Voices of Islam (238 page)

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Voices of Change

Given this peculiarly Islamic philosophy of prophecy, I want to now return to my view of the continuity between Islamic philosophy and Ancient Greek philosophy, seen as the practice of spiritual exercises for the sake of wisdom. The ideal of wisdom, in Islamic Peripateticism, gets articulated as involving some kind of ethical cultivation and growth, culminating in prophetic experiences. Of course, like all good Muslims, Alfarabi and Avicenna do not maintain that they are prophets of the caliber of Prophet Muhammad or that a prophet like Muhammad can emerge in the future. Both Avicenna and Alfarabi, in different ways, distinguish the grandeur of the Muhammadan prophetic experience from what a philosopher might attain. Alfarabi does this by attributing to the prophet a perfected imagination that yields the laws (
Shari‘a
) for governing the community, and Avicenna, as we have seen, distinguishes between the qualities of insight bestowed upon the philosopher and the prophet.

It is important to realize that the Islamic Peripatetics, represented by Avicenna and Alfarabi, do not simply strap their philosophical ideal onto the Prophet of Islam. Rather, the Prophet Muhammad’s words and deeds play a central role in the cultivation and the articulation of their ideal. This is again in accord with their Peripatetic heritage. According to Aristotle, ethical standards are not abstract moral principles (a view prevalent in modern moral philosophy); rather they are given by moral exemplars, the
spoudaios
or
phronimos,
that is, the practically wise person.
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One way the
phronimos
educates is by inviting adepts to imitate him, and the prophetolo- gies articulated by Avicenna and Alfarabi are Islamic precisely because they preserve the Islamic accounts of the Prophet Muhammad’s practices and sayings, as sources of imitation for the spiritual transformation of Muslims. The Qur’an and the Sunna fit into this philosophical framework and provide the relevant features of the concrete exemplar who guides the Muslim seeker of wisdom. Of course, this requires the cultivation of a relevant hermeneutic for getting at the meaning of the Qur’an and the Sunna, and such a herme- neutic is overseen by an instructor who is immersed in the spiritual practices of the religion and who knows the law. Philosophers in the Sufi and the Shi‘a traditions accept the words and the deeds of the Prophet and the authority of the jurists (
fuqaha’
), but they also emphasize the importance of a living exemplar, in the fi re of an Imam, the deputies of the Imam, and so on. These exemplars live the Islamic life and are in touch with the truth (
haqiqa
) of the religion. They are not full prophets in the sense of the Prophet Muhammad, but just like the accomplished philosopher in the philosophies of Alfarabi and Avicenna, they are privy to the Muhammadan truth and can be exemplars for the faithful.

The writings of Nasr and Henry Corbin
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are more than adequate in artic-

ulating the scope of philosophical prophetology in the traditions of Islamic philosophy. Here, I do not want to restate what they have established in their works. I want to make a case for the Islamic Peripatetics, a case that must at

Is ‘‘Islamic’’ Philosophy Islamic?
35

the outset meet Ghazali’s challenge. It is well known that Ghazali accused the Muslim Peripatetics of being heretics on account of their adherence to three specific doctrines. To respond to this challenge, I will draw from the work of the great Andalusian Muslim Peripatetic, Abu al-Walid ibn Rushd (Averroe¨s,

d. 1198
CE
). In a short work titled
The Decisive Treatise Determining the Connection Between the Law and Wisdom,
Averroe¨s refutes Ghazali’s case against the Islamic Peripatetics by rejecting Ghazali’s understanding of philosophy as the production of rational knowledge beholden to the beliefs of its Greek founders. Averroe¨s maintains that philosophy as appropriated by Muslims should rather be understood as a legitimate practice within the constraints of Islam.

