Volume 12. December 2011 Transcendent Philosophy
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shadows of non-existence of the possible quiddities which are
overturned by – as the philosopher states - ‘the [divine] overflowing (ifāda) of the Light of existence’. 40 With this statement, Avicenna implicitly links the inner possibility of matter to both darkness and non-existence which are replaceable by the divine emanation of Light- existence. 41 Avicenna continues his comment on sūra 113 referring to the verses 4 and 5. In this context, he tackles the notion of evil from a moral perspective by explaining that evil finds its abode in the dispositions of the human soul and its incapability to detach from bodily matter and its dictates. Avicenna believes that the subject which in the Quranic verses is seeking refuge is the human soul; he explains this by saying that the human nafs inclines to liaise with the dusky (ghāsaq) and murky (mutakaddira) animal powers, thus connecting itself with matter which is the source of darkness, evil and privation (al-madda hiya manba ’ al-zulma wa’l-sharr wa’l-’adam). 42 In the analysis of the above verses, Avicenna implicitly employs his metaphysical perspective on the nature of the human soul and its faculties: the human soul can stay pure if it manages to tame the internal material senses which belong to the animal soul – amongst which are the common sense (al-hiss al-mushtarak), imagination (mutakhayyila), and estimation (wahm) 43 - and if it can make knowledge of the intellect to prevail over lower faculties. 162 Maria De Cillis The ‘light’ mentioned in Avicenna’s exegesis which is said to overflow from the Necessary Existent can be read from a moral and a gnoseological standpoint: the Qur’anic revelation calls upon the human souls and encourages them to escaping the powers of ‘darkness’; but to achieve this the human souls cannot simply rely on the first three levels of thought which in men are linked to the animal powers (sensation, imagination and estimation); willing to flee the darkness of ignorance (or non-knowledge), the human soul must strive in order detach itself from the injunctions of materiality and use intuition (hads). Intuition occurs when the soul is able to subjugate ‘the objective data of the common sense and the two commemorative powers to the judgment of the intellect’. 44 Intuition can be attained only when the soul is in conjunction with the Agent Intellect and such a conjunction can be reached exclusively through the human rational faculty. 45 The reason for this is that the human rational soul is, like all intellects, immaterial and immortal; intelligibles like the Agent Intellect can only be perceived by faculties deprived of any material substrate. 46 It is exactly through intuition that knowledge ( ‘ilm) becomes authentic gnosis (ma’ārifa); only once the human soul has liberated itself from the imprisoning legacy of the body (and its materiality) it can engage in a communicative liaison with the intelligences that are ready to share with the soul their knowledge which pertains to them as cognizant beings in the emanative order. Clearly, by removing themselves from the limiting dictates of matter and its inclination towards evil, human souls are invited to morally choosing light over darkness and knowledge over ignorance as maintained in the Qurān. Conclusion Avicenna’s attempt to harmonize the Aristotelian-Neoplatonic underpinnings of his metaphysical stances with the Revealed Word is reasonably successful. The Qurān serves as the edifice upon which Avicenna weaves his personal philosophical discourse which is scattered here and there with Kalāmic reminiscences, in his attempt to provide his readers with a product that is certainly open to criticism and Avicenna on Matter, Matter’s Disobedience and Evil … 163 dissent, but also undeniably ‘Islamic’. Avicenna masterly draws attention to his unconventional idea of the disobedience of matter by integrating Quranic dogmas (God is omnipotent and obeyed by heavens and earth) with metaphysically- based theories (the relation of matter and form within the compound and the emanative order). He presents the phenomenon of ‘isyān al- mādda as being embedded in the Quranic discourse on