Class 4 of 5

Preview and Readings

There will be no class 27 October since I will be away.

Please watch the videos and study the assigned readings.

I think you will find them fascinating.

Class 4 of 5

27 October 2017

Philosophy and Religion in the Arabic Philosophical Tradition

and its Importance for Aquinas

Part One: The Arabic Tradition

(4.1) Preview

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. 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, here 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. 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.

     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 religions 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.

     The account of religion by Averroes largely follows and expands on that of al-Farabi. 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” (a.k.a 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 and 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). For Averroes the most perfect form of religious worship is one specific to the philosophers consisting in the study of the Creator and creatures in the science of metaphysics. (See Taylor 2012.) Regarding prophecy, for Averroes 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. For Aristotle as well as for al-Farabi and Avicenna proper moral character are requisite for the study of the highest theoretical sciences such as metaphysics.

Readings:

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

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:

1. (a)video lecture on al-Farabi, The Attainment of Happiness:
   

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

2. (b)video lecture on Avicenna happiness, religion and prophecy:
   

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

100. (c)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

(4.2) Preview

     The conception of the relationship of philosophy and religion in Aquinas is vastly different from what is found in the classical rationalist tradition of Arabic / Islamic philosophy. 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 is achieved. 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 philosophy but much more than that is provided about the nature of God far beyond what is available through natural reason, e.g. Trinity.

     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. 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 may be important in regard to the development of the rationalist movement in thirteenth century Europe.) 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) and/or the contentions of Bonaventure and others against the eternity of the world may have 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 is the case as indicated in Christian theological doctrine.

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 3 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. See Dag Hasse in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy at https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/arabic-islamic-influence/#NatThePro.