A Philosopher-Prophet or an Angel? A Skeptical Reading of Isaac Albalag’s Theory of Prophecy

Abstract:In his Sefer tikun ha-de‘ot, the thirteenth-century Jewish philosopher Isaac Albalag advocates the double truth doctrine, according to which the truth of philosophy and the truth of religion are contradictory yet simultaneously true. To support this doctrine, Albalag offers an unusual conception of prophecy that links prophets to a suprarational mode of apprehension and a domain of reality that contradicts demonstrative truth. Both doctrines clash with the Tikun’s visible Aristotelianism. In this paper, I argue that the double truth doctrine is not an actual dogma, but rather, serves a mere rhetorical-practical purpose. I analyze Albalag’s skeptical critiques of the limitation of the human intellect, showing how these eventually lead to the conclusion that the state of prophecy that lies at the heart of the double truth doctrine is unachievable.