From the beginnings to Avicenna
From the beginnings to Avicenna
Jean Jolivet
INTRODUCTION
Arabic philosophy began at the turn of the second and third centuries
of the Hegira, roughly the ninth and tenth centuries AD. The place
and the time are important. It was in 133/750 that the ‘Abbāssid dynasty
came to power. The ‘Abbāssids, like the Ummayads whom they had
driven out, were Arabs; but they had been aided by eastern powers:
Persians and Shi‘ite Muslims. The symbolic capital of the empire
changed from Damascus to Baghdad, founded in 145/762 by the second
‘Abbāssid caliph, al-Manṣūr. Now Islamic power stretched from the
Atlantic to central Asia. Damascus and Baghdad were areas which had
been Hellenized for a millennium and where Byzantium and Persia
had faced each other. Now the Arabs had been victorious over them
both, overturning the Sassanids, who had already been forced back
towards the East by Byzantium, and taking from Byzantium not only
Egypt but also its Asian provinces, where the monophysite Christians
were in schism with the Orthodox Church and persecuted by the
imperial authorities. These conquests took place between 634 and 650
(the second and third decades of the Hegira). These historical
circumstances foreshadow several essential features of Arabic
philosophy to which we shall return. First, there was a gap in time
between the revelation of the Holy Book, which was ‘handed down’ in
an un-Hellenized area of Arabia, and the beginning of Arabic
philosophy (contrast the development of Christian thought, where
Hellenistic elements are to be found even in the earliest documents).
Second, the emergence of Arabic philosophy coincided with a change
of dynasty brought about with the help of non-Arabs: the political,
religious and, in particular, literary aspects of this change would develop
in the third/ninth century into the movement which was called the
shu‘ūbiyya (after the Koran, 49, 13: ‘Men…we have set you up as
peoples, shu‘ūban). Third, Arabic philosophy developed in a milieu
linked, in language, culture and belief, by age-old ties both to Greece
and to Asia—and, as we shall see, it was thanks to Christian scholars
that it found its particular direction.
THE TRANSLATIONS
For two centuries, Christians had been employed to translate Greek
works into Syriac, a type of Aramaic that had been developed into a
literary language. In this way there began, even before the birth of
Islam, the great enterprise of translation which would provide the
opportunity for the first works of Arabic philosophy and the results of
which would provide its subject-matter and foundation. The history
of this movement, especially its earliest stage, has not yet been written
in full. We can say, however, that between the fifth and seventh centuries
AD translations were made from Greek into Syriac, particularly
translations of medical works and, even more, of logical works. The
first books of Aristotle’s Organon were, then, not merely translated
but received a number of commentaries. The majority of the translators
were Nestorians, but they also included Jacobites. At the end of the
first/seventh century, the Muslims took over the Fertile Crescent and
the Umayyad caliph ‘Abd al-Malik decided that Arabic would be the
official language of the empire. The work of the translators was
enlarged. Translation from Greek to Syriac continued to be their main
task, but there were also translations made from Greek into Arabic
and from Syriac into Arabic. This third route was used only in the
fourth/tenth century when even the educated no longer knew Greek,
and when in any case the translation movement came to a halt.
Not only was there a change in the languages from which, and to
which, translations were made; there was variation over time in the
method and type of translation. Translators into Syriac changed from
giving paraphrases to making literal versions. The greatest of them
were the two Christian Nestorians Ḥunayn ibn Isḥāq and his son
Isḥāq ibn Ḥunayn, whose work in Syriac and Arabic dates from the
third/ninth century. Acute in establishing their texts and rigorously
accurate in translating from one language to another, Ḥunayn and his
son ended by creating ‘a technical Arabic capable of closely reflecting
the structure of the Greek’ ([2.27]). There were many other translators
too in their century and the one before, some of them very fine. Rather
than list them, it is more useful to step back in time and mention the
names of ‘Abd Allāh ibn al-Muqaffa‘ (d. 140/757) and of the Syrian
Ibn Bahrīz, who lived at the time of the caliph al-Ma‘mūn (d. 218/
833). Both wrote epitomes of logical works (al-Muqaffa‘ on
Porphyry’s Isagoge and the first books of the Organon; Ibn Bahrīz on
the whole Organon). We can see in these works the first attempts to
develop an Arabic philosophical vocabulary ([2.27], [2.43]).
In this way an enormous library of philosophical and scientific works
was built up and revealed to the curiosity and interests of new readers.
The last Umayyad caliphs and the first of the ‘Abbāsids were especially
strong in their support for this work of translation. In the case of the
Abbāssids, this enthusiasm was motivated in part by a political motive,
since Greek philosophy and science provided a cultural counterbalance
to the theology of the Islamic Arabs and to the ancient heritage of the
Persians. The intellectual (and, particularly, philosophical) market-place
was thus stocked with a complex mixture of goods: an Arabic Plato
(the details of which still remain unclear), an Arabic Plotinus attributed
to other authors, collections of philosophical comments and aphorisms
in which authentic pronouncements mingle with apocrypha, and above
all the complete works of Aristotle, without the Politics but with
various, especially Neoplatonic, pseudepigrapha. This Aristotle is
omnipresent in Arabic philosophy, yet its presence was the result in the
main of a choice made several centuries earlier by the Syriac translators:
‘it was not the Arabs who chose Aristotle, but the Syriacs who imposed
[him on them]’ ([2.43]; cf. [2.20], [2.38], [2.41], [2.44]).
