Avicenna's eastern ("oriental") philosophy nature, contents, transmission

Arabic Sciences and Philosophy

Volumn 10, Issue 2, 2000, Pages

  Gutas, Dimitri ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 1842643731     PISSN: 09574239     EISSN: 14740524     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/s0957423900000072     Document Type: Article

References (48)

1. It is now best to discontinue the use of "Oriental" as translation of the Arabic mašriqiyya. Although literally correct (oriens is Latin for East), the term is currently loaded with cultural concepts, peculiar to the late twentieth century, that should not be transferred to Avicenna's use of mašriqiyya, by which he merely intended to refer to the Islamic East, i.e., Hcombining breve belowurāsān. It is more advisable to use the neutral English term "Eastern." See the discussion of this point in D. Gutas, Avicenna and the Aristotelian Tradition. Introduction to Reading Avicenna's Philosophical Works, Islamic Theology and Philosophy, 4 (Leiden, 1988), p. 127
2. and note 26, with additional documentation in D. Gutas, "Ibn Tcombining dot belowufayl on Ibn Sīnā's Eastern Philosophy," Oriens, 34 (1994): 222-41, p. 223 note 2.
3. See the text in Gutas, Avicenna, p. 120, § 17.
4. The more recent mantric statements by someone like S.H. Nasr will be discussed in the following section.
5. The extant section on logic from Avicenna's work on Eastern philosophy was first published under the artificial title Mantcombining dot belowiq al-Mašriqiyyīn (Cairo, 1910). It was reprinted in a photographic reproduction in Tehran by the Maktabat al-Ǧa'farī al-Tabrīzī (no date given, but ca. 1970) and in Qum in 1985, and, in a new typeset, in Beirut in 1982, with an introduction by Šukrī al-Naǧǧar. See now H. Daiber, Bibliography of Islamic Philosophy (Leiden, 1999), vol. I, p. 477, no. 4607.
6. D. Gutas, "Avicenna: Mysticism," in Encyclopaedia Iranica, III, 82a-b;
7. and Gutas "Ibn Tcombining dot belowufayl," pp. 231-4.
8. The Arabic has 'alā mā hiya fī al-tcombining dot belowab', "as it is in nature." In my Avicenna book I had translated it "as it is in itself," taking the word tcombining dot belowab', nature, to refer to the nature of philosophy. In his review of my book, M. Marmura ("Plotting the course of Avicenna's thought," Journal of the American Oriental Society, 111 [1991]: 333-42, pp. 339-40) suggested that tcombining dot belowab' refers to the "natural cognitive activity" of the person doing philosophy. The parallels which Marmura adduces from Avicenna all have the expression bi-al-tcombining dot belowab', "by nature," and not fī al-tcombining dot belowab', "in nature," and thus are not precisely relevant; it is only al-Ġazālī who uses fī al-tcombining dot belowab' (p. 337a), which is a different matter. I am much more swayed to Marmura's interpretation by the words al-ra'y al-scombining dot belowarīhcombining dot below ("unbiased view") in the text of Avicenna immediately following. They clearly refer to the view of the person studying philosophy, and as such they can be taken to be parallel to the word tcombining dot belowab', which would also refer to the nature, i.e., natural intelligence, of the same person. In either case, however, the meaning would be roughly the same: a person who has an unbiased view, i.e., who is not misled by historical or accidental misinterpretations in his study of philosophy, can have a clear view of philosophy as it is in itself by letting his natural intelligence guide him.
9. Text in Ibn Sīnā, al-Šifā', al-Mantcombining dot belowiq, al-Madhcombining breve belowal, ed. El-Ahwani, Anawati, El-Khodeiri (Cairo, 1952), p. 10.11-17.
10. text in L. Gauthier, Hcombining dot belowayy Ben Yaqdhān. Roman philosophique d'Ibn Thofaïl (Beirut, 1936), pp. 14-15.
