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Selected Religious Poems of Solomon ibn Gabirol (JPS Library of Jewish Classics)

SKU:100973

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Prolific poet, author of theFons Vitae, Ibn Gabirol is well known in the history of philosophy for the doctrine that all things —including soul and intellect—are comprised of matter & form (“Universal Hylomorphism”), his emphasis on Divine Will. Ibn Gabirol is moved first then foremost by a Neoplatonic theological sense that God's reality infuses all things,by the concomitant ethical, existential ideal of Neoplatonic Return—the notion that we must strive, through mind ,deed,then reclaim our own truest being -likeness to our source. Misunderstood by centuries of Christian scholastics to be either a Christian defender of Augustine or a Muslim misreader of Aristotle, Ibn Gabirol was a Jewish Neoplatonist, with additional influences of Pseudo Empedoclean ideas, painting a modified Plotinian universe where things are rooted in various “layers” of matters & forms revealing mediating graces of God's own Will/Wisdom/Word. For Ibn Gabirol, everything (even the simple unity of intellect itself) reveals a matter+form complexity, mirroring in this way the complex unity of God's own “essential” - “active” moments. Where God reveals himself as the “Fountain of Life,” our material core acts as the river through which we may return always to our source..

Type:Softcover
Condition Rating:Good

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Selected Religious Poems of Solomon ibn Gabirol (JPS Library of Jewish Classics)

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