Tercera etapa: Análisis e interpretación de resultados

Judah ben Isaac Abrabanel (c.l460-after 1523) was, as bis Jewish name indicates, the son o f Isaac Abrabanel, the Portuguese philosopher and courtier who was well-known and respected by his contemporaries for his virtue, erudition and political expertise.^"^ Father and son fled the Iberian peninsular in 1483 when the Catholics’ distrust o f the Jews finally erupted into persecution. Both eventually settled in Naples (Judah in 1483, Isaac in 1492), where Judah continued his career as court physician.^^ Judah Abrabanel became known as ‘Leon’ by his entourage at the court of Ferdinand and Isabella, for whom he was personal

See Chaim Wirsubski’s Pico della M irandola’s Encounter with Jewish Mysticism (Cambridge, MA; Harvard University Press, 1989), p. 175, for Pico’s distinction between the two kinds o f Kabbalah.

For different opinions on the dates o f Léon’s birth and death, see Colette Sirat, A H istory o f Jewish Philosophy in the Middle Ages (Cambridge and Paris: Cambridge University Press and Éditions de la Maison des Sciences de l’homme, 1985), p. 407, and Suzanne Damiens, Amour et intellect chez Léon l'hébreu (Toulouse: Edouard Privât, 1971), pp. 15-22.

See the Encylopaedia Judaica (Jerusalem: [n. pub.], 1972), pp. 109-11, Sirat, p. 407, and Damiens, pp. 15-22, for these and more biographical details.

physician when he fled from Lisbon to Seville in 1481. The name is a reference to Jacob’s speech in Genesis 49. 9, in which Judah’s tribe is compared to a lion, indicating that Judah was esteemed as highly as his father for his virtue and ability.^^ But Léon was to become more famous for his philosophy than for his medical skills. His Dialoghi d ’Amore, which was written in Italian and published

in 1535, became one of the most successful European works of the sixteenth century.^^

The Dialoghi dAm ore consist of a lengthy three-part dialogue between

Philo and Sophie, a wise man who is both courting and answering the ‘philo­ sophical’ questions of his inquiring female interlocutor (whom he also loves). In the course of this profoundly syncretistic work, Léon refers frequently to Aristotle, Plato, Empedocles, Pythagoras, Alfarabi, Avicenna, Algazali, and Maimonides. The text also betrays the strong influence of Ramon Lull, Raymond Sebond and Marsilio Ficino.^*

Wisdom, in its role as intermediary between the individual and God, is one of the dominant themes of the Dialoghi d ’amore, in which love, as the title of

the text suggests, and morality play a vital role.^^ It is through virtue, Philo explains, that man’s passive intellect joins with the Active Intellect (identified

Damiens, p. 16.

See the Encyclopaedia Judaica, pp. 110-11. The Dialoghi was first published in Rome; new Italian editions followed, published by the Aldine press, in Venice in 1541, 1545, 1549 and 1552. Revised Italian editions were published in 1558, 1572 and 1586. Extant Latin editions include the Venice edition o f 1564 and the edition included in the same collection o f Kabbalistic texts - the

Artis cabalisticae (Basle, 1597) - containing Reuchlin's translation o f the Sefer Yetzirah. The work was translated into French by Seigneur du Parc Champenois and published in 1551 under the title Philosophie d ’amour de M. Leon Hebreu (Lyon: Guil. Rouille & Thibauld Pay en). Bodin, Montaigne and Charron may have read this edition or the edition said to have been translated by Pontus de Tyard, also published in Lyon in 1551. I use the 1551 translation by Seigneur du Parc Champenois. Page references to this edition will be presented in the main text.

On Léon’s syncretism, see Damiens, p. 12. It is highly possible that Léon knew both Pico and Ficino {Encyclopaedia Judaica, p. 109; Damiens, p. 19).

with the realm o f the angels), enabling him to make judgements in harmony with right reason:

L ’amour Divin non seulement a de I’Honneste, mais contient en soy l’Honnesteté de toutes choses et de tout l’amour d ’icelles, comment que ce soyt, pource que la Divinité est commencement, milieu, et fin de tous actes honnestes [...]. Il est commencement, en ce que de la Divinité depend l’ame Intellective, agente de toutes les Honnestetez humaines: laquelle n’est qu’un petit rayon de l’infinie clarté de Dieu, approprié à l’Homme pour le faire raisonnable, immortel et heureux: et encores faut il que ceste ame Intellective, pour venir à faire les choses honnestes, participe de la lumière Divine, (p. 56)

This ‘divine sight’ permitted by the mediation of the Active Intellect is possible because the transcendent-immanent divinity is pure intellectual vision in which the human mind participates by carrying out its own simple operations:

Aucuns autres, qui contemplent plus la Divinité, disent (et moy avec eux aussi) que l’intellect actuel qui illumine le nostre Possible est le treshaut Dieu; et ainsi tiennent pour certain que la Beatitude consiste en la cognition de l’intellect Divin auquel sont toutes choses premièrement, et plus perfaictement, qu’en aucun Intellect créé. Pource qu’en iceluy toutes choses sont essentiellement, non seulement par raison d ’intellect, mais aussi causellement [...], de sorte que c’est la cause qui les produit, l’Esprit qui les conduit, la forme qui les informe, et sont faictes pour la fin qu’il leur addresse. Et de luy viennent, et retournent en luy finalement [...] et par sa participation toutes choses sont [...]. Il suffira que vous congoissiez que nostre Félicité consiste en la congnoissance et vision Divine, en laquelle toutes choses sont veues tresperfaictement. (pp. 76- 77)

The influence o f the work of Maimonides and Thomas Aquinas which permeates the philosophical tradition is clearly identifiable in this passage, in which the doctrine of the divinity’s two modes of being - eternal and contingent - bridged by the presence o f the Active Intellect is seen to be a central foundation of Léon’s philosophy.

The essence of Léon Hébreu’s text lies in the notion o f returning to the origin and source of all things, which is itself purely intellectual and which is reached through the realm of non-concrete intelligibles. Here, once again, we encounter the idea according to which concrete things emerge from a spiritual, intellectual reality:

Tout ainsi que TEstre, la Vie, et l’Intellect, et toute autre perfection, bonté, et beauté, depend des choses spirituelles, et derive des immatérielles aux matérielles (en sorte que toutes ces excellences se trouvent es spirituelles premièrement qu’es corporelles), ainsi l’amour se trouve au monde intellectuel premièrement, et plus essentiellement, et depend d’iceluy au monde corporel, (pp. 273-74)

On the basis of this notion, Léon insists that it is through intimate psychological and emotional knowledge of God (that is, through the all-pervading force of love, which is also the Active Intellect) that the individual must know all other things, and not vice-versa. Philo tells Sophie,

[Vous] devez entendre que la Félicité consiste à cognoistre une seule chose: car elle ne peut consister en la congoissance de toutes, estant chascune à par soy séparément, ainçois, estans toutes ensemble, en la congnoissance d’une seule chose, en laquelle sont toutes les choses de l’univers: et, quand elle est congnue, elles se congnoissent toutes ensemble en un Acte. (p. 74)

Paradoxically, however, and in keeping with the hidden God tradition, this inner knowledge of God is acquired through interaction with the things of the world, the aspect o f his being (his works) that God has chosen to reveal to the creatures:

Quelle plus grande Bonté, plus ferme Vérité, plus profonde Sapience, plus diligente Prudence, que celle que nous congnoissons estre en la Divinité? Non pas que nous la congnoissions selon l’Estre, qu’elle a en soy-mesme, mais par les œuvres siennes, que nous voyons en la creation et conservation des creatures de l’univers: de sorte que, qui considérera bien les vertus Divines, l’imitation d’icelles est voye et moyen à le tirer à tous les actes honnestes et vertueux, et à tous les sages conceptions ausquelles l’humaine condition peut arriver, (pp. 58-59)

We can see here that Isaac the Blind’s notion of the mystic being magnetically drawn up through the stages of God’s unfolded being by means o f the contemplation o f exterior things has been fused with the notion that the correct way o f cleaving to God is through good moral actions (the imitation of the divine virtues).