11. Ibn Tcombining dot belowufayl is defended against my thesis by A. Elamrani-Jamal "Expérience de la vision contemplative et forme du récit chez Ibn Tcombining dot belowufayl," in M.A. Amir-Moezzi (ed.), Le voyage initiatique en terre d'Islam (Louvain-Paris, 1996), p. 165, note 25.
12. He says that Ibn Tcombining dot belowufayl did not oppose the Šī' to the Eastern philosophy in terms of doctrine. This objection, however, overlooks Ibn Tcombining dot belowufayl's unambiguous statement that Avicenna claimed that the truth was something else than what was contained in the Šifā' (al-hcombining dot belowaqq 'indahu ġayru dcombining minus sign belowālika), a phrase which Elamrani-Jamal conveniently disregards. I do not see how else this phrase can be interpreted than as a statement of difference of doctrine between the two books. Ibn Tcombining dot belowufayl's phrase was understood to indicate a difference in doctrine also by his Arabophone contemporaries and successors, and possibly even by Averroes himself. There is a work against Avicenna that has survived only in Latin translation and would appear to be by Averroes (C. Steel and G. Guldentops, "An unknown treatise of Averroes against the Avicennians On the First Cause," Recherches de théologie et philosophie médié vales, 64 (1997): 86-135, pp. 98-9;
13. I am grateful to Carlos Steel for bringing this publication to my attention.) Averroes says there that he had met a man who had studied the works of Avicenna (possibly Ibn Tcombining dot belowufayl himself?) and who claimed that Avicenna held views which he "secretly demonstrated in his Oriental Philosophy." That man further "believed that Avicenna had explained the truth only in that Philosophy, whereas he had established in his writings many other theses to agree with his contemporaries" (et hoc est quod demonstravit occulte in sua philosophia orientali, in qua solum credidit se explanasse veritatem et quod multa posita in libris suis posuit ad concordandum cum eis). The phrase I emphasize here in both English and Latin is highly reminiscent of Ibn Tcombining dot belowufayl's statement that for Avicenna "the truth is something else" than what he had in the Šifā', which accordingly posits a doctrinal difference. Avicenna never said anything of the sort, and this fiction is therefore Ibn Tcombining dot belowufayl's creation. Elamrani-Jamal further argues that rather than creating a fiction, as I claim, about an exoteric and esoteric Avicenna, Ibn Tcombining dot belowufayl was justifiably led to such a view from Avicenna's own mention of allusions (talwīhcombining dot below) in the Šifā' in the passage cited above. This can hardly be maintained in this case because talwīhcombining dot below, allusion, is to be understood here in the context of the preceding maǧmaǧa (" indirection") in Avicenna's sentence, as any unbiased reader of Arabic would have done: the book of the Easterners does not contain any indirection, while the Šifā' does; what this indirection consists of is a conciliatory, elaborating, and allusive style rather than a straightforward exposition. It is impossible from this sentence to "supposer un aspect ésotérique dans le Šifā'," as Elamrani-Jamal claims Ibn Tcombining dot belowufayl did, unless one deliberately wanted to create such a fiction against the literal sense of Avicenna's words, as I claim. See also Gutas, "Ibn Tcombining dot belowufayl," p. 231 top. For examples of the conciliatory, elaborating, and allusive style of Avicenna in the Šifā' as opposed to the direct style of Eastern philosophy see below, section VI, and especially the example in §2.
14. Le Muséon, 4 (1885): 594-609, pp. 594-5.
15. A list of such scholars both before and after Mehren is provided by E. Panoussi in his dissertation, La notion de participation dans la philosophie d'Avicenne (Louvain, 1967) [now in Louvain-la-Neuve], pp. 28-9
16. repeated by R. Macuch in his article, "Greek and oriental sources of Avicenna's and Sohrawardi's theosophies," Graeco-Arabica [Athens] 2 (1983): 9-22, p. 11.
