295
into prominence with Saadia's work,
"Emunotwe-
Deot " (ii. 5, 53), in which the doctrine of Attributes is employed directly against the dogma of the Trinity. Saadia, who denies the positive attributes of God, with the exception of existence, unity, power, and wisdom, places the following alternative before Christian Trinitarianism " God is either corporeal or incorporeal. If He be considered corporeal, positive attributes would indeed be possible, but then the idea of God would be open to the grossest anthropomorphism of the ignorant masses. If, on the other hand, God be considered incorporeal, He can possess no attributes (positive properties), for with the possession of attributes differences in God must be admitted, and differences can be predicated of that alone which is corporeal, not of that which is incor:
poreal. "
From
this
comparatively clear statement
of the problem of Attributes it is apparent that it touches the very core of scholasticism. It is interesting, therefore, to inquire what attitude is assumed toward it by Judaism, with its fundamental and constant insistence on the unity of God, who possesses manifold spheres of work; with its many-sided forms of revelation with its all-wise, all-good, allAntithetically expowerful, all-animating God. pressed, what is the relation of unity to multiplicity ? Logically formulated, what is the relation of the individual to its species, of the species to its genus? Sociologically stated, what is the relation of human personality to the community, and of the commu;
on
its part, to the state? evident from the preceding that the question of the Attributes of substance be this substance God, Nature, Atom, Monad (ev koX nav), Idea, Will, the Unknowable— concerns the very highest problems of human intellect; the question being intimately entwined with the fundamental problems, not only of scholastic, but of all philosophy, with the problem, indeed, of universals. It is therefore not surprising that in the Arabian -Jewish philosophy there should be a division between the defenders and the opponents of the doctrine of Attributes or that within the field of attribute-conception the most minutiose attempts at adjustment are evolved, as was so ably shown in the pioneer literary production of David Kaufmann, " Attributenlehre in der Judischen Religionsphilosophie," Gotha, 1877. Though the problem of Attributes merited the most earnest consideration of the loftiest minds, the treatment it actually received was barren and unsatisfactory in the extreme. How great was the need for a scholarly consideration of the problem of Attributes is shown by the fact that as late as the seventeenth century much of the thought of a Descartes, a Locke, and a Spinoza was devoted to it, and that even in the nineteenth century there could occur such a vigorous discussion concerning the proper interpretation of Attributes as that which took place between J. E. Erdmann and Kuno Descartes (in his " Principia Philosophise," Fischer. " attrii. 53, 1644) had drawn the distinction between
nity,
It is
butum " and
—
"
modus " but Spinoza was
the first to
very center of understand whatever
set the doctrine of Attributes in the
a system. the
Attorney
THE JEWISH ENCYCLOPEDIA
"By
attribute I as constituting the essence of
mind conceives
substance" ("Ethics,"
i.,
def. 4).
God
therefore
is
Attributes
conceived as containing infinite Attributes, each one of which expresses His eternal essence (ib, prop, xi.). Of all of the divine Attributes, however, the human mind conceives but two, thought and extension ("Ethics,"
ii.,
prop.
1
and
2).
While Erdmann
explained these Attributes of Spinoza as being merely the modes of cognition in the mind considering them, Fischer maintained that they were real and separate forms of the substance's existence. This modern example will serve to show that speculative metaphysics still has its attribute-problem. Indeed, even the natural sciences of to-day have, on their metaphysical side, attributive implications. Witness, for example, Hackel's naturalistic monism (see Ludwig Stein, in "Archiv filr Geschichte der Philosophie," ii. 319, 1898; idem, "Sociale Fragen im Lichte der Philosophie," p. 516, 1897; idem, "An der Wende des Jahrhunderts, " p. 894, 1899). The historical continuity of philosophy is evidenced by the fact that old problems are continually being revived and modified through the influence of new ideas. Each succeeding age presents for its own consideration the problem of Attributes though clad in its own scientific phraseology. With scholasticism the problem of Attributes was a theological one; with Spinoza it was a mathematical one (the relation of the One to the Many) with Hackel it is a biological problem (the relation of the Organic to the Inorganic). Hackel's monistic conception of the universe (calling it " the conception of coming ages") is in substance that the forms of organic, as well as those of inorganic, matter are the necessary products of natural forces. It is readily seen, however, that his "natural forces " of the underlying substance are
—
in truth just as attributive as
qualities of a Spinoza or of
any of the fundamental any section of scholas-
ticism.
Certain basic problems of metaphysics recur at intervals throughout the ages, clothed always in the
and receive more or adequate formulation according to some one or the other of the dominant scientific tendencies of the
scientific dress of the period,
less
day. L. S.
k.
It is difficult to determine whether it was the influence of the Motazilites or the desire to convince his Karaite adversaries of the danger of always taking Biblical words literally, that actuated Saadia in He raising the question of the divine Attributes. was, however, the first among Jewish writers to do so;
was
and the question having been propounded, it thereafter considered by all the philosophers,
each making an effort at
its
solution according to
his respective school.
Saadia, like the Motazilites, denies all Attributes save those of existence, unity, power, and wisdom, inasmuch as these four, expressing as they do the very essence of God, involve neither multiplicity nor variety in Him and Saadia. furthermore because each of these four essential Attributes being necessitated by, or implying, the other, they can be reduced to one attribute. No other divine attribute found in the Bible can be taken literally without surrender to coarse anthropomorphism ("Kitab al-Imauat Wal-I'tikadat," ed.
