A Jewish scholar at the Collège de France: Salomon Munk’s letter exchange with Victor Cousin

Jewish scholars who studied the history of the reception of Arabic and Islamic sources in the Latin Middle Ages made possible in the nineteenth century a radical paradigm’s shift in the history of Western philosophy. A few centuries after Mantino’s translation of Averroes (Ibn-Rushd), Salomon Munk translated Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed and Salomon Ibn Gabirol’s Source of Life from the Judeo-Arabic into French. Munk was one of the first scholars in the first half of nineteenth century to feel the urge to focus on the importance of the Jewish and Islamic contribution to the European history of philosophy, but most of all, as a disciple of Leopold Zunz, founder of the movement of the Science of Judaism, his scientific interest was rooted in his desire to improve the lives and careers of his fellow Jews in European universities.