NO PRÓXIMO DIA 26 de Novembro pelas 22 Horas no CLUBE LITERÁRIO DO PORTO
Conferência sobre Leão Hebreu pelo ProF. Doutor João J. Vila-Chã
(English below)

Iehudad Abravanel (Leão Hebreu)

Filho de Isaac Abravanel, nasceu em Lisboa, em 1465, tendo vivido também em Espanha e em Itália. Supõe-se que terá morrido em 1534.

Do ponto de vista da filosofia, notabilizou-se pela elaboração dos Diálogos de Amor, cuja primeira edição saiu postumamente em Roma em 1535. Trata-se de uma «filografia universal» em que a propósito de um dos mais fecundos temas do renascimento, o amor, expõe as grandes linhas do seu pensamento, nos planos da cosmologia, teologia, metafísica, antropologia e estética.

O tema do amor, conservando o carácter caritativo e religioso de que se revestira com St. Agostinho e S. Tomás, conhecera um importante influxo com a tradução dos Diálogos de Platão por M. Ficino, sendo por essa via e não pela tradição rabínica que Leão Hebreu receberá a sugestão platonizante.

O seu conceito de sabedoria foi tributário da atitude dominante na época, convidando à erudição de que a sua obra é expressivo exemplo. Assim, procurou fundir a Bíblia com Platão, Aristóteles, os estóicos e os árabes (sobretudo Averróis e Avicena). Por isso, uma das suas maiores preocupações foi a de revelar a concordância de Platão e Aristóteles com a Bíblia, explicando a divergência entre os dois filósofos da antiguidade com base numa diversidade de informação acerca da Escritura.

Abordou desenvolvidamente o tema das relações entre a razão e a revelação, para defender a tese da supremacia desta, afastando o tema averroísta da dupla verdade, não sem que antes acentuasse a origem racional das ciências particulares. Tributário de uma cosmologia neoplatónica em que todos os seres se hierarquizam segundo uma ordem descendente (de Deus até à matéria primeira) e ascendente (da matéria primeira até Deus), Leão Hebreu concebe o amor como princípio universal, mediante o qual o superior se une com o inferior, o eterno com o corruptível e o universo com o seu criador. O amor é o espírito que penetra o mundo, vivificando-o, bem como o laço que abraça todo o universo, estabelecendo a sua harmonia intrínseca. Pode também conceber-se como causa dos dois percursos referidos, cada um dos quais definindo um semicírculo: tendo a sua origem em Deus, dele descende paternalmente do mais para o menos belo. Inversamente, é também o amor que reduz todo o universo a Deus, numa ordem ascendente que une as criaturas ao Criador.

Sobre este pano de fundo aborda os grandes temas da cosmologia, antropologia e estética. A sua cosmologia é de base qualitativa, dando guarida a complexas teorias astrológicas, pois que se dedica à análise do influxo dos planetas no carácter dos indivíduos e à interpretação astrológica das fábulas mitológicas.

À maneira renascentista e de certas correntes platonizantes, entendeu o mundo como um ser vivo onde distinguiu a parte imaterial da corpórea, e nesta, a região celeste da terrestre. Todavia, procurou evitar o panteísmo defendendo que o efeito carece da perfeição da causa. De facto, Deus surge-lhe como o primeiro ser por cuja participação todas as criaturas existem, agindo sempre por inteira e livre omnipotência. O tema da criação é aliás um dado apriorístico, e por ele se entrega à refutação da tese aristotélica da eternidade do mundo.

No plano antropológico veiculou o tema do homem-microcosmo, em coerência aliás com a sua visão qualitativa do universo. Já no que concerne ao significado da felicidade e beatitude do homem, procurou conciliar a mística tradicional, para a qual o homem se une a Deus pelo coração e não por um acto de inteligência, com a mística intelectualista de Maimónedes, para quem, sendo o conhecimento superior à vontade, a atitude mística e a beatitude suprema consistem essencialmente num acto de meditação. Leão Hebreu sintetiza as duas posições: amor e conhecimento são funções distintas apenas ao nível inferior da materialidade e não ao nível do intelecto puro, pelo que é possível falar num amor intelectual de Deus.

