In the Middle Ages there was an approach that combined faith with reason.
In Ibn Pakuda חובות הלבבות Obligations of the Heart you see this right on the first page of the introduction in terms of the important of what Muslims called "theology"["Wisdom of God" literally] . So he is not referring juts to Plato, Aristotle and Plotinus but also to how Muslim scholars developed those ideas. [I imagine he must have been thinking about Al Farabi and Al Kindi.]
Later in Obligations of the Heart in chapter 3 of Shar NaBehina you see the emphasis on Physics [not just the spiritual aspects of Creation like angels.]
This seems to go with the general nature of the approach of Saadia Gaon and later the Rambam.
With the Rambam, the subject becomes a little more clear when he says specifically Physics and Metaphysics as they were understood by the ancient Greeks. [So he is not talking about mysticism.]
Even though learning Torah mainly refers to the Gemara with the Rishonim [Tosphot, Ritva, Rashba, Tosphot HaRosh.] still you see in the medieval sages [mainly from Spain] that also included Physics and Metaphysics in the category of the mitzvah itself.
Physics I think is clear if you look at the subject matter extends to modern Physics. But what about metaphysics?
I think that after the Middle Ages some important advances have been made. On one hand you have Berkeley and general critiques of Aristotle. But what do you do with that? Thomas Reid [the philosopher of common sense] pointed out how absurd Berkley's idealism is and yet admitted that his arguments are close to irrefutable. To deal with this it seems to me it is unavoidable to have to learn Kant and Hegel.
In Ibn Pakuda חובות הלבבות Obligations of the Heart you see this right on the first page of the introduction in terms of the important of what Muslims called "theology"["Wisdom of God" literally] . So he is not referring juts to Plato, Aristotle and Plotinus but also to how Muslim scholars developed those ideas. [I imagine he must have been thinking about Al Farabi and Al Kindi.]
Later in Obligations of the Heart in chapter 3 of Shar NaBehina you see the emphasis on Physics [not just the spiritual aspects of Creation like angels.]
This seems to go with the general nature of the approach of Saadia Gaon and later the Rambam.
With the Rambam, the subject becomes a little more clear when he says specifically Physics and Metaphysics as they were understood by the ancient Greeks. [So he is not talking about mysticism.]
Even though learning Torah mainly refers to the Gemara with the Rishonim [Tosphot, Ritva, Rashba, Tosphot HaRosh.] still you see in the medieval sages [mainly from Spain] that also included Physics and Metaphysics in the category of the mitzvah itself.
Physics I think is clear if you look at the subject matter extends to modern Physics. But what about metaphysics?
I think that after the Middle Ages some important advances have been made. On one hand you have Berkeley and general critiques of Aristotle. But what do you do with that? Thomas Reid [the philosopher of common sense] pointed out how absurd Berkley's idealism is and yet admitted that his arguments are close to irrefutable. To deal with this it seems to me it is unavoidable to have to learn Kant and Hegel.
