Medieval Judaism provided another significant stream of philosophical speculation. Social, personal, and intellectual freedom for Jews was greater in the Islamic world of that era than among the anti-Semitic Christians of Europe, who often simply regarded Jewish thinkers as Arabs. Though born in Egypt, Gaon Saadiah, for example, spent his most active years studying the Talmud in Baghdad. Most medieval Jewish philosophers dealt with the familiar difficulty of trying to synthesize philosophy with religion, but their neoplatonism was often infused with a greater degree of emphasis on the mystical apprehension of reality. The greater breadth of learning achieved by Jewish scholars often resulted in the combination of particular elements derived from diverse philosophical sources. Although Ibn Gabirol accepted Plotinus's view of god as the center from which all created reality emanates, for example, he also defended a hylomorphic account of ordinary objects and proposed a physiological explanation for human conduct and morality. Ibn Daud made an even more explicit use of Aristotelean metaphysics. The most widely respected of the medieval Jewish philosophers was Moses Maimonides, whose patient codification of centuries of commentary on Jewish law in the Mishnah Torah earned him a place of honor among Jews in the saying, "From Moses until Moses, there was no one like Moses." From the neoplatonic philosophical tradition, he took the central vision of god as the sole source of all genuine knowledge, of which human reason can only hope to gain a remote glimpse. Thus, in the Moreh Nevukhim (Guide to the Perplexed) (1190) Maimonides suggested that philosophical reasoning about ultimate matters is neither necessary nor even helpful for most ordinary people, who would be better advised to rely upon faith. For members of the educated elite, who are more capable of understanding abstract philosophical reasoning, however, there may be at least some hope of success. Balancing the philosophical and prophetic traditions, Maimonides himself provided Aristotelean arguments for the existence of god, Biblical evidence for the creation of the universe, and a carefully-crafted synthesis of reasons for the possibility of a divinely-produced immortality for embodied human beings. Source: Philosophy Pages - Arab and Jewish Philosophy
