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Encyclopaedia of the Qurʾān / Philosophy and the Qurʾān

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Article Table of Contents

Introduction

Philosophical methodology and the Qurʾān

The earliest theological controversies

The Ashʿarī onslaught on the philosophers

Ibn Rushd's anti-Ashʿarī polemic and the defense of Aristotle

Logic as an instrument of thought

God, his existence and his attributes

The creation of the world

Ethics and eschatology

Conclusion

Bibliography

Introduction

Although not a philosophical document in the strict sense, the Qurʾān has been at the center of the most heated philosophical and theological controversies in Islam. Now, if by philosophy is meant wisdom (sophia) or rather love of wisdom, as understood by Pythagoras, who coined the term philo-sophos, the Qurʾān itself attests to the merit of acquiring wisdom (q.v.; ḥikma) as a gift from God. For as q 2:269 puts it: “He [God] gives wisdom to whomever he wills,” adding that indeed “whoever receives wisdom has received an abundant good” (see gift-giving; grace; blessing).

More specifically, ḥikma refers in a number of verses to the Qurʾān itself as a divine revelation (see revelation and inspiration; names of the qurʾān) to Muḥammad (q 4:113; 54:5; 62:2) or to his predecessors, such as Luqmān (q.v.; q 31:12), David (q.v.; q 38:20) and Jesus (q.v.; q 3:48; 5:110). In the latter two verses, Jesus is said to have been taught by God the Torah (q.v.) and the Gospel (q.v.) as well as the ḥikma, which appears to refer to the “sapiential” books of the Hebrew Bible (i.e. “wisdom literature”), generally attributed to Solomon (q.v.). In one verse (q 43:63), Jesus is simply reported to have said: “I have come to you with the wisdom,” and to have brought “the clear proofs” (see proof).

The broader meaning of the term philosophy in ordinary usage may be said to correspond to the activity of speculation, reflection or rational discourse in general. Thus, the Oxford dictionary defines “to philosophize” as “to speculate, theorize, moralize,” whereas Aristotle tended to describe wisdom (sophia) as the study of certain principles and causes, and first philosophy (i.e. metaphysics) as the study of first principles and causes (Metaphysics, 14 f.: bk. A.981b ln.29 f.).

In the Qurʾān, the terms reflecting (tafakkur), considering (naẓar), pondering (iʿtibār) and reasoning (ʿaql) are frequently used in what can only be described as a teleological context, intended to illustrate God's creative power (see creation), his sovereignty (q.v.; see also kings and rulers) and the rationality of his ways (see intellect), as we will see in the next section, which deals with philosophical methodology and the Qurʾān.

There is thus a prima facie case for the correlation of philosophy and the Qurʾān, as this article proposes to show. As a matter of history, however, there were from the earliest times vast differences of opinion among Muslim exegetes (see exegesis of the qurʾān: classical and medieval), jurists and other scholars, on the justifiability of applying rational discourse, the paramount expression of philosophical methodology, to the text of the Qurʾān, whether in the form of exegesis (tafsīr) or interpretation (taʾwīl). Al-Ṭabarī (d. 310/923), one of the earliest and most learned commentators of the Qurʾān, prefaces his commentary by referring to those scholars who were reluctant to engage in exegesis “out of fear of error (q.v.), inadequacy or liability to sin” (Ṭabarī, Tafsīr, i, 46). He then quotes a saying of Ibn ʿAbbās (d. 68/687), cousin of the Prophet, to the effect that “he who discusses the Qurʾān by recourse to opinion (raʾy), let him occupy his place in hell.” Without endorsing this opinion in full, al-Ṭabarī (Tafsīr, i, 42) comments that this prohibition bears on “exegesis (tafsīr) by recourse to reprehensible but not praiseworthy opinion.” He, then, invokes the authority of Ibn Masʿūd (d. 32/652-3) and other scholars in support of the permis--> sibility of tafsīr and quotes q 38:29, which reads: “It is (i.e. the Qurʾān) a blessed book that we have sent down to you, that they may ponder its verses and that those possessed of understanding may remember” (see memory; remembrance; reflection and deliberation). This is followed by q 39:27, which reads: “We have given humankind every kind of parable (see parables) in this Qurʾān that perchance they might remember.” These verses, al-Ṭabarī comments, show that “the knowledge of tafsīr and the exposition of its senses is obligatory.” For, “pondering, taking stock, remembrance and piety (q.v.),” he adds “are not possible without the knowledge of the meanings of the [qurʾānic] verses, grasping and understanding them.” He then speaks of the two varieties of sound tafsīr: (1) that which rests on the traditions of the Prophet, provided they are well-accredited and sound (see sunna; ḥadīth and the qurʾān); and (2) that which meets the rules of the soundest demonstration (burhān) and is grounded in the knowledge of the meaning of words (see grammar and the qurʾān; arabic language), poems (see poetry and poets), proverbs and different dialects (q.v.) of the Arabs (q.v.). To this doubly logical and linguistic criterion should be added, according to al-Ṭabarī, material derived from the ancients (salaf), including the Companions of the Prophet (q.v.), their immediate successors and other learned scholars (see scholar).

On the second question of interpretation (taʾwīl), al-Ṭabarī reviews the conflicting interpretations of q 3:7, which refers to those parts of the Qurʾān which are precise in meaning (muḥkamāt) and those which are ambiguous (q.v.; mutashābihāt), then goes on to state: “As for those in whose heart there is vacillation, they follow the ambiguous in it, seeking sedition and intending to interpret. No one, however, except God knows its interpretation. Those well-grounded in knowledge say, we believe in it; all is from our lord.” Whether the phrase “those well-grounded in knowledge” should be conjoined to God raises a serious grammatical question that was at the center of the controversy which pitted liberal and conservative scholars against each other (see knowledge and learning). According to al-Ṭabarī (Tafsīr, i, 214), Mālik b. Anas (d. 179/795) and ʿĀʾisha, wife of the Prophet (see wives of the prophet; ʿāʾisha bint abī bakr), chose the reading which stops at God; whereas Ibn ʿAbbās and Mujāhid b. Jabr (d. 104/722) allowed for the conjunction of God and those well-grounded in knowledge. Al- Ṭabarī himself appears to opt for the first reading, reserving the knowledge of the ambiguous parts of the Qurʾān to God. As for the distinction between the muḥkamāt and mutashābihāt parts, he holds the view that al-muḥkam is that of which the learned know the interpretation; whereas al-mutashābih is that of which no one but God has any knowledge, which is essentially a restatement of what q 3:7 explicitly states. The only clarification he offers is that “ambiguous” references bear on such questions as “the time of the (second) coming of Jesus, son of Mary (q.v.), the coming of the hour, the end of the world and such like” (Ṭabarī, Tafsīr, i, 209; see last judgment; apocalypse).

Philosophical methodology and the Qurʾān

The investigation of the relation of philosophy to the Qurʾān compels us to distinguish between two aspects of this relation, the methodological and the substantive. As regards the latter, any correspondence of the qurʾānic teaching with the classical philosophical tradition on such questions as the origin of the world (see cosmology), the nature of God (see god and his attributes), human destiny (q.v.; see also fate; reward and punishment) and the nature of right and wrong (see good and evil), is purely accidental; the method(s) used by traditional philosophers to arrive at these conclusions is entirely different. The crux of the methodological relation, on the other hand, consists in the degree to which the Qurʾān calls upon the believers to “consider, reflect on, or ponder” the creation, as a means of discovering the secrets of this creation, leading up to the knowledge of God, his omnipotence, his wisdom, and his sovereignty in the world. Thus, q 7:185 asks: “Have they not considered the kingdom of the heavens (see heaven and sky) and the earth (q.v.) and all things that God has created?” In q 88:17 f., it is asked: “Will they not consider the camels, how they were created (see camel); heaven how it was raised up, the mountains, how they were hoisted and the earth, how it was leveled?” (see animal life; agriculture and vegetation; nature as signs).

In these and similar verses, a teleological message is more explicitly preached: by reflecting on the creation of the heavens and the earth, “people of understanding” are said to perceive that the creation of the heavens and the earth is not in vain (q 3:190-1). In q 2:164, it is stated that: “Indeed, in the creation of the heavens and the earth, the alternation of night and day (see day and night); in the ships that sail the seas with what profits humankind; in the water (q.v.) which God sends down from the sky to bring the earth back to life (q.v.) after its death […] — surely in these are signs (q.v.) for people of understanding” (see also pairs and pairing).

In a number of verses, such as q 59:2 (cf. q 39:21), people of “understanding” or of “perception” are urged to “ponder” or take stock (fa-ʿtabirū) of the wonders of creation and the calamities which befall the unbelievers (see punishment stories; chastisement and punishment), by recourse to the God-given light of reason. In token of this divine light, God is said in q 2:31-2 to have taught Adam (see adam and eve), his deputy on earth (see caliph), the names of which the angels themselves were ignorant (see angel).

The Qurʾān also speaks of people who reason (yaʿqulūn), and accordingly are capable of obeying God or worshiping him (see obedience; worship). In fact, the expressions “they reason” or “you reason” occur forty-six times in the Qurʾān. In this context, it is assumed that, prior to revelation, as a well-known tradition of the Prophet (ḥadīth) has it, humankind partook of a natural religion (dīn al-fiṭra) into which they were born and were subsequently made Jews, Christians or Muslims by their own parents (see religious pluralism and the qurʾān; religion; parties and factions).

No wonder, then, that the Qurʾān has defined the rules of debate between rival groups in terms of rational argument or good counsel (see debate and disputation). Thus, the Prophet is urged in q 16:125 to “call to the way of your lord (q.v.) with wisdom and mild exhortation and argue with them in the best manner” (see invitation; exhortations). It is this call, which, following the period of conquest, was historically at the basis of the debates with Christians. The earliest such instance is the debate between a Christian and a “Saracen” on the question of free will and predestination (see freedom and predestination). This debate is attributed to Theodore Abū Qurra (d. 210/826), Bishop of Ḥarrān, or his teacher, St. John of Damascus (d. 130/748), the last great doctor of the Orthodox Church (cf. Sahas, John of Damascus). Another instance is the debate in which Abū Yaʿqūb b. Isḥāq al-Kindī (d. ca. 252/866) has given a “Refutation of the Christian Trinity,” which has survived in the rebuttal of the Jacobite Yaḥyā b. ʿAdī (d. 363/974). The Muʿtazilī (see muʿtazilīs) al-Jāḥiẓ (d. 255/868-9), al-Kindī's contemporary, has pursued the same theme in his own “Refutation of the Christians.” An anti-Islamic polemical tract which pitted the Nestorian (see christians and christianity) ʿAbd al-Masīḥ al-Kindī against the well-known Muslim scholar, ʿAbdallāh al-Hāshimī, had a broader impact, since it denigrated the Islamic rites of pilgrimage (q.v.), the qurʾānic account of the pleasures reserved to the righteous in paradise (q.v.) and the expeditions of the Prophet against Quraysh (q.v.; cf. Muir, Apology; see expeditions and battles; fighting; war).

