Philosophical treatise: Fountain of Life (Fons Vitae)

Overview
Solomon ibn Gabirol’s Fountain of Life (Fons Vitae), composed in eleventh-century al-Andalus and preserved in a later Latin version under the name Avicebron, is a sustained Neoplatonic inquiry into the structure of reality. Cast as a dialogue between a master and a disciple, it seeks the source from which all being flows and the mode by which the many proceed from the One. Its central thesis is universal hylomorphism: every created substance, not only bodies but also intelligences and souls, is composed of matter and form. Only the First Principle, God, is absolutely simple and beyond composition. The flow of being issues from the divine through a mediating Will, the “fountain” that gives both actuality to forms and receptivity to matter across all orders of existence.

Structure and Method
The work unfolds in five books that ascend from definitions to causes. Beginning with the analysis of matter and form in the sensible realm, the dialogue shows that composition is not confined to bodies. It then extends the argument to immaterial substances, establishing that intellectual natures also require a receptive principle to receive form. Subsequent stages identify universal matter and universal form, articulate their dependence on a higher cause, and culminate in the doctrine of the divine Will as the immediate source of emanation and order. Scriptural appeals are absent; the argument proceeds by metaphysical analysis, causal regress, and the purification of concepts as the mind rises from the composite to the simple.

Metaphysical Scheme
At the summit stands God, utterly simple, unknowable in essence, and beyond all genus and difference. From God proceeds Will, through which the multiplicity of forms and the potency of matter are distributed. Below this first procession lie universal form and universal matter, the supreme created principles that ground every subsequent level: separate intellects, souls, natures, and, finally, bodies. The procession is not a temporal sequence but an order of dependence. Each lower rank participates less perfectly in form and is more individuated by matter, while each higher rank approaches simplicity without breaching the unbridgeable transcendence of the First.

Universal Hylomorphism
Ibn Gabirol redefines matter as a metaphysical receptivity, an appetite or desire (“concupiscentia”) that longs for form. Because any created nature is limited and thus in potency to further perfection, even spiritual substances must contain a “matter” proportioned to their level. This matter is not extended or quantitative; it is the principle by which a spiritual substance can receive, be specified, and be differentiated from others of its kind. Form, in turn, is the determining act that gives being according to rank. Universal hylomorphism explains individuation, change, and hierarchical diversity across the entire cosmos while preserving the absolute simplicity of the First Cause.

Will and Emanation
Will mediates between the First and the created order. It is by Will that form flows and matter is capacitated at every level. The image of a spring captures this: the First is the hidden source; Will is the fountainhead; the orders of being are rivers and streams. Will does not multiply God; rather, it names the mode by which the simple cause communicates without division. Through Will, universal form informs universal matter; through their union, the intelligible and sensible worlds are articulated in descending degrees.

Knowledge and Return
Human knowing mirrors the ontological ascent. The intellect begins from forms in matter, abstracts them, and rises to consider form as such, universal matter, and finally the causal role of Will. The First remains beyond comprehension, but its presence is inferred from the order and dependence of all things. Philosophical purification, loosening the mind’s attachment to lower forms of matter, prepares it to apprehend the higher causes by a simple, unified act, achieving a contemplative return to the source from which understanding and being flow.

Legacy
Transmitted into Latin as Fons Vitae, the treatise shaped medieval debates. Franciscans such as Bonaventure drew on its hierarchy and on universal hylomorphism, while Thomas Aquinas and Albert the Great criticized the extension of matter to spiritual substances. Its spare, non-sectarian diction enabled wide reception, yet its core vision remained distinct: a world whose every level, spiritual and corporeal alike, is a composed echo of the overflowing simplicity of the One through the agency of Will.