View of the Effect of Islamic Philosophy on Scholasticism

by:Morad Khani

Abstract

The present paper, in addition to referring to Scholastic philosophy's indebtedness to the Islamic Philosophy of the 12^th and 13^th centuries, briefly explains the philosophies of Ibn Sina and Ibn Rushd as well as their effect on the philosophy of the Middle Ages. When discussing Ibn Sina, by referring to his philosophical sources, such as Aristotle, Neo-Platonists, al-Kindi, and Farabi, the originality of the former's philosophy is directly emphasized. The writer has seen this originality in his discussion of existence, the relation of existence to reality (res) and necessity (necessitas), the distinction between existence and quiddity and its significance in the discussion of creation in Scholastic philosophy, the Sinan argument in the demonstration of the creator, and its difference from Aristotle’s argument of motion.

Later, Ibn Rushd's ideas are discussed by referring to the issue of the soul and the argument of its immateriality in suspending man and, finally, to the Sinan-Augustinian school concerning the issue of knowledge. After mentioning the influence of Ibn Rushd on the 13^th and 14^th centuries and even the Renaissance Period, the writer explains his defense of Aristotle against Ibn Sina and other theologians, particularly Ghazzali, and discusses the mission of religion and philosophy and their single common end. In what follows he deals with the issue of the ordinary people, theologians, and philosophers, and their levels of understanding in the view of Ibn Rushd, and, finally, refers to his influence on Latin Averroists and on his opponents such as Duns Scotus and Thomas Aquinas.

Key Terms

Scholasticism                                              Ibn Sina

Quiddity                                                     existence

Motion                                                       the soul

Ibn Rushd                                                   Augustine

Ishraq                                                        Thomas Aquinas

One of the most important events in the development of Scholastic philosophy was the contact between the Christian West and Islamic philosophy in the 12^th and 13^th centuries. Islamic philosophy had had access to Aristotle’s main works long before the Christian West, and many of the early translations of these works into Latin were made from Islamic manuscripts.

Islamic researchers influenced Christianity with Aristotle’s treatises, their specific interpretations of them, and main philosophical works. Of course, 12^th century Jewish thinkers also helped Christians in developing new points of view concerning philosophical and theological issues. However, if we wish to learn about the development of medieval philosophy, we must first become familiar with the major representatives of Islamic philosophy.

What is generally called Islamic philosophy was one of the cultural achievements of the vast Muslim empire in the 8^th century, which extended from Iran to Spain. This empire had been founded by Muslims under the leadership of Prophet Muhammed (pbuh) and his followers, i.e. the Caliphs.

The Muslims’ victories in the Middle East placed them in contact with the cultural centers of Syria and Iran. As a result, researchers and scholars brought back the sources of Greek science and philosophy to their countries as gifts after 529 AD, exactly when the Emperor Justinian closed the philosophy schools in Athens. At the time of Ma’mun, the Abbasid caliph, philosophy entered the Muslims’ empire. He was the caliph who built the Dar al-Hikmah school in Baghdad to translate the scientific and philosophical literature of Greece. It was here that some of the most prominent scholars of the Empire, particularly Ibn Sina, lived and wrote their masterpieces. The other important Muslim cultural center was Cordoba in Spain. It was the most civilized European city in the 10^th century and the birthplace of the other distinguished philosopher of the Islamic world, Ibn Rushd. It is worth mentioning that neither Ibn Sina nor Ibn Rushd was an Arab: Ibn Sina was Iranian and Ibn Rushd a Spanish Moor. However, both were Muslims and wrote in Arabic.

During these centuries Muslims were superior to Christians in terms of culture. Their scientific knowledge of mathematics and Greek philosophy, as well as their own innovations in these fields, were much more advanced than those of the Christian West. In fact, the West is indebted to Muslims concerning a number of important discoveries such as zero, Arabic numbers and figures, algebra, and trigonometry.

