Hasdai Crescas
1340-1411 · Jewish Thought · Obscure
Crescas was a Catalan Jewish philosopher whose world took Aristotle on trust, through Maimonides. He argued instead that an actual infinity is possible, that empty space exists, and that space runs on past the outermost sphere of the heavens, claims Spinoza later cited. Religion asks love of God of you, ahead of any feat of intellect, and your choices follow by necessity from causes God set running.
Signature
The position Crescas is most identified with in the Profiler:
- Natural Processes
- leans Purposeful
- Agency
- Hard Determinism
Positions on the 5 axes the sources answer
- Natural Processes
- leans Purposeful (75 on a 0–100 scale from Mechanistic to Purposeful)
- The Divine
- leans Describable (25 on a 0–100 scale from Describable to Indescribable)
- Universals
- leans Realism (25 on a 0–100 scale from Realism to Nominalism)
- Meaning
- strongly leans Inherent (97 on a 0–100 scale from Constructed to Inherent)
- Ethics
- leans Means (75 on a 0–100 scale from Ends to Means)
15 of 20 axes are left blank: the sources do not answer them, or Crescas refused the framing. Nothing is imputed; a blank is not a middling score.
Foundational questions
- Theology
- Non-Trinitarian Monotheism
What is your position on the existence and nature of God or gods? - Highest Good
- Union with God / Virtue
What is the highest good? - Good and Evil
- Moral Realism / Good Real, Evil Privative
What is the fundamental nature of good and evil? - Perception
- Direct Realism
What do we directly perceive? - Knowledge
- Tradition / Pure Reason
What is the ultimate foundation of knowledge? - Ethics Basis
- Divine Command / Natural Law
What is the ultimate basis of ethics? - Agency
- Hard Determinism
What is the nature of human agency and freedom? - Beginning of Things
- Creation ex Nihilo
What is the origin of reality? - Time
- Linear Progressive
What is the fundamental shape of time? - Authority
- Sacred Tradition / Rational Expertise
What is the legitimate source of authority? - Language
- Representation
What is the fundamental nature of language? - Law
- Sacred Law
What is the ultimate source of legitimate law? - Death
- Judgement / Ascent of the Soul
What happens at death? - Role of Emotion
- Evaluative Judgment / Path to the Divine
What is the proper role of emotion? - Human Nature
- Imago Dei
What is human nature? - Primary Bond
- The Divine
What is your primary bond and loyalty?