Update Summer 2020

Lecture Class 4 of  5

Philosophy and Religion in the Arabic Philosophical Tradition

and its Importance for Aquinas

Texts Link

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/mgjd5jzrd1tmbh3/AACEdCgIzV7i5Su1kkZjzMuBa?dl=0

Part One: The Arabic Tradition

As mentioned in an earlier class, al-Kindi reasoned in his work, On First Philosophy, that the foreign science of philosophy should be allowed a place along side of the religious sciences since it can be an aid to the understanding of God as the One sought after in religious studies of Tauhīd or Unity. In this way philosophical metaphysics and religious theological studies were understood to coincide in the same object. His proposal was a reasonable one and in this work he establishes the unity of the One as the source and cause of all other unities in things constituting all reality. In doing so he drew upon Aristotle as well as on the reasoning of the Neoplatonist Proclus. In principle philosophy with its method of demonstration was presented as a congenial partner in the worship of God through the attainment of knowledge of God’s creation and of God Himself. Yet in this arrangement there were serious problems lurking that came to light in the development of philosophical from al-Farabi, through Ibn Sina / Avicenna to Ibn Rushd / Averroes.

The three major figures of the classical rationalist tradition, al-Farabi, Avicenna and Averroes, all held for the primacy of reason and philosophy in the discernment and attainment of truth. Religion was recognized as essential to the formation of character toward the end of right action by all three. Al-Farabi begins his Book of Religion with the statement that religion is about “opinions”  for the sake of the human community developed by the ruler. Drawing both on Plato’s Republic and Aristotle’s Rhetoric and other works as received through a tradition largely influenced by Neoplatonism, al-Farabi sketched similar accounts in various works based on the notion that the highest science of metaphysics is concerned with being qua being  and religion was concerned with practical actions in the formation of a morally sound or perfect and completely good society. Religion provides the laws in accord with which the attainment of fulfillment and happiness could ideally be reached. In his development his account of religion as a subdivision of political science his concern is the formation of virtue in the community for the sake of the attainment of ultimate happiness. While elsewhere that ultimate happiness is explained to be only for the philosophers of highest intellectual achievement, in the Book of Religion his concern is for bringing about and maintaining a community of moral excellence. The formation of the community in this practical science aimed at action is subject to the truths known through theoretical sciences which explain the natures and capacities of things. In his Attainment of Happiness he spells out the primacy of the theoretical sciences more fully. As we saw in the last class,  the way to happiness or fulfillment in its highest form is through the study of logic and the philosophical sciences both theoretical and practical as outlined by al-Farabi in The Attainment of Happiness. For al-Farabi religion conveys the truth to people but by way of images crafted for actions in this division of the practical sciences. As such the truths known in theoretical sciences are presented in religion as imitations tailored to the abilities of the people addressed. Elsewhere al-Farabi even sets out the notion that philosophy is prior to religion insofar as it provides the final and formal causes of it.

