Why “Philosophy in Islam”? Why not “Islamic Philosophy” or “Arabic Philosophy”? The simple answers to these questions and the far from simple consequences of those answers provide an entry into the rich world of ideas briefly explored in this chapter. The simple answer to the question “Why not ‘Islamic Philosophy’?” is that not all philosophers in lands under Islamic rule in the Middle Ages were Muslim. It is easy to forget how diverse the empire of Islam was and, in particular, that it included numerous lively religious minorities.1 Among philosophers there were:
Muslims, such as al-Farabi,Avicenna (Ibn Sina), and Averroes (Ibn Rushd), some of whom were Sunni, others Shiites or Ismaili, as the Brethren of Purity
Christians, for instance Yahya Ibn ’Ady, a leading disciple of al-Farabi and a well-known Jacobite theologian
Sabians, such as the physician Thabit ibn Qurra, a translator
Mazdaeans or Zoroastrians, such as Mani al-Majusi
Pagans, such as Abu Bakr al-Razi, the famous Rhazes, who denied the very possibility of revelation or prophecy, on the ground that it would favor a particular people and would therefore be incompatible with God’s justice
Jews, such as Ibn Suwar, Halevy, Maimonides, etc.
The great number and importance of Jewish philosophers, including those working in the Latin West after the Reconquista, call for a full chapter devoted to their thought (the chapter following this one), but they, as well as the other non-Muslims listed above, must be considered as participants in a single philosophical conversation carried on from the ninth through the thirteenth century and beyond.
Scholars have sometimes preferred to speak of “Arabic philosophy,” to avoid suggesting that there is an “Islamic” way of philosophizing comparable to the conception of “Christian philosophy” advocated, controversially, by Gilson as a way to capture the spirit of medieval philosophy in the Latin West.2 But there are problems with “Arabic philosophy,” too. Leaving aside the case of Judeo-Arabic (Arabic written in Hebrew characters), we need to recognize that not all philosophical texts were written in Arabic, since Avicenna, among others, penned some important treatises in Persian. Besides, the word Arabic may be construed as referring not only to the language used by the philosophers but also to their ethnic background, and with the exception of al-Kindi and Averroes, few philosophers were Arab. Avicenna and al-Ghazali, for example, were Persian.
Inclusion of the last-named thinker in my census of philosophers points to yet another complication, for al-Ghazali’s chief contribution to philosophy was a powerful critical work, the 'Incoherence of the Philosophers'. This raises the question, what is meant by philosophy? Often, one restricts it to 'falsafa', an Arabic word which simply transliterates the Greek philosophia and immediately points to the discipline’s foreign origin. Most of the falasifa, that is, Hellenized philosophers, claimed membership in a school deriving from Aristotle, and Averroes bitterly criticized Avicenna for distancing himself too much from “the first teacher.” Others, however, such as al-Razi, criticized Aristotle and invoked Plato or Socrates. Moreover, Islamic theology (Kalam) had already elaborated some philosophical concepts and an ontology – it had developed philosophical reflections, even if its practitioners did not want to be equated with the 'falasifa'. Ghazali objects vigorously to the falasifa’s exaggerated claims to having apodeictic demonstrations of the existence or nature of God, but his objections were themselves so philosophically acute that Averroes felt called to refute as many of them as he could (while conceding the validity of others). It has been well argued that there is much genuine and original philosophy in Kalam and that Avicenna had more influence on Ghazali than has previously been thought.3
“Philosophy in Islam” thus includes the ideas of non-Muslims, non-Arabs, and many thinkers who did not wish to be known as philosophers – and it is none the poorer, philosophically, for all that. It deserves further emphasis here that even those who called themselves 'falasifa' were not grounded exclusively in Aristotle and Neoplatonism (or in Neoplatonic texts falsely attributed to Aristotle, such as the Proclean Liber de causis and the Plotinian Aristotle’s 'Theology' 4). There were other Greek sources, including Christian ones, such as Philoponus’s arguments against the eternity of the world. Little is known about how Stoicism came to influence the 'falasifa', but it clearly did. The same goes for the philosopher-physician Galen, who influenced many 'falasifa' who were also physicians, such as al-Razi,Avicenna, Ibn-Tufayl, and Averroes. And Syriac and Persian sources are not to be ignored, although the great translation movement at the time of the early Abbasids certainly concentrated on Greek texts.5
With regard to these, however, it must be noted, there is still considerable uncertainty as to what philosophical thinkers in Islam actually had before them. It is not always clear whether we are dealing with translations of a full work or simply of some kind of summary. We have an Arabic version of Galen’s'Summary of Plato’'s “Timaeus” but do not know of a full translation of the 'Timaeus' itself. It is uncertain whether there existed a full translation of Plato’s Laws.6 There is a longstanding dispute as to whether Aristotle’s 'Politics' was translated into Arabic, and even, as in the case of Aristotle’s 'Nicomachean Ethics', if a full translation existed, we do not know how much and when it circulated (al-Kindi’s references to the work are rather vague, for example).7
A final remark to conclude this explication of “philosophy in Islam”: although the scope of this chapter will be limited arbitrarily almost entirely to philosophers up to and including Averroes (d. 1198), it must be understood that the supposed death of philosophy in Islamic lands after Averroes is a myth. An Avicennian tradition, the 'Philosophy of Illumination', introduced by Suhrawardi (1154–91), has been maintained up to the present, particularly in Iran, with philosophers such as al-Tusi (1201–74), Mir Damad (1543–1631), and Mulla Sadra (1571/2–1641).8 Recently, scholars have edited post-medieval philosophical texts from other areas of the Islamic world, such as the Ottoman Empire, in which, for instance, several scholars wrote Tahafut, that is, 'Incoherence of the Philosophers' treatises along the same lines as Ghazali’s. 'The 1533 Incoherence' of Kemal Pasazade (also known as Ibn Kemal) takes into account the arguments of Ghazali, Averroes (contrary to the claim that Averroes had no impact on philosophers in Islam), and of a previous Ottoman scholar, Hocazade.9 For medievalists, of course, philosophy in Islam in the Middle Ages is by itself sufficiently engrossing to reward study by further generations of scholars, but the philosophical-critical conversation with which we are concerned in this chapter continued beyond our period into the present.
