Guttmann, Jacob
GUTTMANN, JACOB
GUTTMANN, JACOB (1845–1919), historian of Jewish philosophy. Born in Beuther (Bytom), Silesia, Guttmann studied at the University of Breslau, and at the Jewish Theological Seminary of that city. His doctoral thesis dealt with the relation between Spinoza and Descartes (De Cartesii Spinozaeque philosophiis, 1868). He served as a rabbi in Hildesheim from 1874 to 1892, and in Breslau from 1892 until his death. From 1910 he was president of the German Rabbinical Assembly (Rabbinerverband). Guttmann published a number of monographs, each of which gives a detailed exposition of the doctrine and sometimes of the sources of some medieval Jewish philosophers. These monographs are Die Religionsphilosophie des Abraham Ibn Daud aus Toledo (1879); Die Religionsphilosophie des Saadja (1882); and Die Philosophie des Salomo Ibn Gabirol (1889). His study of Isaac Israeli appeared in Baumker's Beitraege zur Geschichte der Philosophie des Mittelalters (vol. 10 no. 4, 1991). He also published important works dealing with the relation between Christian scholasticism and medieval Jewish philosophy. One of these, entitled Das Verhaeltnis des Thomas zum Judentum und zur juedischen Literatur (1891), studies the extent of the influence of Maimonides on Thomas Aquinas. In Die Scholastik des 13. Jahrhunderts in ihrem Beziehungen zum Judentum und zur juedischen Literatur (1902), Guttmann discussed the influence of Maimonides, Gabirol, and Isaac Israeli upon William of Aurenge, Albertus Magnus, Duns Scotus, Roger Bacon, and others. Maimonides' influence on Christian thought is also discussed in "Der Einfluss der maimonidischen Philosophie auf das christliche Abendland," one of the two articles contributed by Guttmann to the volume Moses ben Maimon (1914), of which he was coeditor; the other one, entitled "Die Beziehungen des Religionsphilosophie des Maimonides zu den Lehren seiner juedischen Vorgaenger," dealt with the relation between Maimonides and earlier Jewish philosophers.
add. bibliography:
J. Guttmann (ed.), Fest- und Sabbath-Predigten von Prof. Dr. Jacob Guttmann (1926); M. Brann, in: mgwj, 64 (1920), 1–7; I. Heinemann, ibid., 250–72; Festschrift zum siebzigsten Geburtstag Jacob Guttmanns (1915), incl. bibl. to date; G. Hasselhoff, "The Rediscovery of Maimonidean Influence on Christianity in the Works of Moritz Steinschneider, Manuel Joel, Joseph Perles and Jacob Guttmann," in: G. Hasselhoff and O. Fraise (eds.), Moses Maimonides (1138–1204) – His Religious, Scientific, and Philosophical Wirkungsgeschichte in Different Cultural Contexts (2004), 449–78.
[Shlomo Pines /
Yehoyada Amir (2nd ed.)]