[lit-ideas] Re: The 'Near-Eastern' influences on the Greek philosophy, sc...

  • From: Robert.Paul@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Robert Paul)
  • To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: 13 Apr 2004 00:31:27 PDT

Mike Chase asks, learnedly:

What precisely are the Avicennian claims that led to the 
accusation of pantheism? How widespread was this accusation? There 
surely must be more to the claim than the alleged existence of a 
title-free work that appears to have been unavailable to the West. If 
the charge originates in Thomas, how well-acquainted was he with 
Avicenna's works? What Avicennian works had been translated into Latin 
by Thomas' time, and what was the quality of these translations?

To the first question, I have no answer; as Mike well knows, I'm not a scholar
of ancient philosophy, especially of ancient Middle Eastern philosophy. However,
although Avicenna may have been 'called many things,' it would seem that such a
'charge' would not have been merely an excuse to dismiss this meddlesome
Persian, but something based on more than idle speculation. That is: there are
certainly other trumped up philosophico-theological charges one can imagine, if
the aim was to dismiss him by whatever means. What texts of Avicenna's support
it, I have no idea, but neither am I driven to doubt the existence of the lost
text; for one doubts on the same sorts of grounds one believes, and where I have
no grounds for belief, I have none for doubt either. 

I have no axe to grind here. I'm more interested in the fact that there is an
argument to the best hypothesis concerning why Avicenna (and his predecessors),
and even the scholarly commentaries of someone as friendly to Aristotle as
Averroes should have dropped out of the traditional picture presented as the
history of (Western) philosophy. And it is that between the great Middle Eastern
scholars and the present day--although they may have begun to philosophize out
of an admiration for or fascination with Plato, and then with Aristotle--came
Scholasticism. 'Scholasticism' was hardly pure, disinterested inquiry, carried
out by Schoolmen living on Rockefeller Grants, and it was because of the
ideological conflict between say, the School of Paris, and the earlier,
Neo-Platonic, Neo-Aristotelian Arab philosophers (as seen from one side of the
mirror) that the latter were erased from the picture, the merit of their
contributions to philosophy notwithstanding. Scholasticism became Western
philosophy, not through overpowering argument but as a sociological fact. 

Mike asks a number of questions, not all of which have any bearing on this
issue, and I would be rash to try to answer any of them in his presence, in any
event. However, I'll guess in one case: I'll bet that the quality of the Latin
translations of whatever extant works of Avicenna's there were in Aquinas' time
were pretty good. If this isn't true, what would explain that, given the many
years of easy exchanges of texts and translations before ideology triumphed over
wit? If _none_ of the translations of Avicenna into Latin were trustworthy,
what's the line of descent from his texts to current pronouncements about
Avicenna the philosopher and scientist? Again, Mike would know everything here,
and I would know nothing, so I'll prudently defer to him.

Mike jokingly or sarcastically pretends to be astonished that a 'scholar' (an
epithet I recoil from) of my 'acuity' could assert that the accusation of
pantheism against Avicenna is true. Very well, I won't assert it. (But neither
will I deny it; surely the best course here is agnosticism.) It doesn't really
matter to me though, because the tacit assumption behind my rambling thoughts on
the matter was that the variouslyheld beliefs that Avicenna was a pantheist
(something Aristotle might also be seen as) were sufficient grounds for writing
him out of the official story, and replacing his interpretations of Plato and
Aristotle with more doctrinally friendly ones. However, one of the sources of
the belief that Avicenna was a pantheist seems to have been Averroes, and I'll
try to find out tomorrow what the grounds for  believing that he believed that
are.

Sleep well.

Robert Paul
The Reed Institute
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