PHILOSOPHY (FALSAFA)
Philosophy in the Islamic world appeared around the III / IX century, when the Arabic translation of Greek philosophical texts took place. The first Muslim philosopher was al-Kindī, who was familiar with the doctrines of Greek philosophy and had himself made the translation of a condensed version of the "Enneads" of the Neoplatonic philosopher Plotinus. It was he who started the process of formulating a technical philosophical vocabulary in Arabic, and a rethinking of Greek philosophy in terms of Islamic doctrines.
In both these aspects he was followed by al-Fārābī, who laid the groundwork for Peripatetic philosophy to take root and develop within Islam. The philosophers of this school were familiar with the Alexandrine and Athenian neoplatons, and with the commentators of Aristotle, and saw the philosophy of the Stagirite through Neoplatonic eyes. There are also neopitagorical elements in al-Kindī, Shiite political doctrines (the figure of Imam) in al-Fārābī and ideas of Shiite inspiration (in particular of Ismaili Shiism) in some of the writings of Avicenna.
The main tendency of the Peripatetic school, which found its greatest Islamic exponent in Avicenna (Ibn Sina), was in any case towards a philosophy based on the use of the discursive faculty, and essentially dependent on the syllogistic method. The rationalistic aspect of this school reached its terminal point with Averroes (Ibn Rushd), who became the most purely Aristotelian Muslim Peripatetic, and refused, as an explicit aspect of philosophy, those Neoplatonic and Muslim elements that had entered the world view. of oriental Peripatetics like Avicenna. In any case, the Peripatetic philosophers, while leaving an indelible imprint on the terminology of the later Muslim theology, gradually turned away from the orthodox, both theological and Gnostic elements, so that after their "refutation" by al-Ghazzali, they exercised little influence on the main body of the Muslim opinion.
From the 6th / 12th century onwards, the other main school of Islamic philosophy developed, the founder of which was Suhrawardī, and which became known as the illuminationist school (ishrāqī), as opposed to the peripatetic school (mashashā'ī). While the Peripatetics were more firmly grounded on the syllogistic method of Aristotle, and sought to reach the truth through arguments based on reason, the illuminationists, who drew their doctrines from both the Platonists and the ancient Persians and from the same Islamic Revelation, considered intellectual intuition and enlightenment the fundamental method to be followed, side by side with the use of reason. In fact, together with gnosis, it occupied the central position in the intellectual life of Islam.
While the Sunni world rejected philosophy almost entirely after Averroes, except for the logic and persistent influence of philosophy on its methods of argument, as well as for some cosmological beliefs that had been preserved in the formulations of theology and in some doctrines of Sufism, in the Shiite world the philosophy of both schools, Peripatetic and Enlightenment, continued to be taught as a living tradition over the centuries in religious schools. Shiism has always been numerically a minority, but its spiritual and cultural importance during Islamic history has nevertheless been very profound. In Persia, the Twelver Shiites have dominated since the XNUMXth / XNUMXth century, where philosophy found its most congenial habitat after the Averroes era. There the logic and Peripatetic philosophy, which is substantially founded on it, became preparatory to the study of the doctrines of the Enlightenment school, and this study was in turn a ladder to ascend to the understanding of the doctrine of pure gnosis. Of the various branches of Shiite Islam, two are particularly important for the study of Islamic philosophy, the Duodeciman or ja'farīta school, and the Ismaili school, which had a great influence, both political and cultural, during the Middle Ages. The Shiite imams who carry the prophetic light within themselves are the interpreters par excellence of the inner meaning of all things, of the Book of Revelation as well as of the Book of Nature. They possess in principle the knowledge of all things, supernatural as well as natural, and some of them - in particular Ja'far al-Sādiq, the sixth imam - were not only teachers of religious and spiritual sciences, but also wrote of natural sciences . Shiism therefore sought to cultivate various sciences, especially the cosmological ones. Many of the famous Muslim scientists and philosophers - like Avicenna, Nāsir-i Khusrau e Nāsir al-Dīn al-Tūsī - they were Shiites or came from a Shiite environment.
Avicenna
The recapitulation and perfection of the philosophy of al-Kindī and al-Farabi came with Avicenna, who was perhaps the greatest philosopher-scientist, and certainly the most influential philosopher, within the Islamic world. He is an excellent example of al-hakīm, in which various branches of knowledge merge. After his death his writings soon became the source from which many different schools would draw ideas and inspiration. Avicenna he was not only a Peripatetic philosopher who combined Aristotle's doctrines with certain Neoplatonic elements, and a scientist who observed Nature within the framework of the medieval philosophy of Nature; he was also one of the precursors of the metaphysical school of Enlightenment (ishrāq), of which the greatest exponent was Suhrawardī. In his later works, and especially in the Visionary Tales and the Epistle on Love, the cosmos of the syllogistic philosophers is transformed into a universe of symbols through which the Gnostic travels to his final bliss. In the "Logic" of the Orientals, belonging to a larger work, much of which has been lost, Avicenna denied his earlier works, which are mainly Aristotelian, considering them suitable for common people; he proposed, instead, for the elite, the "Eastern Philosophy". His trilogy - Hayy ibn Yaqdhan (Living Son of the Awakened), al-Tair (The Bird) and Salāmān and Absāl - deals with the complete cycle of the gnostic's journey from the "world of shadows" to the Divine Presence, the East of Light. In these writings the design of the universe of medieval philosophers and scientists remains unchanged; the cosmos is, in any case, internalized within the being of the gnostic - a "crypt", with respect to which the initiate must orient himself, and through which he must travel. The facts and phenomena of Nature become transparent, symbols that have a spiritual meaning for the subject who comes into contact with them on this cosmic journey.
The totality of Avicenna's work presents a clear example of the hierarchy of knowledge within Islamic society. Avicenna was an observer and experimenter in geology and medicine; philosopher of the Peripatetic school, more neoplatonic than Aristotelian; and author of Gnostic texts that would become the source of much commentaries of later illuminationists. One can see in his writings the harmony of sensible, rational and intellectual knowledge, revealed through an imposing building founded on the hierarchy inherent in the nature of things, and which ultimately rests on the multiple states and degrees of cosmic manifestation.
The Book of Healing (al-Shifa) - the most complete exposition of Aristotelian philosophy in Islam - contains sections that deal with every branch of the natural sciences, as well as with logic, mathematics and philosophy first. Avicenna also describes an elaborate cosmology, in which the planets are made to correspond to various intelligences or angels, emanating all from the First Intellect. In the Islamic world, and especially in Persia, the cosmology of Avicenna was interpreted in the light of an angelology, so that the universe always retained its sacred aspect, and continued to serve as a harmonious background for the realities of religion. In his narrative cycle, as well as in various poems and short, less well-known treatises, in the Western world, of his "essoteric" philosophy, Avicenna clarifies the primordiality of the intelligible or angelic world, and its superiority over the sensitive and human, as well as the need for the human soul to abandon this world of shadows and return to the angelic world from which it came. Since the Intellect is the principle of the universe, the soul acquires a certain knowledge of the cosmos only when it is united with the Intellect - that is, only when it has reacquired its angelic nature.
In the Visionary Tales Avicenna, the natural historian, scientist and philosopher, becomes the navigator and guides through the entire cosmos, from the world of gross forms to the divine principle. All his vast knowledge, illuminated here by the intellectual vision, serves as the basis on which to build with great beauty the panorama of the universe through which the initiate must travel. The natural sciences are here transformed into an immediate and direct reality. The cosmos through which those who seek to know in an effective and not only theoretical way must make their journey is internalized within their very being; in a sense, he "becomes" the cosmos. Avicenna begins the Visionary Tales with a description of the essay, which symbolizes the light of intellectual intuition, as well as the spiritual teacher, who must guide the initiate; and then, in the language of the guide, he describes the anatomy of the universe, or cosmic "crypt", through which the guide and initiate, teacher and disciple, must make their journey.
Al-Ghazzali
The spread of Asharite theology limited the influence of rationalism in Islam and with the help of Sufism finally destroyed it as a force of prominence. The person who was destined to carry out the «destruction of the philosophers» and at the same time to establish a harmony between the esoteric and esoteric elements of Islam was Abū æāmid Muáammad al-Ghazzali. Respected likewise by jurists, theologians and Sufis, and possessing a lucidity of thought and a remarkable capacity for expression, he defined once and for all in his writings the function that philosophy, as an attempt of human reason to explain all things in one system, he would have had in Islam, and especially in Sunni Islam. After him the rationalist philosophy continued to be taught, particularly in the Shiite world, but not as a central aspect of the intellectual life of Islam. In Islam al-Ghazzali, expelled the Aristotelianism from the inner life of Islam, thus guaranteeing the survival of the school of illuminationism and Sufism, which could be preserved to this day. The radically different course of events in the West and in the Islamic world during the following centuries, despite the many similarities of the two civilizations during the Middle Ages, can perhaps be explained in part by the different attitude that each of the two civilizations adopted towards the Peripatetic philosophy . The reaction of Orthodox Islam, both of theologians and of some Gnostics, against rationalist philosophers, especially with regard to the natural sciences, is best exemplified in the "confessions" of al-Ghazzali Release from error, in which he enumerates the various philosophical and scientific schools and their limitations.
Averroes and philosophy in Andalusia
In Andalusia, Islamic philosophy reached its apogee and also its conclusion with Averroes, after having begun three centuries before him with Ibn Masarrah, the Sufi and philosopher who founded the school of Almería. In the V / XI century the theologian, philosopher and historian of the religion Ibn Hazm sustained with his voluminous writings the cause of philosophical and theological studies in Andalusia. In addition to being the author of a remarkable work on the history of religions, Ibn Hazm wrote various philosophical works, of which the most familiar is The Ring of the Dove, which in the mode of Plato's Phaedo analyzes the universal love that pervades the whole cosmos. Ibn Hazm is in fact the Platonic tendency in Islamic philosophy in Andalusia.
As for the Peripatetic school, it found its first eminent representative in Avempace, who was born in northern Spain, in Zaragoza, and died in Fez in the 533 / 1138. He was both a scientist and a philosopher and exerted great influence despite the fact that most of his writings were lost. Like many other Andalusian philosophers, he was more attracted to the philosophy of al-Fārābī than to that of Avicenna, while at the same time he opposed al-Ghazzali, which only a few years before Avempace had criticized Avicenna on some points of his philosophy. Although he himself was inclined to a metaphysical interpretation of philosophy that brought it closer to the domain of gnosis, he represented another tendency with respect to the perspective of al-Ghazzali. In fact, he gave the Andalusian philosophy an imprint that could be called "antighazzālīana", which culminated with Averroes, who opposed both al-Ghazzālī and certain interpretations of Avicenna that al-Ghazzālī had in turn criticized. Avempace wrote several commentaries on Aristotle, as well as independent works on astronomy, philosophy and music and, like al-Fārābī, he was a music expert. In astronomy he wrote a treatise in defense of Aristotelian celestial physics against the Ptolemaic epiciclic system, thus underlining an extensive debate that was carried out by later astronomers and philosophers. The main philosophical work of Avempace is the Regime of the Solitary, an unfinished metaphysical work based on the central theme of the union with the Active Intellect. Avempace developed an elaborate theory of spiritual forms. He distinguished between intelligible forms abstracted from matter and intelligible forms independent of matter, arguing that the process of philosophical perception should go from first to second. This doctrine is of the utmost importance in his physics, where he applies it to gravity, with results that have far-reaching historical effects. It is indeed in the domain of the philosophical aspect of physics that Avempace is best known in the West. Avempace also conceived the force of gravity as an inner form, a spiritual form, which moves the bodies from within and which he compared to the movement of the celestial bodies by the intelligences. Thus he eliminated the barrier between the heavens and the sublunar world.
Between Avempace and Averroes is the figure of Ibn Tufail, a physician, philosopher and politician also known in the West through the criticisms addressed by Averroes in his commentary on Aristotle's De Anima. In addition to his contributions to medicine, he is best known for the work "Living Son of the Awakened One", which however should not be confused with the work of Avicenna bearing the same title. Ibn Tufail was in fact a great admirer of Avicenna, but his work has a different approach and conclusion, although it too is a search for knowledge through union with the Active Intellect. Unknown in medieval times, it was translated in the seventeenth century with the title of Philosophus autodidactus and made a deep impression on some philosophers of that era as well as English mystics, who spoke of the "inner light" and tried to discover the "light" to the internal to oneself through individual effort.
The answer to the Muslim philosophers who tried to modify Aristotle as well as to the challenge of al-Ghazzali against the philosophers was given, but without too great a effect on the Muslim world, by Averroes. Like many medieval philosophers, he believed that both reason and revelation are sources of truth and lead to the same ultimate end, as stated in his book Decisive Treatise on the Agreement of Religion with Philosophy; unlike Avicenna and many other famous Muslim philosophers, however, his thinking remained far more rationalistic than intellectual. His system is the most complete and faithful exposition in the Islamic world of Aristotle and his Neo-Platonic commentators. He followed Aristotle with great fidelity in the sciences of the sublunar region, although he differs from the Stagirite on matters related to the Intellect, to the relationship of God with the universe and to the connection between philosophy and religion. Yet, like the Stagirite, he believed that the whole of knowledge could be discovered by human reason by working on the experience of the senses, and that the existence of God could be demonstrated with arguments drawn from physics. The inconsistency of incoherence was the response of Averroes to the attack of al-Ghazzālī to the philosophers, who, however, did not have an influence in the Islamic world equal to that of the attack. Averroes' ideas were taught in some Islamic countries, such as Persia, immediately after his death, as part of the corpus of the Peripatetic school. Yet, even in the field of Peripatetic philosophy, Averroes occupied a secondary position with respect to al-Fārābī and Avicenna, whose less rationalistic and metaphysical perspectives provided a more congenial company to gnosis and a background more suited to intellectual intuition, of those of the more rationalistic philosophy of Averroes.
Al Tūsī
Fu Nasīr al-Dīn al-Tūsī, one of the leading Muslim mathematicians and astronomers, to try to reestablish the school of Avicenna. He succeeded in placing himself in the perspective of each school, and defending it from his own point of view; and also to compose a work in that field, which was later accepted as a classical authority. He had fully realized the inner harmony of the various perspectives cultivated in Islam. In fact, he highlights this harmony in his writings, the result of the position assigned to each science according to a hierarchical order, thus preserving the harmony of everything and preventing disciplines from becoming contending enemies on an intellectual battlefield. Compared to Avicenna, Nasīr al-Dīn al-Tūsī it must be considered inferior as a philosopher and as a doctor, but superior as a mathematician and as a theologian. His writings in Persian are more important than those of Avicenna. In any case, he is second only to Avicenna, the master of all Muslim philosopher-scientists, in his influence and in his importance for the Islamic arts and sciences and philosophy. The universality of the genius of Nasīr al-Dīn al-Tūsī, which some have mistakenly mistakenly mistaken for lack of principles, is shown by the fact that, while serving the Ismaili, he managed to master their doctrines and also to write various works containing some of the clearest exposures of hismailism.
Suhrawardī e Mullā Sadrā
Although he lived almost a century before Nasīr al-Dīn al-Tūsī, Shihāb al-Dīn al-Suhrawardī belongs - as regards the influence of the school founded by him - to the centuries following the mathematical philosopher, on which he also exercised a certain influence. Suhrawardī only lived 38 years, having been born in 548 / 1153 and having died in 587 / 1191, but were enough for him to found the second most important philosophical perspective of Islam, the school of illuminationism, which became a rival of the most ancient peripatetic school, and it soon ended up even obscuring it. Suhrawardī studied in Maragha, the center of the future astronomical activities of al-Tusi, and also in Isfahan, where he was a fellow student of Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī. He traveled a lot in Persia, Anatolia and Syria, eventually settling in Aleppo. Here his open display of esoteric doctrines, and especially his recourse to a symbolism drawn from Zoroastrian sources, in addition to his harsh and explicit criticisms of jurists, determined a severe reaction, which led to his imprisonment and finally to his death. Suhrawardī, known to his compatriots as Shaykh al-ishrāq, or «master of illuminationism», was the author of a series of philosophical and gnostic works in Arabic and Persian, the most important of which is Hikmat al-ishrāq (La Wisdom of Enlightenmentism), the fundamental testament of that school, which since it was written has always dominated the intellectual scene of Persia. Suhrawardī opens this masterly work with a severe critique of Peripatetic philosophy, not only in logic, but also in natural philosophy, psychology and metaphysics. He insists on the archetypal world, which Aristotle had left aside in favor of the immanent form, and considers the study of nature as the penetration and hermeneutical interpretation of cosmological symbols. He also abolishes the Aristotelian distinction between sublunary and celestial regions, and places the boundary between the world of pure light, or the East, and the world in which matter, or darkness, is mixed with light - that is, the West - in the sphere of fixed stars. The true sky therefore begins at the edge of the visible universe, and what the Aristotelians and Ptolemaic called the heavens belongs more or less to the same dominion of the world of generation and corruption.
Suhrawardī also discussed the problem of knowledge for a long time, ultimately basing it on enlightenment. He combines the mode of reason with that of intuition, considering the two as necessary complementary to each other. The reason without intuition and enlightenment is, according to Suhrawardī, puerile and semi-blind and can never reach the transcendent source of all truth and intellection; while intuition, without a preparation in logic and without the training and development of the rational faculty, can be misled, and furthermore it can not express itself succinctly and methodically. This is why the Wisdom of Enlightenment begins with logic and ends with a chapter on ecstasy and contemplation of heavenly essences. Suhrawardī also wrote numerous short symbolic stories, mainly in Persian, which are masterpieces of Persian prose and which illustrate, in a highly artistic form, the universe of symbols through which the adept has to travel to reach the truth. In these treatises many aspects of natural philosophy are discussed, especially light and luminous phenomena. The aim, however, is to open a way through the cosmos, in order to guide the one who seeks the truth and to free him from all the impacts and determinations connected to natural domination. The ultimate aim of all forms of knowledge is enlightenment and gnosis, which Suhrawardī places, with unmistakable terms, at the top of the hierarchy of knowledge, thus affirming the essential nature of Islamic revelation.
Suhrawardī's doctrines found their congenial home in Persia, especially in the Shiite environment, in which Islamic philosophy and theosophy were developed during the last phase of Islamic history. The school of Suhrawardī approached that of the Peripatetics, especially as interpreted by Avicenna, and also to the Gnostic doctrines of the school of Ibn 'Arabī. In the womb of Shiism these different perspectives were finally united in the XI / XVII century in the synthesis realized by Mullā Sadrā. This Persian sage was a philosopher and gnostic and one of the greatest exhibitors of metaphysical doctrines in Islam. Spiritual journeys of Mullā Sadrā they are the most monumental work of Islamic philosophy, in which rational arguments, illuminations received from spiritual intuition and the principles of Revelation harmonize in a whole that marks the culmination of a thousand years of intellectual activity in the Islamic world. Founding his doctrine on the unity of Being, on the constant "transubstantial" change and on the becoming of this imperfect world of generation and corruption, Mullā Sadrā he created a vast synthesis that dominated the intellectual life of Persia and much of Muslim India during the last centuries. Together with Suhrawardī he provided a vision of the universe which contains elements of the previously developed sciences of Nature, and which have been the matrix of intellectual and philosophical sciences, particularly in the eastern countries of Islam. Thus his doctrines, like those of the master of Islamic gnosis, Ibn 'Arabī, and his followers, have provided the vision of the cosmos to most of those who, in the Islamic world, have trod the path of spiritual realization.