The Development of Metaphysics in Persia Part 5

The Isma'ilian doctrine is the first attempt to amalgamate contemporary Philosophy with a really Persian view of the Universe, and to restate Islam, in reference to this synthesis, by allegorical interpretation of the Qur'an--a method which was afterwards adopted by ?ufiism. With them the Zoroastrian Ahriman (Devil) is not the malignant creator of evil things but it is a principle which violates the eternal unity, and breaks it up into visible diversity. The idea that some principle of difference in the nature of the ultimate existence must be postulated in order to account for empirical diversity, underwent further modifications; until in the ?urufi sect (an offshoot of the Isma'ilia), in the fourteenth century, it touched contemporary ?ufiism on the one hand, and Christian Trinity on the other. The "Be", maintained the ?urufis, is the eternal word of G.o.d, which, itself uncreated, leads to further creation--the word externalised. "But for the 'word' the recognition of the essence of Divinity would have been impossible; since Divinity is beyond the reach of sense--perception"[64:1]. The 'word', therefore, became flesh in the womb of Mary[64:2] in order to manifest the Father. The whole Universe is the manifestation of G.o.d's 'word', in which He is immanent[64:3]. Every sound in the Universe is within G.o.d; every atom is singing the song of eternity[64:4]; all is life. Those who want to discover the ultimate reality of things, let them seek "the named" through the Name[65:1], which at once conceals and reveals its subject.

[64:1] Jawidan Kabir, fol. 149a.

[64:2] Jawidan Kabir, fol. 280a.

[64:3] Jawidan Kabir, fol. 366b.

[64:4] Jawidan Kabir, fol. 155b.

[65:1] Jawidan Kabir, fol. 382a.

-- III.

Reaction against Rationalism.

The As_h_'arite.

Patronised by the early Caliphs of the House of 'Abbas, Rationalism continued to flourish in the intellectual centres of the Islamic world; until, in the first half of the 9th century, it met the powerful orthodox reaction which found a very energetic leader in Al-As_h_'ari (b, 873 A.D.) who studied under Rationalist teachers only to demolish, by their own methods, the edifice they had so laboriously built. He was a pupil of Al-Jubba'i[65:2]--the representative of the younger school of Mu'tazilaism in Ba?ra--with whom he had many controversies[65:3] which eventually terminated their friendly relations, and led the pupil to bid farewell to the Mu'tazila camp. "The fact", says Spitta, "that Al-As_h_'ari was so thoroughly a child of his time with the successive currents of which he let himself go, makes him, in another relation, an important figure to us. In him, as in any other, are clearly reflected the various tendencies of this politically as well as religiously interesting period; and we seldom find ourselves in a position to weigh the power of the orthodox confession and the Mu'tazilite speculation, the child-like helpless manner of the one, the immaturity and imperfection of the other, so completely as in the life of this man who was orthodox as a boy and a Mu'tazila as a young man"[66:1]. The Mu'tazila speculation (e.g. Al-Ja?iz) tended to be absolutely unfettered, and in some cases led to a merely negative att.i.tude of thought. The movement initiated by Al-As_h_'ari was an attempt not only to purge Islam of all non-Islamic elements which had quietly crept into it, but also to harmonize the religious consciousness with the religious thought of Islam. Rationalism was an attempt to measure reality by reason alone; it implied the ident.i.ty of the spheres of religion and philosophy, and strove to express faith in the form of concepts or terms of pure thought. It ignored the facts of human nature, and tended to disintegrate the solidarity of the Islamic Church. Hence the reaction.

[65:2] Extracts from Ibn 'Asakir (Mehren)--Travaux de la troisieme session du Congres International des Orientalistes--p.

261.

[65:3] Spitta: Zur Geschichte Abul-?asan Al-As_h_'ari, pp. 42, 43. See also Ibn K_h_allikan (Gottingen 1839)--Al-Jubba'i, where the story of their controversy is given.

[66:1] Spitta: Vorwort, p. VII.

The orthodox reaction led by the As_h_'arite then was, in reality, nothing more than the transfer of dialectic method to the defence of the authority of Divine Revelation. In opposition to the Rationalists, they maintained the doctrine of the Attributes of G.o.d; and, as regards the Free Will controversy, they adopted a course lying midway between the extreme fatalism of the old school, and the extreme libertarianism of the Rationalists. They teach that the power of choice as well as all human actions are created by G.o.d; and that man has been given the power of acquiring[67:1] the different modes of activity. But Fak_h_ral-Din Razi, who in his violent attack on philosophy was strenuously opposed by Tusi and Qutbal-Din, does away with the idea of "acquisition", and openly maintains the doctrine of necessity in his commentary on the Qur'an. The Mataridiyya--another school of anti-rationalist theology, founded by Abu Man?ur Mataridi a native of Matarid in the environs of Samarqand--went back to the old rationalist position, and taught in opposition to the As_h_'arite, that man has absolute control over his activity; and that his power affects the very nature of his actions.