AL-KINDĪ
Arabic philosophers drew extensively, then, on Aristotle’s work and
thought. Yet they were not Aristotelians in the strict sense of the word.
This is already clear in the work of the first of them, Abū Yūsuf Ya‘qūb
ibn Isḥāq al-Kindī (born end of second century/beginning of eight
century; died after 256/870) ([2.19], [2.11]). Al-Kindī was a philosopher,
no doubt; but he was primarily a wide-ranging scholar and scientist
(and it was just as such that, half a thousand years later, Ibn Khaldūn
would remember him). The biographer and bibliographer Ibn al-Nadīm
(fourth/tenth century) provides a catalogue raisonné of his works:
almost 250 of them in all, of which only about a tenth survive. Ibn al-
Nadīm divides them into seventeen categories. Classifying them, rather,
by subject areas, we find that al-Kindī devoted about 50 treatises to
philosophy and logic, but nearly a hundred to the various branches of
mathematics (including astrology), and 35 to medicine and the natural
sciences. The others do not concern us here. His scholarly and scientific
work was thus extensive and varied; we might mention, for instance,
in passing his contributions to optics and pharmacology. As a
philosopher, he quotes by name hardly any authors besides Plato and
Aristotle. We do not know precisely how great his knowledge was of
Plato, but he wrote a treatise listing the works of Aristotle ([2.23]). Of
the major works only the Politics is, as we should expect, absent. The
list includes two apocrypha (On Plants, On Minerals), but not the
Theology of Aristotle, a work by an unknown author, probably
Porphyry, consisting of considerably adapted extracts from Plotinus’
later Enneads. Its absence is all the more striking because al-Kindī had
corrected an Arabic translation of it made by Ibn Nā‘ima for the son
of the caliph al-Mu‘taṣim (218/833 to 228/842). And indeed al-Kindī’s
philosophy is a branch of Neoplatonism, but not one which is disguised
by being based on Aristotelian apocrypha of Neoplatonic origin.
Among the handful of philosophical works of al-Kindī’s which have
survived, the most important is the Book of First Philosophy (Kitāb alfalsafah
al-ūlā ([2.2]); note how the Greek philosophia is transcribed as
falsafah; similarly philosophas becomes faylasūf, plural falāsifah). Of
this book with its Aristotelian title we have only the first part (divided
into four chapters). It is a Neoplatonic work in the sense that the main
concepts of Aristotelianism (the categories, the predicables, causes) are
made part of a theory of the one, into which al-Kindī’s ontology is
absorbed. In this rich discussion, new ideas and new methods are found
in every chapter. We shall consider merely a few significant themes of
various sorts. Chapter 1 forms a veritable manifesto, decked out with
quotations from Aristotle (who is not named: the passages are mostly
from the Metaphysics A 1). Al-Kindī provides an apologia for philosophy
which, he says, has been formed over the course of centuries. We must
gather what remains and bring it to fruition. It matters little, he says,
that it comes from elsewhere. We must adapt it into our own language
and to our own traditions, since it does not differ in content from the
messages of the prophets: it is knowledge of God’s unity and sovereignty,
of virtue and of what in general we should seek and avoid. The ending
of chapter 2 provides a characteristic example of al-Kindī’s method
and his liberty with regard to Aristotle. Using the method of geometry,
he shows that the body of the world, movement and time can exist only
if they are simultaneous with each other. They are, therefore, finite,
because the world is finite. Aristotle’s view that the world is eternal is
thus rejected. Chapter 3 ends with a dialectical treatment of the one
and the many based in detail, yet also very freely, on Proclus (Platonic
Theology II, 1), who none the less is not named ([2.29]). Finally, chapter
4 demonstrates that the True One is transcendent: above every genus,
category and ontological structure. It is he who gives to everything which
is ‘accidentally one’ the unity which makes it exist, and this being-madeone,
‘the flowing of unity from the True One’ is a being-made-to-exist
(tahawwī. (The noun tahawwī is derived from the pronoun huwa,
‘him’, which by its very meaning implies reference to an existing being
and from which is also derived the word huwiyya, ‘substance’ or
‘existence’ depending on the context. Al-Kindī’s vocabulary includes a
number of neologisms, some of which were not used by his successors;
it bears witness to the state of Arabic philosophical vocabulary which
was still being constructed, especially by the translators.) At this point
the known part of the First Philosophy concludes. It is an important
work, which shows how al-Kindī fits together the major systems of
Greek philosophy, especially Neoplatonism. The concepts of the one
and of transcendence are, in particular, common to this philosophical
school and to Muslim theology. The Mu‘tazilites especially would make
it one of their main themes, and there is independent evidence that al-
Kindī was close to them.