Léon refers to love in the Dialoghi as the force of providence in nature

which enables animals and all other non-sentient beings to know how to act (or be) in order to fulfil their divinely-given natures:

Combien qu’ils n ’ayent pas en eux mesmes ces puissances congnoscitives, si sont ils addrecez par nature, congnoissante et gouvernante toutes choses inférieures, ou par l’ame du monde, en une droicte et infallible congnoissance de leurs choses naturelles, pour l’entretenement de leurs natures. [...] Ainsi ces corps inférieurs cherchent leur propre lieu et fin: non pas de leur propre congnoissance, mais par celle vraye et droicte du premier créateur, infuse en l’ame du monde, et en l’universelle nature des choses inférieures: tellement que [...] l’inclination [...] de ces corps insensibles vient de congnoissance et amour naturelle, (pp. 127-28)

The ‘knowledge’ o f these creatures is therefore God’s love for them infused into their very natures. Their natural alignment with God’s being is contrasted later in the text with the freedom of the human condition. This freedom makes it possible for man to fall out o f alignment with the divinity if he does not manage his moral affairs as nature intended. Thus the individual must leam to control his ‘sensuality’, the ‘bestial’ part of himself, with his reason. Using the analogy of the relationship o f the moon and the earth to the sun, Léon describes the human soul (the moon) as the entity that moves between the inferior part of the individual, his corporeal nature (the earth) and the superior part, his intellect or reason (the light of the sun). He explains that

Quand Tame apporte toute la lumière qu’elle a de l’intellect en la partie inférieure, vers la corporeité, elle est en opposition ennemie avec l’intellect, se reculant totalement de lui. Mais le contraire advient, quand l’ame reçoyt la lumière de l’intellect en la partie supérieure d ’elle incorporelle, qui est vers cest intellect, s’unissant avec luy, comme fait la Lune avec le Souleil en sa conjonction, (p. 329)

This divine union, he adds, causes the individual to abandon his fixation with corporeal things (p. 329). Man’s alignment with God occurs, therefore, when the individual centres his mental focus in his ‘intellect’, the part o f him that joins him to God, whereas

quand I’ame s’addonne, outre mesure, aux choses matérielles et corporelles, et qu’elle s’embourbe en icelles, elle perd du tout la Raison, et la lumière intellectuelle. Pource que non seulement elle perd la copulation divine et la contemplation intellectuelle, ains, d ’avantage, sa vie active se fait du tout irraisonnable, et vrayement bestiale [...] tellement que l’ame [...] est équiparée à l’ame des bestes brutes, et est faicte de leur nature, (pp. 335-36)

As we shall see, the notion of bestise, whereby the individual becomes like a

beast when he allows his ‘sensuality’ or lower passions to usurp the place of reason in his being, is a central theme in the work of Montaigne and, notably, in the form it takes here, in the work of Charron.

Love in the Dialoghi is a unifying force, which, as in Lull’s elemental

universe, has the power to join together the opposites o f humanity and divinity, philosophy and religion."^* Like Plato’s daimon, it is for Léon the intermediary

between the world of the senses and the invisible, sacred world o f divine intelligence which supports all created being. A critic describes the place of love in Léon’s philosophy as follows:

Elsewhere Léon draws the parallel between divine love and the light o f the sun more clearly: Toperation de l’amour de Dieu à causer nostre félicité, et celle de tout l’univers, est telle qu’est celle du souleil à causer que nous le voyons’ (p. 663).

Force cosmique, il est aussi la source d’une conquête des plus hautes vertus chez l’homme. S’il n ’est pas le Bien, il en est le premier reflet; il est parent du divin et le point que les auteurs de la Renaissance contesteront le plus volontiers, c’est que l’amour soit un démon, thèse qu’ils entendent, cependent au sens platonicien, c’est-à-dire au sens où le démon est un être intermédaire entre le divin et l’humain, ou mieux encore entre l’intelligible et le sensible."^^