Volume 36, 1998
Philosophy of Religion
Aharon Shear-Yashuv
Pages 187-192
Jewish Philosophers on Reason and Revelation
Are reason and revelation different sources of truth? Do they contradict or complement each other? The present article tries to give an answer to these ancient questions from a Jewish pluralistic point of view. I describe the essential views of the most important representatives of the two main schools of Jewish thought: the rationalists Maimonides, Moses Mendelssohn, and Hermann Cohen, and the antirationalists Judah Halevi and Solomon Levi Steinheim. I show that even the antirationalists use the tools of rationalism, by which Talmudic-rabbinic thought is characterized, in an attempt to show that they are not irrationalists. The comparison of this attitude with the general philosophic tradition shows that Aristotle’s notion of potential knowledge is closer to Jewish thought than Plato’s view of recollection.