The History of Philosophy in Islam

A second subject of interest was added, in Aristotle’s Logic. Among the Syrians, and for a longer period among the Arabs also, Aristotle was commonly known almost solely as a logician. This knowledge, just as in the early scholasticism of the West, extended to the Categories, the Hermeneutics, and the first Analytics as far as the Categorical Figures. They stood in need of the Logic in order to comprehend the writings of Greek ecclesiastical teachers, since these, at least in form, were influenced thereby. But as they did not possess it complete, as little did they possess it pure. They had it before them only in a Neo-Platonic redaction, as may be seen, for example, from the work of Paulus Persa, which was written in Syriac for Khosrau Anosharwan. In that work knowledge is placed above faith, and philosophy is defined as the process by which the soul becomes conscious of its own inner essence, in which, like a God as it were, it sees all things.

8. What the Arabs owe to the Syrians is expressed by this circumstance amongst others,—that Arab scholars held Syriac to be the oldest, or the real (natural) language. The Syrians, it is true, produced nothing original; but their activity as translators was of advantage to Arab-Persian science. It was Syrians almost without exception, who, from the 8th century to the 10th, rendered Greek works into Arabic, either from the older Syriac versions or from those which had been in part improved by them, and in part re-arranged. Even the Omayyad prince, Khalid ibn Yezid (died 704), who occupied himself with Alchemy under the guidance of a Christian monk, is said to have provided for translations of works on Alchemy from Greek into Arabic. Proverbs, maxims, letters, wills, and in short whatever bore on the history of philosophy, were at a very early time collected and translated. But it was not till the reign of Mansur that a commencement was made with the translation into Arabic—partly from Pahlawi versions—of those writings of the Greeks which deal with Natural Science, Medicine and Logic. Ibn al-Moqaffa, an adherent of Persian Dualism, took a leading part in this task, from whom later workers must have marked themselves off by their terminology. None of his philosophical translations have come down to us. Other material too, belonging to the 8th century has gone amissing. The earliest specimen of this work of translation which we possess dates from the 9th century, the time of Mamun and his successors.

The translators of the 9th century were, for the most part, medical men; and Hippocrates and Galen were among the first to be translated after Ptolemy and Euclid. But let us confine ourselves to Philosophy, in the narrower sense. A translation of the Timäus of Plato is said to have come from Yuhanna or Yakhya ibn Bitriq (in the beginning of the 9th century), as well as Aristotle’s ‘Meteorology’, the ‘Book of Animals’, an epitome of the ‘Psychology’, and the tract ‘On the World’. To Abdalmasikh ibn Abdallah Naima al-Himsi (circa 835) is to be ascribed a rendering of the ‘Sophistics’ of Aristotle, in addition to the Commentary of John Philoponus upon the ‘Physics’, as well as the so-called ‘Theology of Aristotle’,—a paraphrased epitome of the Enneads of Plotinus. Qosta ibn Luqa al-Balabakki (circa 835) is said to have translated the Commentaries of Alexander of Aphrodisias and John Philoponus upon the ‘Physics’ of Aristotle, and in part, Alexander’s Commentary on the ‘De generatione et corruptione’, as well as the ‘Placita Philosophorum’ of the Pseudo-Plutarch, and other works.

The most productive translators were Abu Zaid Honain ibn Ishaq (809?-873), his son, Ishaq ibn Honain († 910 or 911), and nephew Hobaish ibn al-Hasan. Seeing that they worked together, there is a good deal which is ascribed, now to the one and now to the other. Not a little material must have been prepared, under their oversight, by disciples and subordinates. Their activity extended over the whole range of the science of that day. Existing translations were improved, and new ones added. The father preferred to work at versions of medical authors, but the son turned more to the rendering of philosophical material.

The work of the translators was still proceeding in the 10th century. Among those who especially distinguished themselves were Abu Bishr Matta ibn Yunus al-Qannai († 940), Abu Zakarya Yakhya ibn Adi al-Mantiqi († 974), Abu Ali Isa ibn Ishaq ibn Zura († 1008), and finally, Abu-l-Khair al-Hasan ibn al-Khammar (born 942), a pupil of Yakhya ibn Adi’s, of whose writings, besides translations, commentaries, and so forth, a tract is mentioned, on the Harmony between Philosophy and Christianity.

From the time of Honain ibn Ishaq the activity of the translators was almost wholly confined to Aristotelian and Pseudo-Aristotelian writings, and to epitomes of them, to paraphrases of their contents and to commentaries upon them.