Finalmente, no plano da estética, defendeu que a essência do belo é de natureza espiritual, residindo nas ideias, enquanto pré-notícias divinas das coisas produzidas.

Obras
Diálogos de Amor, texto fixado, anotado e traduzido por Giacinto Manuppella, vols. I e II, Lisboa, 1983 (inclui ampla bibliografia)

Bibliografia
Giuseppe Saitta «La filosofia di Leone Hebreo» in Filosofia Italiana e Humanismo, Veneza, 1928;José Narciso Rodrigues, «A filosofia de Leão Hebreu. O amor e a beleza» in Revista Portuguesa de Filosofia, t. XV, fasc. 4, Braga, 1959, pp. 349-386;José Barata Moura «Amizade humana e amor divino em Leão Hebreu», in Didaskalia, vol. II, fasc. I, Lisboa, 1972, pp. 155-157;Id., «Leão Hebreu e o sentido do amor universal» in Didaskalia,, vol. II, fasc. II, Lisboa, 1972, pp. 375-404; Joaquim de Carvalho, Leão Hebreu Filósofo, in Obras Completas de Joaquim de Carvalho, vol. I, Lisboa, 1978;J. Pinharanda Gomes, A filosofia hebraico-portuguesa, Porto, 1981.

JUDAH ABRABANEL, LEONE EBREO (the HEBREW LION?)

Judah Abrabanel was born in Lisbon, Portugal, sometime between 1460 and 1470. He was the firstborn of Don Isaac Abrabanel (1437-1508), who was an important philosopher in his own right. In addition to their intellectual skills, the Abrabanel family played an important role in international commerce, quickly becoming one of the most prominent families in Lisbon.

Despite the conservative tendencies in the thought of his father, Don Isaac insured that his children received educations that included both Jewish and non-Jewish subjects. Rabbi Joseph ben Abraham ibn Hayoun, the leading rabbinic figure in Lisbon, was responsible for teaching religious subjects (e.g., Bible, commentaries, and halakhic works) to Judah and his brothers. As far as non-Jewish works and subjects were concerned, Judah, like most elite Jews of the fifteenth century, would have been instructed in both the medieval Arabo-Judaic tradition (e.g., Maimonides, Averroes), in addition to humanistic studies imported from Italy.[4]

By profession, Judah was a doctor, one who had a very good reputation and who served the royal court. In 1483, his father was implicated in a political conspiracy against Joao II, the Duke of Braganza, and was forced to flee to Seville, in Spain, with his family. Shortly after his arrival, undoubtedly on account of his impressive connections and diplomatic skills, Isaac was summoned to the court of Ferdinand and Isabella, where he was to become a financial advisor to the royal family. Despite his favorable relationship with them, Isaac was unable to influence them to rescind their famous edict of expulsion – calling on all Jews who refused to convert to Christianity – to depart from the Iberian Peninsula.

Judah seems also to have been well connected at the Spanish court and was one of the physicians who attended the royal family. After the edict of expulsion had been issued, Ferdinand and Isabella requested that he remain in Spain. To do this, however, he still would have had to convert to Christianity. Yet, in order to try and keep Judah in Spain, a plot was hatched to kidnap his firstborn son, Isaac ben Judah. Judah, however, discovered the plot and sent his son, along with his Christian nanny, on to Portugal, where he hoped to meet up with them. Upon hearing that a relative of Isaac Abrabanel had re-entered Portugal, Joao II had the young boy seized and forcefully converted to Christianity. It is uncertain whether or not Judah ever saw or heard from his son again. In a moving poem, entitled Telunah ‘al ha-zeman (“The Travails of Time”), he writes:

Time with his pointed shafts has hit my heart
and split my guts, laid open my entrails,
landed me a blow that will not heal
knocked me down, left me in lasting pain…
He did not stop at whirling me around,
exiling me while yet my days were green
sending me stumbling, drunk, to roam the world…
He scattered everyone I care for northward,
eastward, or to the west, so that
I have no rest from constant thinking, planning –
and never a moment's peace, for all my plans.

