JTPR Volume 3: Isaac Polqar
Racheli Haliva
Isaac Polqar – A Jewish Philosopher or a Philosopher and a Jew? Philosophy and Religion in Isaac Polqar’s ʿEzer ha-Dat and Tešuvat Epiqoros
Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter, 2020
To date, scholars have skilfully discussed aspects of Polqar’s thought, and yet none of the existing studies offers a comprehensive examination that covers Polqar’s thought in its entirety. This book aims to fill this lacuna by tracing and contextualizing both Polqar’s Islamic sources (al-Fārābī, Avicenna, and Averroes) and his Jewish sources (Maimonides and Isaac Albalag).
The study brings to light three of Polqar’s main purposes; (1) seeking to defend Judaism as a true religion against Christianity; (2) similarly to his fellow Jewish Averroists, Polqar wishes to defend the discipline of philosophy. By philosophy, Polqar means Averroes' interpretation of Aristotle. As a consequence, he offers an Averroistic interpretation of Judaism and becomes one of the main representatives of Jewish Averroism; (3) defending his philosophical interpretation of Judaism.
From a social and political point of view, Polqar's unreserved embrace of philosophy raised problems within the Jewish community; he had to refute the Jewish traditionalists’ charge that he was a heretic, led astray by philosophy.
The main objective guiding this study is that Polqar advances a systematic naturalistic interpretation of Judaism, which in many cases does not agree with traditional Jewish views.
Open Access (Link)
https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783110569599/html