Al-As_h_'ari's interest was purely theological; but it was impossible to harmonise reason and revelation without making reference to the ultimate nature of reality. Baqilani[68:1] therefore, made use of some purely metaphysical propositions (that substance is an individual unity; that quality cannot exist in quality; that perfect vacuum is possible.) in his Theological investigation, and thus gave the school a metaphysical foundation which it is our main object to bring out. We shall not, therefore, dwell upon their defence of orthodox beliefs (e.g. that the Qur'an is uncreated; that the visibility of G.o.d is possible etc.); but we shall endeavour to pick up the elements of metaphysical thought in their theological controversies. In order to meet contemporary philosophers on their own ground, they could not dispense with philosophising; hence willingly or unwillingly they had to develop a theory of knowledge peculiar to themselves.

[67:1] S_h_ahrastani--ed. Cureton, p. 69.

[68:1] Martin Schreiner: Zur Geschichte des Ash'aritenthums.

(Huitieme Congres International des Orientalistes 1889, p. 82).

G.o.d, according to the As_h_'arite, is the ultimate necessary existence which "carries its attributes in its own being"[69:1]; and whose existence (wujud) and essence (Mahiyyat) are identical. Besides the argument from the contingent character of motion they used the following arguments to prove the existence of this ultimate principle:--

(1). All bodies, they argue, are one in so far as the phenomenal fact of their existence is concerned. But in spite of this unity, their qualities are different and even opposed to each other. We are, therefore, driven to postulate an ultimate cause in order to account for their empirical divergence.

[69:1] Martin Schreiner: Zur Geschichte des Ash'aritenthums.

(Huitieme Congres International des Orientalistes II{me} Partie 1893, p. 113).

(2). Every contingent being needs a cause to account for its existence.

The Universe is contingent; therefore it must have a cause; and that cause is G.o.d. That the Universe is contingent, they proved in the following manner. All that exists in the Universe, is either substance or quality. The contingence of quality is evident, and the contingence of substance follows from the fact that no substance could exist apart from qualities. The contingence of quality necessitates the contingence of substance; otherwise the eternity of substance would necessitate the eternity of quality. In order fully to appreciate the value of this argument, it is necessary to understand the As_h_'arite theory of knowledge. To answer the question, "What is a thing?" they subjected to a searching criticism the Aristotelian categories of thought, and arrived at the conclusion that bodies have no properties in themselves[70:1]. They made no distinction of secondary and primary qualities of a body, and reduced all of them to purely subjective relations. Quality too became with them a mere accident without which the substance could not exist. They used the word substance or atom with a vague implication of externality; but their criticism, actuated by a pious desire to defend the idea of divine creation, reduced the Universe to a mere show of ordered subjectivities which, as they maintained like Berkeley, found their ultimate explanation in the Will of G.o.d. In his examination of human knowledge regarded as a product and not merely a process, Kant stopped at the idea of "Ding an sich", but the As_h_'arite endeavoured to penetrate further, and maintained, against the contemporary Agnostic-Realism, that the so called underlying essence existed only in so far as it was brought in relation to the knowing subject. Their atomism, therefore, approaches that of Lotze[71:1] who, in spite of his desire to save external reality, ended in its complete reduction to ideality. But like Lotze they could not believe their atoms to be the inner working of the Infinite Primal Being. The interest of pure monotheism was too strong for them. The necessary consequence of their a.n.a.lysis of matter is a thorough going idealism like that of Berkeley; but perhaps their instinctive realism combined with the force of atomistic tradition, still compels them to use the word "atom" by which they endeavour to give something like a realistic coloring to their idealism. The interest of dogmatic theology drove them to maintain towards pure Philosophy an att.i.tude of criticism which taught her unwilling advocates how to philosophise and build a metaphysics of their own.

[70:1] See Macdonald's admirable account of the As_h_'arite Metaphysics: Muslim Theology p. 201 sq. See also Maulana S_h_ibli 'Ilmal Kalam pp. 60, 72.

[71:1] "Lotze is an atomist, but he does not conceive the atoms themselves as material; for extension, like all other sensuous qualities is explained through the reciprocal action of atoms; they themselves, therefore, cannot possess this quality. Like life and like all empirical qualities, the sensuous fact of extension is due to the cooperation of points of force, which, in time, must be conceived as starting points of the inner workings of the Infinite Primal Being." Hoffding Vol. II, p.