Like many of those Jews who refused to convert, Judah and his immediate family, including his father, made their way to Naples. There, Ferdinand II of Aragon, the king of Naples, warmly welcomed the Abrabanel family, owing to its many contacts in international trade. In 1495, however, the French took control of Naples, and Judah was again forced to flee, first to Genoa, then to Barletta, and subsequently to Venice. It seems that he also traveled around Tuscany, and there is some debate as to whether or not he actually met the famous Florentine Humanist, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (it seems unlikely that he did). In 1501, after the defeat of the French in Naples, he was invited back to be the personal physician of the Viceroy of Naples, Fernandez de Córdoba. Among all of these peregrinations, Judah found the time to write (but not publish) his magnum opus, the Dialoghi d'amore. He seems to have died sometime after 1521. Other than these basic facts, we know very little of the life of Judah Abrabanel.

Especially enigmatic are the last years of his life, between 1521 when he was requested to give medical attention to Cardinal San Giorgio until 1535 when Mariano Lenzi published the Dialoghi posthumously in Rome. There is some evidence that Judah moved to Rome near the end of his life; some suggest that he fell in with a Christian group of Neoplatonists. Indeed, the 1541 edition of the work mentions that Judah converted to Christianity (dipoi fatto christiano). This, however, seems highly unlikely as (1) it is not mentioned in the first edition, the one on which all subsequent editions and translations were based, and (2) there is no internal evidence in the Dialoghi to suggest this. In fact, one of the characters in the work implies the exact opposite, stating that “all of us believe in the sacred Mosaic law” (noi tutti che crediamo la sacre legge mosaica).[6] It seems, then, that either a careless or over-zealous editor inserted the phrase “dipoi fatto christiano” into a later edition of the Dialoghi.

Amor intellectualis? Leone Ebreo (Judah Abravanel) and the intelligibility of loveJoao Jose Miranda Vila-Cha, Boston CollegeDate: 1999
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Abstract of dissertation by Joao Jose Miranda Vila-Cha, Boston College(1999)
(escholarship.bc.edu.com)
This dissertation provides an analysis of both the text and the context of the philosophy of love developed by Judah Abravanel, also known as Leone Ebreo (ca. 1460-before 1535). As a member of one of the most prestigious Jewish families of the Renaissance, Leone Ebreo was born and raised in Portugal, found temporary refuge in Spain and, after the exodus of 1492, lived most of his life in Renaissance Italy as a man-in-exile. His Dialoghi d'amore, which were first published in Rome in 1535, are a conversation of and about love between a man and a woman, i.e., Filone (Philo) and Sofia (Sophy). We defend that the work was intended as a parable or diagram about the very nature of Philo-Sophy, and, at the same time, as a profound elaboration of the cosmic or transcendental nature of love itself. The Dialoghi d'amore are, thus, both a dramatic representation of a particular philosophy of love and a demonstration of how philosophy as such constitutes a form of love.
A detailed analysis of Leone Ebreo's thought, both a major example of Renaissance Philosophy and a model of interpretation, will here be the way toward progress in our own philosophical treatment of love and of the ontological condition it manifests. Since they constitute a paradigmatic example of philosophical eclecticism in the Renaissance, the Dialoghi d'amore will be read as the representative encyclopedia about the culture of sixteenth-century Europe that they in fact are.
Through a con-textual reading of Leone Ebreo's work we try to illustrate both the philosophical importance and the existential relevance of a text that, located as it is at a crucial moment of transition between the Middle Ages and the Modern Age, is clearly centered upon the Idea of Love (destined to give way to the more modern Idea of Nature) and, as such, came to play a significant role in the development of European thought and letters.