In hmolscience, Judah Leo Abravanel (c.1465-c.1523) was a Portuguese-born Italian physician-philosopher noted for his c.1510 Dialogues of Love, oft-cited, e.g. Cervantes, Robert Burton, Henry Finck, etc., as one of the first love philosophers, per his philosophical discourses on love. [1]
Name
Leo also known as “Leone Medico” (Doctor Leon), Judah Leo (Finck, 1887), Judah Leon, Leo Hebraeus (Latin), Leão Hebreu (Portugese), León Hebreo (Spanish), Leone Ebreo (Italian), Leo the Hebrew (English), among others — literally meaning “Leo the Jew of the Ab (father) Rabban (priest) El (of God) family” (Ѻ), one of the oldest and most distinguished Jewish families of the Iberian peninsula.
Overview
In circa 1510, Leo published his Dialogues of Love, wherein, in seeking to define love in philosophical terms, he structures his three dialogues as a conversation between two abstract and mostly undeveloped “characters”: Philo, representing love or appetite, and Sophia, representing science or wisdom, in other words, Philo+Sophia (philosophy).
Cervantes, in his first volume of Don Quixote, refers those who wish to acquire some information concerning love to Leo’s Dialogues of Love. [2]
Burton, in the chapter on love, in his Anatomy of Melancholy, quotes freely from this work of Leo, whom he names as one of about twenty-five authors who wrote treatises on love in ancient and medieval times. [2]
References
1. (a) Leo, Judah. (c.1510). Dialogues of Love, composed by Doctor Leon, of Hebrew heritage, who later became Christian (Dialoghi di amore, Composti da Leone Medico, di nazione Ebreo, e di poi fatto cristiano). Italy: Publisher.
(b) Finck, Henry. (1887). Romantic Love and Personal Beauty: Their Development, Causal Relations, Historic and National Peculiarities (Judah Leo, pg. 5). MacMillan.
2. Finck, Henry. (1887). Romantic Love and Personal Beauty: Their Development, Causal Relations, Historic and National Peculiarities (Judah Leo, pg. 5). MacMillan.
External links
● Judah Leon Abravanel – Wikipedia.
