Joseph Kaspi as a Matchmaker between Philology and Philosophy: Kaspi’s Philosophy-Inspired Linguistics as an Attempt to Overcome the Andalusian Grammatical Tradition

This contribution aims at evaluating to which extent Kaspi got rid of the heavy authority of the Andalusi lore in his description of the Hebrew language. Kaspi’s criticism towards Ibn Janāḥ and David Qimḥi usually focuses on the accusation of neglecting philosophy. However, beyond this philosophical concern and the consecutive bemoaning on the lack of philosophy in Ibn Janāḥ’s and David Qimḥi’s grammatical and lexicographical work, one could perhaps recognize in Kaspi’s grammatical and lexicographical writing a striving towards a general perspective that could make consider this author the harbringer of an almost typological approach whereby Hebrew is described with the tools of general linguistics and not only through the conceptual framework inherited from the Arabic grammatical metalanguage. Such an independence of the grammatical discourse obtained thanks to the injection of philosophical concepts into grammar brought Kaspi to view Hebrew as a virtual structure, not necessarily attested through the sacred texts, and not only as the sum of the data contained in the Bible. Considering Kaspi the precursor of a typological and general approach towards Hebrew could brings toward a reassessment of the opinion according to which Kaspi’s grammatical and lexicographical work allegedly constitutes a dead end in the history of Hebrew grammar.
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1 Cyril Aslanov. Le provençal des Juifs et l’hébreu en Provence: le dictionnaire Šaršot ha-Kesef de Joseph Caspi. Leuven-Paris: Peeters, 2001, 114-118.