The doctrinal themes of the First Philosophy can be compared to
those contained in other works by al-Kindī: explicitly or implicitly, the
main aspects of his thought are to be found in this central work. First,
the idea of the underlying harmony between revelation and prophecy
is also found in the main discussion of the Letter on the Number of
Aristotle’s Bodies ([2.23]): the ‘divine knowledge’ which God gives,
from his free choice, to the prophets opens to them the knowledge of
visible and invisible substances, whereas men usually have to labour
long and hard, using logic and mathematics, to gain it. Thus the final
verses of sourate 36 (Yā ‘Sīn) provide illuminating teaching on creation,
the sequence of life and death and on contraries in general. Al-Kindī
expounds at length the philosophical content of what divine revelation
condenses into a few words. Second, as has already been explained,
knowledge is gained through science and mathematics. This is an
important theme of the Letter, which is proposed and argued at the
beginning and taken up again near to the end. In both places,
mathematics is put first, and it is this method which is used in chapter
2 of the First Philosophy. The discussions there are taken up in three
other letters about the finitude of the world. Elsewhere too al-Kindī’s
arguments often have a rigorous, detailed structure based on the
mathematical method. Third, the cosmological theme is developed by
the same method in the Letter on the Prostration of the Farthest Body,
which takes a text from the Koran (55: al-Raḥmān, 6)—‘The star and
the tree prostrate themselves’—as its point of departure. Al-Kindī begins
with a semantic analysis of the words ‘prostration’ and ‘obedience’,
which he says mean the same in this context. Then he explains in detail
how God’s will works in the world, which he envisages according to
Greek cosmology and Aristotle’s physics (except that he does not
consider it eternal); once they have been created, the heavens are put
into motion, and from this there comes about time and then comingto-
be. The heavens live, think and are the agent cause of all coming-tobe.
The Letter on the True, First and Perfect Agent Cause, and the
Imperfect Agent Cause [which is called agent] by Extension explains
that true agency is reserved for God alone, who creates the first sphere
of the heavens and puts it into motion and, through it, puts all the
other spheres into motion: but what comes to be from it is not action,
but being-acted-upon (infi‘al) ([2.31]).
We should also mention two topics which are implied in the First
Philosophy but not discussed there. One of these is the soul, the subject
of a metaphysical, exhortatory treatise, which gathers together ideas
from various sources, in particular ones taken from Platonism,
Neoplatonism and Hermeticism ([2.22]). Another is intellectual
knowledge, treated in the Letter on the Intellect, one of the few works
by al-Kindī translated into Latin (twelfth century). Here al-Kindī
differentiates four types or levels of the intellect, according to the
reinterpretation of Aristotle’s theory of intellectual knowledge by the
early Neoplatonic school (Porphyry) and John Philoponus ([2.28]).
Finally, the Letter on How to Dispel Sadness ([2.40]) is a lengthy moral
exhortation which includes spiritual advice, written in the common
philosophical style of the first centuries AD. In this work al-Kindī shows
much less of his characteristic turn of mind than elsewhere, where he
subjects what he has gathered from the Greek philosophers to his own
treatment.
AL-RĀZĪ AND AL-FĀRĀBĪ
The most idiosyncratic figure in the history of Arabic philosophy is,
without question, that of Abū Bakr Muḥammad ibn Zakariyyā al-Rāzī
(251/865–313/925), who was also an outstanding writer on medicine.
The most important of his many medical works, al-Hāwī (known in
Latin as Continens) has a significant place in the history of medicine, in
Christian Europe as well as in Islam, and it was translated into Latin
twice (end of thirteenth century and in the sixteenth century). He took
his inspiration as a philosopher more closely and constantly from the
Greeks than from other sources. He looked to Socrates as the master of
all philosophers in his way of life; he knew and quoted Plato, Aristotle,
Porphyry, John Philoponus and others. He did not think that philosophy
always remains one and the same. It progresses through the very
differences between those who follow it, and to be a philosopher does
not, he believed, mean to have the truth but to try to reach it—a view of
intellectual history entirely other than al-Kindī’s. The basis of al-Rāzī’s
ethics is reason and its aim is the ordering of conduct and the subjugation
of the passions. His theology is explicitly philosophical. The world is
an emanation from God; and not only God, but also the world soul,
prime matter, space and time are eternal. Al-Rāzī believed in the
transmigration of souls, which could rise to higher moral and
metaphysical levels in successive reincarnations. And he denied that
there was such a thing as prophecy. God inspires all men equally, but
they are not all equal in taking advantage of it. Clearly, these views
were not acceptable to the Islamic faithful. Only a few rather short
treatises of al-Rāzī survive, and the work where he denies the existence
of prophecy is known only through the quotes made in order to attack
it by his contemporary and compatriot, the Ismā ‘(lite missionary, Abū
Ḥātim al-Rāzī. Despite the controversial nature of his philosophical
ideas, al-Rāzī was allowed to be the doctor in charge of the hospital at
Baghdad.
Abū Bakr al-Rāzī’s place in the history of falsafah is therefore a
strange one, the very opposite of that held by al-Kindī, another
Neoplatonist. Different again is that held by Abū Naṣr Muḥammad
ibn Muḥammad al-Fārābī, who was born at about the same time as al-
Kindī died and who lived until 339/950 ([2.11]). He maintained the
same high level of philosophical thinking as his great predecessor, but
he moved it definitely into a new direction, opening up a fresh path for
its development. One feature of his work was his great interest and
ability in logic. Here he was the beneficiary of the work done by the
translators and commentators (most of them Christians), such as Abū
Bishr Mattā and Yuḥannā ibn Ḥaylān, his masters at the Aristotelian
school at Baghdad, whom he considered to belong to the tradition of
the Greek commentators. But he went further, especially in the attention
he gave to the structure of reasoning and the types of argument. Among
his works of logic are books based on, or commenting on (often very
freely), all the books of the Organon, as well as Porphyry’s Isagoge
and in accord with the practice of the School of Alexandria, the Rhetoric
(though not, like them, the Poetics, which remained on the edges of
the Arab philosophical tradition). He also wrote introductory logical
works and, more interestingly, a Little Book of Reasoning according
to the methods of the mutakallimūn and the fuqahā, which examines
critically, according to logical criteria alone, the methods of argument
used by the theologians and the lawyers. Al-Fārābī begins with a
systematic exposition of Aristotle’s logic. In his prologue, al-Fārābī
explains that he will use ‘terms known to those who speak Arabic and
examples familiar to our contemporaries’. This method might be taken
as one especially designed for teaching, but it might also be seen in
terms of a more far-reaching principle of logico-grammatical analysis.
