PINES, SHLOMO

PINES, SHLOMO (Solomon; 1908–1990), historian of philosophy and science. Born in Paris, Pines taught at the Institut d'Histoire des Sciences et des Techniques de l'Université de Paris from 1937 to 1939. He settled in Ereẓ Israel in 1940. From 1948 to 1952 he served in the Middle East division of the Israel Ministry for Foreign Affairs. In 1952 he began teaching at the Hebrew University and in 1961 Pines became professor of general and Jewish philosophy. He was a fellow of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, and in 1968 received the Israel Prize. He served as coeditor of the Corpus Commentariorum Averrois in Aristotelem of the Medieval Academy of America. The 20th volume of the philosophic journal Iyyun (1969) was dedicated to him on the occasion of his 60th birthday. Pines wrote in the fields of Islamic philosophy and science, the Greek antecedents of Islamic philosophy and science, and Jewish philosophy. In his first book, Beitraege zur islamischen Atomenlehre (1936), he analyzed the atomic theories of the Muslim theologians. He wrote several detailed analyses of the thought of Abu al Barakāt ben Ali al-Baghdādī Hibat Allah , a hitherto barely known critic of Islamic Aristotelianism. In the field of Jewish philosophy he published a new English translation of Maimonides' Guide of the Perplexed (1963) with an introduction tracing Maimonides' philosophic sources. In his Scholasticism after Thomas Aquinas and the Teachings of Hasdai Crescas and his Predecessors (1967) he proposed the thesis that late medieval Jewish philosophers, such as levi b. gershom , Jedaiah b. Abraham Bedersi (ha-Penini) , and hasdai crescas , were familiar with the philosophic and scientific doctrines of the late medieval Christian scholastics. In "Spinoza's Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, Maimonides, and Kant" (in: Scripta Hierosolymitana, 20 (1968), 3–54) he discusses the interrelation of Maimonides and Spinoza. He also published A New Fragment of Xenocrates (1961). -BIBLIOGRAPHY: For further information on his writings between 1957 and 1968 see Reshimat ha-Pirsumim ha-Madda'iyyim shel Ḥavrei ha-Makhon le-Madda'ei ha-Yahadut (1969), 82–84. (Yehuda Landau / Arthur Hyman)