Ibn Sina

Ibn Sina (980-1037 AD) benefited from several sources such as the philosophies of Aristotle, Neo-Platonics, Plato’s predecessors in Baghdad, al-Kindi, and, particularly, Farabi. However, his philosophy is the product of a noteworthy personal success which places him among the great figures of the history of philosophy. Ibn Sina was always in the minds of the followers of Scholastic philosophy. They were either inspired by him in deliberating upon various issues or tried to deny those of his ideas which were in contrast with Christian beliefs.

He exerted his influence on many of the metaphysical concepts of Scholastic philosophers which later became inseparable parts of their specific metaphysics. For example, Saint Thomas Aquinas, who was the greatest theologian of the Middle Ages, always desired to maintain that the concept of existent (ens) is first conceived by the intellect. Ibn Sina added the concept of (res) or reality and necessity (necessitas) to this primary concept. The meanings of these concepts are evident; in other words, there are no other more evident or simpler concepts by which we can explain them. An existent is something that exists. It is a connected thing about which a reality can be expressed.

Everything has an essence or quiddity through which it is what it is. For example, a triangle has an essence or quiddity that makes it a triangle. Ibn Sina calls the quiddity of a thing its reality because it is what the intellect recognizes and explains.

Necessity is in contrast to possibility. Both are primary concepts that can only be defined through each other. Every existent entails necessity because it has an essence through which it is necessarily what it is. For example, an existent with the quiddity of a triangle is necessarily a triangle.

In Ibn Sina’s view, metaphysics is the first knowledge because its subject is existent qua existent. It examines the necessary attributes of an existent because it demonstrates its unity and its primary division into substance and accident, as well as the existence of God as the primary cause of each existent (except for His own Essence). Since the end of metaphysics is the knowledge of God, it is also called the “divine knowledge”.

Ibn Sina’s argument concerning the demonstration of the existence of God attracted the attention of some Scholastic philosophers as an example of metaphysical approach to divinity. They accepted Ibn Sina’s argument in their philosophies in different ways. This argument can be summarized as follows: anything that is going to come into existence must have the cause of its existence in itself. However, one must pay attention to the limits of this argument and judgment carefully. Ibn Sina does not say that anything that is moving or changing must entail the cause of its motion or change. Thus the cause of motion is other than the cause of existence. The latter grants existence to a thing, while the former only causes its motion.

The creator of an artistic work causes a change in substance; a change that ends in his completed product; however, he does not grant existence to his artistic work. In fact, the existence of this work does not depend much on its creator. An artistic work is created based on what the creator does, and then continues its existence. This is not true about the cause of existence. It must be concomitant with its effect and accompany it as the cause of its being.

Now, everything that comes into existence is a possible existent in itself. A possible existent comes into existence only through the interference and effect of its cause. The reason of the existence of a possible existent lies in the cause granting it existence. If this cause itself is essentially a possible existent, there must be some other ontological cause at work. Nevertheless, the chain of such a causal inference cannot be infinite. Therefore, there must be a primary and first cause which is essentially a necessary being rather than a possible existent, i.e. it cannot owe its existence to a prior cause, and this cause can only be God.

Ibn Sina’s argument is based on the notion that the causal chain of existence cannot be infinite. This affirmation requires demonstration because the chain of causes can be moving. For example, a father can have a child, and the child, in his own turn, can create such a relation, etc. However, the chain of the causes of the existent must be finite, otherwise, all the members of this chain would merely consist of possible existents, and there would be no cause at work as to why they actually exist. Therefore, their realized and actual existence can be explained only through an existence that can in no way be possible.