In
The Incoherence of the Philosophers,
Ghazali maintains that the Islamic Peripatetics held 20 theses that are false, three of which he considered so grave as to constitute heresy (
kufr
). Already in this account we see that Ghazali is approaching his Peripatetic rivals as heretics because of the theses they advance rather than because of their practices. The problematic theses endorsed by Muslim Peripatetics are (1) God does not know particulars, (2) the world is eternal, and (3) bodies are not resurrected. Ghazali refutes each of these theses in a painstakingly rational way, providing evidence from the Qur’an and other relevant sources. I will not relate the details of Ghazali’s arguments but rather show how Averroe¨s, in each instance, diminishes the force of the controversy and presents the philosophers as dealing with the Islamic revelation legitimately, albeit differently from Ghazali.

To begin, Averroe¨s argues that philosophers do not claim that God does not know particulars; they rather claim that He does not know them the way humans do. God knows particulars as their Creator whereas humans know them as a privileged creation of God might know them.
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In regard to the eternity of the world, Averroe¨s shows that the philosophers agree with Ghazali that there is a God, that God created existent things, and that the world (containing the existent things) extends infinitely into the future. What the dispute concerns is merely the past of the world. Philosophers argue that the world is without a beginning in time, whereas Ghazali disagrees. Averroe¨s argues that the scope of this disagreement is insufficient to constitute heresy and he also introduces Qur’anic verses to defend the Peripatetic view.
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Finally, as to the resurrection of bodies, Averroe¨s argues that Peripatetic phi- losophers agree with Ghazali that the soul is immortal and that bodies are resurrected on Judgment Day. The dispute rather turns on the issue of whether the bodies that will be resurrected will be the same material bodies that had perished previously. Islamic Peripatetics argue that ‘‘existence comes back only to a likeness of what has perished.’’
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More precisely, the resur- rected body is identical in its attributes to the perished body, but it is not composed of the same material. Again the point is that the difference in the position of the philosophers and that of Ghazali is insignifi nt and does not constitute grounds for the condemnation of the former as heretics.
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Voices of Change

Averroe¨s’s engagement in the above dialectical joust with Ghazali aims at mitigating the effects of the latter’s attack on the philosophers and is not the substance of his critique of Ghazali. This concerns Ghazali’s metaphi- losophical assumptions. Averroe¨s distinguishes between three forms of reasoning: rhetorical (
al-qiyas al-khitabi
), dialectical (
al-qiyas al-jadali
), and demonstrative (
al-qiyas al-burhani
). Rhetorical reasoning is the mode of discourse suitable to the public preacher and aims at persuasion by appeal- ing to the audience’s imagination and passions. Dialectical reasoning is the preferred method of the theologians, those who explore the truth through rational analysis and argumentation. Demonstrative reasoning, however, is the method of the philosopher, and it is interpretation (
ta’wil
) that gets at the origin (
awwal
) of things, in other words their truth. The fi two approaches begin with assumptions shared by and
apparent
to the multitude and then proceed to others based either on persuasive or rational norms. Only the demonstrative method goes beyond appearances and gets at the real:

God has been gracious to His servants for whom there is no path by means of demonstration—either due to their innate dispositions, their habits, or their lack of facilities for education—by coining for them likenesses (
al-amthal
) and simi- larities of these [hidden things] and calling them to assent by means of those likenesses, since it is possible for assent to those likenesses to come about by means of the indications shared by all—I mean, the dialectical and the rhetorical. This is the reason for the Law (
al-shar‘
) being divided into an apparent sense and an inner sense. For the apparent sense is those likenesses coined for those mean-

ings, and the inner sense is those meanings that reveal themselves only to those adept in demonstration.
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Demonstration is the method of getting at the reality of things, but God has provided—by means of revelation—likenesses of the real for those disinclined to engage in the demonstrative method. The Law, which includes the Qur’an and the Sunna, contains the images of the real. Theologians and preachers work on these images without seeking the originals. Philosophers, however, pierce the image and unveil the hidden original (
awwal
) through their certain interpretation (
al-ta‘wil al-yaqini
). Averroe¨s refers to the demonstrative
ta’wil
as the art of wisdom (
sin‘at al-hikma
),
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a practice that has something to do with aptitude (
al-fitra
), habit (
al-‘ada
), and training (
al-ta‘allum
). The articulation of
ta’wil
as an art that has to be cultivated in the person points to the practice of spiritual exercises as constituting the core of philosophy, geared toward molding the character and the mind such that one shuns images and falsehoods and becomes intimate with the source of truth, the Active Intellect. It is here that Averroe¨s’s principal criticism of Ghazali’s attack on the philosophers comes out. Ghazali, according to Averroe¨s, assesses philosophical theses as if they were theological ones (and harshly at

