Two Andalusian Philosophers
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Two Andalusian Philosophers

Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn Tufayl, Abu'l Walid Muhammad ibn Rushd, John Colville

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eBook - ePub

Two Andalusian Philosophers

Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn Tufayl, Abu'l Walid Muhammad ibn Rushd, John Colville

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About This Book

First published in 1988. Two Andalusian Philosophers provides a short but comprehensive introduction to the central concerns of Islamic philosophy. The Story of Hayy ibn Yaqzan by Ibn Tufayl and The Definitive Statement by ibn Rushd represent the last, great flourish of Islamic philosophy in twelfth century Andalusia. From very different perspectives, they both deal with the central issue of Islamic philosophy - its relationship with shari'a law.

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Information

Publisher
Routledge
Year
2013
ISBN
9781136886331
Subtopic
Anthropology
Edition
1

THE STORY OF HAYY IBN YAQZAN
(risâlat ẖayy ibn yaqẕân)

A Treatise on the Secrets of Oriental Wisdom

by

Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn Tufayl

In The Name of God, the Most Merciful and Compassionate
May God's peace and blessings be upon our lord Muhammad, his family, descendants and companions.
My generous, sincere and good friend, may God grant you joy and life everlasting! You asked me to tell you what I can of the secrets of oriental wisdom that the Master and Imam, Sheikh Abu ‘Ali ibn Sina spoke of.1 You should be aware at the outset that whoever wishes to know the clear, transparent truth must devote himself completely to its pursuit and consummation.
Your request was itself the sublime inspiration which led me (may God be praised) to bear witness to a state that I had not experienced before, a destination too strange and mysterious for words to describe or explain, as it belongs to a domain and world of which words have no part. Yet the rapture, bliss and delight of that state are such that the man who finally arrives upon its frontiers cannot conceal its quality or hide its secret. In fact, the energy, the ecstasy and the joy he feels compel him to reveal it, although in broad outline rather than in detail. Those whose mastery of the sciences is less than complete have, however, spoken of it rashly and comments such as, “Praise be to my own glorious self!”,2 “I am the One Truth!”3 and “It is God within the clothes I wear!” have been made. Sheikh Abu Hamid Ghazzali (may God bless him) represented his own attainment of this state with the following line of verse:
It was what it was but to tell there's no way,
So think only good and don't ask me to say.4
But he, of course, was a well-educated man with a mind disciplined by learning.
Let us consider what Abu Bakr ibn Sa'igh5 said when discussing the quality of conjunction with the Intellect:
When the concept has been understood, it will become clear that it cannot possibly be known or conceived of at the level of the conventional sciences but rather at a level where one realises oneself dissociated from everything before and where other, non-material relationships apply. This level is too sublime to be attached to the physical world and is quite independent of its structure. It is a set of states of bliss that could be described as divine states, given by God to those of his slaves as He wills.6
This level to which Abu Bakr refers is attained by the methods of theoretical metaphysics and rational speculation; there is no doubt that he himself attained it, even if he did not pass beyond. However, the level of which we speak is something else, not in the sense that there is anything different to be discovered but in respect of a greater clarity and the witness to what might be called “power” only metaphorically, since neither ordinary language nor specialised terminology contain the words to refer to the thing to which this kind of vision bears witness. This state of which I speak, and which your request moved me to experience directly, is one of those noted by the Master, Abu ‘Ali:
By will and discipline, he [the mystic] reached a point where ecstatic glimpses of the light of truth sparkled then faded, like flashes of lightning. As he maintained his discipline, these overwhelming states became more frequent and by sustaining it, he achieved rapture without effort. Whatever he looked at would point him towards paradise. He speaks of being overwhelmed by a state in which saw reality in almost everything. Further discipline brought him to a point where time is turned into perfect stillness7, where what was once fleeting becomes constant and what had been a faint glimmer becomes a bright shooting-star. And there comes to him a sure, certain knowledge, like a lasting friendship.
He described a hierarchy of levels of which the last is where
his deepest being becomes like a flawless mirror facing the truth. Waves of sublime ecstasy wash over him and to see the image of the truth is the rapture of his soul. At this level, he sees the truth and he sees his own soul — as it is seeing — and looks from one to the other. He then loses all consciousness of himself, seeing only paradise, and there achieves union.8