Apart from his anti-Trinitarian polemic (see trinity; polemic and polemical language), Abū Yaʿqūb b. Isḥāq al-Kindī was the first Muslim philosopher to espouse the cause of the total compatibility of philosophy and Islam. For him, philosophy is the highest human art, which seeks “the knowledge of the first or true one (al- ḥaqq) who is the cause of every truth (q.v.).” Now, in so far as the aim of both philosophy and revelation, embodied in the Qurʾān, is the pursuit of truth, it follows, according to al-Kindī, that the “seeker of truth” should be willing to look for it from whatever source, even if that source was “races (q.v.) distant from us and nations different from us,” by whom he undoubtedly meant the Greeks (Fakhry, History, 70; see strangers and foreigners). He concedes, however, that although religious truths belong to an order of “divine wisdom,” which is higher than “human wisdom,” the truths preached by the prophets (see prophets and prophethood) are not different from those taught by the philosophers.

Contrary to the claims of his predecessors or contemporaries, such as Mālik b. Anas (d. 179/ 796) and Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal (d. 241/845), al-Kindī then goes on to argue that the Qurʾān itself, which embodies that higher divine wisdom, is not averse to the use of reasoning or argument which is the core of the method used by the philosophers. To illustrate this point, he refers to a passage in the Qurʾān which bears on the mystery of resurrection (q.v.), questioned by the infidel (see uncertainty) who asks: “Who brings the flowers back to life, once they are withered?” In response the Qurʾān states: “He who originated them the first time and has knowledge of every creation” (q 36:79) and goes on to add: “It is he who produces fire from green trees for you” and as such is able to bring the contrary from its contrary, fire (q.v.) from green trees, life from its opposite, and is accordingly able to create or re-create as he pleases. Thus, al-Kindī concludes, “the truth to which Muḥammad, the truthful, may God's blessings be upon him, has summoned, added to what he has received from God almighty,” can be demonstrated by recourse to rational arguments, which only the fool can question. “People of sound religion and intelligence” cannot, therefore, doubt the need to resort to rational discourse or interpretation (taʾwīl) in the attempt to understand the ambiguous passages of the Qurʾān. He then illustrates this point by referring to q 55:6, which reads: “And the stars and trees prostrate themselves” to God, to show how everything, including the outermost sphere, referred to in this verse as the stars, submits to God (Fakhry, History, 81; see bowing and prostration).

The earliest theological controversies

Al-Kindī, who was known for his Muʿtazilī sympathies, lived at a time when theological controversies had defined to some extent the course which philosophy and theology (kalām) were to take (see theo- logy and the qurʾān). In concrete historical terms, the earliest controversies centered on such questions as grave sin (kabīra; see sin, major and minor), faith (q.v.; īmān) and free will and predestination (qadar). Although those controversies had definite political undertones, the arguments that bolstered them were ultimately grounded in the qurʾānic text (see politics and the qurʾān). The first of these questions was raised by the Khārijīs (q.v.), who split from the main body of the army of ʿAlī, the fourth caliph (d. 40/661; see ʿalī b. abī ṭālib), charging him with committing a grave sin (kabīra), by exposing his legitimate claims to the caliphate to question, upon consenting to the so-called arbitration (q.v.), following the battle of Ṣiffīn (q.v.; 37/657). The Khārijīs' charge against ʿAlī was later generalized to apply to any Muslim who committed a grave sin, political or other: such an individual was considered to become thereby an apostate deserving of death (ʿAlī himself was killed by a Khārijī at the mosque of Kūfa in 40/661; see apostasy). In the heat of ensuing controversy, the Murjiʾīs trod a moderate path, arguing that genuine faith cannot be determined in this life but should be deferred — hence their name of Murjiʾīs or “Deferrers” — and accordingly should be left to God (see deferral). Almost simultaneously, the Qadarīs raised the question of free will and predestination, designated by the ambiguous term of qadar, meaning human or divine power (see power and impotence).

This last question had a profound political significance during the early Umayyad period. The early Qadarīs, such as Maʿbad al-Juhanī (d. after 83/703) and Ghaylān al-Dimashqī (d. 116/743), challenged the Umayyad caliphs' claims that their actions, however vile or cruel, were part of the divine decree (qaḍāʾ wa-qadar) and could not for that reason be questioned. Although both Maʿbad and Ghaylān were killed by the order of the caliphs, ʿAbd al-Malik (r. 65-86/685-705) and Hishām (r. 105-25/724-43), respectively, the former ruler, assailed perhaps by understandable doubts, is reported to have put the whole question of qadar to the eminent religious scholar, al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī (d. 110/728), whose response has survived in a famous “Treatise on qadar” (cf. Fakhry, Fikr, i, 17-28). In this treatise, al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī draws extensively on the Qurʾān, which, according to him, supports unquestionably the thesis of free will, or human qadar, as a prerequisite of religious obligation (taklīf) — a thesis which is also endorsed by reason or sound commonsense. For “God almighty,” he writes, “is too just and equitable (see justice and injustice) to cause the human servant to be blind and then order him to see, then tell him: ‘Or else, I would punish you’; cause him to be deaf and then say to him: ‘Hear or else I will torture you’” (see vision and blindness; seeing and hearing). For “this is too obvious,” al-Baṣrī adds, “to be misunderstood by any reasonable person” (Fakhry, Fikr, i, 24). He then proceeds to inveigh against the false interpretations, proposed by those who continue to question these propositions, by whom he undoubtedly meant the “determinists” (jabriyya), such as Jahm b. Ṣafwān (d. 128/745), Ḍirār b. ʿAmr (of the middle second/eighth century) and others.

The significance of this treatise, despite the doubts concerning its authenticity, is that it is the earliest instance of recourse to the Qurʾān in the attempt to resolve the controversy over the question of qadar, destined to become one of the pivotal issues in philosophical and theological circles. Interestingly enough, al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī, who quotes the Qurʾān extensively, does not refer to the ḥadīth in this treatise but supplements the qurʾānic quotations by commonsense or rational arguments.

Other scholars of the period, such as Mālik b. Anas (d. 179/795), founder of one of the four Sunnī creeds (madhhabs; see creed; law and the qurʾān), tended to reject absolutely the application of deduction or independent reasoning to qurʾānic questions. Asked once what he thought of the qurʾānic references to God's sitting on the throne (as in e.g. q 7:54; 10:3; 13:2; see throne of god; anthropomorphism), Mālik is reported to have answered “The sitting is well-known; its modality is unknown. Belief in it is a duty and questioning it is a heresy [or innovation] (bidʿa).”

This rigid traditionalism and deference to the authority of the revealed text was outstripped in the next century by Ibn Ḥanbal (d. 241/855), founder of another one of the four creeds, when in 212/827 the ʿAbbāsid caliph al-Maʿmūn (r. 198-218/813-33) proclaimed two doctrines to be official — i.e. the preeminence of ʿAlī (see shīʿism and the qurʾān; shīʿa) and the createdness of the Qurʾān (q.v.; khalq al-Qurʾān) — a pronouncement that set the stage for the notorious miḥna or inquisition (q.v.). When the concurrence of all the religious judges and scholars in the Muʿtazilī thesis of the creation of the Qurʾān was demanded, Ibn Ḥanbal rejected this thesis with utter single-mindedness. Jailed, scourged and humiliated in a variety of ways, he refused to change his stand that the Qurʾān was the “eternal and uncreated speech (q.v.) of God” (see also word of god; inimitability).

By Ibn Ḥanbal's time, however, the impact of Greek philosophy was beginning to be felt in theological and philosophical circles. The translation of the first three parts of Aristotle's Organon, i.e. the Categories, the Interpretations and the Prior analytics, as early as the eighth century by ʿAbdallāh b. al-Muqaffaʿ (d. 139/756) — or his son Muḥammad, presumably from Persian — had opened the door wide for theological and philosophical discussions in an unprecedented manner. (Some time after, even the grammarians felt compelled to jump into the fray and question the authority of Aristotelian logic as superfluous.)

Greek philosophy and Aristotelian logic had been at the center of theological controversies among Syriac-speaking Jacobites and Nestorians centuries before at Antioch, Edessa, Qinnesrin and Nisibin, and contacts between Muslim and Christian scholars had been common since at least the time of the above-mentioned St. John of Damascus. Not surprisingly, the first theological movement in Islam was spawned as early as the second/eighth century by Wāṣil b. ʿAṭāʾ (d. 131/ 748), disciple of the illustrious al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī. This rationalist movement was fully developed by the great theologians of the third/ninth century, Abū l-Hudhayl (d. ca. 235/849), al-Naẓẓām (d. ca. 226/845), al-Jubbāʿī (d. 303/ 915) and others. Even contemporary philosophers, like the aforementioned al-Kindī, were sympathetic to the Muʿtazilī cause. The teaching of that school centered around the two principles of divine unity and justice, which the Muʿtazilīs supported by recourse to reason, which they, like the philosopher al-Kindī, believed to be perfectly compatible with the teaching of the Qurʾān. They also believed, like the philosophers in general, that right and wrong can be determined by reason and are not, as their opponents contended, matters of divine injunction or prohibition (see commandments; forbidden). Divine revelation, embodied in the Qurʾān, simply confirms the validity of such principles and this confirmation is a divine grace or favor (luṭf) that God “dispenses to humankind, so that whoever perishes would perish after a clear proof [had been given] and those who survive would survive after a clear proof” (q 8:42).

The Ashʿarī onslaught on the philosophers

Some of the philosophers who succeeded al-Kindī did not evince the same deference to the revealed text. Thus, Abū Bakr al-Rāzī (d. ca. 318/930) rejected the whole fabric of revelation as superfluous and held that the God-given light of reason was sufficient for solving human philosophical, moral and practical problems (see ethics and the qurʾān). The source of all wisdom was, for him, Greek philosophy, as expounded particularly by Plato, “the master and leader” of all the philosophers. Al-Rāzī substituted, on essentially philosophical (Platonic) grounds, five co-eternal principles, i.e. the creator (bāriʾ), the soul, space, matter and time, for the unique God of the Qurʾān.

By the fourth/tenth century, the philosophical scene was dominated by the names of the great system-builders and Neoplatonists, al-Fārābī (d. 339/950) and Ibn Sīnā (Avicenna) (d. 428/1037), who constructed an elaborate metaphysical and cosmological scheme, which they presented as an alternative to the Islamic system of beliefs. This Neoplatonic scheme had a remote resemblance to the qurʾānic worldview and was received from the start with suspicion by the traditional scholars and the masses at large.

The arch-enemies of the Neoplatonists during this period were the Ashʿarī theologians, whose leader, Abū l-Ḥasan al-Ashʿarī (d. 324/935) had been, up to the age of forty, a Muʿtazilī theologian of profound erudition. His disenchantment with the Muʿtazila, we are told, was inspired by a call of the Prophet to tend to the (Muslim) community (irʿa ummatī). Without abandoning the Muʿtazilī methodology of rational discourse, al-Ashʿarī was thoroughly committed to Ḥanbalī traditionalism. The leading Ashʿarī theologians of the fifth/eleventh and sixth/twelfth centuries, such as al-Bāqillānī (d. 403/1013), al-Baghdādī (d. 429/1037), al-Juwaynī (d. 478/1085) and al-Ghazālī (d. 505/1111) pursued al-Ashʿarī's line of anti-Muʿtazilism and Neoplatonism in an unabated manner.