Philosophy, Religion, and Culture
It is commonly thought that there was in the Middle Ages (and perhaps still is) a fundamental conflict between philosophy and the religion of Islam. It is clear from what we have already seen of the presence of philosophical thought even in the critics of 'falsafa' that the idea of a simple opposition is a misconception. It would be equally a misconception, however, to imagine that there was a single dominant positive idea of what philosophy and religion have to do with one another. Rather, we find a variety of thoughtful and imaginative explorations of the relationship. The fact that none of the discussions we shall consider was strictly homologous with anything in the Latin-West makes these discussions more, not less, fruitful for cross-cultural understanding.
The importance of cultural context can hardly be exaggerated. Where Christianity came as a new religion into a Graeco-Latin civilization in which the classical philosophical schools were well represented, the situation was just the opposite in Islam. There philosophy came on the scene in the ninth century as an alien import, with the task of making a place for itself in a civilization formed at its deepest levels, both politically and culturally, by the Qur’an and the law based on it. One of the first debates involving 'falsafa' centered on whether logic itself was truly universal or simply arose from Greek grammar. Translators and most of the first defenders of 'falsafa' were not Arabic speakers.
Their broken Arabic and their strange coinages to render Greek technical terms puzzled their Muslim interlocutors, so proud of their language and its importance as the language of the revelation to Muhammad. Many regarded the Qur’an itself as uncreated, a claim grounded in its inimitability, the impossibility of composing verses of such literary artistry. The debate was complicated by the fact that the 'falasifa' adopted the view of the Alexandrian School that Aristotle’s Rhetoric and Poetics are integral parts of logic, rather than of practical philosophy. They equated the arguments of the specialists in Kalam with dialectic and those of the Qur’an with rhetoric and poetical arguments.10 Once the 'falasifa' began to use a more palatable kind of Arabic and to bring stylistic improvements to the translations, some of the misunderstandings dissipated, and logic, often compared to mathematics, was clearly distinguished from Greek grammar, acknowledged as universally valid, and later on found a home in the curriculum of the schools of law. The debate raises vividly the question of what is universally valid in philosophy and what is culturally determined. If logic could be regarded for a while as peculiarly Greek, we should not wonder at the problematic status of metaphysics for some of the thinkers we shall be considering.
As concerns the broader issues in the relation of philosophy with religion, we will do well to begin at the end of our period, with Averroes (1126–98), for an incomplete grasp of his position is a prime source of the belief in a simple and basic philosophico-religious conflict. A fuller understanding of his views will help us to place a number of earlier discussions in context.
Judge Averroes
There is an image of Averroes as a defender of implicitly antireligious Free Thinking and as a forerunner of the Enlightenment11 that is based largely on a partial reading of his 'Decisive Treatise, Determining the Nature and Connection between Philosophy and Religion'.12 In this work Averroes does indeed praise philosophical insight as the highest form of knowledge. The liberal image is severely cracked, however, if not entirely shattered, when one reads, in Averroes’ refutation of al-Ghazali’s Incoherence of the Philosophers, that “heretics are to be killed.”13 Is there an inconsistency? Not at all. Averroes was not simply a philosopher physician but also a judge and, therefore, an expert on Islamic law. The treatise is presented as an official fatwa or juridical decision determining the canonical status of philosophy. “The purpose of this treatise,” he declares at the outset, “is to examine from the standpoint of the study of the law [shari’a], whether the study of philosophy ['falsafa'] and logic is allowed by the law, or prohibited or commanded either by way of recommendation or as obligatory.”
Averroes’ judgment is that the studies in question are obligatory for an intellectual elite but must be forbidden to ordinary believers.
The fatwa presentation and no fewer than nine references to al-Ghazali (1058–1111) show clearly that the latter’s 'Incoherence of the Philosophers' had had a serious impact throughout the Islamic world. Before providing a lengthy and detailed refutation of al-Ghazali’s arguments' in his own 'Incoherence of the Incoherence, Averroes here offers a more popular defense of logic and philosophy, but it is a defense couched in terms of Islamic law. He astutely begins with logic, for al-Ghazali himself had defended logic and claimed in his intellectual autobiography that the logic of the falasifa was superior to the reasoning of the specialists in Islamic law, and he is said to have convinced the schools of law to include logic in the curriculum.
But Averroes carries the justification of logic further. He argues for its usefulness as an instrument for falsafa, which he defines as “nothing more than the study of existing beings and reflections on them as indications of the Artisan,” that is, God, as the Creator. 'Falsafa' thus becomes theodicy, aiming to prove the existence of the creator and to provide a better understanding of God. Averroes thereby seeks to counter al-Ghazali’s charge that the falasifa do not really prove that the world has an Artisan, since they have reduced that word to a metaphor (Incoherence, second and third discussions). A crucial step in Averroes’ acculturation of philosophy to the requirements of Islam rests on a shift in terminology in the words translated in English as philosophy.
Elaborating a parallel between aspects of Islamic law and philosophy,Averroes substitutes “wisdom” (hikmat) for 'falsafa'. In the Qur’an one of the beautiful names of God is “The Wise,” and, therefore, “wisdom” has a qur’anic ring to it, whereas 'falsafa' connotes something alien. Averroes then calls “philosophy” (still hikmat) the art of arts. He concludes the first section of the treatise by claiming that for every Muslim there is a way to truth suitable to his nature, first quoting Qur’an XVI 125: “Summon [them] to the way of your Lord by wisdom and by good preaching, and debate with them in the most effective manner.” The root of the word for “debate,” jadal, is used to refer to Aristotle’s Topics, a work concerned with dialectical arguments based on generally received opinions. Averroes will equate this “debate” with Kalam, or Islamic theology. He is then able to present philosophy as one way of fulfilling the qur’anic injunction – a way that is appropriate, and indeed obligatory, for certain individuals:
"Thus people in relation to Scripture fall into three classes. One class is those who are not people of interpretation at all: these are the rhetorical class. They are the overwhelming mass, for no man of sound intellect is exempted from this kind of assent. Another class is the people of dialectical interpretation: these are the dialecticians, either by nature alone or by nature and habit. Another class is the people of certain interpretation: these are the demonstrative class, by nature and training, i.e., in the art of philosophy [hikmat]. This interpretation ought not to be expressed to the dialectical class, let alone the masses. ([161]" 65)
By thus elliding some of the distinctions between qur’anic language and technical Greek philosophical words and concepts, Averroes is able to claim at the end of the Treatise that “philosophy [hikmat but now intended as synonymous with falsafa] is the friend and milksister of... law [shari’a].”
