Skip to content
Coordinates of ThoughtHome of Philosophy
Join
Question · Explain

What was Hasdai Crescas’s case that an actual infinite is possible?

Tal Rosen Fellow
· 5 replies
God & the argumentsGreek & RomanJewishAristotelianismAristotleBaruch SpinozaHasdai Crescas#actual-infinite#crescas#jewish-philosophy#kalam
Follow

I translate between Hebrew and Arabic, mostly contracts. A client recently asked me to look at some passages from Crescas's Or Hashem (Light of the Lord) and I have been reading around them ever since, including Harry Wolfson's old study of Crescas's critique of Aristotle.

What I understand so far:

  • Philoponus in the sixth century, then al-Kindī and the kalām theologians, argued that an actual infinite is impossible, so the past must be finite, so the world began, so it has a cause.
  • Maimonides built his proofs of God on premises taken from Aristotle's physics, including the impossibility of an actual infinite, partly so that his proofs would work whether or not the world was eternal.
  • Crescas, writing in Aragon around 1400, attacked those premises.

What I don't understand is the shape of his argument. Did he think an infinite series of causes was possible? Infinite space? And if he removed the premise that infinites are impossible, how did he still prove God exists, since he was certainly not an atheist?

I'd be grateful for a clear explanation. My reading of the Hebrew is good but the physics is beyond me.

LikeAnswer
Follow5 answers

Join the conversation: members reply here, and joining is free. Reading is always free.

Join free to reply Sign in

5 answers

Accepted answer

  1. Miriam Adler

    ✓ Accepted answer Fellow

    Tal, the shape is this.

    Against Aristotle's physics. Aristotle denied an infinite body and an actual void, and his proofs relied on his theory of natural place. Crescas attacks those proofs one by one. He argues that space can be an infinite void extension, that an infinite magnitude involves no contradiction, and he even allows that there may be many worlds.

    Against the impossibility of infinite causal series. Maimonides' proofs relied on the premise that an infinite chain of causes is impossible. Crescas argues that such a chain is not impossible in itself.

    How he still proves God. He keeps one argument that doesn't need that premise: whether the series of caused things is finite or infinite, every member is contingent, possible in itself, and so is the whole. A whole made entirely of things that need a cause still needs a cause, one that is necessary in itself. So he removes the premise of the finitist proof and keeps the argument from contingency. That is why he can be both a critic of Aristotle and a firm believer.

    Wolfson's book is the right companion. His introduction explains the physics more clearly than any modern summary I know.

Other answers

  1. Ana Clara Ferreira

    Fellow

    A caution before the real answer arrives: it is tempting to read Crescas as anticipating Cantor's set theory, and some writers do. But Crescas doesn't have a mathematics of infinite sets. His arguments are about magnitudes, space and causal series. The resemblance is real but should not be pushed.

    Helpful · 3
  2. Eliana Halpern

    Fellow

    And one more reason he matters: Spinoza read him. In a well-known letter on the infinite, Spinoza cites an argument from "a certain Jew called Rab Ghasdai", which is Crescas, approvingly. Crescas also took a strongly deterministic view of human choice, holding that our acts are caused though still ours, which some readers think also left its mark on Spinoza. He is one of the bridges between medieval Jewish thought and early modern philosophy, and he is almost never taught.

    Helpful · 1
  3. Rafael Lucena Prieto

    Fellow

    It is worth remembering how he wrote. Crescas lived through the riots of 1391 that destroyed Jewish communities across Spain; his only son was killed in Barcelona. Light of the Lord was written partly to defend the tradition against a philosophy he thought had become too Aristotelian, at a time when the community was under terrible pressure. That doesn't change the arguments, but it explains their urgency.

    Helpful · 2
  4. Tal Rosen

    Fellow

    Thank you, Miriam. So he dismantles the premise but rebuilds on contingency, which is a cleaner argument anyway. Rafael, I didn't know about his son. I will read the passages differently now.

    Helpful · 3