Elijah Del Medigo and Paduan Aristotelianism: Investigating the Human Intellect

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Elijah Del Medigo (1458-1493) was a Jewish Aristotelian philosopher living in Padua, whose work influenced many of the leading philosophers of the early Renaissance. His Two Investigations on the Nature of the Human Soul uses Aristotles De anima to theorize on two of the most discussed and most controversial philosophical debates of the Renaissance: the nature of human intellect and the obtaining of immortality through intellectual perfection. In this book, Michael Engel places Del Medigos philosophical work and his ideas about the human intellect within the context of the wider Aristotelian tradition. Providing a detailed account of the unique blend of Hebrew, Islamic, Latin and Greek traditions that influenced the Two Investigations, Elijah Del Medigo and Paduan Aristotelianism provides an important contribution to our understanding of Renaissance Aristotelianisms and scholasticisms. In particular, through his defense of the Muslim philosopher Averroes hotly debated interpretation of the De anima and his rejection of the moderate Latin Aristotelianism championed by the Christian Thomas Aquinas, Engel traces how Del Medigos work on the human intellect contributed to the development of a major Aristotelian controversy. Investigating the ways in which multicultural Aristotelian sources contributed to his own theory of a united human intellect, Elijah Del Medigo and Paduan Aristotelianism demonstrates the significant impact made by this Jewish philosopher on the history of the Aristotelian tradition.

Reviews

Michael Engel makes a substantial contribution to previous scholarship on the treatise, mastering for the first time its linguistic difficulties, its philosophical complexity and its reliance on Latin scholasticism and Hebrew sources. With an impressively lucid and penetrating analysis, Engel skillfully guides his readers through intricate issues of intellect theory without losing the thread of the argument. -- Dag Nikolaus Hasse, Professor of Philosophy, Universitt Wrzburg, Germany
With admirable clarity, Michael Engel provides an access key to understanding the Two Investigations on the Intellect, one of the most important works by Elijah Del Medigo, no longer extant in Latin, but still preserved in Hebrew. Engels book fills a significant gap in the history of Renaissance Philosophy, and will stimulate further research on this long-overlooked figure, whose own fame has been obscured by his patron Giovanni Pico della Mirandola. -- Giovanni Licata, Short-Term Fellow at the Warburg Institute, University of London, UK
Dr Engel's study constitutes an important contribution to the study of Averroes both in the Hebrew and in the Latin tradition. Examining an unpublished text and focusing on the intellectual context in which Del Medigo worked, it greatly enhances our knowledge of this author, since scholarly attention has hitherto mainly focused on Del Medigos more popular treatise on the relation between religion and philosophy Behinat ha-Dat (The Examination of Religion). This book presents and explains the often quite involved philosophical debates of the Renaissance in a lucid manner. -- Resianne Fontaine, Lecturer in the Department of Hebrew and Jewish Studies, Universiteit van Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Engel shows that Del Medigo, though an Averroist, is distinctive in his Averroism, because of his unique access to him through both the Jewish and the Latin tradition. As a result, he makes us rethink, not just Paduan Aristotelianism, but the whole relationship between Jewish and Christian philosophers in the later Middle Ages. -- John Marenbon, Senior Research Fellow, Trinity College, Cambridge and Honorary Professor of Medieval Philosophy, University of Cambridge, UK

Author Bio

Michael Engel is a Research Associate at the Institute for Jewish Philosophy and Religion, University of Hamburg, Germany.