Before giving a complete survey of logic and placing it within the whole
domain of knowledge, the Book of Terms Used in Logic lists the words
which are joined to nouns, to verbs and to noun-verb combinations:
that is to say, tool-words. In this list are found purely logical terms
(such as quantifiers) but especially invariable words, some of which
correspond to terms in Greek, others of which have a place only in
Arabic. There is, then, here a tension between the universality implied
by the return to Greek philosophy, and the particularity of the language
of faylasūf. In this light, al-Fārābī’s work can be seen as an attempt to
introduce certain particular features of the Arabic language into the
historical development of logic ([2.9], [2.25]).
Here we see the deep structure of al-Fārābī’s thought: more
emphatically than al-Kindī’s, it is based on the attempt to combine
ideas of different sorts—Greek and Arabic, philosophical and religious—
into a whole which is both systematic and historical. Another witness
to this way of thinking and writing is the strange Book of Letters (Kitāb
al-ḥurūf). ‘Letters’ has two different (but compatible) meanings here. It
provides the work’s title first because the book is a set of loose variations,
in al-Fārābī’s usual manner, on Aristotle’s Metaphysics, which was
sometimes called in Arabic Kitāb al-ḥurūf (from the fact that its books
are each designated by a Greek letter). But, second, the title refers to the
fact that, just like the Book of Terms Used in Logic, this treatise contains
a study of various tool-words; and these are what grammarians call
ḥurūf, ‘letters’. Here, however, the list is occupied mainly by terms which
are used in philosophy, whether words like ‘when’ and ‘how’ or the
names of the categories, predicables and so on. In this context, al-Fārābī
examines the copula in attributive propositions which, in Arabic, poses
problems unknown to Greek logicians. (It is wrong, however, to draw—
as has been done—the conclusion that this difference in the way being
is expressed caused a radical separation between ‘Arab thought’ and
‘Greek thought’. The Greek attributive proposition can easily do without
the copula, and Arabic philosophers were perfectly comfortable in
ontology.) This treatise also dwells on, among other things, the relation
between philosophy, religion, language and the whole course of
civilization, considered in the most general way. Altogether, it examines
in depth concepts and themes from the whole field of philosophy: the
status of concepts, the categories, the vocabulary of being, epistemology
and scientific method. In one way or another it includes the subjectmatter
of various Aristotelian works along with subjects such as the
history of culture and the theory of religion which Aristotle did not
consider systematically. Here perhaps is a third reason for its title. To
al-Fārābī, this book occupied a place among his works similar to that
of the Metaphysics (devoted to being qua being, and to theology) among
Aristotle’s writings.
In logic, then, al-Fārābī’s project was to found the Greek on the
Arab and the Arab on the Greek. In political philosophy, his second
main interest, his procedure is the same, although it involves more
material that is rooted in cultural particularities. Political philosophy
includes consideration of the relations between philosophy and religion,
which for al-Fārābī meant the defence of philosophy. A number of his
works fit into this class. The Enumeration of the Sciences surveys the
encyclopaedia of scientific knowledge which the Arabs have built up
through their philology, their translations from the Greek and their
own creative work: grammar and linguistics, logic, mathematics (in
the broad sense of the quadrivium along with mechanics), physics,
metaphysics, politics and two exclusively Islamic branches of
knowledge: fiqh or jurisprudence and kalām, defensive or polemical
theology (about which al-Fārābī manifests considerable reserve, whereas
he recognizes the usefulness of fiqh). Although the chapters on these
two Islamic subjects seem not to fit in with the rest of the work, al-
Fārābī had promised, in his prologue, to deal with the branches of
knowledge ‘which are being followed at the present time’, a qualification
which now is seen to have its rationale. The Agreement of the Two
Sages is intended to show that, despite appearances to the contrary,
Plato and Aristotle do not contradict each other. This subtle, at times
even enigmatic work, is at least clear in its aim. Starting from a definition
and analysis of the content of philosophy, it attempts to reveal a deep
unity among the main doctrines which make it up and so to assert its
value against those who attack it, and guarantee its place in the field of
knowledge and thought. Side by side with this treatise is the collection
consisting of The Attainment of Happiness, The Philosophy of Plato
and The Philosophy of Aristotle ([2.3], [2.4]).
During the course of his life, al-Fārābī was able to observe the
crumbling of the Abbāssid caliphate’s power. In every part of the
empire minor, practically independent princely dynasties sprang up.
During al-Muqtadir’s caliphate (298/908 to 320/930) there were
thirteen vizirs, amd two rival caliphates were formed: the Fatimid in
Egypt and the Umayyad in Spain. Between al-Muqtadir’s death and
al-Fārābī’s own, four caliphs were overthrown or assassinated. Not
unexpectedly, then, al-Fārābī was aware of the importance of politics
and the philosophical problems posed by it. They formed the subject
of many of his works, and were emphasized even in books of his
which also dealt with other areas. His most extensive political work
is called Principles of the Opinions of the Citizens of the Best City.