In describing these states, it was only Sheikh Abu ‘Ali's intention to give an impression, not a reasoned inference from premise to conclusion. If you would like an illustration of how differently from others such people perceive, imagine a man who is naturally intelligent with sound intuition, a good memory and a sharp mind but who has been blind from birth. This man has grown up in the city and, by means of his other senses, has come to recognise people and many of the various animals, objects, streets, alleys, houses and shops to the point where he can find his way around without a guide. He recognises everyone he meets right away. He is aware of colours only by name and by certain denotations. Now, at some point, his eyes are opened and he gains the power of sight. As he walks around the city, he finds nothing to contradict his preconceptions and even colours appear to coincide with the mental picture he had of them. However, there are two important and related differences — an increased clarity and an enormous pleasure and delight.
The condition of the philosopher who has not attained the state of holiness is like the initial condition of the blind man. The things described by Abu Bakr as too sublime to be attached to the physical world and given by God to those of His slaves as He wills, are like the colours known only to him by name and denotation. But the condition of the philosopher who has attained that state and to whom God has granted that thing which we have metaphorically called power, is like the blind man who has gained the power of sight.
It is exceptional to find a philosopher who is so clear-sighted that he has no need of speculation. By “speculation”, I mean neither the materialist knowledge of philosophers nor the transcendent knowledge of the holy; these two kinds of knowledge are totally different and must not be confused. What I mean by “speculation” is the rational metaphysics practised by the likes of Abu Bakr.
It is, however, implicit in metaphysics that it be valid and true and, in this respect, a parallel emerges between Abu Bakr's position and the perception of the holy. The latter speak of precisely the same things but with greater clarity and a rapture quite sublime. Abu Bakr criticised the way that Sufis talk about this rapture. He said it has to do with the power of imagination and promised to give a clear description of the consequent state. You know, he really should be told: “Do not say something's sweet if you've never tasted it or pick a quarrel with two friends at once!” Anyway, he never kept his promise. Perhaps, as he claimed, it was lack of time and his preparation for the move to Oran that prevented him. Or maybe he thought that by describing this state, he would have been obliged to say things that compromised his own lifestyle and contradicted his promotion of money-making schemes! However, I have digressed — albeit necessarily — from my response to your request.
It would appear that you have one of two reasons for making the request. On the one hand, you may wish to know what it is that those who bear witness, experience the truth and enter into the presence see in their state of holiness. It is impossible to state this reality in words. When one tries to press language into service, the reality changes and turns into something speculative. A man's testimony alters beyond recognition when he tries to close in on that world with language. Ways of describing it differ enormously, words slip out of control and men stray from the straight path without realising that it is they, not others, who are lost. The truth, you see, is something infinite, with a multitude of aspects that encompass but are not themselves encompassed.
On the other hand, you may wish me to introduce you to this subject through the methods of systematic reasoning. Now that (and may God bless you with closeness unto Him) is something which it is possible to speak of and to put down in writing but it is rarer than the philosopher's stone, especially in this land of ours. Curiously, only a very few individuals have managed to convey anything at all about it and, even then, only symbolically. The Islamic establishment has given explicit warning and forbidden any involvement.
You should certainly not assume that the extant philosophical writings of Aristotle and Farabi, or Ibn Sina's The Healing,9 are sufficient by themselves, or that any Andalusian has written about it in a satisfactory manner. Before logic and metaphysics developed here, scholars occupied themselves exclusively with mathematics, in which they reached an advanced level but failed to take matters further. Their successors made some progress in logic and demonstrated an intellectual curiosity in our subject but, nonetheless, were not led to perfect truth. One of them wrote these lines:
The sciences of men are of only two kinds
And anything more is impossible to find:
A true, which to try and obtain is futility
And a false which, when mastered, has no utility.10