516.

But a more important and philosophically more significant aspect of the As_h_'arite Metaphysics, is their att.i.tude towards the Law of Causation[72:1]. Just as they repudiated all the principles of optics[72:2] in order to show, in opposition to the Rationalists, that G.o.d could be visible in spite of His being unextended, so with a view to defend the possibility of miracles, they rejected the idea of causation altogether. The orthodox believed in miracles as well as in the Universal Law of Causation; but they maintained that, at the time of manifesting a miracle, G.o.d suspended the operation of this law. The As_h_'arite, however, starting with the supposition that cause and effect must be similar, could not share the orthodox view, and taught that the idea of power is meaningless, and that we know nothing but floating impressions, the phenomenal order of which is determined by G.o.d.

[72:1] S_h_ibli 'Ilmal-Kalam pp. 64, 72.

[72:2] S_h_ahrastani, ed. Cureton, p. 82.

Any account of the As_h_'arite metaphysics would be incomplete without a notice of the work of Al-G_h_azali (d. 1111 A.D.) who though misunderstood by many orthodox theologians, will always be looked upon as one of the greatest personalities of Islam. This sceptic of powerful ability antic.i.p.ated Descartes[73:1] in his philosophical method; and, "seven hundred years before Hume cut the bond of causality with the edge of his dialectic"[73:2]. He was the first to write a systematic refutation of philosophy, and completely to annihilate that dread of intellectualism which had characterised the orthodox. It was chiefly his influence that made men study dogma and metaphysics together, and eventually led to a system of education which produced such men as S_h_ahrastani, Al-Razi and Al-Is_h_raqi. The following pa.s.sage indicates his att.i.tude as a thinker:--

"From my childhood I was inclined to think out things for myself. The result of this att.i.tude was that I revolted against authority; and all the beliefs that had fixed themselves in my mind from childhood lost their original importance. I thought that such beliefs based on mere authority were equally entertained by Jews, Christians, and followers of other religions. Real knowledge must eradicate all doubt. For instance, it is self-evident that ten is greater than three. If a person, however, endeavours to prove the contrary by an appeal to his power of turning a stick into a snake, the performance would indeed be wonderful, though it cannot touch the certainty of the proposition in question"[75:1]. He examined afterwards, all the various claimants of "Certain Knowledge"

and finally found it in ?ufiism.

[73:1] "It (Al-Ghazali's work on the Revivication of the sciences of religion) has so remarkable a resemblance to the _Discourse sur la methode_ of Descartes, that had any translation of it existed in the days of Descartes everyone would have cried against the plagiarism". (Lewes's History of Philosophy: Vol. II. p. 50).

[73:2] Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 20, p.

103.

[75:1] Al-Munqid_h_ p. 3.

With their view of the nature of substance, the As_h_'arite, rigid monotheists as they were, could not safely discuss the nature of the human soul. Al-G_h_azali alone seriously took up the problem, and to this day it is difficult to define, with accuracy, his view of the nature of G.o.d. In him, like Borger and Solger in Germany, ?ufi pantheism and the As_h_'arite dogma of personality appear to harmonise together, a reconciliation which makes it difficult to say whether he was a Pantheist, or a Personal Pantheist of the type of Lotze. The soul, according to Al-G_h_azali, perceives things. But perception as an attribute can exist only in a substance or essence which is absolutely free from all the attributes of body. In his Al-Madnun[75:2], he explains why the prophet declined to reveal the nature of the soul.

There are, he says, two kinds of men; ordinary men and thinkers. The former who look upon materiality as a condition of existence, cannot conceive an immaterial substance. The latter are led, by their logic, to a conception of the soul which sweeps away all difference between G.o.d and the individual soul. Al-G_h_azali, therefore, realised the Pantheistic drift of his own inquiry, and preferred silence as to the ultimate nature of the soul.

[75:2] See Sir Sayyid A?mad's criticism of Al-G_h_azali's view of the soul, Al-Nazrufi ba'di Masaili-l Imami-l humam Abu ?amid Al-G_h_azali; No. 4, p. 3 sq. (ed. Agra).

