn Daud

c. 1110 – c. 1180

Also known as Abraham ibn Daud, Rabad I, Avendauth

Andalusian Jewish philosopher and historian whose Exalted Faith made the first systematic attempt to bring Aristotle into Jewish thought, a generation before Maimonides.

Abraham Ibn Daud was probably born around 1110 in one of the great cities of Muslim Spain, perhaps Cordoba, and was educated by his maternal uncle in both Greek learning, as taught by the Muslim philosophers al-Farabi and Avicenna, and traditional Jewish scholarship. Like many Jews he moved north, presumably after the Almohad invasion of 1147, and in Toledo around 1160 wrote both his philosophical treatise and a history meant to prove the reliable transmission of Jewish tradition.

He is reported to have died a martyr in Toledo around 1180. Some scholars have identified him with Avendauth, a Jewish philosopher who worked with Dominicus Gundissalinus translating Arabic texts into Latin. Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed, which has much in common with The Exalted Faith, soon overshadowed it, though its influence can still be traced in later medieval Jewish thought.

Key ideas

Two lamps at once
Students of philosophy in his day thought that lighting the lamp of philosophy put out the lamp of religion. Ibn Daud held that reason obliges us to use it, that the two can burn together, and that philosophy helps decide which verses of Scripture to read literally.
God as Necessary Being
Instead of arguing from creation, he proved God from Aristotle’s theory of motion, and then, by a proof he thought better, from the need for a being whose essence suffices for its existence to end the chain of contingent causes.
Substance is not relative
Against Ibn Gabirol, for whom one and the same thing might be substance from one angle and accident from another, he insisted that everything is simply one or the other, and so could show that the soul is a substance.
Evil and the possible
God cannot be the agent of evil, which is a privation that comes from matter, as darkness is the absence of light. Our choices against our evil inclinations are neither necessary nor impossible but genuinely possible, a possibility God built into certain created things.
Tradition
Jewish
Region
Al-Andalus and Toledo

Influences

Influenced by

Abraham Ibn Daudc. 1110 – c. 1180

Influenced by

Abraham Ibn Daudc. 1110 – c. 1180

Where these links come from
  • Abraham Ibn Daud drew on al-Farabi. Source: Resianne Fontaine and Amira Eran, Abraham Ibn Daud, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
  • Abraham Ibn Daud drew on Avicenna. Source: Resianne Fontaine and Amira Eran, Abraham Ibn Daud, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
  • Abraham Ibn Daud argued against Solomon ibn Gabirol. Source: Resianne Fontaine and Amira Eran, Abraham Ibn Daud, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Key works

  • The Exalted Faith (ha-Emunah ha-Ramah), 1160
  • The Book of Tradition (Sefer ha-Qabbalah), 1161

Sources

  1. Resianne Fontaine and Amira Eran, Abraham Ibn Daud, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy