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Where Is the Heaven? the Story of an Aristotelian Problem and Its Presentation in Jewish Medieval Sources

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Where Is the Heaven? the Story of an Aristotelian Problem and Its Presentation in Jewish Medieval Sources Julia SCHWARTZMANN WHERE IS THE HEAVEN? THE STORY OF AN ARISTOTELIAN PROBLEM AND ITS PRESENTATION IN JEWISH MEDIEVAL SOURCES Introduction It is well known that Aristotle's concept of place is one of the fundamen- tal principles of his natural philosophy, and especially, of his mechanics. Although the existence of place is, according to him, an obvious fact, he takes pains in the first chapters of the Physics IV to prove it once again. Only after that he elaborates about the nature of place and its definition. Subsequently, he defines place as “the primary motionless boundary of that which contains"1. By establishing in the Physics IV an unbreakable bond between place and motion and by introducing the notion of natural places, Aristotle opens the way to his concept of the physical world as an autonomous self-energizing organism. It is not incidental that the investigation of the nature of place, crucial for the understanding of the Aristotelian theory of motion, is followed in the next chapters by a methodical refutation of the void. It is not incidental either, that those, who like Philoponus or Rabbi Hisdai Crescas opposed Aristotle's concept of the world, rejected both his definition of place and the bond between place and motion. In order to refute Aristotle's mechanics they had to minimize the importance of place and to reinstate the legitimacy of the void2. It seems that the definition of place as “the primary motionless boundary of that which contains" fits quite well the notion of place within the world, and especially, that of bodies having a rectilinear motion. At the same time this definition creates some major problems when applied to the last celes- 1. Aristotle, Physics IV, ch. 4, 212a 20 (All the quotations from the Physics in this article are from Aristotle's Physics, Translated by H.G. Apostle, Indiana University Press, 1969). 2. It is well-accepted today among the scholars that those “new" notions of space and void eventually became the pillars of Newtonian physics. Ch. Schmitt, “Philoponus' Com- mentary on Aristotle's Physics in the Sixteenth Century" Philoponus, ed. R. Sorabji, London, 1987, pp. 210-227. Revue des Études juives, CLIII (1-2), janvier-juin 1994, pp. 67-85 68 WHERE IS THE HEAVEN? tial shpere. According to the Aristotelian picture of the world, the last sphere is some kind of logical conclusion of the physics. This sphere or, to be more pre- cise, its upper part, is the place of all that may exist. At the same time, according to the above definition of place, this sphere itself, not being surrounded by anything, does not have a place of its own3. Yet, as it has been already mentioned, according to the Aristotelian mechanics, place is an essential condition for motion. Theoretically speaking, it means that the last sphere should be motionless. However, this would contradict the basic facts of the classical physics and astronomy. Aristotle himself points out on several occasions that the motion of the last sphere is perfect, eternal, and faster than any other motion4. With these two dogmas: an unconditional claim for a place for every- thing having motion on one hand, and a categorical denial of any entity out- side the world on the other, one inevitably finds himself in a contradictory situation. Being aware of the incompatibility of two of his basic principles, but not willing to part with either of them, Aristotle presumably tried to find a way out of this contradiction. And so we see later in the same chapter a rather problematic attempt to explain the state of the heaven within the above theory of place. Referring to this question Aristotle says that “some things are in a place accidentally, like the soul and the heaven for the parts of the latter [heaven] are somehow in a place since along the circular direction one part contains another"5. The vagueness of Aristotle's language in the above sentence, his almost poetic reference to the soul, do not give a satisfactory answer to the prob- lem. It seems that Aristotle is simply unable to describe the kind of place heaven occupies. Instead, considering the motion of the last sphere as a well established fact, he infers from it the existence of some kind of place, the nature is which not clear to him. “…we must bear in mind, he explains, that there would have been no inquiry about place if motion with respect to place did not exist; for it is because of this that we also consider the heaven to be in a place most of all, seeing that it is always in motion"6. The hesitating tone of this phrase, apparently intended to clarify the prob- lem, only complicated it for Aristotle's commentators. What did Aristotle mean by the words “heaven" and “parts", they wondered; and what kind 3. Idem, ch. 5, 212b 7-10. 4. Aristotle, Metaphysics XII, ch. 7, 1072a 22-24; De Caelo II, ch. 10, 291b 1-5. 5. Aristotle, Physics, IV, ch. 5, 212b 11-13. 6. Idem, ch. 4, 211a 12-15. WHERE IS THE HEAVEN? 69 of state is it “to be somehow in a place": is it the same as just being in a place accidentally or is it some different state? The above quotation from the Physics IV, ch. 5, 212b 11-13, turns out to be even more complicated when considered in the light of Aristotle's other words. It appears that in De Caelo he explained that the word “heaven" may have three different meanings. It may stand for: a) the last sphere; b) the whole system of the spheres and the stars; c) the universe7. As it will be shown later, different commentaries reflect different meanings of the word “heaven". The above lines from the Physics IV, ch. 5, 212b 11-13 became one of the most difficult and controversial issues of the book. It goes without say- ing that, while this problem represented throughout centuries a stumbling block for Aristotle's loyal commentators, it played right into the hands of those, who opposed his physics8. We find a rather vicious, but not entirely unjust judgement on this issue in Philoponus's commentary on the Physics. “…Aristotle, he claims, cloaking the weakness of his doctrine with obscu- rity, made it possible for anyone who liked to twist his words as he wished"9. In this article we systematize different explanations of Aristotle's words in the Physics IV, ch. 5, 212b 11-13 as they were know to Jewish philoso- phers, and Jewish philosophers' own commentaries to them. For this purpose the following commentaries will be examined: Moses Narboni's commentary on Algazali's The Intentions of Philosophers and various supercommentaries on Averroes' Intermediate Commentary of the Physics, namely those of: a) Moses Narboni; b) Gersonides; c) Isaac Ibn Shem Tob; d) Shem Tob ben Yosef. Roughly speaking, these writers belong to two different stages in the his- tory of Jewish thought. While Narboni and Gersonides represent the peak of Jewish Aristotelian philosophy in the post-Maimonidean period, both Shem Tob's pull the curtain on it on the verge of the expulsion from Spain. Despite about 150 years separating these philosophers it would be hard to point at any fundamental changes that had occured in the philosophical thinking during this period. Our choice of the writings was dictated by the fact that apart from a few 7. Aristotle, De Caelo I, ch. 9, 278b 10-25. 8. Ioannis Philoponi in Aristotelis physicorum libros, ed. H. Vitelli Berlin, 1887, 564- 566. See also D. Furley, “Summary of Philoponus' Corollaries on Place and Void", Philo- ponus, ed. R. Sorabji, London, 1987, pp. 130-139. A. Wolfson, Crescas' Critique of Aristo- tle, Harvard University Press, 1929, Proposition I, Part II, pp. 194-199. 9. Philoponus in Phys. 565,1. Quoted from S. Sambursky, The Concept of Place in Late Neoplatonism, Jerusalem, 1982, pp. 106-107. 70 WHERE IS THE HEAVEN? anonymous commentaries, they are the only Jewish supercommentaries on the Averroes' Intermediate Commentary of the Physics. As this article deals with the attempts of Aristotle's loyal commentators to solve the prob- lem, we will not discuss Hisdai Crescas' approach to this issue. Yet it is important to emphasize that Crescas' critical attitude toward Aristotle's physics was known to Isaac Ibn Shem Tob and Shem Tob ben Yosef and scornfully rejected by both of them. It should be pointed out that all of the Jewish writings examined in this arti- cle are extant only in manuscripts. The same can be said about the Hebrew versions of Averroes' Intermediate and Long Commentaries of the Physics used here, which have not been published till now. We will avoid quoting the supercommentaries, because we do not believe that the length and vague language characteristic of this philosophic genre helps to understand the problem. Yet in some cases we will quote briefly the Hebrew original. The Place of the Heaven in Classic and Moslem Commentaries Now let us turn to the various Classic and Moslem opinions on the issue of the place of the heaven, as they were known to Jewish commentators. It should be emphasized, first, that as a rule, in the domain of the Physics, Jewish authors relied on two main sources: Algazali's The Inten- tions of Philosophers and even more on Averroes' Intermediate Commen- tary on the Physics. However, in some cases, as in the case of the place of the heaven, Averroes' presentation of the problem in the Intermediate Com- mentary is so laconic, that it is impossible to understand it without the help of the Long Commentary.
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