9. These translators are not to be regarded as specially great philosophers. Their work was seldom entered upon spontaneously, but almost always at the command of some Caliph or Vizir or other person of note. Outside of their own department of study, usually Medicine, they were chiefly interested in Wisdom,—that is, in pretty stories with a moral, in anecdotes, and in oracular sayings. The expressions which we merely bear with in intercourse, in narrative or on the stage, as being characteristic utterances with certain persons, were admired and collected by these worthy people for the sake of the wisdom contained in them, or perhaps even for no more than the rhetorical elegance of their form. As a rule, those men continued true to the Christian faith of their fathers. The traditional story of Ibn Djebril gives a good idea both of their way of thinking and of the liberal-mindedness of the Caliphs. When Mansur wanted to convert him to Islam, he is said to have replied: “In the faith of my fathers I will die: where they are, I wish also to be, whether in heaven or in hell”. Whereupon the Caliph laughed, and dismissed him with a rich present.

Only a small portion has been saved of the original writings of these men. A short dissertation by Qosta ibn Luqa on the distinction between Soul and Spirit (πνεῦμα, ruh), preserved in a Latin translation, has been frequently mentioned and made use of. According to it, the Spirit is a subtle material, which from its seat in the left ventricle of the heart animates the human frame and brings about its movements and perceptions. The finer and clearer this Spirit is, the more rationally the man thinks and acts: there is but one opinion upon this point. It is more difficult, however, to predicate anything sure, and universally valid, of the Soul. The deliverances of the greatest philosophers occasionally differ, and occasionally contradict each other. In any case the Soul is incorporeal, for it adopts qualities, and, in fact, qualities of the most opposite nature at one and the same time. It is uncompounded and unchangeable, and it does not, like the Spirit, perish with the body. The Spirit only acts as an intermediary between the Soul and the Body, and it is in this way that it becomes a secondary cause of movement and perception.

The statement which has just been given regarding the Soul is found in many of the later writers. But by slow degrees, as the Aristotelian philosophy thrusts Platonic opinions more and more into the background, another pair of opposites come into full view. Physicians alone continue to speak of the importance of the ‘ruh’ or Spirit of Life. Philosophers institute a comparison between Soul and Spirit or Reason (νοῦς, ʻaql). The Soul is now reduced to the domain of the perishable, and sometimes, in Gnostic fashion, even to the lower and evil realm of the desires. The rational Spirit,—as that which is highest, that which is imperishable in man—is exalted above the Soul.

In this notice, however, we are anticipating history: let us return to our translators.

10. The most valuable portion of the legacy which the Greek mind bequeathed to us in art, poetry, and historical composition, was never accessible to the Orientals. It would even have been difficult for them to understand it, seeing that they lacked the due acquaintance with Greek life, and the relish for it. For them the history of Greece began with Alexander the Great, surrounded with the halo of legend; and the position which Aristotle held beside the greatest prince of ancient times must have assuredly conduced to the acceptance of the Aristotelian philosophy at the Muslim court. Arab historians counted up the Greek princes, on to Cleopatra, and then the Roman Emperors; but a Thucydides, for example, was not known to them, even by name. Of Homer they had not picked up much more than the sentence, that “one only should be the ruler”. They had not the least idea of the great Greek dramatists and lyric poets. It was only through its Mathematics, Natural Science and Philosophy, that Greek antiquity could bring its influence to bear upon them. They had come to know something of the development of Greek Philosophy, from Plutarch, Porphyry and others, as well as from the writings of Aristotle and Galen. A good deal of legendary matter, however, was mingled with their information; and the account which passed in the East, of the doctrines of the Pre-Socratic philosophers can only be referred by us to the pseudepigraphs which they consulted, or perhaps even to the opinions which had been developed in the East itself, and which they endeavoured to support with the authority of old Greek sages. But still, in every case, our thoughts must turn first of all to some Greek original.

11. It may be affirmed generally that the Syro-Arabs took up the thread of philosophy, precisely where the last of the Greeks had let it fall, that is, with the Neo-Platonic explanation of Aristotle, along with whose philosophy the works of Plato were also read and expounded. Among the Harranaeans, and for a long time in several Muslim sects, it was Platonic or Pythagorean-Platonic studies which were prosecuted with most ardour,—with which much that was Stoic or Neo-Platonic was associated. Extraordinary interest was taken in the fate of Socrates, who had suffered a martyr’s death in heathen Athens for his rational belief. The Platonic teaching regarding the Soul and Nature exercised great influence. The Pythian utterance: “Know thyself”,—handed down as the motto of the Socratic wisdom, and interpreted in a Neo-Platonic sense,—was ascribed by the Muslims to Ali, Mohammed’s son-in-law, or even put into the mouth of the Prophet himself. “He who knows himself, knows God his Lord thereby”: this was the text for Mystic speculations of all kinds.

