ISACCO ben SALOMON ISRAELI. — Jewish philosopher, b. in Egypt c. 865, d. at Tunis c. 955. He practiced medicine at the court of the caliphs of Qayrawan.
A skilled physician and a mere compiler as a philosopher: such is the judgment passed on him by the physician-philosopher MAIMONIDES in his own time and by E. Gilson in our own. The Hebrew-biblical element in I.’s thought is submerged beneath the influence of Neoplatonism, which at times blends with Aristotelian elements. His chief merit lies in having given the first impulse to Jewish philosophical studies, which were later to be strongly influenced by Arabic philosophical inquiry. His works (The Book of Definitions; The Book of Elements; The Book of Spirit and Soul) present a mixture of medical, physical, and philosophical speculations, revealing “a mind more curious than systematic or original” (Gilson).
I. admits the idea of creation and draws a clear distinction between God’s creative act ex nihilo and natural generation, which proceeds from a pre-existing substratum. Creation reveals God’s goodness and wisdom. As for prophecy: revelation in sensible form is due to the nature of the receptive organs; revelation in dreams is half corporeal and half spiritual. If in prophetic writings the spiritual form and the sensible form alternate, this is due to the device of adapting the prophet’s word to the intelligence of different classes of readers.