United States or Egypt ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Bahya says if a thing is, some cause must have made it to be, for a thing cannot make itself. As we cannot proceed ad infinitum, there must be a first which is the cause of the existence of everything else. The objection here, of course, is that if a thing cannot make itself, how did the first come to be. The Aristotelian proof of Ibn Daud knows nothing about the origin of being.
Composition, it was said, implies the prior existence of the constituent elements, and the elements cannot be eternal, for an infinite past time is unthinkable. This method is common to Saadia, Bahya, Joseph Ibn Zaddik, and others. With the appearance of Ibn Daud's masterpiece, which exhibits a more direct familiarity with the fundamental ideas of Aristotle, the method changed.
Bahya, as we have seen, regards as God's essential attributes, existence, unity, eternity. Herein, too, he seems to anticipate Maimonides who insists against the believers in essential attributes that the attributes, living, omnipotent, omniscient, having a will, are no more essential than any other, but like the rest of the qualities ascribed to God have reference to his activity in nature.
Be this as it may, it is interesting to know that Saadia having arrived as far as Bahya in his argument was not yet satisfied that he proved creation ex nihilo, and added special arguments for this purpose. Before proceeding to prove the unity of God, Bahya takes occasion to dismiss briefly a notion which scarcely deserves consideration in his eyes.
To be sure, there are arguments on the other side, which would give chronological priority to Bahya over Gabirol, but without going into the details of this minute and difficult discussion, it may be said generally that many of the similarities in thought and expression between the two ethical works of Gabirol and Bahya rather point in favor of the view here adopted, namely, that Bahya borrowed from Gabirol, while the rest prove nothing for either side.
The important addition in Bahya is his distinction between God's unity and other unities, which is not found so strictly formulated in any of his predecessors, and goes back to Pseudo-Pythagorean sources in Arabian literature of Neo-Platonic origin. In order to prove that there is a creator who created the world out of nothing we assume three principles. First, nothing can make itself.
All that is known of the life of Bahya ben Joseph ibn Pakuda is that he lived in Spain and had the office of "Dayyan," or judge of the Jewish community. Not even the exact time in which he lived is yet determined, though the most reliable recent investigations make it probable that he lived after Gabirol and was indebted to the latter for some of his views in philosophy as well as in Ethics.
The process in both systems is explained by use of analogies, those of the radiation of light from a luminous body, and of the overflowing of a fountain being the most common. The chief exponent of the ethics of the Sufis in mediæval Jewish literature is Bahya Ibn Pakuda.
But I have not seen any book dealing with the "hidden wisdom." Here we see clearly the purpose of Bahya. It is not the rationalization of Jewish dogma that he is interested in, nor the reconciliation of religion and philosophy. It is the purification of religion itself from within which he seeks to accomplish.
Only he is exempt from studying these matters whose powers are not adequate to grasp them, such as women, children and simpletons. Moreover Bahya is the first, he tells us, among the post-Talmudical writers, to treat systematically and ex professo this branch of our religious duties.
Word Of The Day