Ibn Sina determined the number of causes in the chain of the causes of the existent in conformity with the theology of his time: God is the Primary Cause and the Necessary Being because He is essentially One. Accordingly, God can only create one effect directly: “Nothing is emanated from the One but one.” This is a neo-Platonic principle that only one can be emanated from one. This single effect is a superior kind of angel called the intellect. It is essentially “possible”; however, it becomes “necessary” in relation to its cause, since it originates necessarily in God. Since according to another neo-Platonic principle, the knowledge of anything is the same as creating it, the first intellect creates another intellect by thinking about God. By its knowledge of itself as a necessary thing in relation to God, it creates the soul of the first sphere, and, by its knowledge of itself as a possible thing, it creates its matter. By means of a similar process of deliberating upon the prior intellect and itself as a necessary and possible thing, the second intellect creates the third intellect as well as the soul and the body of the second sphere. In this way, nine intellects and nine spheres are created the last of which is the moon. The intellect dominating this sphere creates the tenth and final intellect which is the same Active Intellect (Agent Intellect).

The Active Intellect, in turn, creates the four elements in the sublunary world including the moon and individual souls. Ibn Sina calls this universal (cosmic) intellect the Giver of forms (Dator Formarum) because it continuously emanates possible forms to the matter and human intellects which are prepared to receive it.

The creation of intellects and the natural world is necessary and eternal. It is only particular existents in the sensible possible world which are characterized by contingency because they are temporal and their contingency is due to their materiality rather than the Divine Will. God is not only superior to the world but also to the entire chain of the intellects. He Knows His own Essence as well as all possible things. However, His Knowledge of possible things is undifferentiated (general) rather than differentiated (particular).[1] Therefore, the Divine Will does not apply to the details of creation. Scholastic theologians firmly stood against such Sinan teachings in the same way that Muslim Sunnite (Orthodox) theologians did in the world of Islam. Many Scholastic philosophers have reflected the idea of the well-known Muslim philosopher as a deviation from rational teachings on his deathbed as follows: “The Omnipotent God tells the truth, and Ibn Sina is a liar!”

However, one aspect of the Sinan idea of creation proved to be of vital importance to the growth and expansion of Scholastic philosophy, i.e., the issue of making a distinction between quiddity and existence in created things (possible things). This idea did not begin with Ibn Sina. In fact, he adopted it from Farabi, who seems to have innovated it. According to Farabi, we can imagine the whatness of “something that exists”, e.g., humanity, without knowing whether it is in existence or not. It is at this point that Farabi concludes that existence is not included in the essence of things; rather, it is their unnecessary accident. Before him, Aristotle had made a distinction between the concept of the whatness of a thing and the reality that it exists in his logical works. Farabi believed that Aristotle’s logical distinction is an indication of the real distinction between quiddity and existence in created things.

Undoubtedly, the idea of expanding Aristotle's logical distinction in order to grant order to reality (existence) is inferred from the revealed concept of creation, which was unknown to Aristotle. In the view of Farabi and Ibn Sina, a created thing is essentially a possible existent, i.e. a quiddity that can come into existence through its cause. Therefore, existence and quiddity are not the same in possible and created things. Existence is not an attribute derived from quiddity, either. For example, laughter is an essential part of man’s quiddity and is necessary for it. Existence is necessary for quiddity and is its separable accident. This idea is correct, at least, about created existents. In the Divine Essence there is no difference between existence and quiddity. In fact, Ibn Sina denies quiddity for God because it is applicable to multiple things while God is One. It is only God who is Pure Existence.

Not only is the quiddity of created things distinct from their existence, but also it simultaneously assumes various modes of existence in the receptacle of the outside world and the mind. For example, humanity can exist in different ways, such as in the receptacle of the outside, as Socrates and Plato maintain, and in the receptacle of the mind, where it becomes known to us. Quiddity exists in the receptacle of the mind in a general way, i.e., the concept is predicable on multiple subjects. Moreover, it exists in the receptacle of the outside world in the from of a specific and particular issue (extensional). It differs from other particular existents with the same quiddity through accidental attributes. Nevertheless, quiddity as such is neither general nor particular but is, rather, indifferent: “Quiddity qua quiddity is nothing other than itself.” Assuming that humanity as such is the same humanity, universality and particularity, like existence, are out of quiddity and added to it as accidents that follow it.