     As Dimitri Gutas has indicated (see his article, “Avicenna’s Philosophical Project,” in Interpreting Avicenna. Critical Essays, P. Adamson, ed. 2013), Avicenna sought to give an account of reality that included the common characteristics of religious phenomena. Still, for Avicenna truth is foremost found in wisdom or philosophy and provided to the masses through a prophet with extraordinary natural talents for portraying to the majority of non-philosophical human beings truths that guide them toward fulfillment in accord with their abilities. Prophecy for Avicenna is a natural phenomenon involving sometimes the assistance of angels but more regularly the natural talents of a human being both to apprehend and understand reality particularly well and to convey proper guidance by way of other strong natural talents of human imaginative communication. In this prophecy — which he regards as something necessary for human beings (see his treatise “On the Proof of Prophecies and the Interpretation of the Prophets’ Symbols and Metaphors,” tr. M. E. Marmura in Medieval Political Philosophy: A Sourcebook, ed. Lerner & Mahdi 1963,; also see Marmura, “Avicenna's Psychological Proof of Prophecy,” J of Near Eastern Studies 22 (1963)) — Avicenna provides a naturalistic account which locates the powers of prophecy in the human prophet and that person’s relationship to the separate agent intellect. That is, prophecy depends on the natural and developed abilities of the prophet rather than on a particular intentional action sent by God. True prophets are philosophers who have knowledge and science as well as special talents for conveying philosophical knowledge to people untrained in philosophy and unsuited for philosophical study. For Avicenna communications can be received from the angels and from the Agent Intellect but it is only the transformation of these by a prophet having extraordinary imaginative skills that revelation is presented to the people in ways that an proper and effective images for bringing about the fulfillment of people in lives of practical excellence or moral virtue. This life of practical excellence and moral virtue is a prerequisite for the development of the rational soul in knowledge and understanding. In this life the burden is on individuals to realize themselves as rational beings for he sake of the fulfillment found in the afterlife in the presence of the Agent Intellect and the knowing of God. Avicenna is deeply committed to his philosophical account even to the point of the reinterpretation of religious doctrine to fit with his rational philosophical teachings. Michael Marmura, my teacher at the University of Toronto, was the translator of Avicenna’s Metaphysics and al-Ghazali’s Incoherence of the Philosophers into English and author of many articles. His last article which I had the privilege of editing and publishing in 2012 was entitled, “Avicenna and Traditional Islamic Belief” and deals with the thought of al-Farabi, Avicenna and al-Ghazali. This issue at stake is the traditional Islamic doctrine of the resurrection of the body. For Avicenna, given his conception of the rational soul as the real self developed through use of the body in earthly life and without need of body in the afterlife, the question is how he could reconcile his conception of soul with traditional Islamic belief in resurrection. His solution is, apparently, to draw on some texts of al-Farabi and to claim that someone once indicated that perhaps the soul in the afterlife imagined itself to have a body, though of course it could not really have a body. Now there are some interesting issues here concerning meaning and interpretation and consistence. Imagination for Avicenna is a bodily power so how could imagination be involved in the immaterial separated human soul in the afterlife?

     The account of religion by Averroes largely follows and expands on that of al-Farabi and is in some respects in accord with the general sense of Avicenna. For Averroes there is a distinction of discourses, one external to be widely shared among human beings and another internal reserved for the wise not to be shared with those unable to understand the true complexities and nature of God and creation. The theoretical foundations for this methodology are found in his short work,  Faṣl al-maqāl, “The Book of the Distinction of Discourse and the Establishment of the Connection between the Religious Law and Philosophy” (scil The Decisive Treatise), and reflected in his work, al-Kashf (“Explanation of the Sorts of Proofs in the Doctrines of Religion”), his Damima or “Treatise on Divine Knowledge” and his Tahaft al-tahafut (“Incoherence of the Incoherence”). In the Faṣl al-maqāl it is dialectically reasoned that the study of philosophy is religiously commanded for those capable.  This is established through a dialectical account and an equivocation. The Qur’an teaches the analogical reasoning or qiyās should be used by human beings seeking to understand its teachings.   The Qur’an also teaches that in seeking this understanding very best form of qiyas should be used. That very best form is burhān, demonstration. How can this be so? A second meaning of qiyās is syllogistic. Hence, by a simple equivocation he now concludes that the Qur’an itself teaches that the most perfect form of syllogistic, demonstration, is the tool to be used in the study of religious law for the guidance of the Islamic community. And this should be used only by those specifically trained in its use, the philosophers. Further, he also reasons that philosophy is dominant over religious interpretation where the two might conflict because “truth does not contradict truth,” a quotation from Aristotle’s Prior Analytics well hidden inside this work, as are other teachings from Aristotle’s logical writings. Further, in his highly technical Long Commentary on the Metaphysics of Aristotle, Averroes explains clearly that the most perfect form of religious worship is one specific to the philosophers (ash-sharī‘ah al-khāṣṣah bi-l-ḥukamā’) consisting in the study of the Creator and creatures in the science of metaphysics. (See Taylor 2012.) Those of you at the De Caelo conference may recall that Prof. Endress spoke of philosophy as being a common religion for all the philosophers regardless of their confessional practice of Islam, Judaism or Christianity.  In yet another work on argumentation used in religious discourses (al-Kashf ‘an al-manāhij), he speaks of prophecy and states that miracles or surprising tricks are no proof the the veracity of one professing to acclaim prophetic messages. Rather, the proof lies in the outcome and is determined by whether the purported prophet has in fact rightly guided human beings in their social contexts to proper moral conduct and character.  Hence, that marvelous outcome proves that this prophecy is miraculous.  But, wait. Averroes elsewhere in his Incoherence of the Incoherence argues against miracles as ad hoc divine interventions into the disruption of nature.  How can we reconcile all these things Averroes has said and how can we come to seethe real meaning of his teachings when it comes to religion and philosophy?

