Life

SOME PHILOSOPHERS‘ LIVES are interesting or significant for their philosophies; others have lives without any particular relevance to their thought. Socrates and Spinoza would be examples of the former; Hume and Kant of the latter. Levi ben Gershom, or Gersonides (in Latin), was a member of the latter group. Unlike Socrates he was not brought to trial and executed for his views; nor like Spinoza was he excommunicated from the Jewish community. Nor did he exemplify a third model of a philosopher: a thinker so deeply involved in the life of his community that he becomes its leader in some capacity. Maimonides, his illustrious predecessor, who functioned as a judge for his Jewish community in Egypt, was a prime example of a philosopher engaged in communal affairs. Not so Gersonides: there is no evidence that he had any official position in any of the Jewish communities in Provence where he lived. Itmay be the case that he had some kind of informal school where he taught philosophy, as some scholars have suggested, but if this is so, such a school was at best private and peripheral to the prevalent pedagogical system characteristic of medieval Judaism. Gersonides was a philosopher, scientist, and biblical exegete whose life was his intellectual activities and the works he composed. Whatever we know about him, and this is not very much, indicates that he spent his entire life in scholarly activities, many of which he pursued as a private, perhaps isolated, individual. Here and there he makes some reference to his family and to a few events that happened in his lifetime: but they are quite sparse. Nevertheless, some facts about Gersonides’ life have been established.

He was born in 1288 in the county of Orange in Provence, perhaps in the town of Bagnols, apparently into a family of considerable learning. In his commentaries Gersonides acknowledges his debt to his father (most likely the talmudist Gershom ben Solomon of Beziers) and his maternal grandfather (Levi Hakohen) for interpretations of several biblical passages. His biblical commentaries clearly testify to a deep knowledge of classical rabbinic literature, which he probably acquired, at least in part, from his father. It is not known who were his teachers of the secular sciences, yet the philosophical and scientific culture of Provencal Jewry was considerable, and Gersonides was able to profit from it.