HISTORY OF
PHILOSOPHY EASTERN AND ~ESTERN VOLUME TWO SPONSORED
BY THE
MINISTRY
GOVERNMENT
OF
OF
EDUCATION
INDIA...
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HISTORY OF
PHILOSOPHY EASTERN AND ~ESTERN VOLUME TWO SPONSORED
BY THE
MINISTRY
GOVERNMENT
OF
OF
EDUCATION
INDIA
EDITORIAL BOARD
SARVEPALLI RADHAKRISHNAN Chairman ARDESHIR.
RUTTONJI
DHIRENDRA
MOHAN
WADIA DATTA
HUMAYUN KABIR Secretary
LONDON GEORGE
ALLEN
Ruslcin House
&_
UN"WIN
Museum Strut
LTD
FIRST PUBLISHED
YN
Y. It i~ hen~ that the prophetic consciousness differs most profoundly from that of Gn.'cce and India where Time is swallowed up in Eternity, anhoulo liL·rlan•d that tht~ notions of the existence of God, Revelation and 1>i\'iiw Rl'trihution were the central dogmatic tenets of J udaism, and thus h•nth•lato's aristocratic conception of philosophy and its dignity had proclaimed and as most Islamic philosophers, following in Plato's footsteps, unanimously asserted. Philosophy was open to every human being, it was indeed the only way of salvation. "Whoever makes an effort and busies himself with study and research has set out on the way of truth. Indeed, the souls of men can be purified from the mud and darkness of this world and saved for the world to come only by the study of philosophy. When a man studies it and grasps a part of it, even the smallest part we can think of, he purifies the soul from mud and darkness and assures its salvation. Were all those who have hitherto tended to destroy their souls and neglected philosophical study to give the slightest attention to it, it would be their salvation from this mud and darkness, even if they grasp only a small part of it." He believed in the cathartic power of philosophy, as had Plotinus and Porphyry. A famous Platonic saying comes to mind: ''If one mixes a small quantity of pure white with average white, this average becomes more white, more beautiful and more true." Ar-Razi may have been deaf and insensitive to the voices of Moses, Jesus and Muhammad. He certainly understood the religious ~epth by which Platonism, the spiritual religion of the Greeks, is most distinctly and unmistakably characterized. Ar-Razi does not believe in the eternity of the world but following some interpreters of the Timaeus such as Plutarch and Galen, teaches that the world came into being in time, whereas matter alone is eternal. Although he denies the creation from nothing this comes nearer to the Islamic view and reminds us of the attack made on Proclus by the Christian John Philoponus which was afterwards used by Al-Ghaza.li against the Muslim defenders of the eternity of the world. God the creator is described as Omniscient and All-Just, as absolute Knowledge and Justice, but also as absolute Mercy. Man should, according to Plato, make himself like God, in the greatest degree possible to man. Hence the creature nearest to God's favour is the wisest, the justest, the most merciful and compassionate. Philosophy is not mere learning but a way of life, knowing and acting accordingly. All this is not so far from the spirit of Islam. Ar-Razi claims to be a Platonist, and it cannot be denied that Platonic, or rather Neoplatonic, elements dominate his thought, and that his views differ widely from those late Greek systems which the majority of Islamic philosophers followed. Al-Farabi attacked him in two treatises, notably for this reason. It is, however, if the phrase may be permitted, a very
134
·'
ISLAMIC PHILOSOPHY
Neoplatonic Platonism, full of elements which remind us of Gnostic speculations; it comprises, on the other hand, certain definite features of the Greek atomic theory of matter which may have well been combined with the Platonic tradition in the later centuries of the Roman Empire. We are still rather in the dark about the immediate sources of Ar-Razi's philosophical thought. He knew Proclus, for example, well and had translations of him at his disposal. Probably his philosophical knowledge was as all-embracing as his medical knowledge, of which we have better information. Tradition connects him with the pagan Greek school of }Jarran which survived there during the first centuries of Islam, and there is no reason to doubt this, although we are unable to verify the report in the present state of our knowledge. There were five eternal principles, not one, as in the other systems: the Creator, the soul of the world, matter, absolute time and absolute space. He was aware that he differed fundamentally from Aristotle, but very deliberately and decidedly he claimed to follow his own way: "But I say.... " It would lead us too far to discuss his cosmogony in detail and to follow up its repercussions in later Islamic thought-especially since he has only recently been rediscovered by modem scholarship, and much detailed research has still to be devoted to the remains of his philosophical work. But the greatness of the man cannot be doubted. Both he and Al-Kindi wrote treatises on popular ethics, based exclusively on Greek material. They are both available in modern translations; and it is obvious which of the two succeeded better in bringing the commonplaces of the Platonic tradition to life. Ar-Razi could fill them with his own experience of life, whereas in Al-Kindi we are aware of the arguments but we are not really touched. Both Ar-Razi and Ibn Sina wrote autobiographies, Ar-Razi in self-defence, Ibn Sina at the request of a pupil. Ibn Sina tells us that he knew everything at the age of eighteen and did not add anything to his knowledge in the course of his later life: it became more mature but it did not grow in bulk. ArRazi was far from such self-righteousness. "If ever I have come upon a book I have not read," he affirms, in his old age, "or heard tell of a man I have not met, I have not turned aside to any engagement whatever-even though it has been to my great loss-before mastering that book or learning all that that man knew." This is again in keeping with the attitude of the greatest among Greek philosophers, who never tired of learning as long as they lived, as Solon had said in an oft-quoted line: "I grow old constantly learning many things." The greatest Islamic scholar, Abii'raihan al-Biriini (died A.D. 1048), famous for his deep and sympathetic understanding of Indian religion and Indian life, seems to have been unique in appreciating Ar-Razi's greatness both as a philosopher and as a scientist. Vesalius, the founder of modem anatomy in the sixteenth century, who knew only his medical work, praised him as
I35
HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY: EASTERN AND WESTERN
the last vigorous representative of the Greek tradition in the Middle Ages whether Eastern or Western. His verdict is not very far from the truth. '
3. AB"O NA$R AL-FARABI (died
A.D.