17. He does so in terms of his own epistemological theory, but with occasional use of sufi vocabulary (e.g. irāda, waqt) in an effort to incorporate its referents also into his philosophical system, much as he had done earlier with other manifestations of religious life (prayer, visitation of saints' tombs, etc.); this chapter is not a "mystical" treatise in the sense intended by Mehren (and all those who followed this implication). Fahcombining breve belowr al-Dīn al-Rāzī, who is usually cited in support of a mystical interpretation of the last three chapters of the Išārāt (e.g., by Marmura, below in this note, and by Inati, as in note 20 below), actually said the following of this 9th chapter: Avicenna "arranged in it the varieties of knowledge of the sufis in a way that was both unprecedented and unsuperseded" (fa-innahu rattaba 'ulūma al-scombining dot belowūfiyyati tartīban mā sabaqahu ilayhi man qablahu wa-lā lahcombining dot belowiqahu man ba'dahu), in Šarhcombining dot beloway al-Išārāt (Cairo, 1325), vol. 2, p. 100.-3.
18. From the context it is clear that what Fahcombining breve belowr al-Dīn means by 'ulūm al-scombining dot belowūfiyya is the "knowledges of the sufis," i.e., the varieties or grades of knowledge, and not "the sciences of the Sufis" as translated by Marmura, "Plotting the course of Avicenna's thought," p. 342a top. This is clear because Avicenna does not talk in this chapter about all (or any of) the sciences of the sufis but only about the grades of knowledge of those who know ('ārifūn). Regardless whether or not one wants to identify "those who know" with sufis - Avicenna never uses the word "scombining dot belowūfi" once in that chapter - the fact remains that even Fahcombining breve belowr al-Dīn al-Rāzī is not claiming that this chapter is about all of sufism or all the "sciences" of the sufis, as those modern interpreters who cite him for support claim. Second, and this is even more egregious, Fahcombining breve belowr al-Dīn al-Rāzī claims a sufi subject only for chapter/namatcombining dot below 9 of Part II of the Išārāt - not for all of the last three chapters, not for the Išārāt as a whole, and certainly not for all those other treatises published by Mehren as "mystical" and unreflectingly accepted as such by most modern scholars. Finally, and it is well worth mentioning here, it is instructive to see what Avicenna really thought of sufism when he does mention the word. At the very beginning of the Physics of the Šifā' (al-Samā' al-tcombining dot belowabī'ī, ed. Sa'īd Zayed [Cairo, 1983], p. 21.4), when discussing inappropriate, confusing, and anthropomorphic (matter = female, form = male) use of technical terminology, he compares it to the way sufis talk and contrasts it with the discourse of philosophers: "From these things it becomes difficult to understand this talk (kalām) which resembles more the talk of the sufis than it does the talk of philosophers (al-kalām alladcombining minus sign belowī huwa ašbahu bikalāmi al-scombining dot belowūfiyyati minhu bi-kalāmi al-falāsifa). Avicenna had a low opinion even of dialectical talk by theologians, let alone sufi talk, for which he exhibits here even greater contempt. Manifestly he is not endorsing sufism or all "the sciences of the Sufis" in the Išārāt. For a similar sentiment about "sufi talk" see his letter to the scholars of Baghdad in Ehsan Yarshater (ed.), Panǧ Resāla (Tehran, 1332 Š), p. 74.
19. G.C. Anawati, Mu'allafāt Ibn Sīnā (Cairo, 1950), nos 213-44.
20. First printing (Cairo, 1958), p. 747;
21. second printing (Cairo, 1968), Part 4, p. 5.
22. I checked MS Istanbul Nuruosmaniye 4894, fol. 229r, middle of the page. Also the nine manuscripts upon which are based the editions by Forget and Mehren himself have no such indication: J. Forget, Ibn Sīnā, Le livre des théorèmes et des avertissements (Leiden, 1892), p. 190;
23. Mehren's second fascicle (Leiden, 1891), p. 1 (Arabic).
24. for the last two see al-Išārāt wa-al- Tanbīhāt ... ma'a al-Šarhcombining dot below li-...al-Tcombining dot belowūsī wa-Šarhcombining dot below al-Šarhcombining dot below li- ... Qutcombining dot belowb al-Dīn ... al-Rāzī (Qum, 1375Š), vol. 3, p. 334.