This is the project of Averroes mentioned by Prof. Endress at the conference.

To do this we must follow the guidance Averroes provides in his Fasl al-maqāl, a work which is not only a legal determination of the obligatory need for the use of philosophy in religious contexts, it is also a discourse on method. According to this, one should divide discourse into ẓāhir and mu‘awwal, evident and interpreted. The first is for those philosophically untrained and perhaps incapable of philosophy. Averroes’s works in this modality of discourse are religiously founded works: Fasl al-maqāl, al-Kashf, Tahafut at-Tahafut and the so-called Damima or Treatise on Divine Knowledge. These differ from one another in a number of ways but all are written inside the evident / ẓāhir discourse of Islam. All presume the truth of Islam and its fundamental doctrines, even the Tahafut at-Tahafut which provides detailed philosophical argumentation in many of its passages. These are works to be shared among the educated public and religious leaders of his day. However, the interpreted or mu‘awwal are writings that provide philosophical and scientific accounts at variance with the more figurative accounts suitable for the non-philosophical, indeed these writings that must not be shared with those insufficiently educated in philosophy and the sciences. It is in these specialist works that issues such as the nature of the soul (in relation to the afterlife) [writings on the De anima of Aristotle], the natures of divine creation, of providence, of prophecy and of God Himself as understood in philosophy [writings on Aristotle’s Metaphysics, De caelo, Physics, Nicomachean Ethics, and more], that is, in Averroes’s Neoaristotelianism meant to recapture the truths set out by Aristotle. But under this plan of classification — one surely inspired by the writings of al-Farabi — Averroes sets out a speculative worldview with a very idiosyncratic conception of Islam.  In accordance with the method spelled out in the Faṣl al-maqāl, priority is to be given to philosophical knowledge in any conflict between philosophy or science and religious interpretation of scripture. Accounts of religion must be reconciled in a way to be in accord with philosophy, as we find in the al-Kashf. There he uses largely Aristotelian philosophical thought to attack religious reasoning and teachings not in accord with the truth (of philosophy).  At the same time in this work which he declared to be ẓāhir NOT mu‘awwal, he carefully supports key foundational religious teachings such as creation, prophecy and more in ways permissible and suitable to his religious audience, even if elsewhere he provides mu‘awwal accounts very different from the understandings of people reading his ẓāhir writings.

I will expand more on this at class, but I want one more relevant matter in the philosophical writings of Averroes.

In his Long Commentary on the Metaphysics of Aristotle in his remarks on Book 2, alpha elaton, he makes some important remarks relevant to religion. There Aristotle says that knowing the highest causes of all things, indeed the highest cause, is for us like the owl trying to see the sun in the light of day. Averroes interprets this such that such sight is extremely difficult but not impossible. He reasons that it is in the very teleology of humans that they attempt this and this teleological desire naturally built into human beings ought not go unfulfilled. This is in accord with the view of Aristotle  expressed in Nicomachean Ethics 10.7 that some human beings can through intellect enjoy what God enjoys at all times.  For Averroes some humans who are philosophers of the highest rank can enjoy the fulfillment of knowledge in the understanding of the natures of highest causes, even God to some extent, during the short period of their lifetimes. This is the highest achievement and fulfillment for a human being. And it is an achievement not just of a human being but of human being as such.  What makes this possible is right religion that orders the lives of humans in society providing the conditions of the development of the philosopher.  I will take this matter up again in the second part since Thomas Aquinas furiously attacks this account by Averroes in a way that reveals much about Aquinas and his understanding of the end of human beings and the relationship of religion and philosophy.

Readings:

A large array of texts is provided for students in the Dropbox folder.

The following should be considered required reading:

Al-Farabi, “The Book of Religion,” extract from Alfarabi. The Political Writings v. II Political Regime and Summary of Plato's Laws, tr. Butterworth (2015).

Al-Farabi, Attainment of Happiness. Extract from al-Farabi Philosophy of Plato & Aristotle.  Tr. M. Mahdi rev ed 2001.

Avicenna, Metaphysics 9.7, 10.1-3, and 10.5. Tr. Marmura, 2005.

Averroes, Faṣal al-maqāl (the so-called Decisive Treatise). Tr. G. F. Hourani

Secondary sources: In additional to those mentioned in the Preview above, explore the materials provided in the Dropbox and on Toledo.