divine qadā ’ wa’l-qadar: the divine decree deterministically unravels through the elements of the emanative scheme and it encompasses everything including the initial matter’s disposition not to comply with the divine command. When Avicenna adopts the Quranic perspective which identifies evil as being part of the divine creation, he accentuates the influence of his Neoplatonic heritage by way of addressing the problem of the theodicy from a moral and an ontological perspective: on the one hand he speaks of the human souls’ need to remit their salvation to divine guidance (of the Agent Intellect); on the other hand, he connects the concept of evil with that of privation through their common link with matter. It might be argued that Avicenna’s metaphysical discourse not simply finds legitimacy within the Qurān, but it succeeds in attaining something unexpected: the arguments adopted and the techniques employed for the Quranic exegesis lead the reader to think that the revealed Scripture could, or rather, should be interpreted through Avicenna’s personal metaphysical perceptions. Endnotes 1 Avicenna, Dānish Nāma-i ‘alā’ī: Ilāhiyyāt, ed. E. Mu’īn, Tehran: Intishārāt-i Anjuman-i Āsār-i Millī, 1952, p. 10, translated by Paraviz Morewedge in The Metaphysica of Avicenna, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, New York: Columbia University Press, 1973, p. 15. Aristotle explains substance in similar terms at the beginning of his Categories, chapter 2. Avicenna understands substance as what subsists by itself and as what is not in a subject (mawdū ’), and he distinguishes between the notions of subject and receptacle (mahall); the former is understood as what has become subsistent by itself and becomes a cause through which something, different from it, comes to be. The latter is seen 164 Maria De Cillis as something in which some other thing inheres, so as to acquire a certain state (hal) through it. Avicenna explains: ‘the substance of hayūla [...] is a substance disposed (musta ’id) to receive things. The substantiality it has does not make it actual, but only prepares it to become something actual through form. […] The meaning of saying that it is a substance is nothing but to say that it is a ‘something’ which is not in a subject. The affirmation is that it is ‘a something’ [and] its character is that it is prepared [for the reception] of all things. Its form consists in its being prepared, receptive.’ See Avicenna, Al-Shifā ’: al- Ilāhiyyāt: The Metaphysics of the Healing. A parallel English-Arabic Text. Translated and edited by M. E. Marmura, Provo (Utah): Brigham Young University Press, 2005, p. 54. According to Avicenna, forms exist only in a receptacle but not in a subject – hence, the primary substantiality of form as that which is not in a subject– whilst matter has a negative sense of substantiality as ‘a something’ which is a receptacle. A similar view is advanced in Avicenna’s Kitāb al-Hudūd, Le Livre des Definitions, edition and translation by A. M. Goichon, Cairo: Publications de l’Institut Français d’Archéologie Orientale du Caire, 1963, p.17, note 6. The relation between form and actuality, matter and potentiality is clearly expressed by Avicenna in Risāla fī’l- ’ishq, in A. F. M. Mehren (ed.), Traitès Mystiques d’Abou ‘Alī al-Hsain b. Abdallah b. Sīnā, Leyde: E. J. Brill, III fascicule, 1889-1899, p. 6; English translation by E. L., Fackenheim, ‘A Treatise on Love by Ibn Sīnā,’ Medieval Studies, 7 (1945), pp. 214-15. 2 A. M. Goichon, La Distinction de l’Essence et de l’Existence d’après Ibn Sīnā (Avicenne), Paris:Desclèe de Brouwer, 1937, p. 20. 3 Al-Fārābī, Al-Farabi on the Perfect State: Abū Nasr al-Fārābī's Mabādi ’ ārā’ ahl al-Madīna al- Fādila, a revised text with introduction, translation, and commentary by Richard Walzer, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985, pp. 101- 35. 4 Elements of the emanation scheme are traceable in all the major works of Avicenna. See al-Ilāhiyyāt, pp. 330-34; Al-Najāt fī al-Hikma al-Man ṭiqīyawa’l- Tabī ’iya wa al-Ilāhīya, Tehran: Muḥyi’l-Dīn al-Kurdī, 1967, p. 274. 5 Avicenna, Al-Mubāhathāt, Bīdārfar (ed.), Qum: Intisharāt-e Bīdār, 1992, pp. 92 and 94. In this text Avicenna argues that what belongs properly to matter is the quality of reception (qabūl). 