He is generally included among the As_h_'arite. But strictly speaking he is not an As_h_'arite; though he admitted that the As_h_'arite mode of thought was excellent for the ma.s.ses. "He held", says S_h_ibli ('Ilmal-Kalam, p. 66.), "that the secret of faith could not be revealed; for this reason he encouraged exposition of the As_h_'arite theology, and took good care in persuading his immediate disciples not to publish the results of his private reflection". Such an att.i.tude towards the As_h_'arite theology, combined with his constant use of philosophical language, could not but lead to suspicion. Ibn Jauzi, Qa?i 'Iya?, and other famous theologians of the orthodox school, publicly denounced him as one of the "misguided"; and 'Iya? went even so far as to order the destruction of all his philosophical and theological writings that existed in Spain.

It is, therefore, clear that while the dialectic of Rationalism destroyed the personality of G.o.d, and reduced divinity to a bare indefinable universality, the antirationalist movement, though it preserved the dogma of personality, destroyed the external reality of nature. In spite of Nazzam's theory of "Atomic objectification"[77:1], the atom of the Rationalist possesses an independent objective reality; that of the As_h_'arite is a fleeting moment of Divine Will. The one saves nature, and tends to do away with the G.o.d of Theology; the other sacrifices nature to save G.o.d as conceived by the orthodox. The G.o.d-intoxicated ?ufi who stands aloof from the Theological controversies of the age, saves and spiritualises both the aspects of existence, and looks upon the whole Universe as the self-revelation of G.o.d--a higher notion which synthesises the opposite extremes of his predecessors.

"Wooden-legged" Rationalism, as the ?ufi called it, speaks its last word in the sceptic Al-G_h_azali, whose restless soul, after long and hopeless wanderings in the desolate sands of dry intellectualism, found its final halting place in the still deep of human emotion. His scepticism is directed more to substantiate the necessity of a higher source of knowledge than merely to defend the dogma of Islamic Theology, and, therefore, marks the quiet victory of ?ufiism over all the rival speculative tendencies of the time.

[77:1] Ibn ?azm, Vol. V, p. 63, 64, where the author states and criticises this theory.

Al-G_h_azali's positive contribution to the Philosophy of his country, however, is found in his little book--Mis_h_katal-Anwar--where he starts with the Quranic verse, "G.o.d is the light of heavens and earth", and instinctively returns to the Iranian idea, which was soon to find a vigorous expounder in Al-Is_h_raqi. Light, he teaches in this book, is the only real existence; and there is no darkness greater than non-existence. But the essence of Light is manifestation: "it is attributed to manifestation which is a relation"[78:1]. The Universe was created out of darkness on which G.o.d sprinkled[79:1] his own light, and made its different parts more or less visible according as they received more or less light. As bodies differ from one another in being dark, obscure, illuminated or illuminating, so men are differentiated from one another. There are some who illuminate other human beings; and, for this reason, the Prophet is named "The Burning Lamp" in the Qur'an.

[78:1] Mis_h_katal-Anwar, fol. 3a.

[79:1] In support of this view Al-G_h_azali quotes a tradition of the prophet. Mis_h_katal-Anwar, fol. 10a.

The physical eye sees only the external manifestation of the Absolute or Real Light. There is an internal eye in the heart of man which, unlike the physical eye, sees itself as other things, an eye which goes beyond the finite, and pierces the veil of manifestation. These thoughts are merely germs, which developed and fructified in Al-Is_h_raqi's "Philosophy of Illumination"--?ikmatal-Is_h_raq.

Such is the As_h_'arite philosophy.

One great theological result of this reaction was that it checked the growth of freethought which tended to dissolve the solidarity of the Church. We are, however, concerned more with the purely intellectual results of the As_h_'arite mode of thought, and these are mainly two:--

(1). It led to an independent criticism of Greek philosophy as we shall see presently.

(2). In the beginning of the 10th century when the As_h_'arite had almost completely demolished the stronghold of Rationalism, we see a tendency towards what may be called Persian Positivism. Al-Biruni[80:1]

(d. 1048) and Ibn Hait_h_am[80:2] (d. 1038) who antic.i.p.ated modern empirical Psychology in recognising what is called reaction-time, gave up all inquiry concerning the nature of the supersensual, and maintained a prudent silence about religious matters. Such a state of things could have existed, but could not have been logically justified before Al-As_h_'ari.

[80:1] He (Al-Biruni) quotes with approval the following, as the teaching of the adherents of Aryabhatta: It is enough for us to know that which is lighted up by the sun's rays. Whatever lies beyond, though it should be of immeasurable extent, we cannot make use of; for what the sunbeam does not reach, the senses do not perceive, and what the senses do not perceive we cannot know. From this we gather what Al-Biruni's Philosophy was: only sense-perceptions, knit together by a logical intelligence, yield sure knowledge. (Boer's Philosophy in Islam, p. 146).