‘Everything is in the Hands of Heaven, Except the Fear of Heaven’ (BT Berachoth 33b). Determinism and Freedom in Medieval Jewish Philosophy

The controversial question of the alternative between determinism and free will represents a kind of leitmotif in medieval Jewish philosophy. The advantage of this saying – as some of the most important Jewish Aristotelian thinkers would recognise – is that it overcomes the inconveniences of the extreme positions of strong determinism and strong libertarianism: the former, by denying human freedom, negated the appel of religious tradition to choose good over evil, while the latter, by denying God’s knowledge of details, compromised His perfection. So by keeoung determinism and freedom in a single plexus, the ‘compatibilists’ arrive at the idea that human actions are free, yet ontologically determined, as if freedom were a law of nature to which man is bound