Videos:

video lecture on al-Farabi, The Attainment of Happiness:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKzDamIpZdU&feature=youtu.be

video lecture on Avicenna happiness, religion and prophecy:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOOR8eSJBbs&feature=youtu.be

videos lecture on Averroes, Faṣl al-maqāl :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kx7ZufqKC4Y&feature=youtu.be

For an introduction to the thought of Averroes, see

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uo5ZlDnzgXs&feature=youtu.be

Part Two: Thomas Aquinas

     The conception of the relationship of philosophy and religion for Aquinas is vastly different from what is found in the classical rationalist tradition of Arabic / Islamic philosophy. In Europe from the time of Augustine one can say that philosophy developed inside the context of religion both figuratively and literally since it grew inside monasteries and among churchmen. Its independence or claims to independence developed most evidently in the context of arts faculties such as that of Paris in the 13th century.

I have mentioned the thesis of my friend Luca Bianchi at Milano but let me rehearse it again for you briefly with some remarks contrasting philosophy in the context of Islam and philosophy in the context of European Latin Christianity . . . . .

For Aquinas there are two sources of truth for human beings, both of which are dependent on what is the source of all truth and at the same time Truth itself, namely, God. The two sources are religious revelation together with the development of theological doctrine and natural human reason in the form of science and philosophy. The thinkers of the Arabic / Islamic tradition studied here find science and philosophy as the primary access points to the truth while at the same time placing religion largely in the realm of the practical and political. For Aquinas not all truth is open to human reasoning since the truth of God — which is the source of all truth — transcends natural human reason. His approach can be seen in the initial sections of his Summa contra gentiles and Summa theologiae. Nevertheless, we have seen in Aquinas an insistence that God and created things caused by Him are through and through rational. That was clear in our discussion of ultimate human happiness for which Aquinas drew on the reasoning of the pagan Alexander of Aphrodisias and and the Muslim Averroes for a model to explain in a very Aristotelian rational way just how the Christian promise of human fulfillment in seeing God face-to-face or in God’s very essence can be explained. For Aquinas God is through and through perfect rationality and truth as well as loving, merciful and much more, of course. Religion and scripture may be of a nature to provide knowledge and understanding of God through faith for those unable to reach the levels of the theologian or philosopher but much more than that is provided about the nature of God far beyond what is available through natural reason, e.g. Trinity. Reason for Aquinas is limited in its reach. Though human beings have a natural longing for being in the presence of God and to have knowledge of God as ultimate human fulfillment, this is unattainable through natural human powers according to the accounts of Aquinas.

Earlier I mentioned the interpretation of Aristotle’s Metaphysics book 2 by Averroes. In his own Commentary on the Metaphysics of Aristotle Aquinas attacks the interpretation of Averroes in detail and at length. This was important for the sake of religion. Averroes reasoned that the possibilities of human knowing extending to all things of the universe were fully open even if extremely difficult. Those of you present at the De caelo conference may recall that Prof. Endress spoke of the rationalist project of Averroes and his final failure to achieve it. A complete understanding of the nature of the cosmos and the natural necessities and regularities it provides for human knowledge is the ground of the entire worldview of Averroes. Yet even if Averroes himself could not complete this unified theory of the all, in principle understanding it and understanding the nature and function, the essence, of the First Cause is possible though extremely difficult for humanity through philosophy, the theoretical sciences, especially through natural philosophy and its consequences and entailments. Aquinas, however, was furious at the interpretation of Averroes in his Commentary on the Metaphysics, and for good reason. Averroes had proposed that natural human reason is in principle unlimited and that ultimate fulfillment is attainable by natural reason and its development. This was a serious threat to religion tantamount to a claim that humans do not need divine grace and help to attain ultimate happiness. For Aquinas the owl cannot look upon the sun in daytime and is unable to know it because of its transcendence. Human beings cannot come to a full knowledge of God because God as well as angels and much more transcend the limits of human reason. Humans cannot attain their most desired end through their own powers. Rather, they need divine grace and help even in heaven to achieve knowledge of the essence of God. God must first enhance the natural powers of receptive knowing of the human being and only then can God enter the soul and be apprehended face-to-face or per essentiam. In this way God is the quo est and the quod est of ultimate human fulfillment in heaven. Without the assistance of God in this way He will not be seen and humans will not be fulfilled in their natural desire to attain complete fulfillment in the presence of God immediately to the human being.

