26. Isaac ibn Latif: Treasures of the King
A Sourcebook in Global Philosophy - Mohammed Rustom
James T. Robinson [+]
The University of Chicago Divinity School
Description
The selection included here is from Isaac ben Abraham ibn Latif’s Hebrew philosophical work Treasures of the King. Our text contains a somewhat idiosyncratic enumeration of the sciences, following and influenced by such philosophers as Fārābī but recoding the sciences in relation to biblical verses, especially the beginning of Genesis. In his classification, moreover, we see a strong tendency toward the Platonic and Neoplatonic with the author’s emphasis on the importance of mathematics for metaphysics and with the appearance of two doctrines that are common throughout his writings: the “first created being,” which marks the space between the metaphysical and real worlds; and the doctrine of Will, Universal Matter, and Universal Form (building on the Neoplatonism of Isaac Israeli and Solomon ibn Gabirol).