Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- 1 Texts and Contexts
- II Logic and Language
- III Natural Philosophy
- 9 Matter, Form, and the Corporeal World
- 10 Cosmology: The Heavenly Bodies
- 11 Miracles
- 12 Time, Space, and Infinity
- 13 Exhalations and Other Meteorological Themes
- IV Epistemology and Psychology
- V Metaphysics and Philosophical Theology
- VI Practical Philosophy
- Biobibliographical Appendix
- Bibliography
- Index
- References
9 - Matter, Form, and the Corporeal World
from III - Natural Philosophy
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 May 2009
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Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- 1 Texts and Contexts
- II Logic and Language
- III Natural Philosophy
- 9 Matter, Form, and the Corporeal World
- 10 Cosmology: The Heavenly Bodies
- 11 Miracles
- 12 Time, Space, and Infinity
- 13 Exhalations and Other Meteorological Themes
- IV Epistemology and Psychology
- V Metaphysics and Philosophical Theology
- VI Practical Philosophy
- Biobibliographical Appendix
- Bibliography
- Index
- References
Summary
INTRODUCTION
Following variously on Pythagorean, Platonic, and Aristotelian traditions, together with biblical, rabbinic, and mystical insights, Jewish philosophies have envisioned matter and form as the necessary play of opposites, at once comprising the very fabric of reality, and signifying a deep cosmic struggle between corporeality and spirit. In Jewish as in Greek philosophical sources, matter marks a kind of not-yet-being moment in the metaphysical analysis of things, and in this sense, inspires three very different kinds of discourses.
In the first place, as mark of not-yet-being, matter emerges in various contexts in a decidedly negative light – as secondary and inferior to form (the mark of being), it is the mark of privation and failure and even the source of evil itself. We will address this kind of discourse with examples from Maimonides, Gersonides, and Philo.
In the second place, matter, as mark of not-yet-being, is addressed in a neutral light, without any negative (or positive) connotations, in various cosmogonic, metaphysical, and scientific contexts. Two good examples are discussions of creation on the one hand, and discussions of Aristotelian matter and prime matter, on the other. Seen by some Jewish theorists alternatively as the something first created by God or as the something (itself eternal and uncreated) out of which God creates all else, matter emerges in a neutral light when it signals the mysteries of [pre-]creation, standing as a cosmic building block in need of description.
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- The Cambridge History of Jewish PhilosophyFrom Antiquity through the Seventeenth Century, pp. 267 - 301Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2008
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