In medical circles and at the worldly court, the works of Aristotle came more and more into favour, first of all of course the Logic and a few things from the Physical writings. The Logic—so they thought—was the only new thing the Stagyrite had discovered: in all the other sciences he agreed throughout with Pythagoras, Empedocles, Anaxagoras, Socrates and Plato. Accordingly Christian and Sabaean translators, and the circle influenced by them, drew their psychologico-ethical, political and metaphysical instruction without hesitation from the Pre-Aristotelian sages.

What bore the names of Empedocles, Pythagoras &c., was, naturally, spurious. Their wisdom is traced either to Hermes or to other wise men of the East. Thus Empedocles must have been a disciple of King David’s, and afterwards of Loqman the Wise: Pythagoras must have sprung from the school of Solomon,—and so on. Writings which are cited in Arabic works as Socratic are, in so far as they are genuine, Platonic dialogues in which Socrates appears. Their quotations from Plato—not to speak of spurious writings—have a more or less comprehensive range: they are taken from the Apology, Krito, the Sophistes, Phaedrus, the Republic, Phaedo, Timäus and the Laws. That does not mean, however, that they possessed complete translations of all these works.

This much is certain,—that Aristotle did not reign as sole lord from the very outset. Plato, as they understood him, taught the Creation of the world, the Substantiality of the Spiritual, and the Immortality of the Soul. That teaching did no harm to the Faith. But Aristotle, with his doctrine of the Eternity of the World, and his less spiritualistic Psychology and Ethics, was regarded as dangerous. Muslim theologians of the 9th and 10th centuries, from various camps, wrote therefore against Aristotle. But circumstances altered. Philosophers arose by-and-by who rejected the Platonic doctrine of the One World-Soul, of which the souls of men are only transient parts, and sought grounds for their hope of immortality from Aristotle who attributed so great a significance to the Individual Substance.

12. The conception which was entertained of Aristotle in the period most remote, is best shown by the writings which were foisted upon him. Not only did they get his genuine works with Neo-Platonic interpretations attached to them,—not only was the treatise: “On the world” unhesitatingly acknowledged as Aristotelian, but he was also regarded as the author of many late-Greek productions, in which a Pythagorising Platonism or Neo-Platonism, or even a barren Syncretism was quite frankly taught.

Let us take here as our first example “the Book of the Apple” [7], wherein Aristotle plays the same part as Socrates in the Phaedo of Plato. As his end draws near, the Philosopher is visited by some of his disciples who find him in a cheerful frame of mind. This leads them to request their departing Master to give them some instruction about the Essence and Immortality of the Soul. Thereupon he discourses somewhat as follows:—“The Essence of the Soul consists in knowing,—in fact, in Philosophy, which is the highest form of knowing. A perfect knowledge of the truth constitutes therefore the blessedness which after death awaits the soul which is devoted to knowing. And just as knowing is rewarded with a higher knowledge,—so the punishment for not-knowing consists in a deeper ignorance. And really, there is nothing in Heaven or Earth, after all, except knowing and not-knowing, and the recompence which these two severally bring with them. Farther,—virtue is not essentially different from knowing; nor does vice differ essentially from not-knowing. The relation of virtue to knowing, or of vice to not-knowing, is like that of water to ice: i.e. it is the same thing in a different form.

In knowing,—which is the divine essence of the Soul,—the Soul finds naturally its only true joy, and not in eating and drinking and sensual pleasure. For, sensual pleasure is a flame which merely warms for a short time; but the thinking Soul,—which longs for its deliverance from the murky world of the senses,—is a pure light that sheds a radiance far and wide. The Philosopher therefore is not afraid of death, but meets it gladly, when the Deity summons him. The enjoyment, which his limited knowledge affords him here is a guarantee to him of the rapture which the unveiling of the great world of the Unknown will procure him. Even already he knows something of this, for it is only through knowledge of the invisible, that the proper estimate of the sensible, on which he prides himself, is at all possible. He who comes to know his own self in this life, possesses in that very knowledge of himself the assurance of comprehending all things with an eternal knowledge,—i. e. of being immortal.”