Too many interpreters, unaware of these shifts in terminology and of cultural differences, have assumed that Averroes raised questions about the relation between philosophy and religious faith similar to those posed by the so-called “Averroists” in thirteenth-century Paris. Averroes does not in fact refer to religion but rather to the shari’a or Islamic law, and the relation he asserts between philosophy and this law is one of accord, but only for a small elite.
Prophecy Interprets Philosophy (culturally): al-Farabi
Al-Farabi, the “second teacher” (after Aristotle) and an important participant in the early debate about the status of logic,14 pays lip service to Greek terminology in speaking of the “Ideal or Virtuous City,” but indicates that city may mean a universal empire with great ethnic, linguistic, and religious diversity. He is fully aware that Islamic rule aims at being universal and that a city-state does not fit the current political and economic situation.15
The absolutely perfect human societies are divided into nations. A nation is differentiated from another by two natural things – natural make-up and natural character – and by something that is composite (it is conventional but has a basis in natural things), which is language – I mean the idiom through which men express themselves. As a result some nations are large and others are small. (The Political Regime [97] 32)
Al-Farabi is a radical: falsafa, which for him reached its peak with Aristotle, is absolutely and universally true, but accessible only to a small intellectual elite. The masses therefore need something they can relate to, that is, religion, which must be adapted to particular cultures. Although there is only one philosophical truth – and in the Alexandrian tradition he claims that Plato and Aristotle are basically in agreement – there must be a plurality of true religions, varying from culture to culture, each of them conveying philosophical concepts by means of appropriate symbols. He explains, for instance, that darkness or chaos in religious texts represents nonbeing or prime matter, the Agent Intellect is represented by the angel Gabriel, and so forth. Philosophy alone uses apodeictic demonstrations, Kalam uses dialectical arguments, and religion uses rhetoric and poetry.16 Hence, in the 'Book of Letters' and in 'The Attainment of Happiness' he writes that falsafa is prior in time (sic) to religion [“din,” closer to our conception of religion than Averroes’ shari’a].17
Religions are culturally determined imitations of true Aristotelian philosophy. Prophecy is simply an overflow of intelligibles on the imagination and, therefore, subordinated to philosophy. A perfect ruler will be not only a philosopher but also a lawgiver and a prophet or will work in connection with a prophet, to translate philosophical ideas into a more accessible language for the various cultures. Whether al-Farabi actually held these views or used them to flatter and attract prospective falasifa may be debated, but he was much respected and died of old age, in spite of his not so hidden assertions of the primacy of philosophy.18
The 'falasifa'’s overemphasis on “apodeictic demonstration” and their claim that they alone practiced it explains why al-Ghazali delighted in showing that most of their arguments were not apodeictic at all, particularly in metaphysics, but on the contrary manifested an uncritical acceptance of Greek philosophic stances. His forcefulness matches that of al-Farabi’s bitter attacks against his intellectual rivals, the specialists in Kalam, whom he ridiculed.
Philosophy Culminates in Prophecy: Avicenna
Al-Farabi’s rationalism and his subordination of religion to the role of local interpreter of Greek philosophy strongly influenced Averroes, but it put 'falsafa' on the margins of Islamic culture. Avicenna (980–1037), as a Persian writing in both Arabic and Persian, engaged positively with the culture of Islam. He was even involved at times in practical politics as vizier of Shams al-Dawla.
Avicenna knew Aristotle’s 'Metaphysics' by heart, but he could not understand it, he tells us, until a little treatise by al-Farabi revealed to him that metaphysics was not focused on theology, as he had believed, but rather on being qua being.19 But then his own profound thinking led him to modify or abandon some of Aristotle’s teachings.
Avicenna “completed” Aristotle’s understanding of physical causes as causes of motion preceding their effects with an understanding of true or metaphysical causes, which are simultaneous with their effects but operate necessarily and by emanation.20 The Agent Intellect, the tenth separate intelligence, is not only a source of intellectual illumination but also literally a “giver of forms” for sublunary beings and grounds this causal simultaneity. In other words, Avicenna accepted the challenge to rethink some of the inherited Greek “orthodoxy.” Though still philosophizing in the spirit of Aristotle,21 he took into account Neoplatonic ideas, as well as concepts elaborated in Kalam, and he paid more attention to the circumstances of his own place and time. This may explain why his texts have remained influential in Islamic culture until today, especially in Iran.
Avicenna’s best-known metaphysical text, the 'Metaphysics' of the Shifa’, ends in Book X, chapters 2–5, with reflections on political philosophy.22 Here he presents prophecy as the culmination of intellectual development, a grasp of intelligibles, which no longer requires discursive reasoning. In chapter 2 he argues for the necessity of prophecy. Human beings need to formassociations, which require a Lawgiver who must convince the masses, and must therefore be a human being (an invidious contrast is intended with the Christian conception of Christ as Son of God). The Lawgiver must be a prophet:
"A prophet, therefore, must exist and he must be a human. He must also possess characteristics not present in others so that men could recognize in him something they do not have and which differentiates him from them. Therefore he will performthe miracles...When this man’s existence comes about, he must lay down laws about men’s affairs... The first principle governing his legislation is to let men know that they have a Maker, One and Omnipotent ... that He has prepared for those who obey Him an afterlife of bliss, but for those who disobey Him an afterlife of misery. This will induce the multitude to obey the decrees put in the prophet’s mouth by God and the angels. But he ought not to involve them with doctrines pertaining to the knowledge of God, the Exalted, beyond the fact that He is one, the truth, and has none like Himself. To go beyond this... is to ask too much. This will simply confuse the religion they have." ([114] 100)
Yet, to incite promising youth to pursue philosophy, the prophet may insert symbols and signs that might stimulate a true philosophical awakening, as is the case in the Qur’an.