950)
Al-Kindi was an Arab of noble descent, born in Ba~ra. His father had held a high position as governor of Kiifa, and he had spent most of his life at the Caliph's court in Baghdad. Ar-Razi was of Persian origin and passed the greater part of his life in his native town of Raiy, near the site of Teheran but spent some time in Baghdad as well. Al-Farabi was a Turk from Transoxania, who studied first in Khurasan, then came to live for many years in Baghdad, becoming eventually a pensioner of the famous Hamdanid Shi' ite ruler of Aleppo, Saifad-daula. Al-Farabi was bent on assigning to philosophy a dominant position in the Islamic world and was not satisfied to give it the second place as the handmaiden of theology. Nor, on the other hand, was he convinced that Ar-Razi's attempt could be successful in the long run and that the Law of Islam and the theology which had developed from it could be 'excluded from the higher life. His own works show a different approach. Philosophy was not to replace traditional religion altogether but was to assign it its proper position as had been done in the Greek world by Plato. He tried, indeed, to re-interpret the whole of Islam from his own philosophical standpoint, using Greek philosophy as a torch which gave new light to every aspect of Islamic life: dialectical theology, creed and Qur'an, law, jurisprudence, grammar, aesthetic appreciation of artistic prose and poetry, and above all the organization of the perfect society and the essential qualities of its ruler. If the times were propitious, one universal world-state might come into existence; if not, several religions might exist side by side, ancl, if this also were impracticable, Islam at least might be reshaped according to the demands of the royal power of philosophy, which was the highest perfection of which man was capable. Yet Al-Farabi was not a man of action himself, as Plato had been, but rather a thinker who put forward a new scheme to show how things ought to be, living himself in retirement as an ascetic and watching the world with a serenity of mind of his own. Al-Farabi did not, like Al-Kindi, claim simply to follow the Greek philosophers. He believed that Greek philosop'Qy was in full dec~y in Greece, that the "Hellenes:'~ the pagan Greeks, existed no more, but that the works of Plato and Aristotle themselves could guide those who were about to revive it and show the way to restoring its glory in the land of Iraq from which, according to late Greek opinion as shared by Al-Farabi, it had originally come. It has been pointed out how intimately he is connected with the Baghdad school of Christian translators and
136
ISLAMIC PHILOSOPHY
philosophers, and it is certainly to his credit that he fully understood the interpretations of Aristotle and Plato which were at his disposal and passed them on to his pupils. But this alone would scarcely have made him a Muslim philosopher. Fortunately he makes his procedure sufficiently clear himself, and in addition he gives four comprehensive surveys of his whole philosophical system which are all available for study and comment. A more orthodox Aristotelianism than that adopted by Al-Kindi was conjoined in Al-Farabi with an appreciation of Plato's political theory which enables him to contribute forcefully to the discussion of the qualities by which the successor of the Prophet, the head of the Muslim community, was to be distinguished. If philosophy was the highest achievement of man, he must be a philosopher king. In the use of Plato's Republic as a textbook of political theory Al-Farabi was followed by Ibn Rushd (as also in other important aspects of his thought), but we look in Ibn Rushd's highly polished and admirably worked-out productions in vain for his predecessor's reformatory zeal and original freshness. Ibn Rushd treated the Republic in his lecture courses, because Aristotle's Politics was not available in Arabic translation and because Al-Farabi had done so before. Al-Farabi's interest in Plato arose from genuine Islamic problems of his day, and enabled him to find an original and impressive solution. An otherwise unknown account of Plato's philosophy which did full justice to the political side of his work, an equally unknown commentary on Plato's Republic, and a paraphrase of Plato's Laws were used by Al-Farabi to convey his views on the ideal caliph to Muslim readers. He eliminated almost every element of Plato's logic, physics and metaphysics which he considered superseded by later developments of Greek philosophy, and picked out the arguments which he could use for his purpose. In the same way he included in his first comprehensive work on philosophy a general summary of Aristotle, stopping short at the M etaphysics, using here a scheme of ordinary Neoplat"nic type, as described above. He made it clear in his programme that he was only selecting those parts of the Platonic and Aristotelian legacy which :fitted his own ends. What these were is not always absolutely clear, and he leaves it to the intelligent reader to guess their application for himself. He could only express himself this way and is very sparing with direct hints. Aristotle's logic of demonstration, according to Al-Farabi, provides the key to t~e phj.l~s