Saadia ben Yosef (Saadia Gaon)
882–942 · Jewish Thought · Known
Saadia ben Yosef headed the academy at Sura and gave medieval Judaism its first systematic philosophy. Reason and revelation are two harmonious roads to one truth, he argued in the Book of Beliefs and Opinions. He gave rational proofs that a single incorporeal God made the world from nothing, defended free will, and sorted the commandments into those reason can reach on its own and those revelation alone supplies.
Signature
The position Saadia is most identified with in the Profiler:
- Meaning
- strongly leans Inherent
- Beginning of Things
- Creation ex Nihilo
Positions on the 1 axes the sources answer
- Meaning
- strongly leans Inherent (95 on a 0–100 scale from Constructed to Inherent)
19 of 20 axes are left blank: the sources do not answer them, or Saadia 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
- Harmony
What is the highest good? - Good and Evil
- Moral Realism
What is the fundamental nature of good and evil? - End of Things
- Division of Good and Evil
What is the ultimate end of all things? - Ethics Basis
- Divine Command / Natural Law
What is the ultimate basis of ethics? - Agency
- Libertarian Free Will
What is the nature of human agency and freedom? - Beginning of Things
- Creation ex Nihilo
What is the origin of reality? - Time
- Eschatological
What is the fundamental shape of time? - Authority
- Divine Revelation / Sacred Tradition
What is the legitimate source of authority? - Law
- Divine Law / Natural Law
What is the ultimate source of legitimate law? - Death
- Judgement
What happens at death?