Avicebron

AVICEBRON. - Jewish poet and philosopher of the 11th century. It is barely a century ago (1846) that, thanks to S. Munk, it became possible to identify in the mysterious A. (or Avencebron) of the Scholastics the Judeo-Hispanic poet Solomon ibn Gabirol, who lived around the years 1020-1059 (or 1070?). His thought, already announced in the short poem The Royal Crown, took systematic form in the work Fons Vitae, which is a great dialogue between master and disciple concerning true wisdom. Since the Arabic original of it has disappeared, as it seems, there survive ample extracts of the Hebrew version of ibn Falaquera, discovered and published by Munk, and the medieval Latin version of John the Spaniard and Gundissalinus in the first half of the 12th century, now edited in full by Cl. Baeumker.

To judge from the title (Liber Fontis Vitae, de prima parte sapientiae i. e. scientia de materia et forma universali), the treatise formed the first part, the one dedicated to the creature, of a larger work that was to have had two other parts dedicated to the science of the will and of the divine essence, but of which no trace remains. The Fons Vitae consists of 5 treatises arranged as follows: I, De materia et forma universali; II, De substantia quae continet corporeitatem mundi; III, De assertione substantiarum simplicium; IV, De inquisitione materiae et formae in substantia simplicibus; V, De materia universali et forma universali per se. The division into chapters is Baeumker's. Perfect agreement has not yet been reached concerning the immediate sources and the specific character of A.'s thought, whether it is to be regarded as Aristotelian (Neumark), Neoplatonic (Charles, Joel) or creationist (Masnovo); in reality it is a grandiose speculation that does not link itself directly to any particular school and that takes upon itself the most varied and contrasting aspects, fused into a new synthesis that must be taken as it is: an exaggerated realism, filtered into a decadent Neoplatonism against the background of a rigid Jewish monotheism, even though throughout the work there appears not even a single verse of the Bible or a quotation from the Talmûd.

The medievals recognized in A. the paternity of the following doctrines: the universality of matter, the multiplicity of substantial forms, the denial of the activity of bodies, voluntarism. God alone is the One, a most pure and absolutely simple spiritual essence. Every created substance, on the other hand, results from two "essences," matter and form (I, 5), that is to say from a principle in which all creatures agree and which is, as it were, their bond, and from a principle that diversifies them (I, 6), from one that sustains and one that is sustained (IV, 1). What matters most is the distinction of matters, which in this philosophy constitute the true pillars of the real: 1) a particular natural matter, common to artificial bodies, 2) a universal natural matter, common to natural bodies, 3) a universal corporeal matter, common to the elements and to natural bodies, 4) and an incorruptible matter, common to the celestial bodies. Characteristic of A.'s philosophy is the admission of a fifth matter, "spiritual matter," common to souls and to separated substances. The decisive argument is taken from the philosopher's exaggerated realism, according to which there is a direct correspondence between the logical order of concepts and that of the constituents of the reality of things (D. "Quod est signum quod intellectus non apprehendit nisi rem constantem ex materia et forma?" M. "Signum huius est quod ultimum ad quod intellectus apprehendendo pervenit, hoc est apprehensi generis et differentiae; et in hoc est signum quod materia et forma sunt finis rerum," IV, 6; cf. III, 18). To the hierarchy of matters there corresponds a hierarchy of forms which, each uniting with its respective matter, actualize the five degrees of finite reality: universal matter, universal form, universal nature, universal soul, universal intelligence. Above all stands the "divine will." Indeed the union of matter and form gives substance, and the lower substance is as matter in relation to the higher form on which it depends in being and in acting; the last form would be the divine essence, but God cannot come into any contact with the creature. And hence the intermediary of the "divine will," a divine virtue that first creates matter and form and then binds them together, diffused everywhere, which moves and disposes every thing (V, 38-42).

Its modes are "movement" in bodies and the "intelligible word" in spiritual substances, and movement is included in the word as every lower causality is included in the higher (V, 35) in a universe of concentric circles penetrated by the divine will, a universal energy that A. assimilates to light. Negligible was A.'s influence on Jewish thought (Ḥasdai Crescas, Leone Ebreo) when he was not even sharply criticized (Ibn Daud, Almosnino). Differently in the Latin world, where his appearance was decisive for the formation and differentiation of the most prominent speculative systems (Augustinianism, Thomist Aristotelianism).

Cornelio Fabro