Chapter 3 gives a rather rationalistic justification of Islamic prescriptions about worship, such as ritual purification for the official prayers, and the pilgrimage. Chapter 4 rationally justifies other Islamic practices, such as almsgiving, care for the poor, the handicapped and the sick, as well as justifications of marriage customs and the dependency of women on men, since women “are less inclined to obey reason.” (It is interesting to note that on such details Avicenna distances himself from al-Farabi, who followed closely Plato’s 'Republic' in affirming a quasi-equality of women and also in commanding that the chronically ill and the handicapped not be taken care of. Averroes will follow al-Farabi in his neglect of those who are not “useful” to the city, as well as in affirming that “the woman shares in common with the man all the work of the citizens,” even if in his own society “they frequently resemble plants,” as is the case in bad cities. Their being a burden upon the men is one of the causes of urban poverty.23)
The concluding chapter of Avicenna’s work concerns the Caliph and political organization. Avicenna obviously considers Muhammad the greatest prophet – not simply one among many, as he was for al-Farabi – and he gives rational justification here for the most basic principles of shari’a. Avicenna’s account of political philosophy and religion is much more Islamicized than al-Farabi’s. His position is still fairly rationalist, however, as a small treatise on prayer24 and the 'Proof of Prophecies'25 clearly attest. A genuinely mystical interpretation of his thought is doubtful.
Exile
Al-Farabi, Avicenna, and al-Ghazali worked in the East, but 'falsafa' began to spread to the West of the Islamic lands, to “Andalusia” in particular, where the political situation was both confused and fragmented. In al-Andalus the falasifa renounced the Islamicized Platonic ideal of the philosopher-ruler-lawgiver-prophet and advocated “exile” from the “city,” perhaps because of the political instability.
Ibn Bajjah, or Avempace (d. 1138), another physician-philosopher, wrote 'The Governance of the Solitary'.26 Abandoning al-Farabi’s dream of the virtuous or perfect state, he focuses on the place of the philosopher in an imperfect city.
"It is clear from the situation of the solitary that he must not associate with those whose end is corporeal nor with those whose end is the spirituality that is adulterated with corporeality. Rather, he must associate with those who pursue the sciences. Now since those who pursue the sciences are few in some ways of life and many in others, there even being ways of life in which they do not exist at all, it follows that in some of the ways of life the solitary must keep away from men completely so far as he can, and not deal with them except in indispensable matters and to the extent to which it is indispensable for him to do so; or emigrate to the ways of life in which the sciences are pursued – if such are to be found. This does not contradict what was stated in political science and what was explained in natural science. It was explained there [that is, in natural science] that man is political by nature, and it was explained in political science that all isolation is evil. But it is only evil as such; accidentally, it may be good, which happens with reference to many things pertaining to nature. ('The Governance of the Solitary" [361] 132)
Separate islands
Ibn Tufayl (c. 1116–85) wrote a famous philosophical novel preceded by a technical introduction, 'Hayy ibn Yaqzan', or 'The Living, Son of the Wakeful' (“Wakeful” here may refer to the Agent Intellect). In this charming tale Hayy (the Living), having come somehow to a deserted island as a newborn, is raised by a doe. Without contact with other human beings, he discovers by himself not only how to survive but, later, all the principles of falsafa. He deduces the existence of God and then, at first, tries to imitate the celestial bodies. He emulates their provision of light and warmth by taking care of the animals; their brightness by cleanliness, perfumes, and dazzling clothes; their circular movements by spinning himself until he loses consciousness, as the “whirling” dervishes or Sufi do, and running around his own house, in a transposition of the pilgrimage ritual around Abraham’s house at Mecca; and their contemplation by concentrating his thoughts on the necessary being, or God. Bit by bit, however, he realizes that his environmental concerns and his interest in cleanliness are distracting him from the contemplation of God and his own essence, and so he abandons them and reaches a state that cannot be expressed.
On a neighboring island, a man named Asal, a believer in one of the true religions, decides to become a hermit and moves to Hayy’s island, which he assumes to be deserted. After Hayy encounters him and quickly learns to speak, Asal discovers that Hayy has reached a much higher level of contemplation than he has himself. On the other hand, Hayy cannot understand why Asal’s religion offers only images and parables of philosophical truths. In order to enlighten the people of the other island, Hayy and Asal travel there, but the more Hayy tries to teach them true philosophy, the more restless they become. Finally, Hayy understands that they are not gifted for philosophy and should for their own good be left in peace in their religion. He returns to his own deserted island with Asal, who, despite his best efforts, never reaches Hayy’s level of contemplation.27
This remarkable tale implies that reason can discover everything on its own, while religions are socially useful for ordinary people but are only pale imitations of 'falsafa'.28 Ibn Tufayl’s views are surprising, since he was court physician and vizier of the Almohad ruler Abu Ya‘qub, to whom he introduced Averroes. Finding Aristotle’s texts difficult, Abu Ya‘qub requested that Averroes write commentaries on them, a request with which Averroes complied monumentally and seminally.
The question of philosophy’s relation to religion is far from central in the philosophical texts produced in medieval Islam. What was written on this question is nevertheless of considerable interest, especially if we avoid the misconception that there was a single view of the matter – or a single pair of violently opposed positions, one philosophical and purely rational, the other religious and unsystematically dogmatic.
Psychology and Metaphysics
Al-Farabi developed a psychology to fit his views on religion and prophecy. For him, there is only one Agent Intellect for the whole of humankind, the tenth emanated intelligence, which he equates with the angel Gabriel, who transmitted the Qur’an to Muhammad. The intelligibles emanate from the Agent Intellect to all human beings, but most of the intelligibles can be acquired only by the few people who are best prepared to receive them, the 'falasifa', of course.