Here al-Fārābī considers the city and its government by placing it
within a wider scheme of macrocosm and microcosm, in which the
structure of the greater and lesser worlds is seen to be similar at every
level. This structure is hierarchical: its elements (the celestial spheres,
the faculties of the soul, the bodily organs, the inhabitants of cities)
are each seen to depend on something superior, which is the basis for
their initial and continuing existence. Al-Fārābī gives a clear description
of the emanation of the celestial intelligences and their spheres, one
which Avicenna will copy and fill out in detail. The city should be
organized and run by a legislator who combines being ‘wise, prudent
and a philosopher’. From the agent Intellect there come into the
legislator’s potential intellect the intelligible forms which make up his
knowledge, whilst also putting his imagination to work so that he
becomes an ‘annunciatory prophet’, who can inculcate the best laws
in the people through persuasion and thus achieve the aim of political
science: to establish the happiness of the city. The legislator will, then,
be both philosopher and prophet: he will combine philosophy and
religion. Especially in the Book of Letters and the Book of Religion,
al-Fārābī asserts the priority of philosophy to religion, which ‘follows’
it: ‘good religious laws are subordinate to the universal principles of
practical philosophy’. Religion is subordinate to philosophy in the
way that imagination is to the intellect, and persuasive discourse to
demonstration. These ideas are linked to various ancient philosophical
themes: Platonic (the role of the legislator) and Aristotelian (the
position of rhetoric). Al-Fārābī is certainly nearer than al-Rāzī to the
Islamic view of religion and the state, in that he accepts the existence
of prophets and gives a rational explanation for it. But, by sharp
contrast with al-Kindī, his doctrine is laicized: it keeps the form of
Islam but subverts its content. The philosophical religion about which
he theorizes ends by placing the philosophical theology of the Greek
philosophers above the teaching of God’s messengers ([2.8]).
This is not the place for a history of Islamic theology (the kalām),
nor even a sketch of it. This kind of speculative theology began even
before the end of the first century, the product of the need to express
and defend in formal language the truths first formulated in the Qu’rān.
Its main themes included the structure of created being, the relation of
human actions to God’s absolute power and how God should be
conceived. Only the Mu‘tazilite school, which began in the second
century, need be mentioned here, since it was the first to deal with the
central points of theology and arrange them into a doctrinal whole;
and since, moreover, its exponents were accused of being close to the
falāsifah. The Mu‘tazilites—who differed between themselves on many
matters—were agreed that the good can be known by reason, apart
from revelation; that man creates his own acts. They emphasized the
absolute unity of God: his names are many, but not his attributes. And
some of them engaged in profound speculations about the status of
non-existing things (for instance, things before God created them, or
those things which God knows will never exist). These are genuinely
philosophical themes, and it is legitimate to speak of a metaphysics or
physics of the kalām—but one which has a characteristic vocabulary,
set of concepts and structure different from those of falsafah. Their
paths are different but, quite often, they intersect. Without some
knowledge of the kalām, there are important features of Arabic
philosophy which will not be properly understood ([2.21], [2.39]).
At the same period there were other writers connected in one way
or another with the central tradition of falasfah. First, the collective
work of the Ikhwān al-¬afā’ (Brothers of Purity) should be mentioned.
It was produced throughout the tenth century AD. It consists of fiftytwo
letters, written in a style which is more accessible and persuasive
than that of the philosophers and theologians. Taken together, the letters
make up an encyclopaedia which is Neoplatonic in its arrangement
and concepts, spiritual in content and religious in its basis. The Ikhwān
should be placed within Shi‘ism or, rather, on its edges, since they were
Isma‘(lites. Theirs was an hierarchical organization of initiates. Although
they therefore have a rather special place within Islam as a whole, their
method of speculation illustrates how the Shi‘ites accepted far more
readily than the Sunnis the connection between philosophy and religion.
Like the Mu‘tazilites, the Ikhwān held that truth was originally given
in a divine revelation witnessed by the philosophical sages as well as
the prophets. Whilst it is just to compare this idea to late Neoplatonism,
it also has a precise place in the intellectual and spiritual history of
Islam in this particular period. On the one hand, it provided a way to
recognize the value of ancient traditions, especially those in what was
now the eastern part of the empire, which seemed to pre-date Islam.
On the other hand, it was a means of legitimating the philosophy derived
from the Greeks, following the path opened by al-Kindī but with greater
historical precision. As a result the sages of antiquity (Empedocles and
Pythagoras were thought the most venerable) were considered to have
lived at the same period as David and Solomon and to have profited
from their wisdom; this wisdom, which emanated from ‘the tabernacle
of prophecy’ was successively passed to Socrates, then to Plato and
even went as far as Aristotle. The heyday of this historico-ideological
doctrine was the second half of the tenth century AD, a time when
several emirs of the Shi‘ite Buyid dynasty, with its capital at Shīrāz,
acted as patrons of learning and science. There is a certain uniformity
to the philosophy of this period. Ancient philosophy was well and
accurately known, but it did not stimulate any really creative thought.