The purpose of the Sinan analysis of quiddities is separating them from existence in case of their purity and separating from them anything that is external to them. Ibn Sina denies the existence of quiddities in itself; they merely exist in the mind or in objects. At the same time, he attributes to quiddities a specific existence which is their quiddative rather than ontological existence. When the mind takes a quiddity into consideration, it separates it from anything that does not belong to it.

Scholastic philosophers, such as Duns Scotus, agreed with Ibn Sina’s idea given above, as to quiddities as such possessing their own specific existence or quiddative existence (esse proprium), and attributed to quiddities and essences their specific existence, which they called the existence of essence (esse essentiae).

We can believe that the Sinan analysis of essences is also effective in psychology. In response to the question “What are man’s essence and quiddity?”, Ibn Sina asks us to imagine a human being suspended in a space; one who is incapable of perceiving any thing through his senses, even his own body. Does this imaginary person have knowledge of anything? Ibn Sina responds that he does. He perceives his specific existence as a spiritual (abstract) soul. However, he is unaware of the existence of his body because he is incapable of perceiving it. Then he concludes that man’s body is an external (accidental) entity in relation to its essence and quiddity and also demonstrates that the body is a substance different from the substance of the soul. Moreover, he maintains that the soul has a spiritual existence independent from the body and is, therefore, prepared for survival after the annihilation of the body. In sum, the soul is immortal. It is the form and perfection of the body and grants it life and motion; however, this relation to the body is not the quiddity and the essence of the soul. The soul as such is a spiritual (abstract) substance. Granting life and motion to the body is an external and accidental act in relation to its essence. We call the soul form in the same way that we call a man a worker. Like a worker, the soul is characterized by this attribute, i.e., granting motion and life to the body. This attribute is not man’s essence in the example of the worker and the essence of the soul in its own example.

According to Ibn Sina, the spiritual (abstract) soul of each human being has three faculties: vegetative, animal (alive), and intellectual. The most supreme of these faculties is the intellect. This created intellect lacks cognition; therefore, it is called the possible or potential (material) intellect which is capable of acquiring knowledge. In fact, it acquires knowledge in the light of the cooperation of the senses and the Active Intellect.

It is worth mentioning that the Active Intellect is a separate intellect which not only creates man but also continually emanates some forms which affect the human intellects prepared for receiving forms. The preliminary work of this perception is done by the faculties of internal and external senses the functions of which are described in detail by Ibn Sina. We perceive sensible issues through external senses. The produced forms are preserved in the inner faculties of imagination and the common sense (sensus communis) and cognitive faculties. The ultimate aim here is the perception of essence without accidents, separate from all accidental attributes. This is done through abstracting the form. Here, the essence of the particular sensible thing is separated, and its form is preserved in inner faculties.

However, abstraction is not the job of the human intellect; rather, it is the task of the immaterial Active Intellect, which, like the sun, fills our eyes with light and illuminates our intellect so much that it can see pure forms. At this point, it becomes clear how much the destiny of human souls is connected to the Active Intellect. This intellect is not only the direct creator of the souls but also the source of perfection and bliss, i.e. rational knowledge. Moreover, after their death, the souls see their salvation not in God, but in this intellect. They unite with it in this life as much as their rational progress allows them.

Scholastic philosophers found certain issues in Ibn Sina to disagree with and some to agree with. Since both Ibn Sina and Augustine were under the influence of neo-Platonic philosophy, there are certain similarities between their perceptions of the soul and the issue of knowledge. That is why some of the followers of Augustine in the 13^th century viewed the Muslim philosopher with a positive attitude. Particularly, they share the theory of illumination concerning the issue of knowledge to the extent that it has been rightly called the Sinan-Augustinian idea.

Ibn Rushd

The greatest philosopher of the Muslim’s empire (in Spain and the West) after Ibn Sina was Ibn Rushd. His influence was great all through the 13^th and 14^th centuries and even during the Renaissance. Therefore, his commentaries on Aristotle’s works during this period, in which he was nicknamed the “Commentator,” were considered of great value. His wish was to understand Aristotle’s philosophy and to make others do so. For him, Aristotle was the greatest of all philosophers. He wrote, “I believe that this man [Aristotle] is a principle in nature; an example that nature brought into existence in order to display ultimate human perfection.” Of course, this is exaggerated praise. In fact, Ibn Rushd wrote about him as if Aristotle’s philosophy was the same as philosophy itself. He did not conceive of philosophy as a rational plan capable of progress. Indeed, the Averroist School that he injected into the Christian West was one of the least creative and advanced schools of philosophy in the world.

He had to defend Aristotelian philosophy against two groups in the Islamic world. The first group consisted of philosophers such as Farabi and Ibn Sina who, according to Ibn Rushd, had distorted Aristotle’s philosophy by mixing it with religious theories, e.g., the issue of creation. The second group consisted of theologians who attacked philosophy as an enemy of religion. The most distinguished of them was Ghazzali, whose Tahafut al-falasifah is an effort to deny the teachings of Aristotle and Ibn Sina, such as the idea of the pre-eternity of the world, which are against the Qur’an.

In contrast to Ghazzali, Ibn Rushd proved the legitimacy of philosophy in his work called Tahafut al-tahafat. While defending philosophy as a higher truth, he introduces religion as a social necessity which is in agreement with philosophy. In order to affirm the specific functions of religion, philosophy, and theology, Ibn Rushd considers it necessary to know about three classes of people who deal with them. The first class consists of the mass of people who deal with imagination not the intellect. Due to eloquent preaching which provokes their faculty of imagination, this class lives with virtue. Philosophers are people of virtue and, because of their rational motives, do not need religion. Thus religion and philosophy follow the same purpose (virtue) and are basically in agreement with each other. Religion makes the truth accessible to those whose imagination dominates their intellect. The second class consists of theologians. They have the same beliefs of the mass of people; however, they are always in search for reasons and arguments for what they believe in. The intellect is the beginner of awakenness in this class, and its members aim at rationally justifying their beliefs. Nevertheless, they are incapable of attaining the absolute truth, and their conclusions are in their best form of a probabilistic nature. The third class consist of a few selected philosophers. They perceive the essence of the truth which is inherent in the imaginations of believers and the discoursive probabilities of theologians, pose them, and know them in their purest forms.

The above-mentioned classes follow various approaches in order to reach a single reality and finally make peace with each other. The beliefs of ordinary people and the teachings of theologians comprise the philosophical realities which suit lower level minds. Ibn Rushd never humiliated religion or faith; in fact, he confirmed the civilization-making power of religion among the masses. Due to their ominous mixing of religion and philosophy or belief and the intellect, theologians became the target of Ibn Rushd’s attacks. He believed that the Qur’an was the book of miracles and divine revelation, since it had been more effective than philosophy in leading people to the domain of ethics and morality. Ibn Rushd testifies that Moses (S) and Muhammed (S) are true prophets and sent to the human species. However, their religions are general approaches to the truth, while it finds its pure form in philosophy.

Ibn Sina posed the metaphysical argument for God’s Existence, according to which God is above the intellects moving the celestial spheres. Unlike him and like Aristotle, Ibn Rushd thought that it is possible to demonstrate God in the philosophy of nature through the analysis of motion. Therefore, the God demonstrated by Ibn Rushd is not Ibn Sina’s Transcendent God; rather, it is the intellects themselves at the summit of which is the Prime Mover.

Ibn Rushd reminds us that there are certain existents that are in motion and, thus, are moving from potency to actuality. Therefore, all moving things move through the mediation of another thing that is actual. Since the chain of such movers cannot be infinite, there must be a first cause for motion, which is itself pure actuality.

How many first causes are there? According to the calculations of the scholars of astronomy, their number is equal to the number of first motions in the world, which is 38. Therefore, there are 38 actual entities or intellects, which are all divine. The first level of these levels consists of intellects that are prime movers and the ultimate cause of each motion. According to Ibn Rushd all intellects are pre-eternal and move the world in a way. The issue of creation in Ibn Rushd’s mind is a religious teaching and has no place in philosophy. In the world of philosophy, i.e. in Aristotle’s school, the intellects move celestial spheres and, through them, the bodies of the sublunary world. The souls of the spheres, which enjoy cognition, love the intellects and imitate their perfection as much as possible through their periodic motion.

After denying the issue of creation, Ibn Rushd, naturally, refutes the real distinction between quiddity (essence) and existence. In his view, there is merely a logical distinction among concepts. If existence is other than quiddity, it means that something from the outside occurs to the essence or quiddity so that it comes into existence. In this case, another existent must have pre-existed that existent, and this chain continues forever, which is absurd. The truth is that since Aristotle did not know anything about this distinction (between existence and quiddity), it was enough for Ibn Rushd to say that it had no place in philosophy.

The metaphysical ideas of Ibn Rushd himself are rooted in Aristotle’s metaphysics. “Existent”, primarily, means substance, i.e. the particular existing thing (in Aristotle’s terms, substance in the first meaning). Universals only exist in the intellect; in other words, the intellect is the origin of universality. Secondly, “existent” is an accident which depends on substance and exists through it. Substances are the first intellects, i.e. immaterial (spiritual) forms and absolute actual entities. In material things forms are in unity with matter; however, the essence of these material substances consists of their forms. Thus all existents are either substances or accidents; there is nothing other than them that can be called “existence”.

The substantial form of man’s body is his soul. Unlike what Ibn Sina believes, the soul is not a spiritual (immaterial) substance enjoying possible (material) intellect. The soul is the bodily form which is in unity with the body quiddatively and, therefore, unable to survive after death. The most supreme faculty of the soul is the bodily faculty, which is called the passive intellect or the imaginal faculty, through which man is capable of uniting with the active intellect. This intellect, as Ibn Sina teaches, is the last of all heavenly intellects and rules the sublunary world.

The Active Intellect illuminates the passive intellects of human beings to receive knowledge from it because the human knowledge is possible through it. That is why it is called the possible (material) intellect. Ibn Sina affirms a specific spiritual soul and possible intellect for each human individual. The spiritual faculty through which man is capable of attaining the truth personally and enjoying eternal happiness is called the Active Intellect, not the possible intellect of human beings. Ibn Rushd even went beyond this and denied the possible intellects of human beings. As a result, he considered man to be a higher kind of animal whose most sublime personal faculty is the bodily faculty and dies with the body. Man’s glory and grace consists of his specific unity with the Active Intellect based on knowledge and love.

Ibn Rushd’s rationality placed him against his Muslim fellow philosophers, who accused him of heresy and expelled him from Cordoba. Of course, he was treated with kindness before his death. Due to the growth of atheism among Christians, his influence became stronger. Duns Scotus called him the cursed Ibn Rushd and the Patriarch of Cordoba assimilated him to a mad dog which barked against Jesus Christ and the Catholic Church. However, Ibn Rushd never explicitly attacked Christianity and believed that religion was a social necessity. Such hostile nicknames led to the acceptance of the destructive effect of Ibn Rushd’s philosophy in Christian philosophy centers.

Historical evidence testifies that Thomas Aquinas tried to prevent Ibn Rushd’s thoughts influencing the Christian West. Aquinas' victory over Ibn Rushd was portrayed by painters such as Andrea of Florence, Benois, and Gozzoli in Renaissance art. In one of these paintings St. Thomas is leaning on a throne and Ibn Rushd has fallen before his feet. Although there is some truth in this painting, the relationship between Thomas Aquinas and the great Muslim philosopher is not completely shown. The former effectively annulled the latter's mistakes but learnt much from him. For example, he always kept Ibn Rushd’s commentaries at hand and frequently referred to them and learnt from them. In the view of Aquinas and other Scholastics, Ibn Rushd was the “interpreter” of Aristotle and a bottomless source of philosophical subjects.