"Those are the first intelligibles which are common to all men, as, for example, that the whole is greater than the part, and that things equal in size to one and the same thing are all equal to one another. The common first intelligibles are of three kinds: (1) the principles of the productive skills, (2) the principles by which one becomes aware of good and evil in man’s actions, (3) the principles which are used for knowing the existents which are not the objects of man’s actions, and their primary principles and ranks: such as the heavens and the first cause. ('On the Perfect State'" [95] 203, 205)
The intelligibles then can overflow on the imagination in the guise of symbols and parables appropriate to the various cultures and languages. Al-Farabi’s subordination of prophecy to philosophy explains his claims that not only the first intelligibles for metaphysics but also those for ethics and the various disciplines come by emanation from the Agent Intellect, whereas al-Ghazali, who has less confidence in the intellect than al-Farabi, attributes the discovery of even the basic principles of astronomy and medicine to prophecy. (Interestingly al-Farabi tells us that his teacher, the Christian Ibn al-Haylan, and his fellow Christians were forbidden to read Aristotle’s 'Posterior Analytics', known in Arabic as 'The Book of Demonstration'.) Emanation of the first intelligibles from the Agent Intellect ensures the validity of the putatively apodeictic demonstrations characteristic of the 'falasifa'. Neoplatonism grounds Aristotelianism.
Avicenna considered it necessary to abandon some of Aristotle’s tenets, not only to develop his account of prophecy, but also to ground his conception of a purely spiritual afterlife and to provide a more sophisticated human and animal psychology for the present life. In his famous De anima of the Shifa’ (Book I, chs. 1–3) he argues that the rational soul is not the form of the body but a full substance on its own. He then constructs a thought experiment – “the flying man” – to prove that self-consciousness is immediate and not a result of reflection. The text reminds us, retrospectively, of Descartes’s 'Cogito'.
"The one among us must imagine himself as though he is created all at once and created perfect, but that his sight has been veiled from observing external things, and that he is created falling in the air or the void in a manner where he would not encounter air resistance, requiring him to feel, and that his limbs are separated from each other so that they neither meet nor touch. He must then reflect as to whether he will affirm the existence of his self. He will not doubt his affirming his self existing, but with this he will not affirm any limb from among his organs, no internal organ, whether heart or brain, and no external thing. Rather, he would be affirming his self without affirming for it length, breadth and depth. And if in this state he were able to imagine a hand or some other organ, he would not imagine it as part of his self or a condition for its existence." ([129] 387)
Avicenna gives a much more detailed account than Aristotle of the inner senses.29 More germane to the themes of the present chapter are his conception of the Agent Intellect and his distinction of four “intellects” within the human soul. With most Greek Aristotelian commentators, he holds that there is only one Agent Intellect for the whole of humankind and follows al-Farabi in claiming that it is the tenth Intelligence, which rules the sublunary world. But within the soul Avicenna posits: (1) a purely potential intellect; (2) an actual intellect, which has received the primary intelligibles (such as the principle of noncontradiction and the notion that a whole is greater than any of its parts) from the Agent Intellect; (3) an habitual intellect, which conserves secondary intelligibles and can use them at will; and (4) the acquired intellect, when it is actually thinking the intelligibles and knows that it is doing so. Since the soul is a spiritual substance for Avicenna, and not, as Aristotle held, a form impressed in matter, it survives the body after death. The afterlife is purely spiritual, but people who have not reached full and immediate self-consciousness, not being able to conceive of themselves without the body, will recreate for themselves an imaginary body, in which they will experience the “physical” rewards or punishments of the afterlife, as they are described in the Qur’an.30
Since Avicenna, contrary to al-Farabi, does not subordinate prophecy to philosophy, he indicates that some individuals have a very powerful potential intellect and can therefore get in touch with the Agent Intellect easily and do not need much instruction or reasoning to acquire new knowledge. Some do not need any discursive process at all, but only intuition, and their habitual intellect becomes a divine or holy intellect, which immediately grasps all intelligibles at the same time. Syllogisms are no longer necessary. In that case these intelligibles overflow into the imagination, which translates them into symbols, parables, and so forth. Such an intellectual faculty is the highest human faculty and the prophet’s privilege.31
It is clear that Avicenna is trying to do more than accommodate Greek philosophy to his political and religious circumstances. He finds food for his own distinctive thought wherever he can. He is famous for arguing in the Metaphysics of the Shifa’ I 5 that being is “the first concept.” In that chapter he holds that the other primary concepts are “thing” (known in Latin as the transcendental res), and “necessary.”32 Aristotle had spoken of some notions as pertaining to all being as such (for example, “one,” “true,” and “good”). Avicenna derived the need for “thing” as a primary concept from the Kalam’s ontological commitments. He argued that the concept was required to ground the distinction between essence and existence, as well as the distinction between the contingent and the necessary-throughitself.33
Since I have relied mostly on the Shifa’, a text clearly in the Aristotelian tradition, for all its originality, I must point to three problems of Avicennian interpretation. First, the Latin versions of Avicenna’s works do not always match the Arabic. This led Rahman to wonder whether Avicenna really claimed that existence is accidental to essence, as Thomas Aquinas understood him to have done.34
Since the Latin manuscripts are often older than those we have in Arabic, the Latin text may sometimes be more correct than the Arabic. Besides, recent studies show that Avicenna’s psychological and epistemological conceptions evolved and that he does not always take the same position in every text.35 Second, Avicenna sometimes speaks of an “Oriental” philosophy, which some hold to be his own philosophy and quite different from his “Aristotelian” texts, while others deny this.36
The third difficulty stems from the fact that at some stage in Avicenna’s career he and other falasifa began to adopt the language of the mystics or Sufi, perhaps to provide some disguise for their unconventional rationalist views. Several small texts were published a century ago as Avicenna’s Mystical Treatises, among them the rather rationalist approach to Islamic prayers we referred to earlier.37 His lasting influence on Latin scholasticism, greater than that of Averroes, certainly comes from his rationalism, but it is a rationalism that modified some Aristotelian tenets by integrating aspects of Neoplatonism with them and that developed theologically fruitful distinctions between essence and existence and between contingency and necessity.38 Avicenna’s distinction between metaphysical and physical causes is at the heart of Duns Scotus’s distinction between essentially and incidentally ordered causes, central to his famous proof for the existence of God.
