Gersonides also called Levi ben Gershom (1288–1344), French Jewish philosopher and mathematician, the leading Jewish Aristotelian after Maimonides. Gersonides was also a distinguished Talmudist, Bible commentator, and astronomer. His philosophical writings include supercommentaries on most of Averroes’ commentaries on Aristotle (1319–24); On the Correct Syllogism (1319), a treatise on the modal syllogism; and a major Scholastic treatise, The Wars of the Lord (1317–29). In addition, his biblical commentaries rank among the best examples of philosophical scriptural exegesis; especially noteworthy is his interpretation of the Song of Songs as an allegory describing the ascent of the human intellect to the agent intellect.
Gersonides’ mentors in the Aristotelian tradition were Maimonides and Averroes. However, more than either of them, Gersonides held philosophical truth and revealed truth to be coextensive: he acknowledged neither the conflict that Averroes saw between reason and revelation nor Maimonides’ critical view of the limitations of the human intellect. Furthermore, while remaining within the Aristotelian framework, Gersonides was not uncritical of it; his independence can be illustrated by two of his most distinctive positions. First, against Maimonides, Gersonides claimed that it is possible to demonstrate both the falsity of the Aristotelian theory of the eternity of the world (Averroes’ position) and the absurdity of creation ex nihilo, the traditional rabbinic view that Maimonides adopted, though for nondemonstrative reasons. Instead Gersonides advocated the Platonic theory of temporal creation from primordial matter. Second, unlike Maimonides and Averroes, who both held that the alleged contradiction between divine foreknowledge of future contingent particulars and human freedom is spurious, Gersonides took the dilemma to be real. In defense of human freedom, he then argued that it is logically impossible even for God to have knowledge of particulars as particulars, since his knowledge is only of general laws. At the same time, by redefining ‘omniscience’ as knowing everything that is knowable, he showed that this impossibility is no deficiency in God’s knowledge. Although Gersonides’ biblical commentaries received wide immediate acceptance, subsequent medieval Jewish philosophers, e.g., Hasdai Crescas, by and large reacted negatively to his rigorously rationalistic positions. Especially with the decline of Aristotelianism within the philosophical world, both Jewish and Christian, he was either criticized sharply or simply ignored. See also ARISTOTLE , AVERROES , JEWISH PHILOSOPHY , MAIMONIDES , PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGIO. J.Ste.