Is ‘‘Islamic’’ Philosophy Islamic?
37

that). Rather, philosophical principles, according to Averroe¨s, must be examined for their service to the practice of philosophy and the activity of aiming at the original (
ta’wil
).

Averroe¨s’s view also suggests that philosophy as
hikma
is aligned with Islam, but Muslim philosophers have the further advantage of working with the Islamic law and practices, and are therefore capable of a more direct insight into the truth. In the
Incoherence of the Incoherence,
a text devoted to a more detailed refutation of Ghazali’s attacks on the philosophers, Averroe¨s writes:

[Islamic Peripatetic philosophers] are of the opinion that a human being has no life in this abode but by means of practical arts, and no life in this abode or in the final abode but by means of theoretical virtues; that neither one of these two is completed or obtained by him but by means of the practical virtues; and that the practical virtues are not firmly established but through cognizance of God (may He be exalted) and magnifying Him by means of devotions set down in the law for them in each and every religion—such as offerings, prayers, invocations, and similar speeches spoken in praise of God (may He be exalted), the angels, and the prophets.
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It is evident then that Averroe¨s follows the earlier Muslim Peripatetics in understanding philosophy as a way of life aiming at the cultivation of virtues. Moreover, this cultivation is in accord with the Islamic revelation as contain- ing the truth and the practices leading to this truth in a way appealing to the imagination and the reason of the multitude. The reliance on Islamic law, practices, and beliefs as supplied by the revelations of the Prophet Muhammad makes Averroe¨s and his Peripatetic predecessors Muslims. This is a point that I have explored above in dealing with earlier Peripatetic prophetology. Perhaps it would be appropriate to end this section with Avicenna’s Persian quatrain, which he composed on being accused of heresy:

It is not so easy and trifling to call me a heretic; No faith in religion is firmer than mine.

I am a unique person in the whole world and if I am a heretic, Then there is not a single Muslim anywhere in the world.
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My aim in this chapter has been to argue that what makes Islamic philoso- phy Islamic is the philosophical prophetology advanced by its proponents. The first premise in the argument consists of the claim that philosophy as inherited from the Greeks was a way of life rather than a set of rational the- ories. This premise was established by reference to the scholarship of Hadot. I also surveyed accounts of ancient philosophy given by some prominent scholars of Islamic philosophy and criticized aspects of these accounts as

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Voices of Change

confl cting with the practical focus of philosophy. The second premise of the argument identifi the elements that constitute the ‘‘Islamicity’’ of Islamic philosophy. I argue that the central element of Islamic philosophy was not,
pace
Nasr, the combination of theory and self-transformative spiritual exercises. This combination, as I showed with regard to the first premise, was already present in ancient philosophy. Nasr’s view had as a corollary the privileging of the anti-Peripatetic posture of Avicenna’s later work and its relation to the Hermetico-Platonic Illuminationism advanced by Suhrawardi. I maintain that the central element making Islamic philoso- phy Islamic was the notion of Islamic philosophical prophetology and that versions of this prophetology were embraced by Muslim Peripatetics. In order to emphasize the Islamicity of Islamic Peripateticism, I defend this tradition against the charge of heresy brought to it by Ghazali. I argue with Averroe¨s that Ghazali misinterpreted the activity of philosophy (especially that of the Islamic Peripatetics) and that the charge of heresy is misplaced.

NOTES

1. Pierre Hadot,
   Philosophy as a Way of Life
   (Oxford, U.K.: Blackwell, 1995), 269.
   

2. Ibid., 267.

3. Ibid., 268.

4. Ibid., 264.