[lit-ideas] Avicenna Pantheist, Claims 101 Year-Old Text!
- From: Scribe1865@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 14 Apr 2004 00:10:45 EDT
Here's a brief squibbet from 101-year old text. It would be rather
enlightening if those with more specialized knowledge (Mike? Anyone?) could
skewer it
and highlight its ethnocentric errors, mistakes, and outmoded views. -Eric
from http://www.nd.edu/Departments/Maritain/etext/hop36.htm
History of Philosophy
by William Turner, S.T.D.
[CHAPTER XXXVI
THE PANTHEISTIC SCHOOL]
ARABIAN PHILOSOPHY
The Arabians received Aristotle's works from the Syrians and Persians, who in
529 gave shelter to the philosophers banished from Athens by Justinian. The
most important of the translators and commentators who made Aristotle and Plato
intelligible to these Oriental peoples are David the Armenian (sixth
century), the Nestorian Christians of the schools of Edessa and Chalcis (fifth
and
sixth centuries), and Honain ben Isaac, who, in the ninth century, began a
series
of translations from Syriac into Arabic. It is, therefore, beyond dispute
that the Arabians owe their knowledge of Greek philosophy to the Syrian
Christians.
Sources. The classic works on Arabian philosophy are: Munk, Mélanges, etc.
(Paris, 1859); articles by Munk in the Dictionnaire des sciences
philosophiques;
Renan's De Philosophia peripatetica apud Syros (Paris, 1852), and his
Averroès et l'Averroïsme (Paris, 1869). To the bibliography given by Weber (p.
211)
and Ueberweg (p. 406) add M. Forget's articles in Néo-Scolastique (1894),
Figuier, Vies des savants du Moyen Age (Paris, 2883), and De Vaux, Avicenne
(Paris,
1900).
SKETCH OF SYSTEMS OF PHILOSOPHY AMONG THE ARABIANS
Speculative thought among the Arabians passed through the following phases:
1. Primitive unquestioning belief in the Koran. From the middle of the
seventh century until the middle of the eighth, the authority of the Koran was
supreme among the followers of Mahomet.
2. Motazilites, or dissidents. This sect represented a rationalistic movement
against the orthodox fatalism and anthropomorphism, -- a movement occasioned
by the contact (A.D. 750) of the Mussulman with the civilization of Persia,
Bahylonia, and Assyria.
3. Motacallimîn, or professors of the word. These were the first theologians
of Islam. In their effort to expound the Koran rationalistically, and yet
without exceeding the limits of orthodox belief, and in the use which they made
of
the philosophy of the Greeks, they resemble the schoolmen of Christian
Europe. The Motacallimin received encouragement and patronage from the
Abbassides,
who began to rule as caliphs about the year 750.
4. Sufis, or mystics. These represented a more extreme phase of the
theological reaction against rationalism. They flourished chiefly in the
Persian
portion of the Arabian empire. Distrusting reason and philosophy, they taught
that
the only source of truth is the Koran, and that the reading of the Koran is to
be supplemented by ecstatic contemplation.
5. Philosophers. The philosophical movement among the Arabians extended from
the ninth century to the end of the twelfth. The philosophers were, in a
sense, the continuators of the dissident movement. As a rule, they disregarded
the
authority of the Koran, and built their systems of philosophy upon lines
traced by the Greeks, whose works they obtained from the Syrian Christians.
They
were opposed by the mystics and persecuted by the caliphs both in Asia and in
Europe.
The chief philosophers are: (1) Among the Arabians of the East, Alkendi (died
870), Alfarabi (died 950), Avicenna (Ibn Sina) (980-1037), and Algazel
(1059-1111); (2) Among the Arabians of the West, that is, in Spain, Avempace
(died
1138), Abubacer (1100-1185), and Averroes (Ibn Roshd) (1126-1198).
Avicenna, physician, philosopher, and theologian, was born in the province of
Bokhara. He composed a medical Canon and numerous philosophical works in
which he expounded the doctrines of Aristotle and of his Greek commentators. He
devoted special attention to metaphysics, maintaining the existence of a
Sovereign Intelligence as the highest reality, and of matter, or the
non-existent, as
the lowest in the scale of being. The first emanation from the Supreme
Intelligence is the active intellect, to which Avicenna assigns a metaphysical
as
well as a psychological rôle, teaching that it is the source of all heavenly
and
earthly intellects, and that it is the principle by which the potentially
intelligible becomes actually intelligible to the human mind.{11}
Despite these Neo-Platonic principles, Avicenna maintained the Aristotelian
doctrine of sensation and the moderate realistic doctrine of universals. The
latter he expressed in the formula so often quoted by Albert and other
schoolmen: "Intellectus in formis agit universalitatem." His definition of the
soul{12}
is identical with Aristotle's: "Completa definitio animae est perfectio prima
vel actus primus corporis organici." Still, he returns to Neo-Platonic
principles in his account of the origin of intellectual knowledge, as when{13}
he
teaches that intelligible species are acquired in two ways: by rational
discourse, or demonstration, and by infusion ("infusio vel manatio divina").
Both St. Thomas and Albertus Magnus ascribe to Avicenna the doctrine of the
unity and transcendency of the active intellect. The former says:{14}
"Intellectum agentem ponit Avicenna quandam substantiam separatam,"{15}
"Avicenna ponit
quod intellectus agens est unus in omnibus, quamvis non intellectus
possibilis."
Historical Position. Avicenna was the first of the Arabians of the East to
depart from the Neo-Platonic interpretation of Aristotle. The remnant of
Neo-Platonism in his system of philosophy is proof of his inability to escape
altogether from the influence of his predecessors. Averroës, who represents the
Arabian philosophy of the West, looked upon Avicenna as a materialistic
pantheist;
Algazel and other mystics regarded him as a rationalist; and many of the
schoolmen spoke of him as the first of the mediaeval Occasionalists. [emphasis
mine- EY]
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