Al-Ghazālī and al-Juwaynī, his master, were the most notable standard-bearers of the Ashʿarī onslaught on the Muslim philosophers, represented by al-Fārābī and Ibn Sīnā, with Aristotle as their master. Al-Ghazālī accuses those philosophers of irreligion (kufr) on three scores: the eternity (q.v.) of the world, God's knowledge of particulars and bodily resurrection. Thus, when they profess to prove the existence of God as creator of the world, the philosophers, according to him, are guilty of dissimulation (talbīs) since an eternal universe does not require a creator. They also impugn the perfection of God when they limit his knowledge to that of universals and are finally unable to demonstrate the resurrection of the body. On all those scores, none of the arguments of the philosophers are convincing or conclusive and the only recourse left to the conscientious searcher, according to al-Ghazālī, is the Qurʾān, whose authority on all these questions is indisputable. For the Qurʾān stipulates in unmistakable terms that God is the sovereign and all-knowing creator of the world in time (q.v.) and ex nihilo, who is able to do whatever he pleases. He is, in addition, the sole agent, who operates directly and miraculously in the world without reference to secondary or natural causes (Ghazālī, Tahāfut, question 17).

Ibn Rushd's anti-Ashʿarī polemic and the defense of Aristotle

The philosopher who pursued those questions relentlessly and confronted al-Ghazālī's onslaught head-on was the great Aristotelian philosopher and Mālikī judge, Ibn Rushd (Averroes; d. 595/1198) of Cordoba, Spain. In his Faṣl al-maqāl, “Decisive treatise,” Ibn Rushd begins by defining philosophy as the art of “investigating entities and considering them in so far as they manifest the maker; I mean in so far as they are made.” From this premise, he draws the inference that “existing entities actually manifest the maker… and the more complete their status as made (maṣnūʿa) is known, the knowledge of their maker is more complete” (Ibn Rushd, Faṣl, 27). After reviewing a series of qurʾānic verses, which call on humankind to “consider” or “reflect on” creation, he concludes that scripture (al- sharʿ), by which he clearly means the Qurʾān, has not only exhorted humankind to investigate “existing entities” but has actually regarded such investigation as obligatory.

As a good jurist, to whom we owe a major juridical treatise, Bidāyat al-mujtahid, the “Primer of the accomplished scholar,” Ibn Rushd proceeds next to draw a close analogy between juridical and rational deduction (qiyās) and to defend the use of the latter as perfectly legitimate. In fact, rational deduction is more appropriate than juridical. For, as he asks, who indeed is more worthy of our esteem than he who investigates the very nature of existing entities insofar as they manifest their maker — by whom he obviously meant the philosopher.

Now, whoever wishes to know God, as the maker of existing entities, must begin by mastering the rules of deduction and distinguishing between the three modes of deduction, the demonstrative used by the philosophers, the dialectical used by the theologians (al- mutakallimūn) and the rhetorical used by the masses at large. These rules, as everybody knows, are embodied in Aristotle's logical treatises, especially the Posterior analytics, known in Arabic sources as Kitāb al-Burhān, the “Book of Demonstration.” Ibn Rushd is emphatic that, of these modes, the demonstrative is the highest. Fully conscious of the aversion to the study of logic and the other so-called “foreign sciences” in theological and popular circles, Ibn Rushd proceeds to defend such a study on the ground that the conscientious searcher cannot dispense with the assistance of his predecessors, “regardless of whether they share in our religion or not” (Ibn Rushd, Faṣl, 31). Moreover, logic, being simply a tool or “instrument of thought,” has no specific religious character or national affiliation. Accordingly, it is our duty, he states, to look into the books of the ancients (by whom he meant the Greeks; see generations; orality and writing in arabia), and to examine what they have said about existing entities, and then determine the extent to which it conforms with the “principles of demonstration.” “If we find,” he writes, “that some of it is accordant with the truth, we should receive it gladly from them and thank them. If, on the contrary, it is not accordant with truth, we should draw attention to it, warn against it and excuse them” (ibid., 33). In stressing the “formal” character of deduction or logical discourse, Ibn Rushd cites the example of the lawful slaughter (q.v.) of animals, which is entirely independent of the instrument (āla) used (see also lawful and unlawful; consecration of animals; sacrifice).

It is to be noted that, in drawing a parallel between juridical and rational deduction, Ibn Rushd exploits skillfully the ambiguity of the term qiyās, which derives from a root meaning “to measure” and does not occur in the Qurʾān at all (see measurement). Juridical qiyās had been used from earlier times as a means of enunciating legal decisions on matters on which the Qurʾān was silent, by recourse to the method of analogy, accurately denoting resemblance (shabah) rather than deduction. What justified analogy in legal decisions was actually the reason (ʿilla) which the parallel cases had in common. Thus, jurists, on the whole, were not willing to proceed beyond particular cases. Their procedure was, in other words, purely inductive; whereas rational qiyās was deductive and conformed to the syllogistic rules Aristotle and the Greek logicians had laid down. Al-Kindī, the first genuine Islamic philosopher, had used a more accurate term to translate the Greek syllogismos, i.e. al- jāmiʿa, which, over time, fell out of use and was replaced by the ambiguous term qiyās.

Deduction or qiyās was thus recommended by the philosophers who, like the Muʿtazilīs, were willing to apply the rational canons of proof to the qurʾānic text. Faced with the anthropomorphisms and incongruities of that text, the two groups felt compelled to resort to another rational device, interpretation (taʾwīl), which, as we have seen, the Qurʾān had allowed where “ambiguous” verses were concerned.

Of the philosophers, no one exploited the method of interpretation in his theological treatises as thoroughly as Ibn Rushd. After explaining that by interpretation is meant eliciting the real meaning underlying the figurative connotation of scriptural terms, Ibn Rushd proceeds to argue that this method is explicitly recommended in that famous passage (q 3:7) which speaks of the Qurʾān as a revelation from God, “with verses which are precise in meaning (muḥkamāt) and which are the mother of the book (q.v.) and others which are ambiguous (mutashābihāt).” The latter are then said to be the object of interpretation by “those in whose heart there is vacillation” and are in quest of sedition. Contrary to al-Ṭabarī's already-mentioned reading, however, Ibn Rushd proposes the conjunction of both “God and those well-grounded in knowledge,” referred to in the last part of the verse, as equally com--> petent to undertake the interpretation of the ambiguous parts.

By those well-grounded in knowledge, Ibn Rushd is categorical: only the philosophers, or “people of demonstration” as he calls them, are meant. That definitely excludes the two lower classes: that of the theologians, the “dialectical,” and the masses at large, the “rhetorical” class.

In his other theological treatise, al-Kashf ʿan manāhij al-adilla, the “Exposition of the methods of proof,” written in 576/1180 as a sequel to the Faṣl, Ibn Rushd lays down the rules or “canon of interpretation,” as he calls it, in a systematic way. The texts of scripture (sharʿ), he explains, fall into two major categories: (1) Those which are perfectly explicit and do not need any interpretation, corresponding to that part the Qurʾān has called “precise in meaning” (muḥkamāt); and (2) Those in which the intent of the scripture is one of allegory or representation and which fall into four parts: (a) in which the allegory or representation (mithāl) is too abstruse to be understood by any except the especially gifted; (b) which is the opposite of the former and in which the allegory or representation is readily understood; (c) which is readily recognized to be an allegory, but the significance of that allegory is known with difficulty; and (d) which is the opposite of the former, or that in which the significance of the allegory is readily recognized. The sense in which it is an allegory is, however, only known with difficulty (see polysemy).

The first part (a), Ibn Rushd goes on to explain, should be accepted at face value by the theologians and the masses at large. The second part (b) may be interpreted but its interpretation should not be divulged to the public (see secrets; hidden and the hidden). The third part (c) may be divulged as a means of explaining the allegorical intent of scripture and the rea--> son why it is expressed in the form of an allegory. The fourth part (d) may not be interpreted for fear that such interpretation may lead to “wild opinions,” such as those in which the Ṣūfīs and their ilk are liable to indulge (see ṣūfism and the qurʾān).

Logic as an instrument of thought

In matters of both interpretation and deduction, it is clear that logic plays a preponderant role. Ẓāhirī scholars, however, such as Ibn Ḥazm (d. 456/1064), Ibn Qudāma (d. 620/1223) and Ibn Taymiyya (d. 728/1328) were averse to the use of logic or deduction in any form or guise. Some commentators of the Qurʾān, such as al-Zamakhsharī (d. 538/1144), tended to accord grammar a more preponderant role than logic in their qurʾānic exegesis. The Ashʿarīs, despite their anti-Muʿtazilī and anti-philosophical sympathies, did not exclude the use of deduction or logical methods of proof in theological disputations altogether. This is illustrated by al-Ashʿarī's own treatise, Istiḥsān al-khawḍ fī ʿilm al-kalām, “Vindication of the use of theological discourse” and al-Ghazālī's own attitude to logic in his anti-philosophical works. Here, as is explicitly stated in Tahāfut al-falāsifa, the “Incoherence of the philosophers,” a clear-cut distinction is made between logic as an “instrument of thought” and the philosophical sciences, such as physics and metaphysics (see science and the qurʾān). The former is perfectly innocuous from a religious viewpoint; whereas the latter contains the bulk of the philosophers' pernicious propositions which are “in conflict with the fundamentals of religion (i.e. Islam).”

In fact, apart from this friendly concession, al-Ghazālī bequeathed to posterity a very lucid and systematic treatise on Aristotelian logic entitled the Miʿyār al-ʿilm, “Criterion of knowledge.” Even more to the point, he developed in another treatise, al-Qusṭās al-mustaqīm, the “Straight balance,” a variety of logic which may be termed qurʾānic, which, according to him, was proposed by God, taught by Gabriel (q.v.) and used by both Abraham (q.v.) and Muḥammad (Ghazālī, Qusṭās, 12).

This qurʾānic logic rests on three principles, according to al-Ghazālī: (1) the principle of parallelism; (2) that of concomitance; and (3) that of disjunction. He illustrates the first principle by referring to Abraham's challenge in the Qurʾān to Nimrod (q.v.), who arrogated to himself the title of divinity in these words (q 2:258): “God brings the sun (q.v.) from the east, so bring it up from the west!” Being unable to meet this challenge, Nimrod's arrogation of divinity is logically confuted.

The second principle of concomitance is illustrated by reference to the qurʾānic dictum, “Were there in them both [i.e. the heaven and earth] other gods than God, they would surely have been ruined” (q 21:22). Since they have not been ruined, we are justified in concluding that there is no god but God. The logical form of this argument, according to al-Ghazālī, is that of the conditional syllogism: If A then B; but not-B, therefore not-A. An instance of the third principle of disjunction is the question asked in the Qurʾān: “Say, who provides for you (see sustenance) from the heaven and the earth?” followed by the answer: “Say, God and you or we are either rightly guided or in manifest error” (q 34:24). From this, we are justified in inferring that God is the provider and we, as well as the infidels who question this proposition, are in manifest error.

It is not without interest to note that, in developing this system of qurʾānic logic, al-Ghazālī actually refers to his two other treatises of conventional logic, Miʿyār al--> ʿilm, the “Criterion of knowledge” and the shorter Miḥakk al-naẓar, the “Touchstone of speculation,” in which, he says, he had refuted the ten deceptions of Satan (see devil), which he does not list (Qusṭās, 42 f.). The chief advantage of the principles he has given in al-Qusṭās consist, according to him, in the fact that they are bound to confirm our faith in Muḥammad as the infallible teacher (see impeccability), as against the Shīʿī imām (q.v.), who is in temporary occultation, as al-Ghazālī has also asserted in his autobiography, al-Munqidh, the “Deliverance from error.” Moreover, the logic of the Qusṭās, he goes on to argue, will be found to be suitable “for measuring (or testing) the arithmetical, poetical, physical, juridical and theological sciences, as well as any real science, which is not purely conventional” (ibid., 53).