Al-Ghazali, debunking the 'falasifa'’s claims to apodeictic demonstrations, focused his attack on al-Farabi and Avicenna and their conception of causation. His intellectual autobiography shows that he was fully aware that this was the core issue in his condemnation of two of their central positions: eternal creation and the denial of God’s knowledge of particulars.39 Emanation, which he attacks brilliantly, makes creation an eternal necessity for God. Al-Ghazali insists that only God is a true Agent and that agency requires the ability to distinguish between two indiscernible temporal instants. It therefore requires knowledge of particulars, as well as choice. Whether al-Ghazali, under Avicenna’s influence, allows some efficacy to secondary causes remains a disputed question.40
Strikingly, al-Ghazali spends little time on the falasifa’s views on the intellect, whereas those views were to cause much commotion in thirteenth-century Paris. Al-Ghazali simply indicates that the 'falasifa' fail in their attempt to prove that the human soul is a substance capable of subsisting after death. On this issue he may have been happier with Aristotle’s conception of the human soul as the form of the body, since in Islam resurrection is complete recreation, and there is no conception of a soul surviving the body’s death. Al-Ghazali simply deplores the 'falsafa'’s denial of the resurrection of the body and, therefore, the reality of physical rewards and punishments at the resurrection.
Averroes claims that there is not only a single Agent Intellect for the whole of humankind, but also only one “material” or passive intellect. The so-called “Material Intellect” is in fact immaterial, but in intellection it plays a role similar to that of matter in hylomorphic composition. His position seems to deprive human beings of their own capacity to think and to act freely, since they themselves do not really think, but the common Material and Agent Intellects think in them and feed them intelligibles. Such views caused an uproar at the University of Paris, where some members of the arts faculty adopted them with enthusiasm. In late 1270 Thomas Aquinas felt the need to write his On the Unity of the Intellect Against the Averroists to refute such views and to criticize Averroes’ interpretation of Aristotle as a betrayal. It has recently been argued, however, that some of Aquinas’s criticisms are misguided and that Averroes can in fact give a coherent account of our awareness of our acts of understanding as being our own acts.41 The argument depends on the correct reading of Averroes’ 'Long Commentary on the De anima', which is known only through a medieval Latin translation, although a few fragments of the Arabic have recently surfaced.
It is not easy to determine exactly whatAverroes’ position is on the Material Intellect.42 Not only is the text of the Long Commentary very difficult, but scholars working on the original Arabic text of Averroes’ 'Epitome of the De anima' have shown that in that text he does not claim that there is only one Material Intellect for the whole of humankind. They therefore argue that such a strange position must come from errors in the Latin translation. In fact, there are two versions of the 'Epitome', and more recent research has shown that Averroes revised his text at a later date. It is, therefore, true that Averroes did not at all defend this position in his first version of the 'Epitome', but, later on, he felt the need to develop it. He indicates in his preface to the revised 'Epitome' that his earlier exposition rested more on the commentators than on the text of Aristotle. Once he really focused on Aristotle’s own text, his views changed.43
Even if we limit ourselves to the commentaries on the 'De anima' and do not touch on the various positions defended in other texts,44 there are still some thorny issues. First, it has only slowly been recognized that Averroes changed his mind on various philosophical issues and went back to correct some manuscripts of his own previous works. Second, whether the 'Middle Commentary', which is a paraphrase of Aristotle’s text but includes a long excursus on the Material Intellect, precedes the 'Long Commentary' is disputed.45 The situation may become clearer when R. C. Taylor publishes his English translation of the 'Long Commentary'.46
Ethics
Little scholarly attention has been paid to philosophical ethics in Islam.47 The focus on 'falsafa' as mainly Aristotelian has contributed to this neglect, for although the Nicomachean Ethics and a summary of it known as the 'Summa Alexandrinorum' were translated into Arabic, they did not circulate widely or quickly. Few ethical texts in the Aristotelian tradition have survived, including some known to have been written, such as al-Farabi’s 'Commentary on the Nicomachean Ethics'. Averroes’ 'Middle Commentary' on the Ethics still awaits a complete critical edition. There exist, however, a number of interesting texts from a Hellenistic, more popular tradition of spiritual medicine.
The 'falsafa' tradition was much influenced by the Alexandrian School, which developed a curriculum requiring that students first acquire the habits of character necessary for serious philosophical studies. The 'falasifa' distinguish, therefore, between a “reformation of character” or “spiritual medicine,” as prerequisite to the study of logic and philosophy, and a “scientific ethics” grounded in metaphysics (as we saw in our reflections on Avicenna’s 'Metaphysics of the Shifa'’ X).