Rather, it was linked to a taste for learning and for expounding the
stock of ancient wisdom. Writers of this sort include Abū Sulaymān al-
Sijistānī (died c. 990), Abū Ḥayyān al-Tawḥīdī (died in 399/1099) and
Ibn Fātik al-Mubashshir, all of them men of great learning. Among the
works typical of this tendency is the Eternal Wisdom of Abū ‘Alī Aḥmad
ibn Miskawayh (died in 421/1030), chancellor of the Buyid emir, ‘Aḍud
al-Dawla. This work claims to be a translation of an old Persian book
and collects pronouncements attributed to ancient Persian, Indian, Arab
and Greek sages. For the exponents of this current of thought, the
truth has been available ever since its original revelation. Such a
conception comes down to applying to philosophers the principle by
which the prophets all transmit the same revelation; but, for this reason,
philosophy, having been made sacred, becomes merely a matter of
retrospection. Al-Kindī’s explicit view was very different, but his idea
of a deep agreement between philosophers and prophets left the way
open for the notion of eternal wisdom and so may have perhaps
contradicted his own theory of progress ([2.18], [2.33], [2.34]).
AVICENNA
The traditional (perhaps not completely exact) date for the birth, near
Bukhara (in present day Uzbekistan) of Abū ‘Alī al-Ḥusayn ibn
‘Abdallah ibn Sīnā is 370/980. Ibn Sīnā, known as ‘Avicenna’ in the
West through the twelfth-century Latin translations, is a giant in the
history of thought. A polymath, he was in particular an outstanding
physician, and it was in this capacity or as a vizier that he served various
princes in the eastern parts of Islam. His life was thus far from calm
and, at times, it was dramatic. He died at Hamadān in 429/1037 as a
result of taking a wrongly made-up medicine. Some of his works have
been lost, but what remains is still substantial. It includes treatises on
various subjects, especially medicine; writings in which he wraps
philosophical views in fiction, in a way reminiscent of Plato’s myths;
and a set of encyclopaedias, some of which are more or less schematic,
whilst others are fairly or extremely detailed. The detailed, lengthier
encyclopaedias are The Direction (al-Hidāya), The Cure (al-Shifā’)—
by far the longest of them, The Salvation (al-Najāt) and Instructions
and Remarks (al-Ishārāt wa-l-tanbīhāt). These are all in Arabic, whilst
a fifth large encyclopaedia, the Book of Knowledge (Dānesh-nāme) is
in Persian. Two rules of method guide the composition of these works.
First, they follow in general the scheme of the branches of knowledge
traditionally recognized in Aristotelianism: logic, physics, mathematics,
and theology or metaphysics. This does not mean that all Ibn Sīnā’s
encyclopaedias follow exactly this order. For instance, the Book of
Knowledge, as well as another work in Persian, the Philosophy for
‘Alā al-Dawla, places metaphysics before physics, in accord with the
idea of metaphysics as the study of the general properties of being.
Avicenna’s other encyclopaedias place metaphysics after physics, which
prepares the ground for understanding it. The second rule is what
follows from the progress of knowledge and Ibn Sīnā’s own decisions
on theoretical questions. The result of these two principles is that Ibn
Sīnā expounds his own views, following Aristotle but not repeating
him; thus in the Shifā the material of the Meteorologica is differently
arranged among different books, and the Metaphysics follows
Aristotle’s plan only distantly. The only works on which he actually
wrote commentaries are Aristotle’s Metaphysics _ and On the Soul,
and also the apocryphal Theology of Aristotle. These commentaries
belonged to the Book of Right Judgement (Kitāb al-Inṣāf), which
survives only in fragments (the complete text was lost when the prince
whom Ibn Sīnā served as physician and vizier was defeated in battle).
In this way there disappeared almost the whole of what has been taken
as Ibn Sīnā’s last philosophy, what he called an ‘Eastern philosophy’,
distinct from that of ‘Westerners’. There has been much speculation
about the nature of this ‘Eastern philosophy’. Some have seen it as a
definite turning towards what would later be called ‘philosophy of
illumination’. Others point out that a treatise which Ibn Sīnā actually
calls Logic of the Easterners is not particularly different from his other
writings. They consider that the term ‘Easterners’ refers to an
Aristotelian school at Khurāsān. Moreover, in the Instructions, which
are later than the lost Book of Right Judgement, there is no mention of
‘Eastern philosophy’ ([2.10], [2.24], [2.25]).
As a young man, Ibn Sīnā read and learnt everything there was to
read and learn. But for the formation of his thought the most important
of all the books he read were the Letters of the Ikhwan al-afa’, and the
works of al-Fārābī, which were particularly important in allowing him
to grasp the point of Aristotle’s Metaphysics by showing him the deep
connection between the theology and the ontology of forms which this
text brings together. His interest in the Ikhwān is understandable in
the light of his spiritual sympathy (perhaps even adherence) to
Isma‘(lism; his father was himself an Isma‘(li. With regard to al-Fārābī,
there is no difficulty in drawing up a list of parallels with Ibn Sīnā’s
views. The two thinkers shared a universal vision of a hierarchy of
being with God at the head of it, and (following the accumulated
teaching of the Aristotelian commentators and of al-Kindī) an analysis
of the intellect which, using the notions of act and potency, divides it
into several ontologically distinct levels. To this, they both linked a
doctrine of prophecy; and they also shared an interest in logic. But Ibn
Sīnā treated these traditions as he did Aristotle: he handled their various
features in his own personal way. A fuller study would need to take
these differences into account, listing and analysing them. For instance,
in logic Ibn Sīnā combined the rules for attributive propositions and
those for hypothetical ones into a more complete synthesis than had
been previously achieved ([2.35], [2.37], [2.42]). Similarly, Ibn Sīnā’s
thinking about the origin of things goes further than al-Fārābī’s.
