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Delmedigo, Elijah

Born: c. 1455

Died: 1492/3

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Abstract

Elijah Delmedigo is one of the most representative Jewish philosophers of the Italian Renaissance. As a staunch follower of Averroes, he played a key role in disseminating Averroes’ ideas among early modern scholars and philosophers through commentaries, quaestiones, and various translations from Hebrew into Latin. Between 1481 and 1486, he was among the Jewish collaborators of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola and assisted him in his investigations in Aristotelian and Averroistic philosophy. Delmedigo is known mainly for his short treatise Beḥinat ha-Dat (The Examination of Religion), a philosophical-religious work that influenced, among others, Spinoza. In it he reinterpreted some of the key issues in Averroes’ Decisive Treatise in the light of Jewish context.

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Correspondence to Giovanni Licata .

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Licata, G. (2018). Delmedigo, Elijah. In: Sgarbi, M. (eds) Encyclopedia of Renaissance Philosophy. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02848-4_40-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02848-4_40-1

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Chapter history

  1. Latest

    Delmedigo, Elijah
    Published:
    26 September 2019

    DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02848-4_40-2

  2. Original

    Delmedigo, Elijah
    Published:
    09 May 2018

    DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02848-4_40-1