Scholars in Hellenistic philosophy have shown that Stoics, Skeptics,and Epicureans wrote “therapies of the soul” intended to cure students’ passions, or at least curb them, in order to liberate the soul for the study of philosophy. Emotions, passions, or desires are considered to be either false beliefs or the effects of such beliefs, and they can therefore be cured or curbed by substituting more appropriate beliefs. Literary artistry makes the arguments more appealing for budding philosophers, and, generally, there is a progression from rhetorical to dialectical and truly philosophical arguments, since stages in the healing process allow for greater and greater philosophical sophistication.48
One of the longest treatises of al-Kindi (c. 801–66) is 'The Art of Dispelling Sorrows', in which he moves from “gentle remedies,” that is, Stoic arguments, to “stronger remedies,” that is, metaphysical Neoplatonic arguments. There are striking similarities to Boethius’s 'Consolation of Philosophy', since both are deeply rooted in the same Hellenistic tradition.49
Al-Razi, the nondenominational Persian philosopher-physician (c. 864–925 or 932), wrote a charming 'Spiritual Medicine', much grounded in Galen, which incites the reader to reform his character and begin studying logic and philosophy.50 A critic of Aristotle, al-Razi took Plato’s views on transmigration literally and elaborated a very original conception of the soul, in which animals are endowed with some sort of reason and choice. This allows al-Razi to elaborate a purely rational normative ethics, based on a consideration of God’s basic attributes of intelligence, justice, and compassion. A detailed environmental ethics is included, as well as a case study of the type, “Who should be saved first?”51 Since God is merciful and tries to diminish pain, al-Razi attacks the ascetic practices of various religions:
"The judgment of intellect and justice being that man is not to cause pain to others, it follows that he is not to cause pain to himself either. Many matters forbidden by the judgment of intellect also come under this maxim, such as what the Hindus do in approaching God by burning their bodies and throwing them upon sharp pieces of iron and such as the Manichaeans cutting off their testicles when they desire sexual intercourse, emaciating themselves through hunger and thirst, and soiling themselves by abstaining from water or using urine in place of it. Also entering into this classification, though far inferior, is what Christians do in pursuing monastic life and withdrawing to hermitages as well as many Muslims staying permanently in mosques, renouncing earnings, and restricting themselves to a modicum of repugnant food and to irritating and coarse clothing. Indeed, all of that is an iniquity towards themselves and causes them pain that does not push away a preponderant pain". ([383] 232)
Al-Razi also accepts the Alexandrian distinction between a prephilosophic “reformation of character” and a scientific ethics based on metaphysics.
Since al-Farabi’s 'Commentary on the Nicomachean Ethics' is lost, we turn to his popular Reminder of the Way to Happiness (not to be confused with 'The Attainment of Happiness'), which advocates character reformation and invites its readers to the study of logic (carefully distinguished from grammar). For al-Farabi there are ethical first intelligibles, such as the existence of human freedom, emanating from the Agent Intellect. In his 'Long Commentary on Aristotle’s 'De Interpretatione', he mounts a scathing critique of specialists in Kalam who, according to him, hold that there is no human freedom.52 Here again, a “scientific ethics” rests on psychology and metaphysics.
Al-Farabi’s Christian disciple, Yahya ibn ’Ady (893–974) also wrote a 'Reformation of Character', which includes barbed attacks against clerics who abuse their flock.53 Trying to defend Christian monks from the attacks of al-Razi and Muslim thinkers who considered celibacy excessively ascetic and detached from community life, he argues that it allows the monks to prepare better apodeictic syllogisms. This surprising view helps us better to understand how much the philosophers emphasized their monopoly on demonstrative reasoning.
Among Muslims, this tradition continues in Ibn Miskawayh (d. 1030). His 'Reformation of Character' reverses the traditional order and begins with a systematic presentation of ethics, much influenced by the 'Nicomachean Ethics', but ends by prescribing medicine for the soul. Its first part lays down a foundation, with a study of the faculties of the soul and reflections on the good and happiness and on virtues and vices. After discussing character and human perfection and its means, Miskawayh surveys in more detail the good and happiness. He focuses the fourth part of his treatise on justice and in the fifth deals with love and friendship.
Finally, medicine for the soul is provided, with references to Galen and al-Kindi. Miskawayh here analyzes different diseases of the soul, such as anger, fear of death, and sadness; determines their causes; and suggests appropriate treatment. His 'Treatise on Happiness' relies heavily on al-Farabi’s Reminder and belongs entirely to the “medicine of the soul” genre.
This tradition imbues al-Tusi’s (d. 1274) Nasirean Ethics, written in Persian.54 No religious community was immune from the genre: the Muslim religious writer, Ibn Hazm of C´ ordoba (994–1064), wrote a 'Book on Character and Behavior', and the Jewish writer Ibn Paqudah (c. 1050–80) penned a 'Guide to the Duties of the Heart' inspired by this tradition.
Avicenna, though subscribing to the Alexandrian tradition of a double ethics, that is, a prephilosophic one and a scientific one, wrote little on ethics but, as we have seen, concludes his 'Metaphysics of the Shifa’' with a rational justification of the basic prescriptions of the shari’a.55
This brief and vastly incomplete presentation of philosophy in Islam shows that there is much pioneering work yet to be done. Since 1950 much has happened in the field. Exciting discoveries have been made. English translations of key texts, such as Avicenna’s 'Metaphysics of the Shifa’' by M. E. Marmura and Averroes’ 'Long Commentary on the “De anima” by R. C. Taylor are eagerly awaited. Critical editions of other important texts are still needed, however, as well as analyses of arguments and works of interpretation. It would be wrong to exaggerate the contribution to current controversies about “western” and “Islamic” values that might be made by scholarly research in the material presented in this chapter, but it can at least be said that a deeper understanding of philosophy in medieval Islam, including a more nuanced awareness of the issues debated concerning the very existence of falsafa in Islamic culture, can only improve our insight into the nature and role (and perhaps the limitations) of philosophy in general.
Notes.
1. J. L. Kraemer, for instance, has admirably shown the cultural interchanges in Baghdad at the end of the tenth century and the first half of the eleventh century between people of various religious and ethnic backgrounds [492].
2. E. Gilson, “What is Christian Philosophy?,” in [635] 177–91, and E.Gilson [628]. F. Van Steenberghen defended the autonomy of philosophy and argued that strictly speaking there can be no specifically Christian philosophy in [637].
3. See R. M. Frank [487–89].
4. See C. D’Ancona Costa [477] and J. Kraye et al. [18].
5. See D. Gutas [490]. Gutas shows how, then as now, political ideologies sometimes dictated the choice of the texts that were translated.
6. D. Gutas [102] and T.-A. Druart [100] doubt it, but J. Parens [105] affirms it.
7. H. A. Davidson in [483] shows admirably the Greek origins of arguments on those topics, as well as the Kalam sources, and their transformation and integration at the hands of philosophers in lands under Islamic rule.
8. See the second part of H. Corbin [10], called “From the Death of Averroes to the Present Day.” Corbin also highlighted that philosophy persisted among Sunni and Shiite, as well as Ismaili.
