Introduction.

Amable Jourdain, in his foundational Researches on the Ancient Latin Translations of Aristotle, once remarked: original French: "Il est assez singulier qu'aucun des historiens de la philosophie n'ait parlé avec détail du 'Liber de causis' et du 'Fons uitae'. Cependant, je le répète, on ne connaîtra sûrement la philosophie du treizième siècle que lorsqu'on aura analysé ces ouvrages." "It is quite singular that none of the historians of philosophy have spoken in detail about the Book of Causes and the Source of Life. However, I repeat, one will surely not know the philosophy of the thirteenth century until these works have been analyzed."^1

It was one of those statements which, arising from an insight gained through comprehensive study of original sources, does not lose its right to serve as a starting point for later research and to indicate the next objectives, despite any exuberance in its expression.

Recalling Jourdain’s words, S. Munk provided proof as early as 1846 that Avicebron—designated by the Scholastics A group of medieval philosophers and theologians who sought to reconcile Christian doctrine with classical philosophy, particularly that of Aristotle. as the author of the Source of Life original Latin: Fons uitae, and whom H. Ritter still called "the enigmatic Avicebron"^2—was "none other than the famous Jewish poet and philosopher Solomon Ibn Gabirol from Malaga, who flourished in the second half of the eleventh century."^3

Ten years later, Munk published the "Source of Life" original German: Lebensquelle in extensive excerpts which the Jewish philosopher Shem-Tov ben Falaquera had extracted around the middle of the thirteenth century from the—as it seems—lost Arabic original...

1 In the second edition (Paris 1843), page 197, note.
2 History of Philosophy, Part VIII (Hamburg 1845), page 94. In the treatise On our Knowledge of Arabic Philosophy and especially on the Philosophy of the Orthodox Arabic Dogmatists (Göttingen 1844, in quarto), page 10, note 2, Ritter remarked that "the deepest darkness is spread" over Avicebron's name and person.
3 Literary Journal of the Orient original German: Literaturblatt des Orients from the year 1846, No. 46, columns 721–727.