According to Ibn Sīnā ‘the Being which is necessary by its essence’ is an
Intelligence which thinks itself and so is at once thinking and thought.
The thought which it has of itself is productive of being. The first
being produced in this way therefore exists necessarily and yet, in its
own essence, it is contingent. It too is an Intelligence (the First
Intelligence) which (1) thinks the Necessary in itself and also thinks
itself in its two aspects: (2) in its own necessary existence and (3) in its
contingent essence. From Thought (1) there emanates a second
Intelligence placed directly below this first Intelligence; whilst from
Thought (2) there emanates a form, and from Thought (3) matter,
which are respectively the soul and body of the first Intelligence’s sphere.
The second Intelligence produces the soul and body of its own sphere,
and the third Intelligence; and this process continues down to the last
Intelligence, that of the sphere of the moon. From it there emanate
into the sublunary world the forms which human intellects receive in
different ways and the matter which is ‘prepared’ to receive these forms.
The ideas implied by this scheme of cosmic emanation are at the very
heart of Avicenna’s metaphysics—none more so than the correlated
notions of necessity and contingency.
Aristotle had established the existence of a pure Act, the First Mover
‘on which depend the heavens and all nature’; al-Kindī that of a True
One, the ‘cause of unity’ and so of the existence of ‘all beings which
are unitary’. Ibn Sīnā bases his own argument on a division of being
according to logical modality. All beings of whose existence we are
aware are contingent by their very essence, since it includes no
necessity: they can without contradiction be conceived as not-existing.
Moreover, their existence is ultimately linked by causal relations to
the celestial spheres which are themselves also contingent in essence.
But it is impossible that a chain of causes should go on for ever from
one contingent thing to another, since what is contingent is, by
definition, something which can equally be or not be: contingent
existence tends in itself towards non-existence in so far as it is not
founded on something which exists necessarily. There is, therefore, a
first term in the causal chain which is necessary in its very essence—
that is to say, whose essence includes that mark of necessity which is
lacking in all other things and which can also be expressed as the
identity in it of essence and existence. In this way, the cosmogony
sketched above is given a philosophical basis. Just as the whole system
of the world comes about from the thought which the Necessary
Being has of itself, so this being, in thinking itself at the same time
thinks everything in the universe: it thinks ‘the higher (that is, heavenly)
beings, each in its individuality, and the being of the sublunary world
in the universals under which they are classified’ ([2.6]).
The distinction between essence and existence is another feature of
Ibn Sīnā’s thought which is his own; he did not take it from al-Fārābī,
as was long thought because of the misattribution of a short treatise
(Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam, which might be translated as Precious Aphorisms)
which continues Ibn Sīnā’s own formulation of the distinction. In all
contingent things, Ibn Sīnā differentiates, on the one hand, the fact of
having a certain quiddity (māhiyyah: mā is translated into Latin as quid,
thus producing the word quidditas) or, as he is also willing to say, a
ḥaqīqah, meaning ‘truth’—what this thing which exists really is; and,
on the other hand, the very fact that it exists, its wujūd or huwiyya.
(The word huwiyya is made up from the pronoun huwa which means
‘him’ but also acts as the copula in attributive propositions; al-Kindī,
who also uses wujūd, had already used huwa as the basis for another
word, tahwid, as noted above.) The standard contrast essence and
existence in Western philosophy is, then, a good rendering of Ibn Sīnās
distinction between māhiyya and wujūd. In existing things essence does
not imply existence, otherwise they would exist necessarily. The one
exception, as we have seen, is God, and this structural distinction has
its place at the level of the ultimate origin of things. But it also gives rise
to an idea relevant to the ontology of forms. What sort of being does
essence have? It has no effect on existence as such, but essence determines
its status in each existing thing. In itself, essence is neither universal nor
particular, neither singular nor plural, neither present in existence nor
just a concept in the mind: but it can be any of these. To use Ibn Sīnā’s
own example: the universal ‘horse’ signifies something which is distinct
from its universality: ‘horseliness’ (equinitas in the Latin translations)
or ‘just horseliness’ (equinitas tantum). This horseliness can be attached
to the ‘conditions’ of existence in actual horses, or not: in itself, it is
removed from any condition and only a ‘divine being’ can be attributed
to it, as Ibn Sīnā says in an enigmatic comment which should certainly
be linked to what he says about the origin of the world in God’s thought.
Methodologically, this doctrine of being supports one of Ibn Sīnā’s
favourite procedures. He engages in an imaginary experimentation with
combinations of forms, an inspection of the ‘thingness’ (his word too)
of a given object, from which one can see what is or is not compatible
with its nature and so what should be thought about it. In this theory of
essence, Ibn Sīnā can be seen to be following on from the theological
speculations about non-existing things mentioned above in connection
with the Mu‘tazilites ([2.32]).
There remains one area where Ibn Sīnā is close to al-Fārābī: the
theory of prophecy, its nature and function. Prophetic revelation is an
outstanding example of the joining of the human soul with the separated
Intelligences. Intellectual understanding is the most common instance
of this joining, but whereas ordinary men proceed through discursive
thought, the prophet is, he said, ‘informed of what is invisible; an angel
speaks to him’. The function of prophecy is to ensure the social ties
which are necessary for men by giving them laws and laying down
religious obligations. But it can only inculcate the truth which it contains
through symbols which are accessible to simple minds. It is not a matter
of the prophets’ hiding the truth but of expressing it in another language.
