Alfonso de la Torre (ca.1417–60), a person of somewhat obscure background, wrote Visión delectable de la filosofía artes liberales, metafísica y filosofía moral (or Visión deleytable as Girón-Negrón insists) ca. 1440 at the urging of the prior of Navarre, who was close to the crown prince Carlos de Viana. An unusual philosophical work for a Christian author, it does not conform to standard Scholastic doctrine, but is clearly dependent to a very great extent on the Guide for the Perplexed (Moreh nevukhim) of Maimonides. As such, the work, and this detailed analysis of it, is of particular interest to students of Jewish philosophy. At the outset, let it be said that Girón-Negrón has done a thorough and brilliant job in this book, a revision of his doctoral dissertation. He was aided by Jewish advisors in understanding and translating Hebrew texts, but one assumes that, as is the case with many Spanish scholars, his knowledge of Arabic is his own. He also has done an extensive amount of reading in secondary Jewish literature. (There are some errors, nevertheless; e.g., the philosopher Abraham Bivagch, not “Bibago,” did not engage in a “philosophical discussion” with Juan II of Aragón; rather, it was with an unnamed Christian “sage,” and it was a polemical debate, not a philosophical discussion.)
Luis M. Girón-Negrón, Alfonso de la Torre's "Visión deleytable". Philosophical rationalism and religious imagination in fifteenth century Spain. Brill, Leiden, 2000; 306 pp.
