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

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9780827600607: Selected Religious Poems of Solomon ibn Gabirol (JPS Library of Jewish Classics)

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0827600607 ISBN 13: 9780827600607

Publisher: University of North Carolina Press, 1974

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..

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About the Author:

About the Author:

"Solomon ibn Gvirol, also Solomon ben Judah was an Andalucian Hebrew poet and Jewish philosopher. He was born in Malaga about 1021; died about 1058 in Valencia.

Little is known of Gabirol's life. His parents died while he was a child. At seventeen years of age he became the friend and protege of Jekuthiel Hassan. Upon the assassination of the latter as the result of a political conspiracy, Gabirol composed an elegy of more than 200 verses. The death of Hai Gaon also called forth a similar poem. When barely twenty Gabirol wrote "Anak," a versified Hebrew grammar, alphabetical and acrostic, consisting of 400 verses divided into ten parts. Of this grammar, ninety-five lines have been preserved by Solomon Parhon. In these Gabirol reproaches his townsmen with their neglect of the Hebrew language.

Gabirol's residence in Saragossa was embittered by strife. He thought of leaving Spain, but remained and wandered about. He gained another friend and patron in the person of Samuel ibn Nagdela, whose praises he sang. Later an estrangement arose between them, and Nagdela became for a time the butt of Gabirol's bitterest irony. All testimonies agree that Gabirol was comparatively young at the time of his death, which followed years of wandering. The year of his death was probably 1058 or 1059." (Quote from wikipedia.org)

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