Thus the descriptions of the happiness of heaven are allegories of the
spiritual pleasures of the separated soul. Besides its use in interpreting
prophecies, Ibn Sīnā uses his idea of symbolic expression in two ways.
Sometimes he employs it to give philosophical readings of verses from
the Qur’ān: for instance, in Instructions and Remarks he interprets the
famous verse about light (Sourate 24, Light, v, 35) as an imagistic
description of the intellectual faculties of the soul and their hierarchy,
from the material intelligence up to the intelligence in act which is in
contact with the Agent Intellect. In the same work, Ibn Sīnā refers to
the Story of Salāmān and Absāl (about which he also wrote a letter):
they are two figures, he says, who represent the soul of man (‘yourself’)
and its level of mystical knowledge, a subject treated in detail in the
Instructions. Or again—this is the second way in which he treats
symbols—he himself composes stories which put into the form of images
the adventures of the soul desiring ‘light’ (Ḥayy ibn Yaqzān) and in
search of truth (The Story of the Bird) ([2.1], [2.7], [2.36]).
CONCLUSION
Without doubt Ibn Sīnā is the most widely known of the great Eastern
falāsifah, because of the extent of his work and the variety of fields,
including medicine and literary composition, in which he excelled.
Knowledge of al-Kindī and al-Fārābī is more restricted to specialist
historians of philosophy, but it would be unjust not to recognize al-
Kindī’s pioneer role and his genius as a scholar and philosopher, or al-
Fārābī’s penetration and power of synthesis. Not, of course, that there
is any question of drawing up an order of merit. The task of these
concluding remarks is, rather, to give a general picture of this period of
falsafah. It was a lively, creative period, and many lesser but highly
able authors, unmentioned in this account, were active. Its central
problems resulted from the interplay between two different oppositions.
On the one hand, there was the opposition between the Prophet of
Islam’s revelation and a body of teaching originating in another
language and a different spiritual atmosphere. On the other hand, there
was the opposition between tradition and progress, which in some
ways repeats the first opposition, but in others suppresses it by looking
to a wisdom which has always been the same. Leaving aside this illusory
solution, there are two different ways in which the main opposition—
between religion and philosophy—was resolved. One way was to
reconcile their differences in some way or other. This was al-Kindī’s
procedure (although his historical view of philosophy did not fully
resolve the tension between the terms of the second opposition, tradition
and progress). Ibn Sīnā, too, proceeded in this way. He combined a
theology which was philosophical in a highly technical way with
exegetical and mystical meditations. The other way involved
subordinating religion and making the philosophical tradition the solid
basis for progress. Al-Rāzī went the furthest in this direction; al-Fārābī
tried to have the best of both worlds, but his philosophy of religion
has philosophy of mind and political science, rather than the Koran,
as its main constituents.
These, then, were the main themes and tensions in the first period of
falsafah: the first period because, after Ibn Sīnā, Arab and Islamic
philosophical and religious thought took on a new configuration.
During the fifth/eleventh century, the Seljuk Turks conquered Iran bit
by bit, moving from East to West, and they entered Baghdad in 447/
1055. They did not suppress the caliphate which had long been in
decline, but they put it beneath their authority and presented themselves
as its defenders against the various Shi‘ite regimes of the Near East and
Egypt. As a necessary accompaniment to this military/religious
programme, there was ideological reform. Its outstanding exponent
was Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazzālī (458/1058 to 505/1111). His work took
many forms (theoretical, mystical, political), but here we need note
merely his hostility to falsafah. His main work in this area is the
Incoherence of the Philosophers (Tahāfut al-falāsifah), in which he
refutes twenty theses held by al-Fārābī and Ibn Sīnā. These theses, he
says, express in one way or another three points of view which are
directly opposed to the faith: that the world has existed for eternity;
that God knows only universals; and that bodies will not be resurrected.
Physics and metaphysics are thus to be rejected; the only valuable parts
of philosophy left are mathematics and logic. Al-Ghazālī’s attack, which
took place in a political climate hostile to whatever fell outside strict
theological and juridical tradition, put an end to three centuries of
vigour in the falsafah of the Near East. Falsafah would go on as such
for a while in the extreme West of Islam, the Maghreb and Spain,
where there was already a well-established scientific and philosophical
tradition. And, in the East, the legacy of Ibn Sīnā would continue, but
in a way where (starting especially with Shihāb al-Dīn Yaḥyā al-
Suhrawardī, of Alep, put to death in 587/1191) its mystical tendencies
were emphasized. There followed a brilliant line of philosophers whose
doctrines brought together a profound metaphysics, religious
speculations characteristic of Shi‘ism and traditions attributed to the
great figures of ancient Persia (such as Zoroaster) or to a mythical past
(Hermes). It is difficult not to recall here Neoplatonism at the end of
antiquity, in which poems attributed to Orpheus and the Chaldaean
Oracles were made the subject of commentary and were the goal for
pupils who would already have studied Plato and Aristotle. This new
Islamic philosophy thus marks the return, though with a different
content, of a stimulating structure of thought able to unify different
religious traditions. The ideas about ‘eternal wisdom’ of the fourth
and fifth (tenth and eleventh) centuries were a more restricted
development of the same way of thought.
(translated by John Marenbon)
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