6 On these argument see M. Marmura, ‘Some Questions regarding Avicenna’s Theory of the Temporal Originations of the Human Rational Soul’, Arabic Sciences and Philosophy, 18 (2008), pp. 124-25. 7 The philosopher states that matter does not contribute in the existence of each form except (illā) for the fact that it is indispensably needed for form to exist with it, this being the specific characteristic of a receptive cause (al- ’illa al-qābiliyya). Ibid., p. 66-7. 8 Avicenna, Kitāb al-Hidāya li-Ibn Sīnā, M. ‘Abduh (ed.), Cairo: Maktabat al- Avicenna on Matter, Matter’s Disobedience and Evil … 165 Qāirat al- ḥadīṭa, 1974, pp. 243-44. For a classification of causes in Avicenna see J. Jolivet, ‘La Repartition des Causes chez Aristote et Avicenne: le sens d’un Déplacement’, in Lectionum Varietates: Hommage à Paul Vignaux (1904-1987). J Jolivet, Z. Kaluza, A. De Libera (ed.), Paris: Vrin, 1991, pp. 49-65. 9 B., Kogan, Averroes and the Metaphysics of Causation, Albany: State University of New York Press, 1985, pp. 36-7, and 88-9. Avicenna, following the Aristotelian distinction between material and formal cause, distinguishes matter and form as being causes responsible for the subsistence of a thing. He refers to the wood and the form of the bed as parts responsible for the existence of the bed; the wood is nothing but the potential to constitute the bed (potential-material causality); the form of the bed is that by which the bed is what it is. See, Kitāb al- Hidāya, pp. 243-44. 10 Qurān 2:117; 16:40; 16:48-50; 36:82; 40:68. 11 Plotinus, The Enneads, translated by S. MacKena, B. S. Page, London: Penguin Books, 1991, pp. 67-78. 12 References to Quranic verses are from Yusuf ‘Alī, ‘The Meaning of the Holy Qurān’, Amana Publications: Maryland, USA, 10th edition, 1999, reprinted in 2004. References to Avicenna’s interpretation of chapter 41 verses 11 and 12 are from J. Michot ‘Le Commentaire Avicennien du Verset: “Puis Il se Tourna vers le Ciel”, Mideo, 14 (1980), pp.317-28, Arabic text pp. 319-21. 13 Ibid. 14 References are to Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī’s Mafātīh al-Ghayb (al-Tafsīr al-Kabīr), Cairo, 1890, part VII, p. 343. 15 See for instance Qurān 16:48-50. In the Qurān the term qadā ’ is used to indicate a measure, a judgment and a decision. Its verbal form qadā ’ is usually employed to signify ‘to decree’, ‘to judge’, and ‘to accomplish’. Speculative theology (Kalām), in particular, embeds this term with a sense of predetermination, by referring to it as a divine ‘universal’ decree; qadā ’ is conceived as a perfect and precise divine plan, projected by God in aeternitate, determining all things and occurrences (on these arguments see ‘Abd al-Qahir Jurjānī, Kitāb al-Ta’rīfāt, Flügel (ed.), Leipzig, 1845). Qadar generally refers to the divine decree operating in time; it is often understood as fate, destiny and as being determined or fixed. In the Qurān it appears often in the verbal form of qaddara meaning to determine (something) ineluctably or according to a specific measure. See, L. Gardet ‘Al- kadā ’ wa’l-kadar’ in Encyclopaedia Islamica second edition. 16 C. Belo, ‘Ibn Sīnā on Chance in the Physics’’, in J. McGinnis and D. C. Reisman (ed.), Interpreting Avicenna: Science and Philosophy in Medieval Islam, Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2004, pp. 25-41; See also idem, Chance and Determinism in Avicenna and Averroes, Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2007, p. 47. 17 Li-yakūn al-taw’u ‘āi’d ilā madda al-falak wa’l- karāha ‘āi’d ilā madda al-ard. 166 Maria De Cillis ‘Le Commentaire Avicennien du Verset’, Arabic text p. 320. 18 Mafātī ḥ al-Ghayb, p. 343. 19 ‘Le Commentaire Avicennien du Verset’, Arabic text, p. 317. 20 Avicenna’s position is particularly reminiscent of the Ash’arite view on atoms and accidents usually referred to as ‘occasionalism’. Based on the idea that everything in the world consist of atoms (jawāhir) and accidents (a’rād) which are combined in the bodies (ajsām, sing. jism), Ash’arite occasionalism intended to vindicate the absolute power of God and to ascribe to His direct intervention not only the coming into being of things, but also their persistence in existence from one instant to another. The Ash’arites found in the most characteristic feature of atoms - their perishable nature - a perfect tool to fulfil their intent to depict God as both the ultimate provider and sustainer of existence. Following al- Ash’arī’s claim that ‘everything in the world comes into existence through God’s fiat [...] and ceases through His commanding it to cease’ (‘Abd al-Qahir al- Baghdādī, U ṣūl al-dīn, Istanbul: Maṭba’at al-Dawla, 1928, p. 50) the Ash’arites believe accidents are, like atoms, perishable by nature and that they belong to the class of the ‘transient things’ of this world, referred to in the Qurān. The existence of the bodies is made contingent upon the inherence in them of the accident of being (kawn) whilst their endurance is seen as dependent on the accident of duration (baqā’) which, not being capable of duration per se, presupposes the existence of other accidents of duration ad infinitum. Because of this infinite dependence, according to the Ash’arites, the durability of either bodies or accidents has to be referred to a different principle of durability (beyond accidentality). The Ash’arites identify this principle with God’s own decree to preserve in being or destroy at will the atoms or ultimate components of the world. Accordingly, both the accidents and the atoms depend for their duration on God’s decree to repeat the process of their creation as long as He pleases. Any possibility of a transitive action between two bodies is denied and the changes inherent in the bodies are explained only as the result of God’s will ceasing to create the same accident in the body. On these arguments see R. M. Frank, ‘Bodies and Atoms: the Ash’arite Analysis’, M. E. Marmura (ed.), Islamic Theology and Philosophy, Albany: State University of New York press, 1984, pp. 39-53; idem, ‘The Structure of Created Causality according to al-Ash’arī. An nalysis of the Kitāb al- Luma‘’, Studia Islamica, 25 (1966), pp. 13-75. 21 Avicenna explains the case of heated water in which the heat present in the water is generated with aversion on behalf of the water; this is the time in which water is commanded (mā’mūra) to receive, for example, the form of air. ‘Le Commentaire Avicennien du Verset’, Arabic text, p. 319. 22 ‘Le Commentaire Avicennien du Verset’, p. 320. 23 Ibid. 24 Ibid. Avicenna on Matter, Matter’s Disobedience and Evil … 167 25 Ibid. 26 The Ash’arites, the theological school which mainly contributed to the shaping of Islamic orthodoxy, believed that God is the Creator of both good and evil. They supported the idea that what is created by God is without a reason (sabab) which makes it necessary and that God is not bound to any compulsion or duty towards mankind (what He commands being necessarily right, and what He condemns being necessarily wrong). On these arguments, see McCarthy, R. J. (ed.), The Theology of al-Ash’arī: the Arabic texts of al-Ash’arī's Kitāb al-Luma’ and Risāla Isti ḥsān al-khawḍ fī ‘ilm al-kalām, Beyrouth: Imprimerie Catholique, 1953, pp. 59- 60, 63, 67; Mu ḥammad ibn al-Ḥasan Ibn Fūrak, Mujarrad Maqālāt al-Shaykh Abī al- Ḥasan al-Ash’arī: Exposé de la doctrine d'al-Aڑ'arī, D. Gimaret (ed.), Beirut: Dār al-Macher, 1987, p. 131. 27 Al-‘A ṣī, al-Tafsīr al-qur’ānī wa’l-lugha al-sūfiyya fī falsafat Ibn Sīnā, Beirut, 1983, p. 116. 28 Ibid. See also J. Janssens, ‘Avicenna and the Qur’ān: a Survey of his Qur’ānic Commentaries’, Mideo, 25-26 (2004), p. 191. 29 Al-‘Asī, al-Tafsīr al-qur’ānī, p. 116. In al-Najāt (p. 325), Avicenna states: ‘God wills (yurīdu) things and wants evil (al-sharr) too, in an accidental way (‘alā al-wajh alladhī bi’l-’arad) […] Good (al- khayr) is decreed (muqtadan) by itself (bi’l-dhāt) and evil is decreed by accident (bi’l-’ara ḍ), and everything is according to determination (bi’l-qadar).’ The Ash’arite view of divine qadā’ encompassing good and evil, predetermining salvation and damnation, recompense and punishments is perfectly respected within Avicenna’s construct in which God wills good as well as evil. Nonetheless, in the above quotation Avicenna significantly uses the word determination (qadar) instead of qadā’ in order to stress that the philosophical ‘accidental’ evil, although decreed by God, is rooted within the possible nature of evil itself because evil is connected with matter and the secondary causes. This means that all existents cannot be what they are without evil (including forms of bad belief or impiety): evil, in fact, is encompassed within the divine arrangement of creation. 30 Al-‘A ṣī, al-Tafsīr al-qur’ānī, p. 116. 31 Ibid. 32 J. Janssens, ‘Avicenna and the Qur’ān’, p. 190. 33 Chance and Determinism, pp. 114-15. 34 Avicenna, Risāla fī’l-qadā’, in Lettre au Vizier Abū Sa’ad, edition, translation introduction and notes by Y. Michot, Beirut: Al-Bouraq, 2000, pp. 103-05. 35 This perspective underscores the exegesis of the previous sūra (41:11-12) in which Avicenna’s Islamic perspective shines bright when he speaks of an omnipotent God who is ultimately obeyed by heaven and earth, as stated in the 168 Maria De Cillis Qurān, despite the ‘temporary’ disobedience of matter. 36 Al-‘Asī, al-Tafsīr al-qur’ānī, p. 117. 37 According to Avicenna, ‘privation is not absolute, rather it is privation in relation to existence, for it is the privation of something with inclination and preparation (tahayyu’ wa’l-isti’dād) in a specific matter’. Al-Shifā’: Al-Samā’al- Tabī’ī, p. 92. 38 Avicenna, Risāla fī’l-’ishq, p. 6; English translation, p. 215. 39 The facts that God is the only Necessary Existent by Himself and that perfection equals existence make God - as ultimate Perfection and Actuality - an uttermost goodness. Goodness is nothing else than the absence of non-realized possibilities in actuality: it is a synonymous of the perfect actualization of existence. God is, therefore, ‘willing’ what is good (and best in its being actual) at all given times and from eternity, and this implies that God ‘wills’ emanation over non-emanation, emanation being actuality (or existence) over the possibility (or non-existence). Kitāb al-Hidāya, pp. 271-72 commented on by O. Lizzini, ‘La Metafisica del Libro della Guida’, Presentazione e Traduzione della terza parte (bāb) del Kitāb al-Hidāya di Avicenna’, Le Muséon, Revue d’Etudes Orientales, 108 (1995), p. 380. 40 Al-‘A ṣī, al-Tafsīr al-qur’ānī, p. 118. 41 Ibid., p. 116. With this observations in mind, it can be argued that in Avicenna’s analysis of sūra 41:11-12, evil might be placed in the instant in which matter’s disposition (prior to its conjunction to any form) makes it disobedient; more precisely, evil can be found in matter’s disposition towards the reception of all possible forms, and consequently, in matter’s inclination towards everything that is not in actu but it is merely possible. 42 Al-‘Asī, al-Tafsīr al-qur’ānī, p. 118. 43 The first is the faculty which has sense perception; the second has the function to combine and separate images and forms; the third faculty has multiple purposes such as to perceive the non-sensible attributes of things and to determine a course of action. See D. Gutas, ‘Intellect without Limit: the Absence of Mysticism in Avicenna’, Rencontres de Philosophie Médiévale Intellect et Imagination dans la Philosophie Médiévale, Brepols: Société Internationale pour l’Etude de la Philosophie Médiévale, 2006, pp. 336-37. 44 J. Janssens, ‘Avicenna and the Qur’ān’, p. 191. 45 Kitāb al-Hidāya, pp. 293-94. 46 Ibid, pp. 295-96. Transcendent Philosophy © London Academy of Iranian Studies Some Reflections upon Islamophobia as the ‘Totally Other’ Seyed Javad Miri Institute of Humanities and Cultural Studies (Tehran-Iran) Center for Critical Research on Religion (West Newton- USA) Abstract In this essay I would like to look at the question of Islamophobia by looking at various pro and con positions in relation to Islam and the “fear” which some ascribe to it, which, in return, seems to back up their antagonistic or hostile views and actions on Muslims as a community and Islam as a religion. Keywords: Islamophobia, other, Islam, fear, Muslim, community. Islamophobia in the context of Kulturwissenschaften The fact that history of the term “Islamophobia” is very recent explains a sociological fact that societies which today display Islamophobic tendencies are in a very peculiar sense trying to come to terms with various socio-demographic transformations which are occurring Download 5.01 Kb. Do'stlaringiz bilan baham: |
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