     As we have seen earlier in discussing ultimate happiness, Aquinas thought that ultimate happiness for the philosophers (Greek and Arabic) was generally agreed upon as seeing or knowing separated substances, that is, pure intellects, as an attainment of fulfilling transcendence for human beings. In his Commentary on the Sentences he attacked accounts by al-Farabi, Ibn Bajja, Avicenna and Averroes as being inadequate since they did not lead to the full vision or knowledge of the ultimate cause of all things, God. In that Commentary and also in his De Veritate and Summa contra gentiles Aquinas asserted that for Averroes ultimate happiness is in knowing separate substances, the pure intellects that move the heavens and perhaps even God who is the most perfect of the pure intellects. To this extent he attributed to Averroes the teaching that human fulfillment in seeing separate substances through the agent intellect was a way by natural reason to reach the divine and ultimate happiness without reference to religion or divine grace. Again, Aquinas’s own view made it clear that ultimate happiness in seeing God face-to-face or per essentiam desired by human beings is not attainable by natural human powers but only through divine grace that, he explained, in heaven could supernaturally enhance the receptivity of human possible intellect (quo) to see the very essence of God (quod). That is, he saw philosophy proposing a secular way to ultimate human happiness. This conception of ultimate happiness by Averroes and the Arabic tradition constituted a secularist threat to the very nature of Christianity.  Curiously enough, by explaining this view Aquinas may have contributed to the development of what is sometimes called Latin Averroism. (If the date of his De aeternitate mundi can be given as ca. 1260, his contentions in that work that it is rationally possible for God to have eternally created the world become all the more interesting and this consideration might also be significant.) It was this rationalism that was nascently being developed by certain thinkers later in the 1260s and 1270s in Paris whose work was signaled as unacceptable in the Condemnations of 1277, some three years after the death of Aquinas. Aquinas himself encountered this rationalism in his De unitate intellectus contra averroistas, On the unity of the intellect against the Averroists. There he argued apparently against the Master of Arts teacher at Paris Siger of Brabant that the human possible intellect cannot be one for all human beings as Averroes and his Latin followers argued in various ways since it would undermine key religious teachings on will and human moral responsibility. Hence, Aquinas encountered the rationalist approach found in the Arabic tradition in a new form in Latin at Paris. The rationalist approach to the issue of the eternity of the world common in the Arabic tradition (and discussed by Maimonides) prompted Aquinas to craft a new conception of creation as ontological dependency without necessarily involving a beginning of time, much to the consternation of others in his Christian tradition, even if Aquinas himself held that the temporal origination of the world is also possible and in fact the case as indicated in Christian theological doctrine.

There is more to be said about religion and philosophy but since this is our last class it is best to allow plenty of time for discussion of today’s topic and also for discussion of any of the topics taken up in my five classes of lectures.

Readings:

Summa contra gentiles Book 1, chapters 1-8:

http://dhspriory.org/thomas/ContraGentiles1.htm

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5k092nNV0s&feature=youtu.be

Summa theologiae, prima pars, question 1, articles 1-8:

http://dhspriory.org/thomas/summa/FP/FP001.html#FPQ1OUTP1

Another very valuable translation by Fred Freddosa is available at

https://www3.nd.edu/~afreddos/summa-translation/Part%201/st1-ques01.pdf

One can add to these the discussions of ultimate happiness studied in class 4 with the texts of Summa contra gentiles Book 3 and Summa theologiae, prima secondae, questiones 1-5 since in these Aquinas firmly sets out his view of the limits of human reason and the necessity for divine aid and grace for the attainment of ultimate happiness.

For a more philosophical critique of the threat to Christian principles by a philosophical approach from the Arabic tradition, see Aquinas’s De unitate intellectus contra Averroistas (On the Unity of the Intellect Against the Averroists).

See http://dhspriory.org/thomas/DeUnitateIntellectus.htm.

Also see Dag Hasse in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy at https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/arabic-islamic-influence/#AveUniThe

     It should be added that Aquinas was somewhat enticed by Avicenna’s account of prophecy but ultimately had to reject it because of its naturalistic basis. For Avicenna, it is the powers of the particular natural human prophet that enable prophetic pronouncements, while for Aquinas that is left in the hands of God.