They, in turn, were followed by more sophisticated thinkers who came closer to the truth. Among these, Abu Bakr ibn Sa'igh had the subtlest mind, the soundest reasoning and the most genuine perception. However, he was preoccupied with mundane matters and died before the hidden treasures of his wisdom could be disseminated. Most of his extant works, for example, On the Soul and The Organisation of the Solitary Life, as well as his writings on logic and physics, are incomplete. Those which are complete are merely summaries, as he himself acknowledges. He admits that he was able to give expression to his theme in The Treatise on the Conjunction of the Intellect with Man only with difficulty and after much effort. His style leaves something to be desired, in places and, had time permitted, he might have been inclined to revise.
This, then, is what is known to me of Ibn Sa'igh's state of learning. I did not meet him personally and have never read anything by those of his contemporaries who are said to be his equals. Thereafter, we come to our own contemporaries — who are either still at the formative stage,11 have no interest in perfection, or are unknown to me.
Most of the extant works of Abu Nasr Farabi12 deal with logic; those dealing with metaphysics are highly sceptical. In The Principled Beliefs of the Superior Community,13 he asserts the existence, after death, of evil souls in eternal torment. Then, in Politics, he claims they will be obliterated and end up in nothingness, with only consummate and superior souls being eternal. In his commentary on Aristotle's Ethics, he describes human happiness as something existing only on the plane of this earthly life. He goes on to say what could be paraphrased to the effect that everything else is irrational and the superstition of old women. This deprives mankind of any hope of the Mercy of God and places good and evil on the same level by making nothingness the fate of all. He slips up here and his position does not thereafter recover. Additionally, he maligns prophecy claiming that it is only a particular kind of imaginative power and expresses his preference for philosophy. He expresses other views that there is no need to discuss here.
Sheikh Abu ‘Ali was a commentator of Aristotle and follower of his school of thought. He wrote The Healing within the framework of the Peripatetic system. Nevertheless, he claims at the beginning of that book that the truth, in his view, lies elsewhere and refers us to his Oriental Philosophy. The reader of The Healing and the Aristotelian corpus will observe that, in most cases, they are consistent, although the former discusses several topics on which we are unaware of Aristotle's views. If both are considered literally, without discerning their deeper, esoteric meaning, the reader will not attain to any sort of perfection, as Sheikh Abu ‘Ali himself indicates in The Healing.
The writings of Sheikh Abu Hamid Ghazzali,14 addressed as they are to a popular audience, contain inconsistencies; he levels the charge of unbelief against things that he himself later accepts. For example, in The Incoherence of the Philosophers, he criticises philosophers for, among other things, rejecting the physical resurrection of the body and asserting reward or punishment only for souls. At the beginning of The Balance of Action,15 he claims that these beliefs are held by all leading Sufis, without exception. Then, in The Deliverance from Error and Explanation of the States,16 he states that he himself holds Sufi beliefs, although reaching this position only after prolonged study.
His writings contain many examples of this sort, as anyone who studies them carefully will discover. He defends his position at the end of The Balance of Action where he describes three categories of beliefs: those commonly held by the masses, those addressed in response to a question or request for guidance and those held privately and only expressed to others holding similar beliefs. He goes on to say,
If the result of this is to cause doubt in traditional beliefs then that will be benefit enough. Without doubt there is no critical examination and without critical examination there is no perception. The man who does not perceive remains in blindness and confusion.
He expressed this idea with the following verse:
Leave aside what you have heard,
Accept what you see with your eyes,
Saturn's faint glimmer shines dimly beside
The radiant morning sunrise.
This is characteristic of Sheikh Abu Hamid's teaching — largely symbolic and obscurantist, of use principally to someone who had first studied his writings carefully and then listened to his personal commentary, or to someone approaching his work with an open and discerning mind and for whom the simplest of allusions is enough.
He states in his Book of Gems that he has written other works, withheld from general circulation, that contain unambiguous explanations of the truth. As far as I am aware, none of these has reached Andalusia. Some of his writings that are available, including Intellectual Knowledge, The Rising and the Levelling and Miscellaneous Questions, have been claimed, mistakenly, as these esoteric works but while they do contain certain allusions, they provide little more insight than we find in his well-known works. The Sublime Destination seems to contain something more enigmatic but he himself has stated that it does not belong among his esoteric writings, which implies that neither do any of the above.
A recent critic has supposed from the conclusion to The Tabernacle of Lights that Sheikh Abu Hamid committed a grave ...

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