We pass now from Ibn Rushd, the Muslim philosopher garbed in a cloak of Fiqh, to the commentator of Aristotle, who was more faithful to the “First Master” than Alexander of Aphrodisias and Themistius. Medieval philosophy in Europe was influenced by Aristotle through the commentaries of Ibn Rushd. As Gilson rightly puts it: “Strangely enough, very few men have been more influential than Averroes in shaping the popular notion of medieval philosophy which is now currently received as historical truth.”34 It is true that his main system is Aristotelian, but under the influences of ideas received from different sources, he gave the system a new form.
The way to knowledge is one of the major problems, discussed all through Muslim philosophy because of its relationship to higher existents, namely, the “agent intellect” with which man gets in communion. The soul and intellect are carefully distinguished by Ibn Rushd in his consideration of the process of knowledge.
A full account about the hierarchical order of beings is necessary to understand the place of these two entities. This is why Ibn Rushd began his treatise Talkhis Kitab al-Nafs by giving a short review concerning the composition of beings and their source of behaviour and knowledge. From the very start he says: “The aim of this treatise is to set forth in psychology the commentators' opinions which are more related to natural science and more appropriate to Aristotle's purpose. It would be relevant before that to give a brief introduction about the necessary principles presupposed for understanding the substance of the soul.”
These are: (i) All perishable beings are composed of matter and form, each of which is not by itself a body, although through their combination the bodyexists. (ii) Prime matter has no existence in actuality, but is only the potency to receive forms. (iii) The first simple bodies in which prime matter is actualized are the four elements: fire, air, water, and earth. (iv) The elements enter in the composition of all other bodies through mixture. The remote cause of this mixture is the heavenly bodies. (v) Natural heat is the proximate cause of the real combination. (vi) Organic beings are generated from animate individuals of their kind through natural heat. Soul is the proximate cause of their generation and their remote cause is the intelligence that moves the spheres.
Before further discussion of psychology Ibn Rushd asks the crucial question “Can there be forms separate from matter ?”35 The answer to this question constitutes the true way of knowledge.
Material forms can never be separate from matter, since physical forms36 - which is another expression of material forms - subsist only in matter. Hence they are temporal and subject to change. They are not eternal since they have no subsistence except in matter. It follows that separate forms are some¬thing other than the material forms. Consequently, the separateness of the rational soul, namely, the intellect, can only be demonstrated if it is shown that it is pure form.
The soul is not separate because it is “the form of an organic natural body”.37 The soul is divided according to its acts into five kinds: the nutritive, the sensitive, the imaginative, the cognitive, and the appetitive, and this last seems to be subsequent to the imaginative and sensitive.38
The hierarchical order of the faculties is dependent on the order of the material forms, mentioned above. The way of animal knowledge is by sensation and imagination, and that of man, besides these two, by intellect. Thus, the way to knowledge is either through the senses or through the intellect, leading either to the knowledge of the particular or of the universal. True knowledge is that of the universal, otherwise animals can be said to have knowledge.
The term “knowledge” is applied equivocally to animals, man, and God. Animal knowledge is limited by the sensuous and imaginative, whereas human knowledge is universal. Sensation and imagination exist in animals for their conservation. To assure their security, protect themselves, and obtain food, animals have to move towards or away from the sensibles.
In case the sensibles are present, they are perceived by the senses; and in their absence, representations take their place. Sensations are, then, the condition of representation, and “every being which has representations necessarily has sensations.” 39 But, since man has a higher faculty, namely, intellect, he gets representations through thought and reasoning, whereas in animals representations exist by nature.40
Further, forms perceived by animals are finite, and sometimes, when perceived by man, they become universal images. Those who assume that animals have reason confuse uni¬versal images with universal concepts. Forms perceived by man are infinite, in the sense that the particulars they denote are infinite. Representations, in so far as they are the motor cause for movement, effect their action in man through their collaboration with concepts.
Human knowledge must not be confused with divine knowledge, since “man perceives the individual through the senses and universal existents through his intellect. The cause of man's perception changes through the change in the things perceived, and the plurality of perceptions implies the plurality of objects.”41
It is impossible that God's knowledge should be analogous to ours, because “our knowledge is the effect of the existents, whereas God's knowledge is their cause.”42 The two kinds of knowledge, far from being similar to one another, stand in opposition. God's knowledge is eternal, while man's know¬ledge is temporal. “It is God's knowledge which produced the existents, and it is not the existents which produce His knowledge.”43
So far, we have seen that there is individual as well as universal knowledge. The first is the outcome of sensation and imagination, and the second is the result of the intellect. The act of the intellect is to perceive the notion, the universal concept, and the essence.
The intellect has three basic operations abstraction, combination, and judgment. When we perceive a universal notion, we abstract it from matter. This is more evident in a thing denuded of and far from matter, such as the point and line.44 Not only does intellect abstract simple apprehensions from matter, it combines them together and judges that some of them when predicated of some others are true or false. The first of these operations is called apprehension (intelligere in the Latin terminology) and the second is called assent (credulitas).