25. Ibn Sīnā and Mysticism (London and New York, 1996).
26. See the text from his al-Mašāri' (195 Corbin) cited in my Avicenna, p. 118, no. 13.
27. The Iranian tradition of reading Avicenna in an illuminationist way is so dominant, even to this day, that scholarly investigations of the historical Avicenna (and not what later tradition made of him) cannot even be envisaged by its followers. A pertinent example is provided by the astonishment exhibited by Ch. Jambet, Corbin's hierophant, who could not believe how anyone could deny (as I did), against the entire Iranian tradition, that Avicenna was a mystic and illuminationist. Reviewing my entry on "Avicenna and mysticism" in the Encyclopaedia Iranica (III, 79-83), he exclaimed, rhetorically, "Il faut que les avicenniens d'Orient (Sohravardi en tête) et toute une tradition de la philosophie iranienne se trompe, et que D. Gutas ait raison," Abstracta Iranica, 13 (1990): 81-2.
28. S.H. Nasr, "Ibn Sīnā's Oriental philosophy'," in S.H. Nasr and O. Leaman (eds), History of Islamic Philosophy (London and New York, 1996), p. 250. Nasr's essay is written in an almost complete bibliographical vacuum: apart from the lack of references to primary sources, the only secondary references are to the works of Corbin and his own. Substantiated interpretations of the Eastern philosophy that differ from Nasr's, such as those of Nallino, Goichon, Pines, or my own, are completely disregarded without argumentation (though some of the names are mentioned). This type of doing scholarship, which can be called the "ostrich method" of hiding the head in the sand, is particularly inappropriate for a book such as that in which this essay appeared, which purports to have the nature of an encyclopedia containing mainstream views.
29. On the Cairo manuscript and its scribe see D. Gutas, "Notes and texts from Cairo manuscripts, II: Texts from Avicenna's Library in a copy by 'Abd-ar-Razzāq asScombining dot belowiġnāhcombining breve belowī," Manuscripts of the Middle East, 2 (1987): 8-17.
30. I would like to take this opportunity to make two additions to that article, with thanks to David C. Reisman and Ahmad Hasnawi respectively who brought them to my attention. On p. 12b, add to paragraph 4.iii.β or γ: "MS Ankara, Ismail Saib 4605, copied 696H, referred to in M.T. Dānišpajūh, Fihrist-i Mīkrūfilm-hā-yi Kitābhcombining breve belowānah-i Markazī-i Dānišgāh-i Tcombining dot belowihrān (Tehran, 1348Š), vol. I, p. 449, no. 6; no ff. references given."
31. On p. 13a, add a new paragraph, numbered 4.1, before §5: "f. 151v. Hcombining dot belowuǧaǧ Aflātcombining dot belowūn 'alā baqā' annafs, ed. Badawī 73.15-74. Translation and study by Ahmad Hasnawi, 'Deux textes en arabe sur les preuves platoniciennes de l'immortalité de l'âme,' Medioevo, 23 (1997): 395-399."
32. Tatimma [sic] Scombining dot belowiwān al-hcombining dot belowikma of 'Alī b. Zaid al-Baihakcombining dot belowi, ed. M. Shafī' (Lahore, 1935), p. 56
33. = Gutas, Avicenna, p. 117, no. 11a.
34. Mantcombining dot belowiq al-Mašriqiyyīn, pp. 5-8.
35. This would seem to be a justifiable extrapolation: a first fann (i.e., no. 1.a above) must be followed by a second, while the Išārā t, the other work by Avicenna which is roughly contemporary with al-Hcombining dot belowikma al-mašriqiyya, also has sections on these parts of logic except poetry.
36. See the detailed list of contents in the table below, Section VII.
37. Two of those manuscripts are described in two articles by G.C. Anawati, "Un manuscrit de la Hikma Mashriqiyya d'Ibn Sina," MIDEO, 1 (1954): 164-5
38. and "Le manuscript Nour Osmaniyye 4894," MIDEO, 3 (1956): 381-6.
