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Updated: June 25, 2025
"Olam Katon" or "Microcosm" is the Hebrew name of the philosophical treatise which he wrote in Arabic, but which we no longer possess in the original, being indebted for our knowledge of it to a Hebrew translation of unknown authorship. Maimonides knew Joseph ibn Zaddik favorably, but he was not familiar with the "Microcosm."
While it is true that Gabirol's influence on subsequent Jewish philosophy is slight at most we find it in Moses and Abraham ibn Ezra, Abraham ibn Daud and Joseph ibn Zaddik traces of his ideas are met with in the mysticism of the Kabbala. Gabirol's "Fons Vitæ" is a peculiar combination of logical formalism with mystic obscurity, or profundity, according to one's point of view.
Joseph Ibn Zaddik is the first who finds it necessary to give an independent treatment of the sciences before proceeding to construct his religious philosophy, and in so doing he expounds the concepts of matter and form, substance and accident, genesis and destruction, the four elements and their natures and so on all these Aristotelian concepts.
He quotes approvingly Aristotle's definition of the soul, and proceeds to interpret it in a manner not intended by the author of the "De Anima." If he had read the context he could not have misunderstood the definition as he did. Unlike his predecessors, Ibn Zaddik did not confine himself to a special topic in philosophy or to the metaphysical aspects of Judaism.
We have already spoken of the fact that the method of basing one's theology upon the creation of the world is one that is distinctive of the Kalam, as Maimonides himself tells us. And this method is common to Saadia, Bahya and Ibn Zaddik. In his discussion of the attributes Ibn Zaddik offers little if anything that is new.
And yet it is a small book; for Ibn Zaddik does not enter into lengthy discussions, nor does he adorn his style with rhetorical flourishes or copious quotations from Bible and Talmud.
We have in these pages followed their ideas Saadia, Gabirol, Ibn Zaddik, Abraham Ibn Daud. The latter in particular anticipated Maimonides in almost all his ideas. None had the effect of upsetting the theological equilibrium of Jewry. Everyone had his admirers, no doubt, as well as his opponents.
Then Neo-Platonism and Kalam combined, or pure Neo-Platonism, in Bahya, Gabirol, Ibn Zaddik and the two Ibn Ezras, Abraham and Moses. In Judah Halevi, so far as philosophy is represented, we have Neo-Platonism and Aristotelianism. Finally in Ibn Daud and Maimonides, Neo-Platonism is reduced to the vanishing point, and Aristotelianism is in full view and in possession of the field.
First the Baal Shem, the pure Zaddik, then Rabbi Baer, the worldly Zaddik, and then a host of Zaddikim, many of them having only the outward show of Sainthood.
We need not follow Ibn Daud in his detailed descriptions of the functions of the several kinds of soul, as there is little that is new and that we have not already met in Joseph Ibn Zaddik and Judah Halevi. The soul is not eternal. It was created and bestowed upon body. When a body comes into being, the character of its mixture determines that a soul of a certain kind shall be connected with it.
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