We have, then, three successive operations. First, we get in the intellect single notions (intentions) totally abstracted from matter, and this operation is what has been called abstraction. Secondly, by way of combining two or more notions together we have the concept, such as the concept of man which is composed of animality and rationality, the genus and differentia. And this constitutes the esse of a thing. Hence, a complete essence constitutes also its definition. Thirdly, since concepts are neither true nor false, when affirmed or negated in a proposition, we have a judgment.45
The intellect is theoretical and practical. Practical intellect is common to all people. This faculty is the origin of arts of man necessary and useful for his existence. Practical intellectibles are produced through experience which is based on sensation and imagination: Consequently, practical intellect is corruptible since its intellectibles depend for their existence on sensation and imagination. Hence they are generated when perceptions and representations are generated, and corrupted when these are corrupted.
Through practical intellect man loves and hates, lives in society, and has friends. Virtues are the product of practical intellect. The existence of virtues is nothing more than the existence of representations from which we move towards virtuous acts in the most right manner; such as to be brave in the proper place and time and according to the right measure.46
Two main questions must be settled concerning the theoretical intellect, the first its eternity and the second, its communion with the agent intellect. The first question can be put in other terms: Are the theoretical intellectibles always in actuality, or do they first exist in potency and then in actuality, thus being in some way material?47 This brings Ibn Rushd once more to the consideration of the material forms, grading from the elementary forms (i.e. forms of the four elements) to the representations produced by the imaginative soul.
They all have four things in common. (1) Their existence is subsequent to change. (2) They are diverse and multiple according to the diversity and plurality of their objects. (It follows from these two qualities that they are temporal.) (3) They are composed of something material and something formal. (4) The perceived is different from the existent, since the form perceived is one in so far as it is intelligible and multiple as regards its individuality.48
Intelligible forms in man are different from all the other material forms. (1) Their intellectual existence is one and the same as their objective existence which can be pointed out. (2) Their perception is infinite since the forms when abstracted have no individual plurality. (3) The intellect is the intellectible and perception is the perceived. (4) Intellect grows with old age, whereas all other faculties weaken, because the intellect operates without an organ.49
The operatica of intellection runs like this: there is the intellect or the person who perceives, and there are the intellectibles which are the object of intellection and perceived by the intellect. Intellectibles must be existent, otherwise the intellect would have nothing to apprehend, because it can only be attached to what exists, not to what does not exist.50 And, our know¬ledge is the effect of the existents.
Now, these intellectibles, namely, the univer¬sals, either exist in the soul as held by Plato, or exist in the reality outside the soul. Ibn Rushd, following Aristotle, rejects the doctrine of idealism. Conse¬quently, universals exist in reality and their existence is attached to the particulars composed of matter and form. Through the operation of abstrac¬tion, the intellect denudes the forms of matter.
It follows that intellectibles are partly material and partly immaterial.51 They are material in so far as they depend on representations which in their turn depend on the particulars. The material intellect must not be under¬stood as corporeal, but as mere possibility, the disposition to receive the intellectibles. What brings but the possible intellect from potency to actuality is the agent intellect. It is higher and nobler than the possible. It is itself existing, always in actuality, whether perceived by us or not. This agent intel¬lect is from all points of view one and the same with the intellectibles.
Man can attain to the agent intellect in his life-time as he grows up. Since it has been shown that the intellect is nothing other than the intellectibles, the act of the intellect in acquiring the intellectibles is called the “union” (al-ittihad) or the “communion” (al-ittisal).
Union is not something analogous to the way of the Sufis, since the agent intellect is not divine and does not illuminate our souls as some Neo-Platonists hold. Union is a rational operation explained on epistemological grounds, and is based on the acquirement of the universal forms by the possible intellect. These universal forms have no existence in actuality apart from the sensible individuals.
When Ibn Rushd was translated into Latin, some of his doctrines were accepted and some refuted. The movement which was influenced by him is called Latin Averroism. It means Aristotelian philosophy as interpreted by Ibn Rushd, his distinction between philosophy and theology, his empirical rationalism, and more especially his theory concerning the intellect. On the whole, Latin Averroism considered Ibn Rushd a faithful exponent of Aristotle and of truth.
Meanwhile, there arose many theologians who opposed his doctrines. An example of this opposition is to be found in the treatise of Albert the Great, “On the Oneness of the Intellect against Averroes.“ Siger of Brabant followed Ibn Rushd in his psychology in particular; a summary of Siger's treatise: “On the Intellect,”52 proves that he borrowed his ideas from a translation of the Kitab al-Nafs. The Averroist movement lasted till the ninth/fifteenth century and had many reactions, which proves the great in¬fluence of the philosopher of Cordova.
Jumat, 27 September 2024