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It is sufficient for us to see here how Israeli combines Aristotelian psychology, as later Aristotelian logic and physics, with Neo-Platonic metaphysics and the theistic doctrine of creation. But more of this hereafter. From the Intelligence, as we have seen, proceeds the rational soul. The two conceptions are in reality diametrically opposed.
But not so well known is his earlier contemporary, Isaac ben Solomon Israeli, who also was born in Egypt and from there went later to Kairuan, where he was court physician to several of the Fatimide Califs.
He was a pupil of Isaac Ben Amram the younger, probably a grandson of another Isaac Ben Amram, who, after having become famous in Bagdad, went to Cairo and became the physician of the Emir Zijadeth III. The younger Isaac established a school, and it was with him that Israeli obtained his introduction to medicine.
Isaac Israeli and Gabirol discuss special questions in Physics and Metaphysics without bringing them into relation with Judaism or the text of the Bible. Saadia takes cognizance of philosophical doctrine solely with a view to establishing and rationalizing Jewish dogma, and only in so far as it may thus be utilized.
This is evidently due to the fact that Israeli is unwittingly combining Aristotelian physics with Neo-Platonic emanationism. For Aristotle matter and form stand at the head of sublunar change and are ultimate. There is no derivation of matter or form from anything. The celestial world has a matter of its own, and is not the cause of the being of this one except as influencing its changes.
The explanation of Ibn Daud it was not original with him, as we have already seen the non-religious philosopher in Halevi's Cusari giving utterance to the same idea, and in Jewish philosophy Israeli touches on it the explanation of Ibn Daud is grounded in his psychology, the Aristotelian psychology of Avicenna.
This explanation does not really explain, but it is noteworthy as the first Jewish attempt to reduce prophecy to a psychological phenomenon, which was carried further by subsequent writers until it received its definitive form for the middle ages in Maimonides and Levi ben Gerson. To sum up, Israeli is an eclectic. There is no system of Jewish philosophy to be found in his writings.
Carmel; by the formation of the Palestine branches of the Bahá’í National Assemblies; by exhumation of the Brother and Mother of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá and reburial in the neighborhood of the Báb’s resting place; by the evacuation by these same adversaries of the Mansion of Bahjí, after forty years’ occupancy; by the demise, in distressing circumstances, of the archbreaker of the Covenant himself; by the ignominious flight of his henchmen on the eve of the disturbances which rocked the Holy Land in recent years; by the deaths with dramatic swiftness of this same lieutenant, his kindred and closest associates; by the intervention of the Israeli government in denying the competence of the civil courts to adjudicate the case brought by the remnant of these same Covenant-breakers and the subsequent authorization issued by the Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs to demolish the ruined building close to the vicinity of Bahá’u’lláh’s Tomb; finally, by the extinction of the life of the prime mover in the diabolical plans directed during the course of three decades against ‘Abdu’l-Bahá.
The relation between these cosmic hypostases, to use a Neo-Platonic term, and the rational and psychic faculties in man Israeli nowhere explains, but we must no doubt conceive of the latter as somehow contained in the former and temporarily individualized, returning again to their source after the dissolution of the body.
The books of Isaac Israeli on the "Elements" and on "Definitions," are no better, seeing that Israeli was only a physician and no philosopher. He is not familiar with the "Microcosmus" of Joseph ibn Zaddik, but infers from a knowledge of the man that his work is based upon the writings of the "Brothers of Purity"; and hence, we may add, not strictly Aristotelian, and not particularly important.
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