39. A. Hcombining dot belowusaynī and M. Mar'ašī, Fihrist-i nushcombining breve belowah-hā-yi hcombining breve belowatcombining dot belowtcombining dot belowī-i Kitābhcombining breve belowānah-yi 'umūmī-i Hcombining dot belowadcombining dot belowrat-i Āyatullāh al-'uzcombining dot belowmā Naǧafi Mar'ašī (Qum 1354Š/1975), vol. I, p. 313.
40. M.T. Dānišpajūh, Fihrist-i kitāb-hā-yi hcombining breve belowatcombining dot belowtcombining dot belowī-i Kitābhcombining breve belowānah-yi Maǧlis-i Sanā (Tehran, 1355 Š), vol. I, p. 44. I am grateful to David C. Reisman for bringing this and the previous manuscript to my attention.
41. F. Rahman, Avicenna's De Anima (London, 1959).
42. The text of the Physics part of the work was printed in a Marmara University dissertation by Ahmet Özcan, İbn Sîna'nin El-Hikmetu'l-Meşrikiyye adli eseri ve tabiat felsefesi (Istanbul, 1993). Özcan transcribed the text from MS Nuruosmaniye 4894 and added an occasional variant from MS Aya Sofya 2403 (which, however, is given in his Bibliography, p. 219, as "Nuruosmaniye 2403!). There is no critical apparatus or notes in the body of the work, which does not contribute anything to research; one is advised to use MS Nuruosmaniye 4894 directly. (I am indebted to Jules Janssens for first bringing this dissertation to my attention and to Jean Michot for providing me with a copy of the text.)
43. The scribe of this, the second, part of the manuscript is listed as Yaqob ben Yizcombining dot belowhcombining dot belowaq hal-Levi Y'rushalmi by A. Neubauer, Catalogue of the Hebrew Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library (Oxford, 1886), p. 475a, no. 1334;
44. the scribe mentioned by Tzvi Langermann is, according to Neubauer again, responsible for the first part of the manuscript: see Y. Tzvi Langermann, "Arabic writings in Hebrew manuscripts: A preliminary listing," Arabic Sciences and Philosophy, 6 (1996): 137-60, p. 157. The owners include Abraham bar Yoseph, Sh'muel bar Hcombining dot belowananel ben Yahcombining dot belowyah, and his son Yoseph. My investigations and inquiries so far have not yielded their identity. Charles Manekin and Mauro Zonta inform me, on the basis of Malachi Beit-Arie's Supplement to Neubauer's Catalogue (Oxford, 1994), that the script of the Bodleian MS is oriental cursive. My thanks go to them both.
45. In a private communication by Charles Manekin, to whom I am deeply indebted. Manekin refers me, i.a., to Walter Mettmann, Mostrador de justicia (Opladen, 1994), pp. 160, 235.
46. MS III. Ahmet 2125, fol. 660r5-7: innahu qad hcombining dot belowukiya fī al-ta'līmi al-awwali wafi kitābi al-Šifā'i ārā'u al-qudamā'i fī māhiyyati al-nafsi wa-ihcombining breve belowtilāfātuhum fihā waūrida fī al-mawdcombining dot belowi'ayni ǧamī'an munāqādcombining dot belowātuhum fa-man ahcombining dot belowabba ma'rifata dcombining minus sign belowālika fa-l-yarǧi' ilayhā wa-hunā naqtascombining dot belowiru 'alā bayāni al-ra'yi al-hcombining dot belowaqqi. It is to be noted that by al-ta'lim al-awwal Avicenna always refers to the works of Aristotle.
47. The later dating for this work proposed by J.R. Michot, La destinée de l'homme selon Avicenne (Louvain, 1986), p. 6, n. 29, even if correct, does not affect my argument here.
48. In A.F. al-Ahwānī, Ahcombining dot belowwāl al-nafs (Cairo, 1371/1952), p. 57.4-6.