13. In the second place the so-called “Theology of Aristotle” may be referred to. In it Plato is represented as the Ideal-Man, who gains a knowledge of all things by means of an intuitive thinking, and thus has no need of the logical resources of Aristotle. Indeed, the highest reality—Absolute Being—is not apprehended by thinking, but only in an ecstatic Vision. “Often was I alone with my soul”, says Aristotle-Plotinus, on this point. “Divested of the body, I entered as pure substance into my proper self, turning back from all that is external to what is within. I was pure knowing there, at once the knowing and the known. How astonished I was to behold beauty and splendour in my proper self, and to recognize that I was a part of the sublime Divine world, endowed even with creative life! In this assurance of self, I was lifted above the world of the senses, ay, even above the world of spirits, up to the Divine state, where I beheld a light so fair that no tongue can tell it, nor ear understand”.

The soul forms the centre of the discussions in the ‘Theology’ also. All true human science is science of the soul or knowledge of self,—knowledge of its essence, it is true, coming first, and next in order, though less complete, knowledge of the operations of that essence. In such knowledge, to which exceedingly few attain, the highest wisdom consists, which does not admit of being fully understood in the form of ideas, and which therefore the philosopher like a skilful artist and wise lawgiver represents, for us men, in ever beautiful figures in religious service. In this function precisely, the wise man comes forward as the potent, self-sufficing magician, whose knowledge lords it over the multitude, seeing that they remain always bound in the fetters of outward things, of presentations and desires.

The soul stands in the centre of the All. Above it are God and Intelligence, beneath it—Matter and Nature. Its coming from God through Intelligence into Matter, its presence in the body, its return on high—these are the three stadia in which its life and that of the world run their course. Matter and Nature, Sense-perception and Presentation here lose their significance almost entirely. All things exist by Intelligence (νοῦς, ʻaql). Intelligence constitutes all things, and in Intelligence all things are One. The Soul too is Intelligence, but, so long as it stays in the body, it is Intelligence in hope, Intelligence in the form of longing. It longs for what is above, for the good and blessed stars, which spend their contemplative existence as sources of light, exalted above presentation and effort.

That then is the oriental Aristotle, as he was acknowledged by the earliest Peripatetics in Islam [8].

14. We need not wonder that the Easterns did not succeed in reaching an unadulterated conception of the Aristotelian philosophy. Our critical apparatus for discriminating between the genuine and the spurious was not in their possession. It must have proved even more difficult for them, to familiarize themselves with the world of Greek civilization, than for the Christian scholars of the Middle Ages, which had never entirely lost living touch with antiquity. In the East men remained dependent on Neo-Platonic redactions and interpretations. A part of the scientific system, to wit, the Politics of Aristotle, was a-wanting; and so, as a matter of course, the Laws or the Republic of Plato took its place. Only a few were aware of the difference between the two.

Another determining motive deserves notice. In their Neo-Platonic sources even, the Muslims came upon a harmonizing exposition of the Greek philosophers, and they felt constrained to adopt it. The first adherents of Aristotle were bound to assume a polemical and apologetic attitude. In opposition to, or in conformity with, the voice of the Muslim community, they required a coherent philosophy, in which the One Truth must be found. The same reverence, which Mohammed in his day had paid to the sacred writings of the Jews and of the Christians, was shewn afterwards by Muslim scholars towards the works of Greek philosophers; but these learned men exhibited greater familiarity with their models, and less originality. In their eyes the old philosophers were invested with an authority, to which it was their duty to submit. The earliest Muslim thinkers were so fully convinced of the superiority of Greek knowledge that they did not doubt that it had attained to the highest degree of certainty. The thought of making farther and independent investigations did not readily occur to an Oriental, who cannot imagine a man without a teacher as being anything else than a disciple of Satan. In accordance, therefore, with the precedent set by Hellenistic philosophers, an attempt had to be made to demonstrate the existence of the harmony between Plato and Aristotle,—and, in particular, to shelve tacitly those doctrines which gave offence, or to exhibit them in a sense which was not too decidedly contrary to Muslim Dogmatics. In order to humour the opponents of Aristotle or of Philosophy in general, prominence was given to wise and edifying sayings out of the philosopher’s works,—both the genuine and the spurious,—that so the way might be prepared for the reception of his scientific thoughts. To the initiated, however, the teaching of Aristotle, like that of other schools and sects, was set forth as a higher truth, to which the positive faith of the multitude and the more or less firmly established system of the theologians were merely preliminary steps.