Notwithstanding this wild claim, it is clear, we believe, that a careful analysis of this alleged qurʾānic logic would reveal that it differs little formally from the traditional, Aristotelian scheme al-Ghazālī himself had expounded in the “Criterion of knowledge” and elsewhere. The only difference between the two systems consists simply in the type of qurʾānic instances he cites to illustrate his specific logical points. The syllogistic rules in both cases are really the same.

God, his existence and his attributes

The most overwhelming impression the Qurʾān leaves on its reader is God's utter uniqueness, his omniscience and his sovereignty or lordship. In the prefatory or opening sūra (Sūrat al-Fātiḥa; see fātiḥa), God is described as the “Lord of the worlds… master of the day of judgment” (q 1:2, 4) and in the near-final Sūrat al-Ikhlāṣ (q 112), God is said to be “the only one, the everlasting, who did not beget and is not begotten. None is his equal” (q 112:1-4). This last point is stated more dramatically in these words: “Nothing is like unto him” (q 42:11).

As regards God's existence, the Qurʾān provides its readers with ample evidence which later theologians and philosophers were able to exploit to the full in formulating systematic proofs of his existence. In the process, they were divided into three groups: (1) Those who favored the argument from temporal creation (ḥudūth) or the argument a novitate mundi; (2) those who favored the argument from contingency (jawāz) or possibility (imkān); and (3) those who favored the teleological proof, or the argument from providence, as Ibn Rushd was later to call it.

The Ashʿarīs and the Muʿtazilīs, who believed the world to consist of compounds of atoms and accidents, which do not endure for two instants of time, argued that the world was created by an act of divine fiat (amr), which the Qurʾān has expressed in these words: “Be and it [the world] comes to be” (q 2:117, etc.). Al-Kindī, who was the first philosopher to formulate the first argument, held that both the world and its temporal duration are finite, and accordingly must have a beginning (muḥdath). As such, the world, being muḥdath, must have an originator, muḥdith, who created it in time.

The argument from contingency was developed by Ibn Sīnā, who argues in his al-Shifāʾ, the “Book of healing” (and that of al-Najāt, “Salvation”), that the series of existing entities, being contingent or possible, terminates in a being who is non-contingent or necessary, whom he calls for that reason the necessary being; otherwise that series would go on ad infinitum, which is absurd (Najāt, 271 f.). The Ashʿarī al-Juwaynī opted for this argument in his lost Niẓāmiyya treatise, as we are told by Ibn Rushd.

Ibn Rushd favored the teleological argument, which is supported by the most overwhelming evidence and is truly characteristically qurʾānic. This argument, which is the most accordant with the precious book, as Ibn Rushd has put it, rests on the premise that everything in the world is necessarily ordered in accordance with the dictates of divine wisdom, so as to serve the existence of humankind and their well-being on earth. Thus, he invokes verses q 78:6-14, which ask: “Have we not made the earth as a wide expanse, and the mountains as pegs and [have we not] created you in pairs?… Have we not built above you seven mighty heavens; and created a shining lamp (q.v.); brought down from the rain-clouds abundant water?” Similarly, he invokes q 25:61, which reads: “Blessed is he who placed in the heavens constellations (see planets and stars) and placed therein a lamp and an illuminating moon (q.v.).” He finally cites verses q 80:24-32, which read: “Let humankind consider its nourishment. We have poured the water abundantly; then we split the earth wide open; then caused the grain to grow therein, together with vines and green vegetation… for your enjoyment and that of your cattle” (cf. Ibn Rushd, Kashf, 152, 198 f.; see grasses; agriculture and vegetation).

All these and similar verses prove, according to Ibn Rushd, the existence of a wise creator, who has determined willfully that the world and everything in it was intended to be subservient to the existence and well-being of humankind.

A closely related argument that is embodied in the Qurʾān, according to Ibn Rushd, is that of invention (ikhtirāʿ). This argument is supported by a series of verses, such as q 22:73 which reads: “Surely, those upon whom you call, beside God, will never create a fly, even if they band together” (see polytheism and atheism; idols and images), or q 7:185, which reads: “Have they not considered the kingdom of the heavens and the earth and all the things God has created?” Having been invented or created, Ibn Rushd concludes, the world must have an inventor or creator, who brought it into being, in the first instance.

For these and other reasons, Ibn Rushd was critical of the first two traditional arguments. To begin with, the argument from the temporal creation of the world as formulated by the Ashʿarī in particular and the mutakallimūn in general, rests on the two premises of temporality (ḥudūth) and the atomic composition of existing entities. Now, neither of these premises is demonstrable in a conclusive way and each is too abstruse to be readily understood by the learned, let alone the masses at large. As a good Aristotelian, Ibn Rushd was opposed to the thesis of atomic composition of substance as well as the creation of the world in time, expressed in the Arabic sources as temporality (ḥudūth), the antithesis of eternity.

Secondly, the argument from contingency or possibility runs counter to the incontrovertible maxim that everything in the world is causally determined by its wise creator, or maker, who did not abandon it to the vagaries of chance (ittifāq; Ibn Rushd, Kashf, 200 f.). Here and elsewhere, Ibn Rushd inveighs on two fundamental grounds against al-Ghazālī and the Ashʿarīs in general for repudiating the concept of causality: That whoever repudiates the necessary causal correlation between existing entities (a) repudiates divine wisdom, and (b) repudiates the very concept of reason, which is nothing but the faculty of apprehending causes (Ibn Rushd, Tahāfut, 522).

As for the attributes of God, the Muslim philosophers and theologians alike were inspired by the qurʾānic verse which states: “Were there other deities than God, they [i.e. the heavens and the earth] would have indeed been ruined” (q 21:22); as well as q 23:91, which reads, “God did not take to himself a child and there was never another god with him; or else each god would have carried off what he created, and some of them would have risen against the others.”

The anti-Trinitarian implications of the first part of the second verse are not difficult to see. Accordingly, as mentioned above, many of the debates with, or polemical writing against, the Christians, turned on the question of the Trinity. The Neoplatonists among the philosophers, such as al-Fārābī and Ibn Sīnā, inspired by the teaching of Plotinus (d. 270 c.e.), built their cosmology and metaphysics around the pivotal concept of “the one” or “the first” [being]. Thus, al-Fārābī, the founder of Muslim Neoplatonism, opens his opus magnum, al-Madīna al-fāḍila, the “Virtuous city,” with a discourse on the first (being), who is the first cause of all existing entities, is free from all imperfections and is entirely distant from everything else. In addition, he has no equal or partner (sharīk), has no opposite and is therefore utterly unique. His uniqueness, al-Fārābī goes on to argue, follows from the fact that “his existence, whereby he is distinct from all other existing entities, is nothing other than that whereby he exists in himself” (Fārābī, Madīna, 30). In short, God's uniqueness is synonymous with his existence, which is identical with his essence.

Another sense of unity, as applied to the first being, is then given as indivisibility, from which al-Fārābī infers that he is indefinable since the parts of the definiendum are reducible to the causes of its existence or its components, which in the case of the first being is impossible.

Other Neoplatonists, including Ibn Sīnā, followed al-Fārābī's example in asserting the unity, indivisibility and indefinability of the first being, whom Ibn Sīnā calls the necessary being. Ibn Sīnā, however, denied that the necessary being has an essence, exposing himself to the vehement strictures of Ibn Rushd, Aquinas and others, who regarded the identity of existence and essence in God as incontrovertible. That identity was in a sense the hallmark of God's uniqueness.

The other attributes, known collectively as the seven attributes of perfection, consisted of knowledge, life, power, will, speech, hearing and sight. Those attributes were regarded by the philosophers and the Muʿtazilīs, despite allegations by their opponents to the contrary, as identical with the divine essence (dhāt), whereas the Ashʿarīs regarded them as distinct from that essence. The most heated controversy raged around the two active attributes of speech and will. With respect to the first attribute, the controversy centered on the question of how God's eternal speech can be embodied in a temporal document, i.e. the Qurʾān. With respect to the second attribute, the question was asked: How can God will the creation of the universe in time, without a change in his essence?

In response to the first question, the Muʿtazilīs simply asserted that the Qurʾān, as God's speech, was created in time — rejecting the rival Ḥanbalī thesis of its eternity — on the ground that this would entail a multiplicity of eternal entities. For them, the only eternal entity is God, who is entirely one and whose attributes are identical with his essence. For that reason, the Muʿtazilīs labeled themselves as the “people of divine unity and justice.” The Ḥanbalīs and the Ashʿarīs, relying on the qurʾānic references to the Qurʾān as the “preserved tablet” (q.v.; q 85:22) and the “mother of the book” (q 3:7; 13:39; 43:4) insisted that, as Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal put it: “The Qurʾān is God's eternal (qadīm) and uncreated speech,” a position to which he stuck adamantly, despite the persecution and vilification to which he was exposed, in the wake of the afore-mentioned inquisition (miḥna) imposed by the caliph al-Maʾmūn.

Faced with the problems which the creation of the world in time raised, the Ḥanbalīs took an entirely agnostic line, whereas the Ashʿarīs took the more sophisticated line of proposing that God created the world in time by an act of eternal will. That thesis was rejected by the philosophers on the ground that, as Ibn Rushd was to argue in his rebuttal of al-Ghazālī, God's eternal will entails logically an eternal creation, which the Ashʿarīs rejected. For the world to come into being in time, subsequent to God's willing it from all time, entails the absurdity that an infinite lapse of time intervened between his willing and his action due to some outward impediment or some deficiency on his part. It follows, as Ibn Rushd argues, that the world, as the product of God's willing and doing, must be supposed to have existed from all time, or as the Latin scholastics were later to put it, to be the product of God's creatio ab aeterno, or eternal creation. For, of the two modes of creation or origination of the world, the “continuous” and the “discontinuous” (dāʾim and munqaṭiʿ), as Ibn Rushd calls them, the former — continuous — creation (iḥdāth dāʾim) is more appropriately predicated of God, whose creative designs can never be thwarted by any impediment or deficiency (Ibn Rushd, Tahāfut, 162).

Notwithstanding, Ibn Rushd was never fully reconciled to the concept of eternal will, as predicated of God. He accuses al-Ghazālī of conceiving of divine will as analogous to human will and asserts that the modality of God's will, like the modality of his knowledge, is unknowable (ibid., 149).

The other attributes of life, power and knowledge, asserted so dramatically in the Qurʾān, did not, on the whole, raise serious problems. Hearing and sight were likewise asserted on the authority of the Qurʾān which speaks of God as all-seeing (baṣīr) and all-hearing (samīʿ). For the philosophers, such as al-Kindī and Ibn Rushd, those two attributes are predicable of God on the ground that his knowledge encompasses all objects of cognition, whether intelligible or perceptible.

The creation of the world

The Qurʾān speaks of God's creative power in the most dramatic terms. He created the world in six days and then sat upon the throne (q 7:54; 10:3; 32:4; 57:4); he creates by a sheer act of divine fiat, for if he wills anything, he bids it to be and it comes to be (q 2:117; 16:40; 36:82; 40:40). He has created “everything in truth” (q 45:22; 46:3), for “we have not created the heavens and the earth and what lies between them as sport,” as q 44:38 puts it. What the purpose of creation is, is left undefined but in q 51:56, it is stated, “I have not created the jinn (q.v.) and humankind except to worship me.” The mutakallimūn, almost without exception, interpreted the Qurʾān to mean that God created the world ex nihilo and in time. A variety of terms are used in the Qurʾān to highlight God's creative might, such as creator (khāliq), cleaver (fāṭir), originator (badīʿ, mubdiʿ), fashioner (bāriʾ) and so on.

Although the philosophers did not question the fact of creation or bringing the world into being, they tended to steer clear of the term khāliq (creator) and khalq (creation) and to substitute for the first such terms as bāriʾ (al-Rāzī), ṣāniʿ (Ibn Rushd), muḥdith (al-Kindī) and for the second ibdāʿ (Ibn Sīnā), iḥdāth or ījād (Ibn Rushd), and so on. Al-Kindī went so far as to coin the two terms muʾayyis — “maker,” from aysa (to be), the antonym of laysa — and the parallel term muhawwi — from the Arabic pronoun huwa, “he,” or its Syriac equivalent — to express God's role as the creator of the world out of nothing.

The Neoplatonists, as we have seen, substituted for the concept of creation that of emanation (ṣudūr, fayḍ), derived ultimately from Plotinus, founder of Greek Neoplatonism, and his successor, Proclus. The universe, according to the emanationist view, is not the product of God's creative power or will, in the strict sense, but an eternal and necessary emanation or procession from God's very substance. According to this emanationist view, God (the one or first, i.e. being) generates, by an eternal act of overflowing, the first intellect (nous), followed by a series of intellects, culminating in the tenth or active intellect, followed by the soul (psyche) and finally matter. The lower world consists of an infinite variety of compounds of form and matter, whose simplest ingredients are the four elements of Aristotelian physics, fire, air (see air and wind), water and earth.

The philosophers questioned whether the Qurʾān explicitly supports the mutakallimūn's concept of creation (khalq), ex nihilo and in time. Ibn Rushd, who rejected the Avicennian thesis of emanation while retaining the concept of eternal creation (iḥdāth dāʾim), as we have seen, argues that a number of verses in the Qurʾān, such as q 11:7, imply, on the surface, the eternity of the universe. That verse reads: “It is he who created the heavens and the earth in six days, and his throne was upon the water,” which implies the eternity of water, the throne and the time that measures their duration. Similarly, verse q 41:11, which states that “he arose to heaven while it was smoke,” implies that the heaven was created out of a pre-existing matter, which is smoke, rather than out of nothing as the mutakallimūn claim (Ibn Rushd, Faṣl, 42 f.).

What rendered the concept of eternity entirely nefarious from the Ashʿarī point of view in particular and that of the mutakallimūn in general was the contention that it appeared to entail a limitation of God's power to act freely, to create or not create the world at any time of his own choosing. The philosophers, including Ibn Rushd, as we have seen, rejected this contention on the ground that eternal creation was more in keeping with God's perfection. It ensured that creating the world involved no change in his essence and that his power, being infinite, could not be barred by some impediment or deficiency from bringing the world into being from all time.

Contrary to the philosophers, God's creation of the world, like his other actions or decisions, was represented by the mutakallimūn as miraculous, or independent of any conditions other than the divine will, spoken of in the Qurʾān as the divine command (amr). For this reason, they were led to reject the Aristotelian concept of necessary causation, insofar as it entailed that other causes or agents, whether voluntary or involuntary, operated in the world beside God. For al-Ghazālī (Tahāfut, 276), who held that God is the sole agent, that claim runs counter to the consensus of the Muslim community that God is able to do whatever he pleases in a miraculous way.

On the question of the end of the world, the philosophers tended to assert the post-eternity (abadiyya) of the world, as a counterpart to its pre-eternity (azaliyya, qidam). They were charged on this account by al-Ghazālī with heresy (q.v.) or innovation (q.v.; tabdīʿ), rather than the more serious charge of irreligion (takfīr; see belief and unbelief). For the philosophers, whether Neoplatonists, like Ibn Sīnā, or Aristotelians, like Ibn Rushd, the post-eternity of the world was a consequence either of the eternity of prime matter and time (as Aristotle held) or the eternal procession of the universe from the one (as Plotinus held). The two major exceptions were al-Kindī, who adhered, as we have seen, to the qurʾānic view of creation in time and ex nihilo (ḥudūth) and al-Rāzī, who maintained a central metaphysical conception of five coeternal principles (see above: matter, space, time, the soul and the creator; cf. Fakhry, History, 121). Al-Rāzī adhered to a picturesque view of the creation of the world by the creator (al- bāriʾ) out of the three co-eternal principles of space, time and matter to serve as the stage upon which the soul's infatuation with a sister co-eternal principle, matter, could be requited. Once the union of these two sister-principles is achieved, the soul is led eventually to rediscover its original essence as a denizen of the intelligible world, through the therapeutic function of philosophy; the material world will then, according to al-Rāzī, cease to exist and the soul will in Platonic fashion regain its original abode in the higher world (Fakhry, History, 101).

The mutakallimūn without exception rejected the thesis of post-eternity as inimical to God's unlimited creative power. Their position was in line with those qurʾānic verses, such as q 55:26-7, which explicitly indicate that nothing remains forever: once the world is destroyed or ceases to exist, all perishes except the “face of your lord” (see face of god).

Ethics and eschatology

The Muʿtazilīs were the first genuine moral theologians of Islam. Their ethical speculation bore, from the start, on such fundamental issues as the justice of God, the nature of right and wrong, the capacity (istiṭāʿa) or power of the agent to act freely and the genuine meaning of responsibility (q.v.) or accountability, as a logical corollary of free will.

The precursors of the Muʿtazilīs in the first/seventh century, known as the Qadarīs, were the first to challenge the traditionalist view that all human actions are predetermined by God, for which the human agent cannot be held responsible. The early Umayyad caliphs, as we have seen, welcomed the determinists' view as a means of justifying their repressive policies, contending that, however cruel or heinous, their crimes or transgressions were part of the divine decree (qadāʾ), which cannot be questioned.

For the Muʿtazilīs, who rationalized what was in part a natural response to the political excesses of the Umayyads, God, who is just and wise, cannot perpetrate or sanction actions which are morally wrong. To substantiate this claim, they undertook to demonstrate that God was truly just, that human actions are known to be right or wrong in themselves, and that the human agent is both free and responsible for his deeds and misdeeds.

Despite their rationalist stand on these issues, the Muʿtazilīs sought a basis for these propositions in the Qurʾān. Apart from this, a careful perusal of the qurʾānic verses which bear on all three questions would reveal that the textual evidence is equally weighted in favor of both indeterminism and determinism and allows for divergent interpretations, as in fact the history of Islamic theology (kalām) shows.

Although justice is not predicated in positive terms of God, there are numerous verses in the Qurʾān, which assert that: “God [or your lord] is not unjust to the [human] servants” (cf. q 3:182; 41:46). In q 28:50, 46:10, etc., God is said “not to guide the unjust people [aright],” and in q 16:90, God is said to “enjoin justice, charity and giving to kinsmen (see kinship),” reinforced by the statement that “he forbids indecency (see modesty ; adultery and fornication), wrong-doing and oppression (q.v.).”

Overwhelmed by the parallel spectacle of God's absolute power and majesty, as depicted in the Qurʾān, the determinists (jabriyya) and traditionalists could not reconcile themselves to the notion of God submitting, like human agents, to a higher canon of right and wrong. In fact, they adhered to the maxim that right is precisely what God commands, evil what he has prohibited, and accordingly his actions cannot be described as either just or unjust. As al-Ghazālī has put it, to predicate justice or injustice of God is as frivolous as predicating playing or frolicking of the wall or the wind.

The Muʿtazilīs insisted from the start, however, that responsibility entailed the ability of the agent to discriminate between good and evil, right and wrong. In addition to such discrimination, the agent should be able to choose freely; otherwise no merit would attach to his actions, which would be no different from mechanical or involuntary reactions, such as convulsions, trembling or the like.

The two qurʾānic terms on which the Muʿtazilīs seized to describe the intrinsic property of goodness or badness predicated of human actions were al- maʿrūf, “approved,” and al-munkar, “disapproved.” Demanding or commanding the “approved” and prohibiting the “disapproved” were then posited as one of their five fundamental principles (see virtues and vices, commanding and forbidding).

If we turn to the qurʾānic text, we will find that right actions are, in general, spoken of as acts of obedience (ṭāʿāt), vicious actions as acts of disobedience (q.v.; maʿāṣin). The term applied frequently to the first category of action is birr, “righteousness,” khayr, “goodness,” qiṣṭ, “equity,” or maʿrūf, “approved,” whereas the term applied to the second category is ithm, “wickedness,” wizr, “burden, sin,” or munkar, “disapproved” (see good deeds; evil deeds).

In a number of verses, the Qurʾān speaks in laudatory terms of people who discriminate between those two categories. Thus, q 3:104 reads: “Let there be among you a nation calling to goodwill (al- khayr), bidding the right (al- maʿrūf) and forbidding the wrong (al-munkar). These are the prosperous.” In q 3:114, the People of the Book (q.v.) are commended as those “who believe in God and the last day, bid the right and forbid the wrong, hastening to do the good deeds.” In the next verse, it is stated “that whatever good they do, they will not be denied it. God knows well the godfearing” (see fear). The deontological implications of this and similar verses are clear; the distinction between good and evil, right and wrong is explicit and God's pleasure or displeasure consequently is explicit, too.

As for human responsibility for freely chosen actions or, as the Qurʾān puts it, what an individual has “earned” or “acquired” (kasaba and iktasaba), the Qurʾān is categorical that the righteous and the wicked are bound to meet with their appropriate punishment or reward in the hereafter (see eschatology). Thus, q 42:30 reads: “Whatever calamity might hit you is due to what your hands have earned (kasabat).” q 2:281 reads: “Fear a day when you will be returned to God; then each soul will be rewarded [fully] for what it has earned, and none shall be wronged.” Similarly, q 2:286 reads: “God does not charge any soul beyond its capacity. It will get what it has earned and will be called to account for what it has acquired.”

Set against these and similar verses, there are numerous verses in the Qurʾān which support the contrary or determinist thesis, according to which God's decrees are irreversible and unquestionable. Thus, q 54:49 reads: “We have created everything in measure (bi-qadarin)” and q 13:8, which reads: “Everything with him is according to a certain measure.” Finally, q 64:11 reads, “No disaster befalls you on earth or in yourselves but is in a book before we created it.”

The concepts of measure and book in these and other verses clearly indicate that human actions, as well as their consequences, are part of the divine decree and will not escape God's ineluctable reckoning on the day of judgment. The book in question appears to be identified with the “preserved tablet” (q 85:22), on which the Qurʾān was originally inscribed and is the embodiment of the divine decree, which admits of no alteration (see heavenly book; revision and alteration). This is forcefully brought out in q 85, called appropriately Sūrat al-Burūj, “The Constellations,” which asks rhetorically in verse 9: “To whom belongs the dominion of the heavens and the earth?” adding “God is witness of everything” (see witnessing and testifying). Then, after assuring the righteous of their well-earned reward in heaven, and the unbelievers of their eventual consignment to hell, the supreme prerogative of God, “the lord of the glorious throne,” is reasserted and the wicked are reminded that “the vengeance (q.v.) of your lord is surely terrible.” (q 85:12).

As far as the theological controversy is concerned, the early determinists, such as Jahm b. Ṣafwān (d. 128/745) and al- Ḥusayn b. Muḥammad al-Najjār (d. middle of the third/ninth century), as well as the whole class of Ashʿarīs, adhered to a theodicy in which God's creative power was absolute and his decrees irreversible. Thus, al-Ashʿarī writes in Kitāb al-Ibāna, the “Book of clarification”:

We believe that God Almighty has created everything by bidding it to be, as he says [in q 16:40]: “Indeed, when we want a thing to be, we simply say to it ‘Be’ and it comes to be; that there is nothing good or evil on earth except what God has pre-ordained;… that there is no creator but God and that the deeds of the creatures are created and pre-ordained by God, as he says [in q 37:96]: “God created you and what you make.”

As regards the universal sway of providence, al-Ashʿarī continues:

We believe that good and evil are the product of God's decree and pre-ordination (qaḍāʾ wa- qadar)… and we know that what has missed us could not have hit us, or what has hit us could not have missed us and that the creatures are unable to profit or injure themselves without God's leave (Ashʿarī, Ibāna, 23 f.; McCarthy, Theology, 238 f.).

The leading Ashʿarī doctors of the next two centuries, such as al-Bāqillānī (d. 403/1013), al-Baghdādī (d. 429/1037), al-Juwaynī (d. 478/1085) and al-Ghazālī (d. 505/1111), developed and systemized the teaching of the master. To rationalize this deterministic view, they developed an “occasionalist” theory according to which the world consists of indivisible particles (atoms) and accidents, which God continuously creates and recreates as long as he wishes their compounds to endure. When God wishes them to cease to exist, he just stops the process of continuous creation or, as some Ashʿarīs had put it, he creates the accident of annihilation (fanāʾ) but in no substratum and then the world would cease to exist at once. Justice and injustice, as al-Ashʿarī had taught, consisted in what God commands or prohibits, and humans have no share in the production of their actions, which the Muʿtazilīs had attributed to them, considering people to be free agents. To moderate the extreme determinism of Jahm b. Ṣafwān and his followers, however, they made a purely verbal concession, based on those qurʾānic verses, which, as already mentioned, speak of acquisition or earning (kasaba, iktasaba) the merits or demerits of the actions by the agent. They continued to hold, nonetheless, that God creates both the choice and the action.

In the field of eschatology, the Qurʾān had depicted the fate of humans in the hereafter in such dramatic terms, especially in the Meccan sūras, that pious souls, especially among ascetics and mystics (see asceticism; saint), were later obsessed with the spectacle of hell and its horrors drawn in these sūras; while others, especially poets, dwelt on the delectable pleasures of the garden (q.v.), reserved for the righteous in the life to come. Thus, a number of sūras bear such expressive titles as “The Earthquake” (Sūrat al-Zalzala, q 99), “The Calamity” (Sūrat al-Qāriʿa, q 101), “Worldly Increase” (Sūrat al-Takāthur, q 102), “The Chargers” (Sūrat al-ʿĀdiyāt, q 100), “The Clear Proof” (Sūrat al-Bayyina, q 98) and “The Overwhelming Day” (Sūrat al-Ghāshiya, q 88) to highlight the picture of hell and its horrors (see hell and hellfire). People on the last day are said to be “like scattered butterflies and the mountains like tufted wool” (q 101:4-5) and “faces on that day shall be downcast, laboring and toiling; roasting in a scorching fire; given to drink from a boiling spring” (q 88:2-5; see springs and fountains). By contrast, the righteous are promised the most bounteous rewards in glowing terms, as in q 88:8-16: “Faces on that day shall be blissful; well-pleased with their endeavor; in a lofty garden; wherein no word of vanity is heard (see gossip); wherein is a flowing spring; wherein are upraised couches, and cups passed round (see cups and vessels), and cushions in rows, and carpets spread out.”

For the Muslim philosophers, life after death raised the most acute questions (see death and the dead; burial; salvation). Some, like al-Kindī, concurred with the mutakallimūn in adhering to the thesis of bodily resurrection and the attendant pleasures or tortures of paradise or hell, as embodied in the Qurʾān. In support of this thesis, al-Kindī quotes q 36:78 f., which refer to God's supreme power to “bring the bones back to life, once they are withered and to bring opposites from opposites,” as he does in causing fire to come from green trees (q 36:80).

Other philosophers, such as al-Fārābī and Ibn Sīnā, while conceding the immortality of the soul, were embarrassed by the qurʾānic thesis of bodily resurrection. Accordingly, they tried to interpret this resurrection in a variety of ways, which the mutakallimūn found unacceptable. For al-Fārābī, the soul's fate after leaving the body will depend on the degree of its apprehension of true happiness and its vocation as an inhabitant of the intelligible world. Upon separation from their bodies, souls will partake of a growing measure of happiness, as they join successive throngs of kindred souls in the intelligible world. Those souls, however, whose happiness consisted in clinging to bodily pleasures in this world, will continue to pass from one body to the other endlessly. Wayward souls will continue to be embodied in lower material forms until they have degenerated to the bestial level, whereupon they will simply perish. What adds to the misery of such wayward souls, as they pass through this cycle of transmigration, is the perpetual agony which they will suffer upon separation from the body and its pleasures, for which they will continue to yearn, until they perish completely (Fārābī, Ahl al-madīna, 118).

Al-Fārābī's spiritual disciple and successor, Ibn Sīnā, was committed to the view, adhered to by almost all the Muslim philosophers, especially the Neoplatonists among them, that the soul's perfection consists in achieving “conjunction” (ittiṣāl) with the active intellect. This is the precondition of true happiness and the warrant of the soul's becoming, once it fulfilled its intellectual vocation, a replica of the intelligible world to which it originally belonged, prior to its descent into the body. Those souls which have fallen short of this condition, by virtue of their attachment to the body and its cares, will suffer misery consequent upon the unwanted separation from the body. But once they are freed from this misery by attaining the level of apprehension proper to them, they will be able to partake of that intellectual pleasure which is “analogous to that blissful condition proper to the pure, living entities (i.e. spiritual substance) and is greater and nobler than any other pleasure” (Ibn Sīnā, Najāt, 330).

Ibn Sīnā, however, recognizes in addition to this intellectual condition of which the soul will partake upon separation from the body a scriptural (sharʿī) one, that resurrection “which is received from scripture (sharʿ) and can only be demonstrated by recourse to the holy law (sharīʿa) and assent to prophetic reports” (ibid., 326). “Thus, the true law,” Ibn Sīnā writes, “which Muḥammad our Prophet has brought us, has set forth the nature of the happiness and misery in store for the body” (ibid., 326; see joy and misery). Ibn Sīnā does not call into question this bodily happiness but continues to hold that there is a higher intellectual happiness which the “metaphysical philosophers” are intent on seeking in “proximity to God,” which the mystics (Ṣūfīs) have placed at the center of their teaching and which is confirmed, according to Ibn Sīnā, by the “true holy law” of Islam.

Ibn Rushd, despite his divergence from Ibn Sīnā and the Neoplatonists generally, tended to agree with this conciliatory position. Resurrection or survival after death (maʿād), as he prefers to call it, is a matter on which “all the religious laws or creeds are in agreement and which the demonstrations of the philosophers have affirmed.” After distinguishing three Islamic views of happiness and misery, which although generically different only in point of duration, degree of corporality or spirituality, he goes on to argue that the crass corporal resurrection entertained by the vulgar is untenable. According to that view, the soul, upon resurrection, will be reunited to the same body it dwelt in during its terrestrial existence. How is it possible, he then asks, for the same body which was reduced to dust upon death, then changed into a plant on which another man has fed, and then turned into semen which gave rise to another person, to enter into the makeup of a resurrected person? It is more reasonable, Ibn Rushd holds, to assert that the risen soul will be united on the last day to a body, which is analogous, but not identical, with its original body (Ibn Rushd, Tahāfut, 586). In fact, religious creeds are in agreement regarding the reality of survival after death, he goes on to explain, but are nevertheless in disagreement on its modality (ṣifa). Some creeds, by which he probably meant the Christian, regard it as spiritual, whereas others, by which he meant Islam, regard it as doubly corporeal and spiritual. If, however, we probe the difference between the various creeds on this question, we will find, he argues, that they are reducible to the mode of “representation” (tamthīl) or idiom used by each one of them in describing the misery or happiness reserved to the wicked or righteous in the life to come. To the extent that corporeal representations are more effective in commanding the assent of the masses at large, they are preferable to purely spiritual representations that are appreciated only by the intellectually gifted, including the philosophers in general. Thus it appears, he writes, “that the (corporeal) representation found in this our own region (i.e. Islam) is more effective in leading to understanding, where the majority of humankind are concerned, and in moving their soul in that direction… whereas spiritual representation is less effective in moving the souls of the masses” (Ibn Rushd, Kashf, 244). Illuminationist (Ishrāqī) philosophers, such as al-Shīrāzī (d. 1050/1641), who recognized the harmony of philosophy and mysticism (Ṣūfism) for the first time in Islamic history, tended to follow the lead of Ibn Sīnā on this and similar questions.

Conclusion

This article has shown that the Qurʾān speaks in the first place of wisdom (ḥikma), both in the Greek sense of sophia and the Semitic or biblical sense of divine revelation to Muḥammad, Jesus and the Hebrew prophets. In the second place, it urges the believers to contemplate the wonders of creation, to reflect, to consider and ponder the mysterious ways of God. Such contemplation, reflection, consideration and pondering are the hallmarks of the philosophical method as it was applied to the theological and ethical questions which preoccupied the mutakallimūn and the philosophers from the earliest times.

The major problems around which controversy in theological and philosophical circles turned centered on such questions as the existence of God, the creation of the world, the destiny of humans in the hereafter and the rationality and justice of God's ways as creator and providential ruler of the world. As the controversy between the philosophers and the theologians intensified, the latter split into two rival groups, the pro-philosophical, led by the Muʿtazilīs, and the anti-philosophical, led by the Ḥanbalīs and the Ashʿarīs. Naturally enough, both groups sought support in the Qurʾān for their conflicting interpretations of those ambiguous passages which bear directly or indirectly on the problems in question. Some theologians and jurists confined the prerogative of interpreting the so-called “ambiguous” passages of the Qurʾān to God; others, including some philosophers, extended this prerogative to the learned or specially gifted, as Ibn Rushd has done.

The status of the Qurʾān itself and whether it was created in time (makhlūq) or was eternal (qadīm) raised, from the third/ninth century on, the most acute questions and led to endless recriminations between some theologians, such as the Muʿtazilīs, and those jurists and tradition-mongers (muḥaddithūn), such as Ibn Ḥanbal and his followers, who insisted that the Qurʾān was “the eternal and uncreated word of God,” relying in the last analysis on those passages in the Qurʾān itself which speak of the “mother of the book” and the “well-preserved tablet,” in reference to the original codex on which the Qurʾān was inscribed since all time. The Ashʿarīs, who sought an intermediate position between the Muʿtazilīs and the Ḥanbalīs, tried to resolve the conflict by distinguishing between the “significations” (dalālāt) of the words in which the Qurʾān is expressed and the actual words themselves, written (see textual criticism of the qurʾān; collection of the qurʾān; muṣḥaf; codices of the qurʾān) or recited (see recitation of the qurʾān), which could not as such be eternal or uncreated, since they belonged to the category of perishable accidents. Some philosophers, including Ibn Rushd, subscribed to this view. In popular Muslim consciousness, however, it is fair to say that the Ḥanbalī view, which stresses the sanctity and inimitability (iʿjāz) of the qurʾānic text, may be said to have triumphed, and the Qurʾān continues today to be regarded by the vast majority of Muslims as the miraculous word of God (see miracles; marvels). Contemporary scholars, such as the late Pakistani Fazlur Rahman (d. 1988) and the Egyptian Naṣr Ḥāmid Abū Zayd, who attempted to draw a line of demarcation between the human and divine aspects of the qurʾānic text, or to apply the canons of literary or “higher criticism” to that text (see contemporary critical practices and the qurʾān), have been either reprimanded or declared infidel (kāfir; see exegesis of the qurʾān: early modern and contemporary; post-enlightenment academic study of the qurʾān). This has served as a warning to other contemporary liberal scholars or philosophers to avoid this highly sensitive subject altogether.

Majid Fakhry

Bibliography

Primary

Aristotle, Metaphysics, ed. and trans. H.G. Apostle, Bloomington 1966, 19733

al-Ashʿarī, Abū l-Ḥasan ʿAlī b. Ismāʿīl, al-Ibāna ʿan uṣūl al-diyāna, ed. F. Ḥusayn Maḥmūd, Cairo 1997

Eng. trans. R.J. McCarthy, The theology of al-Ashʿarī, Beirut 1953

al-Fārābī, Abū Naṣr Muḥammad b. Muḥammad, Ārāʾ ahl al-madīna al-fāḍila, ed. A. Nader, Beirut 1959

al-Ghazālī, Abū Hāmid Muḥammad b. Muḥammad, al-Qusṭās al-mustaqīm, ed. M.A. al-Zuʿbī, Beirut 1973

id., Tahāfut al-falāsifa, ed. M. Bouyges, Beirut 1927

al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī, Abū Saʿīd b. Abī l-Ḥasan, Risāla fī l-qadar, in M. Fakhry, al-Fikr al-akhlāqī l-ʿarabī, 2 vols., Beirut 1978, 1986, i, 17-28

Ibn Rushd, Abū l-Walīd Muḥammad b. Aḥmad, Bidāyat al-mujtahid wa-nihāyat al-muqtaṣid [English].

The distinguished jurist's primer, trans. A.Kh. Nyazee, 2 vols., Doha 1994-6, Reading 2000

id., Faṣl al-maqāl, ed. A. Nader, Beirut 1961

id., al-Kashf ʿan manāhij al-adilla, ed. M. Qāsim, Cairo 1961

id., Tahāfut al-tahāfut, ed. M. Bouyges, Beirut 1930

Ibn Sīnā, Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥusayn b. ʿAbdallāh, Kitāb al-Najāt, ed. M. Fakhry, Beirut 1985

al-Jāḥiẓ, al-Radd ʿalā l-naṣārā, in A.S.M. Hārūn (ed.), Rasāʾil al-Jāḥiẓ, 4 vols., Cairo 1979, iii, 301-51

Ṭabarī, Tafsīr, Cairo 1954-68

Secondary

I. Bello, The medieval Islamic controversy between philosophy and orthodoxy. Ijmāʾ and taʾwīl in the conflict between al-Ghazālī and ibn Rushd, Leiden 1989

D. Black, Logic and Aristotle's rhetoric and poetics in medieval Arabic philosophy, Leiden 1990

H. Corbin, History of Islamic philosophy, trans. L. Sherrard, London 1993

van Ess, tg

M. Fakhry (ed.), al-Fikr al-akhlāqī l-ʿarabī, 2 vols., Beirut 1986

id., A history of Islamic philosophy, New York 1983

id. (trans.), The Qurʾān. A modern English version, Reading 1998

O. Leaman, A companion to the philosophers, ed. R. Arrington, Oxford 1999

id., Key concepts in eastern philosophy, London 1999

P. Morewedge (ed.), Islamic philosophical theology, Albany 1979

id. (ed.), Islamic philosophy and mysticism, New York 1981

W. Muir, The apology of al-Kindī, London 1882

S. Nasr and O. Leaman (eds.), History of Islamic philosophy, London 1996

K. Reinhart, Before revelation. The boundaries of Muslim moral thought, Albany 1995

N. Rescher, The development of Arabic logic, Pittsburgh 1964

Rippin, Approaches

D. Sahas, John of Damascus on Islam, Leiden 1972

W.M. Watt, Islamic philosophy and theology. An extended survey, Edinburgh 1985

H. Wolfson, The philosophy of the kalam, Cambridge, MA 1976

Cite this page

Fakhry, Majid, “Philosophy and the Qurʾān”, in: Encyclopaedia of the Qurʾān, General Editor: Jane Dammen McAuliffe, Georgetown University, Washington DC. Consulted online on 07 January 2017 <http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/1875-3922_q3_EQCOM_00146>

Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition / Falāsifa

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, pl. of faylasūf, formed from the Greek φιλόσοφος. By its origin this word primarily denotes the Greek thinkers. Al-S̲h̲ahrastānī gives a list of them: the seven Sages who are “the fount of philosophy (falsafa) and the beginning of wisdom (ḥikma) ”, then Thales, Anaxagoras, Anaximenes, Empedocles, Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato, Plutarch, Xenophanes, Zeno the elder, Democritus, the philosophers of the Academy, Heraclitus, Epicurus, Homer (the poet whose wisdom inspired Greece for, with the Greeks, poetry preceded philosophy), Hippocrates, Euclid, Ptolemy, Chrysippus and Zeno, Aristotle (whose philosophy is described according to Themistius), Porphyry, Plotinus (al-s̲h̲ayk̲h̲ al-yūnānī), Theophrastus, Proclus and Alexander of Aphrodisias. The doctrines attributed to these thinkers are often incorrect or anachronistic, perhaps under the influence of the systemization of Aristotle and the Eclectics. Then the falāsifat al-Islām are named. The list is somewhat long; we may mention al-Kindī, Ḥunayn b. Isḥāḳ, Abu ’l-Farad̲j̲ al-Mufassir, T̲h̲ābit b. Ḳurra, al-Nisābūrī, Ibn Miskawayh, al-Fārābī, etc. But, he writes, the true representative of the falāsifa (ʿalāmat al-ḳawm) is Ibn Sīnā, and it is his philosophy alone that he expounds. From this point of view the Muslim falāsifa appeared merely as the successors of the Greeks: “They followed Aristotle in all he thought... except for unimportant expressions on which they adopted the views of Plato and the earlier philosophers”. This judgment needs to be radically revised.

a). The word falāsifa has retained in Arabic the general sense of the Greek equivalent. It is thus synonymous with ḥukamāʾ or ʿulamāʾ. This is the meaning it has in al-D̲j̲āḥiẓ (K. al-Ḥayawān, introd.) where falāsifat ʿulamāʾ al-bas̲h̲ar is compared with ḥud̲h̲d̲h̲āḳ ridiāl al-raʾy, in a passage in which human reason and skill, which in the signs of nature discern the wisdom of God, are compared with animals’ instinct, the immediate expression of this wisdom.

b). If the general idea of wisdom (which occurs both in the Ḳurʾān and in the Greek philosophical tradition) remains attached to the term falsafa, there is justification for describing as falāsifa those Muslim theologians who gave a place to human reason and raʾy. Indeed, from the very start of Muʿtazilī thinking there can be discerned, in the exposition of problems and in methods of reasoning, a Greek influence, transmitted indirectly by the Christian philosophers of Syria (John of Damascus, Theodore Abū Ḳurra). Later, when the logic of Aristotle (the pre-eminent Master and organizer of this branch of learning in the Arabs’ eyes) was known directly, it was utilized by the mutakallimūn, but less as an instrument of constructive analysis than as a means of exposition and refutation. In this form it quite soon became general throughout Islam, despite the opposition of the strictly orthodox. An instance of this purely dialectical use of logic can be found in the Ẓāhirī Ibn Ḥazm (5th/11th century) at the beginning of his Fiṣal, to refute certain philosophically inspired ideas about the eternity of the world. In the thinking of such As̲h̲ʿarīs as al-Bāḳillānī and al-D̲j̲uwaynī, and especially in al-G̲h̲azālī, despite his opposition to the falāsifa, the influence of Greece is even more positive. Al-Bāḳillānī’s theory of simple substances (atoms) and accidents, the Muʿtazilī doctrines concerning essence and existence or the knowledge that God has of created things before and after their creation, derive among other things from pure philosophy. Moreover the falāsifa properly speaking are acquainted with these theological schools and sometimes refer to them in order to determine their own situation. An absolute distinction between them cannot be made.

c). As for the falāsifa in the restricted sense of the word, it is not possible to give a clear-cut, exclusive definition. In general, they are the successors of Neo-Platonism, which is itself an eclecticism in which are combined Platonic, Aristotelian, Stoic, Pythagorean and many other kinds of ideas. This Neo-Platonism had been sufficiently flexible to integrate Alexandrian learning, as P. Duhem has shown. In this multiplicity of influences, that of Aristotle is distinguished by the part played by his logic. Seen from this point of view, falsafa was a consequence of the translation of Greek writings, and certain translators were themselves the first falāsifa. Orientalists, following Renan, have regarded falsafa as a sect, and this is the opinion of Muslims in general. But if there is a common body of doctrine and strong resemblances, the originality of each thinker and the existence of different tendencies must not be denied.

The sources of the falāsifa are no doubt essentially Greek—Plato, Aristotle and the commentators, especially Alexander and Themistius. But we must also observe the influence of scientific thought, particularly of Galen, the scholar and philosopher, and also that of an intellectualist mysticism deriving from Plotinus, and combining theological and cosmological ideas of gnostic type, the theology and angelology of Proclus, the Theology of the pseudo-Aristotle, doctrines of Hermetic origin. All the gnoses of the Alexandrian period, which even then were tinged with Iranism, find an echo in Arabo-Muslim thought. The Sabaeans, with their astrology that was at once scientific and religious, and with their conception of an intermediate world of spirits (cf. the exposé of al-S̲h̲ahrastānī), played a large part. In this situation, Persian-inspired dualism was able to infiltrate without difficulty, either directly or through the S̲h̲īʿī sects, especially Ismāʿīlism. From the theoretical aspect, it is difficult entirely to isolate from falsafa esoteric mystics such as Suhrawardī whose speculative thinking is Peripatetic and who speaks of light as Aristotle speaks of substance. The thinking of the falāsifa is thus very complex; Ibn Sīnā, a scholar and the disciple of Galen, a logician and follower of Aristotle, a Neo-Platonist, exponent of a mysticism that gave rise to that of Suhrawardī, illustrates in a single harmonious entity the complexity of falsafa.

But this description is only entirely true of the first falāsifa, al-Kindī and, in particular, al-Fārābī and Ibn Sīnā. What characterizes them is their belief, deriving from Greek electicism, in the harmony between the “two sages”, Plato and Aristotle (cf. the treatise of al-Fārābī on this subject). Reason, the instrument of truth, can produce only a single system. Insofar as the falāsifa concentrated on defining and developing this single system which came to them from Greece, they do indeed form a single school or sect. But al-G̲h̲azālī, under the inspiration of al-Ḏj̲uwaynī, denounces this mistake: reason is not the supreme arbiter (ḥakam); there are as many divergencies (ik̲h̲tilāf) between philosophers as between theologians. He thus marks the beginning of a second period which is characterized by a better knowledge of Aristotle’s works and exemplified in the West by Ibn Bād̲j̲d̲j̲a and, more particularly, by Ibn Rus̲h̲d upon whom al-G̲h̲azālī was not without influence in spite of their obvious differences, and who reacted against Arab Neo-Platonism. In the East, Fak̲h̲r al-Dīn and Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī returned to Ibn Sīnā’s doctrine on various important points, while also integrating elements of As̲h̲ʿarī theology with it, in the case of the former, or of mystical esoterism in the case of the latter.

Finally, side by side with this main stream (Ibn Sīnā, al-G̲h̲azālī, and then Ibn Rus̲h̲d in the West, al-Rāzī in the East), a further, and Neo-Pythagorean, stream must be pointed out, represented by the Ik̲h̲wān al-Ṣafāʾ whose esoteric and mystical character is more clearly marked. They accuse other philosophers or theologians of having only partially observed the rhythms of the universe. It is not consonant with Wisdom that beings should go only in multiples of two (matter and form, substance and accident, etc.), or of three (the three dimensions, the three modes of existence—necessary, possible and impossible, etc.), or of four, five, six, seven (doctrine of the septimanians), etc. The Pythagoreans (al-ḥukamāʾ al-fīt̲h̲āg̲h̲ūriyyūn) “accept the right of everything which has a right”; since the number includes everything, measures and balances everything, so their thought takes everthing exactly into account. In their eyes, Pythagoras was a sage adoring the single God; they connected him with the philosophers of Ḥarrān.

How are the falāsifa as a whole to be characterized?

a). By their vocabulary. It is composed of iṣṭilāḥāt, words that are Arabic or caiques from the Greek which have assumed a technical meaning. For the expression of the truth, strictly orthodox theology only allows words of divine origin (texts from the Ḳurʾān and from Tradition). However, a large proportion of this vocabulary has been accepted by the mutakillimūn. The distinguishing feature of the falāsifa is therefore merely the more systematic and independent use which they make of this conventional vocabulary.

b). By logic. As with Aristotle, logic became a true organon (āla). It shows from what known starting-point one can reach a certain unknown point, and by what course. It is based on the study of concepts and categories, judgment, syllogism and induction. This analytical and constructive use of logic to discover the structure of truth is not accepted by strict theologians. Al-G̲h̲azālī, however, recognizes that it has a certain value, although not absolute. On the other hand the falāsifa, indirectly following Aristotle, have taken account, in their studies of concept and judgment, of principles enunciated by the Arab grammarians. With logic can be connected the division of the sciences, inspired by the Greeks but varying according to the authors (Ik̲h̲wān al-Ṣafāʾ; al-Farābī: Iḥṣāʾ al-ʿulūm ; Ibn Sīnā: Aḳsām al-ʿulūm al-ʿaḳliyya). Its basis is the tripartite division into sciences theoretical, practical and creative.

c). By their study of natural science. The falāsifa were all scholars, sometimes of originality. They integrated astronomy, physics, chemistry and medicine with their general metaphysics which was the source of their fundamental concepts. Nevertheless a spirit of experiment, not unrelated to the Muslim tendency to attach value to the experience of the senses, is clearly revealed.

d). By metaphysics. Here the divergences between authors are more marked. But for all of them, metaphysics is a theory of being, built up on the distinction between the necessary and the possible (being necessary in itself, being necessary through another or possible) or the eternal and the contingent. The pure being of all matter is at once the intellect, the agent which intellectualizes, and intelligible. The interplay of these ideas explains the constitution of the world. For the Neo-Platonists and Arab Pythagoreans, from the One only one can emerge, that is to say the first intellect. Ibn Rus̲h̲d does not accept this postulate. The first intellect on the one hand intellectualizes the being necessary in itself, thus producing a second intellect; on the other hand, it intellectualizes its own essence, either as being necessary through another and thereby producing the form or soul of the sphere, or else as being possible in itself and so producing the body of the sphere (d̲j̲irm al-falak). Upon this general principle of emanation, many variations are to be found in the expositions by the different authors. This process continues up to the last intellect, that is to say the active intellect. Beneath it are placed the sentient beings of the sublunary world. The active intellect plays an important part in human knowledge, but upon this point the falāsifa differ considerably. Emanation is of a different character for the Ik̲h̲wān al-Ṣafāʾ. From the Creator (al-Bāriʾ) is emanated Intellect, which is the immediate expression of his powers and virtues (cf. Philo of Alexandria). From the intellect is emanated the universal Soul which at once receives the forms of all beings. From this emanates universal matter, a simple intelligible substance like the foregoing, which eventually receives the forms. The first form received is the corporeal form in the three dimensions which constitute a sort of intelligible scale, and in this way the absolute body (al-d̲j̲ism al-muṭlaḳ) is attained, where emanation is halted. After this comes the diversity of sentient objects, the universal bodies of the spheres and the elements, the individual and composite bodies of our world.

e). By theology. The falāsifa here are in agreement with the mutakallimūn and the problem of the attributes of God. They are close to the Muʿtazila in that they seek not to multiply the divine essence. But they differ in that, for them, God is at once the source of existences and essences. Their central problem is that of divine knowledge. God, knowing Himself sufficiently, knows Himself as the cause of everything that is; of all kinds, of all species, of all possibilities that enter into existence, that is to say possibilities which are necessary by their cause, and finally of all individual beings, not by a knowledge which would vary with them, but through a universal species (bi-nawʿ kullī). Providence leads to the necessary universal order. The falāsifa have a theory as to the Prophet: in general, he is a man so gifted that the active intellect acts on his imagination (while it acts on the intelligence of the wise man).

f). By psychology and morality. Morality is a practical science: moral natures, virtues and characters exist, whose value one can learn by reason in order to gain from it a system of life that conforms with the good. These values are in relation to the human soul. In regard to the metaphysical nature of the soul, theories are diverse and reflect the uncertainties of Plato and Aristotle. But gnostic beliefs are intermixed with them: in the cosmos, the soul has an itinerary to follow, stages of purification to traverse, to regain its place of origin (cf. Theology of Pseudo-Aristotle). The Aristotelians such as Ibn Rus̲h̲d do not accept these ideas. Moreover, in all the falāsifa we find a morality based on the Greek psychology of the three souls or powers (rational, irascible and concupiscible) and on the doctrine of virtue as the golden mean. Thus, in falsafa we meet two moralities, juxtaposed and co-existent for some (Ibn Sīnā), the one a humanist morality (Ibn Rus̲h̲d), the other mystical (Suhrawardī). Both are at variance with strict orthodoxy which regards the revelation of the Law as the single source of knowledge of both ethical and religious values. But, in their classification of the virtues within the Greek philosophical systems, the falāsifa introduced a considerable number of Islamized Arab virtues, for example ḥilm (cf. Ibn Sīnā, Risālat al-ak̲h̲lāḳ).

Thus the falāsifa often break away from orthodox Islam, but thanks to taʾwīl they could still believe that they were in harmony with the Ḳurʾān, from which they quoted unfailingly. But they quoted it purely as evidence, without incorporating it in the body of their argumentation. Thus the theologians, so far as they depart from the revealed texts, are opposed to them. This is how Abū Ḥayyān al-Tawḥīdī speaks of the Ik̲h̲wān al-Ṣafāʾ (K. al-Imtāʿ, 17th Night). According to them, the Law has been profaned by foolish ignorance and confounded by error. It must be purified by philosophy. By harmonizing Greek philosophy and Arab law, perfection is reached. But their Epistles are no more than “ramblings” consisting of “scraps strung together in a kind of patch-work”. They have “woven a philosophy in secret” out of the science of the stars and spheres, the Almagest, the knowledge of the greatness and works of nature, music, logic. Now there is no question of these sciences in the Revelation. The Muslim community is divided into sects, but none of them has had recourse to the falāsifa. “What is the relation between religion and philosophy? (ayna ’l-dīn min al-falsafa (?)”, between what is derived from a heavenborn revelation and what is derived from fallible personal opinion? The prophet is superior to the philosopher. As for reason, it does not pertain in its entirety to any one man, but to mankind as a whole. And al-Tawḥīdī proclaims the ambition of philosophers: their wish is, not to cure men of their maladies, the task to which the prophets confine themselves, but rather to preserve the health of those who possess it. They aspire to the most exalted happiness and to a dignity, thanks to which man becomes worthy of the divine life. But in that case what purpose would the Revelation serve ?

For al-G̲h̲azālī (Munḳid̲h̲ ; Maḳāṣid), certain parts of philosophy are without danger to the faith, I provided that good is made of them: these are mathematics and logic. Physics is also admissible, on condition that it is never forgotten that the only causality is that of God. The useful sciences such as medicine are the ʿulūm al-dunyā, and ought to be studied, at least by some (farḍ kifāya) for the general good, since life in this world contains the germ of the future life and it must not be neglected (cf. Iḥyāʾ ʿulūm al-dīn, ch. on Science). Certain sciences are I harmful, like magic and the science of talismans (which still come into Ibn Sīnā’s classification); they must be rejected. As for the theology of the falāsifa, this is frankly bad, since it teaches that bodies are not resurrected, that it is disembodied spirits that are rewarded or punished, and that penalties are spiritual, not bodily. Moreover, the theories of the eternity of the world and of the knowledge of God who knows only the universals are complete heresies (kufr). On the other hand, the doctrine which reduces the divine attributes to essence is not kufr in the eyes of al-G̲h̲azālī since the Muʿtazila, who cannot be charged with infidelity, adhered to it. Finally, the political theory of the falāsifa is taken from the ancient prophets (salaf al-anbiyāʾ), a very ancient idea which Philo of Alexandria had already rejected; and their moral philosophy is inspired by the mystics. From the end of the period of antiquity the opinion was widespread that Plato was an initiate and inspired.

For al-S̲h̲ahrastānī (6th/12th century), philosophers are men of passions (ahl al-ahwāʾ), that is to say men who follow their own judgment and who must be distinguished from those who follow a revelation (arbāb al-diyāna), to whom they are diametrically opposed (taḳābul al-taḍādd). Later, Ibn Taymiyya (7th-8th/13th-14th centuries), in the K. al-Radd ʿalā ’l-manṭiḳiyyīn, denounces the uselessness and inconsequence of the logic of the falāsifa. Finally we may mention Ibn K̲h̲aldūn (8th/14th century) who attacked philosophy in his Muḳaddima (Ibṭāl al-falsafa). Philosophers think that it is reason, I not tradition, which confirms the truth of the foundations of the faith. They proceed by successive abstractions, reach the first intelligibles and then integrate them to establish sciences in the manner of second intelligibles. The soul which, in purifying itself, comes to the sciences, experiences joy and has no need of the illumination of the Law. The soul that is ignorant is in affliction. Such is the meaning of the rewards and punishments of the other world. But this opinion is false: when they relate all beings to the first intellect and find this a satisfactory means of reaching the necessary, they reveal a lack of vision in regard to the actual organization of the divine Creation, which surpasses any representations of it that they give. Existence is too vast for man to be able to embrace it in its entirety.

These criticisms make it possible to place the falāsifa in relation to orthodox Muslim ideals. But they give too sharp a definition of outline to falsafa. In reality, the philosophers of Islam remain truly Muslim, in touch with the theologians and with the mystical elements which have not tried to break away from the teaching of the Ḳurʾān. As for the legacy of Greece, this was first acquired by the Muslim world as a whole, in spite of the opposition i raised by strict orthodoxy. If it appears to be systematized in their doctrines, its influence is far from i being limited to the falāsifa alone. It is therefore impossible to regard falsafa as a sect sharply differentiated from the general cultural and spiritual movement which is the pride of Muslim civilization.

(R. Arnaldez)

Cite this page

Arnaldez, R., “Falāsifa”, in: Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition, Edited by: P. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C.E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel, W.P. Heinrichs. Consulted online on 10 January 2017 <http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/1573-3912_islam_COM_0208>