9. M. Aydin [478].
10. See D. Black [480], in particular the chapter on the imaginative and poetic syllogism, pp. 209–41.
11. E. Renan [172].
12. Also known as The Harmony Between Philosophy and Religion. My translation is based on that of G. F. Hourani [161]. Most of the texts I shall refer to in this section were not translated into Latin during the Middle Ages and, therefore, had little impact on the scholastics, even if they gained popularity with the Enlightenment (see G. A. Russell [497]) and in our own time, particularly among the disciples of Leo Strauss.
13. Incoherence of the Incoherence, discussion 17, that “heretics be killed” [165] I 322.
14. Al-Farabi was famous for his Long Commentary on Aristotle’s De interpretatione and his epitomes of Aristotle’s Organon, including the Poetics. He carefully distinguished logic from grammar, and though he is a rationalist, his language and vocabulary are influenced by religious terminology.
15. See R. Walzer’s translation [95].
16. M. Galston [101] and J. Lameer [103] highlight the link between logic and political philosophy in al-Farabi.
17. See The Attainment of Happiness in Alfarabi’s Philosophy of Plato and Aristotle [96].
18. M. Mahdi in particular has highlighted al-Farabi’s rationalism in [104], and C. E. Butterworth has recently published translations of the Selected Aphorisms, The Book of Religion, and The Harmonization of the Opinions of the Two Sages: Plato the Divine and Aristotle in [98].
19. The Life of Ibn Sina [117] 30–35.
20. Shifa’s Metaphysics VI 1 and 2. Medieval Latin translation [116] II 291–306. English translation [113].
21. See D. Gutas [124].
22. Trans. [114].
23. Averroes on Plato’s “Republic” [164] 101 and 59.
24. In Avicenna on Theology [120].
25. Trans. [22] 112–21. Curiously, Roger Bacon (c. 1210–92) adapted the end of Avicenna’s Book X to Christendom in his Opus maius, Part VII.
26. Very partial English translation in [22] 123–33.
27. Partial excellent English translation [22] 134–62; full translation [368].
28. In the Middle Ages Ibn Tufayl’s novel was translated into Hebrew (with a Hebrew commentary by Moses Narboni). It was translated into Latin only in 1671, by Pocok, and into English in 1708 under the title The Improvement of Human Reason Exhibited in the Life of Hai Ebn Yokdhan, In which is demonstrated, by what methods one may, by the meer light of nature, attain the knowledg of things natural and supernatural; more particularly knowledg of God, and the affairs of another life. The English text is illustrated and provided with an appendix, intended to protect the faith of Christian readers, “in which the possibility of Man’s attaining the true knowledg of God, and things necessary to salvation, without instruction, is briefly consider’d” [367]. The Latin and English translators both read the tale as a purely rationalist account, although some have interpreted it as a mystical allegory. For interpretations of the text, see L. I. Conrad [369]. There is some dispute whether Pocok’s translation could have influenced the author of Robinson Crusoe, and simplified forms of the tale are still sometimes told as a fairy tale to Middle Eastern children. See also H. Daiber [481].
29. On this see chapter 9 in the present volume.
30. See J. Michot, La Destin´ee de l’homme selon Avicenne (Louvain, 1981).
31. Partial English translation in F. Rahman [119].
32. Trans. [49] 219–39. Also see M. E. Marmura [131] and Thomas Aquinas, Truth, q. 1, a. 1.
33. R. Wisnovsky [134]. Marmura pointed earlier to differences between Avicenna’s philosophy and the Kalam [130]. For the immense influence of these distinctions in Latin philosophy, see chapter 6 in this volume.
34. F. Rahman [132].
35. See D. Gutas in [133] 1–38 and D. N. Hasse in [133] 39–72.
36. S. H. Nasr argues for the “originality” of the Oriental Philosophy in [11] 247–51, whereas D. Gutas claims there is no such thing [123].
37. A. F. Mehren, Traités mystiques d’Avicenne, 4 fascicles (Leiden, 1889–94). H. Corbin, too, highlighted a “mystical” aspect in Avicenna [10]. But if mysticism there is, it is a very rationalistic one.
38. See J. F. Wippel [261].
39. Trans. [149].
40. R. M. Frank says yes in [487], and M. E. Marmura denies it in [151] and [150].
41. See D. Black [166].
42. H. A. Davidson has remarkably retraced the general history of this issue among both the Greek commentators and the falasifa in [482].
43. Averroes seems first to have followed Alexander of Aphrodisias, then to have adopted the position of Ibn Bajjah (Avempace) [360], and finally, after re-reading Themistius, to have decided that there should be one Material Intellect for all humankind. In the Long Commentary he somewhat rhetorically accuses Ibn Bajjah of having led him into error.
44. Such as The Epistle on the Possibility of Conjunction with the Active Intellect [160].
45. A. L. Ivry, who edited and translated the Middle Commentary (Arabic edition in 1994 and with English translation in 2002), maintains that it is posterior to the Long Commentary, whereas H. A. Davidson considers that it preceded it (Ivry [170], Davidson, with Ivry’s response, in [167]).
46. The articles by A. Hyman, A. L. Ivry, and R. C. Taylor in [168] offer much useful material on these difficult questions.
47. Except for G. F. Hourani [491] and M. Fakhry [486].
48. See M. C. Nussbaum [494] and [495].
49. See T.-A. Druart [92] and [485].
50. Trans. [384].
51. See his autobiography The Book of the Philosophic Life, trans. C. E.Butterworth [383], and T.-A. Druart [385] and [386].
52. Trans. [94] 76–84. See also T.-A. Druart [99].
53. Trans. [366].
54. Trans. G. M. Wickens [390].
55. Mehren (note 37 above) had attributed to him a treatise on the Fear of Death, but, in fact, this text comes from the concluding section of Miskwayh’s Reformation of Character.
By Thérèse-Anne Druart in "The Cambridge Companion of Medieval Philosophy", edited by A.S. McGrade, excerpts chapter 4, pp.97-120. Digitized, adapted and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.