Philosopher
Abraham Ibn Ezra
fl. 1140–1170
Also known as Abraham ibn Ezra
Poet, biblical commentator and astrologer from Tudela whose brief, cryptic remarks on God, the stars and the soul carried great authority in later Jewish thought.
Abraham Ibn Ezra was probably born around 1093 in Tudela, then on the northern edge of Muslim Spain, and spent his first fifty years there, apparently earning a living as a poet. Fleeing the Almohad invasions in 1140, he wandered through Europe for three decades, living in Rome, Lucca, Rouen, London and Béziers, and wrote nearly all his works in those years. His exchanges with Judah Halevi, whose outlook was opposed to his own, are revealing for the history of Jewish philosophy.
He wrote short, very popular handbooks on grammar, astrology, arithmetic, astronomy and religion, as well as Bible commentaries; the Latin versions of his astrological works spread that art through Christian Europe. He wrote few strictly philosophical works and seems to have had no rigorous philosophical training, mixing doctrines from kalam and philosophy as Saadia, his strongest influence, had done. Even so, later Jewish thinkers treated his terse, enigmatic remarks with great respect.
Key ideas
- Rule of the stars
- God governs the earthly world through the heavenly bodies. The stars are formally subject to God, but in practice their grip on the material world is total, and human beings live under astral destiny.
- The higher soul
- No one can know for certain how the soul is built or how it is joined to the body. But one part of the soul is made of the same stuff as the realm above the stars, and nothing is more like God; tending it offers the only escape from this world.
- Individual salvation
- His account of salvation centres on the individual rather than the community, one of several reasons, alongside his travels, his output and the popularity of his Bible commentaries, that his ideas spread so widely.
- Tradition
- Jewish
- Region
- Tudela, Rome, Rouen, London and Béziers
- Period
- Judaeo-Arabic
- Themes
- Free will and fate
Influences
Influenced by
Abraham Ibn Ezrafl. 1140–1170
Influenced
Influenced by
Abraham Ibn Ezrafl. 1140–1170
Influenced
Where these links come from
- Abraham Ibn Ezra drew on Saadia Gaon. Source: Tzvi Langermann, Abraham Ibn Ezra, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- Joseph Ibn Kaspi drew on Abraham Ibn Ezra. Source: Hannah Kasher and Moshe Kahan, Joseph Kaspi, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Key works
- Foundation of Reverence (Yesod Mora)
- Hayy ben Meqitz
- Read free at Wikisource (in Hebrew)
Terms on this page
- kalām
- Rational theology in the Islamic world. Saadia’s Jewish thought was shaped by the kalām theologians, whose approach seemed outdated by Ibn Daud’s time.
Sources
- Tzvi Langermann, Abraham Ibn Ezra, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy