 |
The Light Z
of Ibn Sina’s Philosophy of God
Reflected by Thomas Aquinas
By Michael Abdullah Abdur-Rashid O.S.B.
December 1, 1998
Introduction
Before Aristotle’s philosophy had made its way to Western Europe and Christianity, the great thinkers of the Islamic world pored over its meaning for a revealed monotheistic faith. It was clear that Aristotle had not the knowledge of Allah’s/Yahweh’s existence and role in the universe of experience and being, but it was also clear that Aristotle had a great knowledge of the truth of things, which truth (al-Haqq) is one of the key attributes or names of Allah. “However the All-Truth attains existence, it is through Himself.”
Follwing the path blazed by Al-Farabi, the greatest of these thinkers was Ibn Sina, who lived from 980 to 1037 AD. He lived in the furthest frontier of western culture & civilization in Transoxiana of central Asia, where Turkic, Indic, Mongol & Chinese cultures directly flowed into our pool of cultural inheritance.
Ibn Sina was a learned prodigy, being an accomplished physician by age 16, and teaching and lecturing by his late teens. The scope of his inquiry was in no way limited to philosophy or theology. He wrote a monumental work on medicine (Qanun) and his work The Healing (Ash-shifa) encompasses physics, psychology and mathematics as well as logic and metaphysics. The name of this work and it’s scope is indicative of an essential difference between Islam & Christianity, the philosophies of the East and the West (although it is ironic that Ibn Sina is regarded among muslims as more Western than Eastern because of his wholehearted embrace of Aristotelian method and content.)
The central dogma of Islam is Tawhid, the one-ness of God from which flows all else, sacred & secular, in essential unity. There is no division in life, all knowledge is one; Islam directly speaks to and regulates all areas of human life; there is no such thing as a secular state or government and an unbeliever is a threat of some sort to the Umma, the word for Muslim community ( derived from the Arabic word for mother.) Muslim scholarship then was firmly anchored in synthesis.
How different from our western overindulgence of analysis which has brought technological triumph at such a great spiritual cost. At any rate, Aristotle’s metaphysics could not but intrigue such a Muslim scholar as Ibn Sina. What Ibn Sina so carefully and laboriously laid out in Ash-Shifa he restated in simpler forms in other works, such as the Risalat al-Arshiya used in this paper, which resembles Aquinas’ Summa in its brief summary arguments for specific topics in subsidiary arrangement to a major issue.
From Ibn Sina to Aquinas
In addition to 250 years, there are thousand’s of miles between Bukhara and Paris. A word or two should be said on the connection between the two. The connection is in a word, Cordoba , where Ibn Rushd (known to the Christian west as Averroes), and the Jewish philosophers Ibn Gebirol (Avicebron) and Maimonides lived and taught in the 12th century. Cordoba was the seat of learning in the Ummayyad Calpihate of Spain, which developed a high civilization with high tolerance in splendid isolation from the messy violent politics of the Middle East and Central Asia. Ibn Rushd (1126-1198) was first and foremost an Aristotelian, and from Cordoba developed and expounded his philosophy (from the starting point of Ibn Sina, who was well known there) as a great commentator on Aristotle; moreover, Ibn Rushd was concerned to correct what he
perceived to be the undue influence of divine revelation upon Ibn Sina’s philosophy. Both Cordoba and Ibn Rushd were much closer to home for Aquinas, and the Muslim works made their way to Paris. William of Auvergne, Bishop of Paris from 1228 to 1249, used Ibn-Sina widely in his teaching and Ibn Sina was well known at the University of Paris in Aquinas time. Aquinas wrote in part to counter the appeal of Ibn Rushd, notably in areas where he diverged from Ibn Sina (as on the importance of knowing God from being as opposed to natural science) and in Ibn Rushd’s other Plotinian leanings.
The Necessary Being
Ibn Sina has been called the philosopher of being. Almost one thousand years before Descartes’ “Cogito ergo sum”, he realized that the intuition of being was the beginning of all knowledge for man. His illustration of this, used in Kitab Ash-Shifa and at least one other of his works, is the Flying Man. That is a man blindfolded, ears stopped, suspended in mid-air so that he touched and sensed nothing, would still be conscious of his own existence. Being is the ultimate, irreducible, simplest and undefinable concept. But whence comes this existence or being ? From the necessary being.
Ibn Sina has essentially two arguments for the necessary being. One is ontological and intuitive, contained in the very meaning of Being itself. This “proof” suffices only for the most righteous men, and so is not useful for lesser men, who must use the argument from possibility and necessity. While Aquinas did not use this ontological proof, Duns Scotus did.
“Whatever has being must either have a reason for its being or have no reason. If it has a reason, then it is contingent…All contingent beings end in a necessary being.” The essential proof of God’s existence for Ibn Sina is from necessity, not from motion or change, and this is the anchor of his metaphysics of God. Contingent beings are contingent both before and after they come into existence, since the fact of coming into existence has no bearing the very reason for their being. A contingent being then depends upon a chain of other contingent beings (necessary for its existence but contingent on others) going back to the ultimate and solely necessary being, since an infinite chain has both no beginning (no ultimate reason) and so no immediate link or effect, which he calls an absurdity.
It is interesting to note, however, that Ibn Sina had certain Plotinian notions admixed in his philosophy, partly due to popular mistaken attributions to Aristotle of some Plotinian works. Because of his concept of creation, positing that things cannot be otherwise than they are, all beings are in that sense necessary. In reading his chain of reasoning one must labor through this level to the ultimate necessary being, which Ibn Sina understood to be quite different from others. Yet this points out a quite significant difference between Islam and Catholicism anchored in this concept. Qadar or predestination was a hot topic in the theological schools of Baghdad. How can there be free will if things cannot be other than they are ? “Where there is no free choice in God, there is none in man.” Islam, to my knowledge, has never satisfactorily
reconciled this issue other than to rely on the Christian-sort of “mystery” answer. Thus the ever heard “insha-allah” or “masha-allah” (If God wills it, God wills it) in the Muslim world.
Ibn Sina next proceeds to assert that “It is not possible in any way that the Necessary Being should be two.” This is not only logically significant but theologically significant for Islam in regards to Tawhid and Islam’s subjection of Zoroastrian dualism in the former Persian empire. He demonstrates the assertion as follows.
Assuming there are two necessary beings, one must be distinguishable from the other. Their distinction must be either accidental or essential. If it is accidental, then the accidental element must be either present in both of them or in one and not the other. If each has a distinguishable accidental element, then both must be caused, because accidents are joined to essence. If the accidental element is in one and not the other, the one with the accident must be contingent while the other be necessary. If their distinction is essential, that whereby the essence subsists, and truly differentiated then they are both compound beings, and so caused and not necessary. If the essential element belongs to only one and the other being is truly one in every way and not compounded, then only that one without division is a necessary being.
In light of the above argument, one could say it would have been more logical to deal with the issue of God as uncaused cause before tackling uniqueness. This in fact is what he does in Ash-Shifa, which is the most systematic work. In the Risalat al-Arshiya, however, perhaps for the above mentioned theological reasons, the matter of causation follows the matter of partnership (shirq).
God - the Uncaused Cause
“A necessary being has no cause whatsoever.” This is self evident, for if the necessary being had a cause it simply wouldn’t be the necessary being, which has its existence through itself. “It is not possible that something is necessary in respect to existence and necessary in respect to existence through another.”
Further, ”When it is stated that He is a necessary being, this means that He is a being without cause and that He is the cause of other than Himself.” Ibn-Sina classifies causes into four kinds: The Active Cause (that from which something has being), the Final Cause (that on account of which something has being), the Material Cause (that in which a thing has being) and the Formal Cause (that through which something has being). Upon these principles he paints in broad strokes.
In demonstration that God has no active cause (by which we understand efficient cause), Ibn Sina comes to say that “His Quiddity is none other than His Identity.” God cannot be substance and accidents because all accidents are caused, every cause requires a reason and God as Necessary exists by his own reason. This bold statement, derived from both Aristotle and Plotinus, was the first clear expression of this fact with which those latter philosophers were attempting to come to grips. The philosophical root of this statement (the distinction between Esse and existence) in his own work, appearing in Ash-Shifa 1.5 “ Nature which is proper to each thing is other than its existence” is referred to by Aquinas in De Ente et Essentia .
In his demonstration in the Risalat Al-Arshiya that God has no material cause Ibn Sina lapses into seemingly inspired language, evoking our knowledge of the great Pauline hymns of the New Testament. “Every perfection belongs to Him, derives from Him, and is preceded by His Essence, while every deficiency, even if it be metaphorical, is negated to him. All perfection and all beauty are of His being; indeed these are the vestiges of the perfection of His Being. How, then, should He derive perfection from any other ?” God is without any potentiality and possesses all perfections in actuality. He is changeless, without opposite & contrary (another strike at dualism) and as pure act it is impossible for Him not to be.
God has no formal cause because he has no composition of matter ( and accordingly has no purely corporeal attributes such as singular location in time and space) and no final cause because he is the necessary being who is the reason for the existence of all else. “When it is stated that He is a necessary being, this means that He is a being without cause and that He is the cause of other than Himself.”
Not only has God no cause, but He is a different type of cause from the usual Aristotelian classification. God is the agent cause, that is one whose proper effect is the very being of the thing it causes. “In the order of causality, the cause of existence, or agent cause, stands alone.
Attributes
Setting the stage for Aquinas, Ibn Sina proceeds from the existence of God to what we may know of Him. These attributes or names, which have a doctrinal or philosophical interest to the Christian, have a much greater significance to a Muslim, whose real understanding of God comes from the mystical names which form a prayer. Using the foundations of necessity and oneness, God is found to be Pure Truth, Pure Benevolence, Knowing, Living, Willing, Omnipotent, Speaking, Seeing, Hearing. His attributes are understood as positive, negative and compound. Being creator is positive; Being eternal is the negation of not being initially; Being necessary is a combination of the positive Cause of Causes and the negative Being Without Cause; Being Omnipotent is a compound of creativity and knowledge.
Most interesting is Ibn Sina’s assertion that God is Love. Being in its fullness is Good in its fullness; pure good is pure beauty and full knowledge. All beauty is loved as it is known, and loved ardently. God’s love for his essence is most perfect. Because the divine attributes are one in God, Love is essence and being, one in God.
Epilogue
“Whoever resists acquiring knowledge of the real nature of things possesses in truth no religion.” Al-Kindi’s (the first Muslim Aristotelian) words resonate to us in the modern scientific world. They could be the motto of the Catholic university. The Philosophy of the Dominican professor Thomas Aquinas, built as much on the foundations of Ibn-Sina and Aristotle ( and the commentaries of Ibn Rushd) as on St. Augustine and the Fathers of the Church, has reigned from lofty heights in Aquinas’ world of Roman Catholic theology and doctrine continuously almost from its publication. Yet the Summa is left incomplete, and we are tantalized by Thomas’ judgement that all that philosophical knowledge is just so much straw.
The philosophy of the man of the world, physician, scholar-teacher, politician, advisor of princes, encyclopedic writer of genius Ibn-Sina survives primarily as a historical vestige in his world of Islam, and of course as a progenitor (much like Galileo to Newton) in ours. What happened is interesting. In a Hegelian sense, the Spirit moved westward. The great “Aquinas of Islam” Al-Ghazzali (1058-1111), once a philosopher, saw too clearly the straw Aquinas saw, and pushed the genius of Islam inextricably toward mysticism as opposed to a more accessible theology. Consequently the masses became imbued with legalism by dint of the dearth and difficulty of mystic experience. Al Ghazzali’s work The Foolishness of the Philosophers was the death knell for an independent speculative philosophy. His greatest work The Revival of
Religious Knowledge has become the Summa of Islam. And yet it is clear, the foundation is still there for Muslim and Christian alike...
Say
“God is undivided and unique,
God is independent of all beings, eternal;
He neither begets nor is He begotten,
And there is no being comparable to Him.”
Qur’an, Sura 112
“The Purity (of Faith)”
Bibliography
Secondary Sources
Arberry, Arthur J., Avicenna on Theology, John Murray, London 1951
Burrell, David, Knowing the Unknowable God: Ibn-Sina, Maimonides, Aquinas,
Coppleston S.J., Frederick, A History of Philosophy –Volume II, Burnes and Oates, London, 1950
Gilson, Etienne, History of Christian Philosophy in the Middle Ages, Sheed & Ward, London, 1955
Goichon, A.M., The Philosopher of Being in Avicenna Commemoration Volume,
The Iran Society, Calcutta 1956
Gutas, Dmitri, Avicenna and the Aristotelian Tradition, E.J. Brill, Leiden 1988
Hyman, Arthur & Walsh, James, ed., Philosophy in the Middle Ages:The Christian, Islamic & Jewish Traditions, Hackett Publishing, Indianapolis 1973
Knowles, David, The Evolution of Medieval Thought, Vintage Books, New York 1962
Weinberg, Julius R., A Short History of Medieval Philosophy, Princeton University 1964
Primary Sources, Translations
Ibn Sina
“Autobiography” trans by Arberry, op. cit.
“Biography of Ibn Sina”, Abu Ubaid al-Juzjani, trans by Arberry, op.cit.
“On the Nature of God” (al-Risalat al-Arshiya) trans. by Arberry, op.cit.
“The Healing Metaphysics” (Kitab ash-Shifa), First & Sixth Treatises, trans. by Hyman, Op. cit.
______________________________________________________________________________________
Endnotes – referring to works listed in the bibliography
1 “On the Nature of God” p.23
2 “Autobiography” & “Biography”
3 Gilson, p. 211
4 Knowles p.229
5 Knowles, p.205
6 Weinberg, pp.111-112
7 Goichon, pp. 109-110
8 Weinberg, pp.112-113
9 Weinberg, pp. 115-116
10 Risalat, p.25
11 Risalat, p.25
12 Goichon, p.110
13 Gilson, p. 216
14 AshShifa, p.240
15 Risalat, p. 26
16 Ash-Shifa, p. 241
17 Risalat, p. 26
18 Ash-Shifa, p. 241
19 Risalat, p. 32
20 Risalat, pp. 26-27
21 Risalat, p. 27
22 Goichon, pp. 112-113
23 Burrell, p. 19
24 Risalat, p. 29
25 Risalat, p. 32
26 Gilson, p. 211
27 Risalat, pp. 31-33
28 Goichon, pp.116-117
29 Gutas, p.243
30 Weinberg, pp.122-124
| |