It was due to al-Kindi that philosophy came to be acknowledged as a part of Islamic culture. The early Arab historians called him “the Philosopher of the Arabs” for this reason. It is true that he borrowed his ideas from Neo¬-Platonic Aristotelianism, but it is also true that he put those ideas in a new context. By conciliating Hellenistic heritage with Islam he laid the foundations of a new philosophy. Indeed, this conciliation remained for a long time the chief feature of this philosophy. Furthermore, al-Kindi, specializing in all the sciences known at his time - of which his writings give sufficient evidence - -made philosophy a comprehensive study embracing all sciences.
Al-Farabi, Ibn Sina, and Ibn Rushd were first scientists and then philosophers. For this reason Ibn al-Nadim placed al-Kindi in the class of natural philosophers. This is his full account: “Al-Kindi is the best man of his time, unique in his knowledge of all the ancient sciences. He is called the Philosopher of the Arabs. His books deal with different sciences, such as logic, philosophy, geometry, arithmetic, astronomy, etc. We have connected him with the natural philosophers because of his prominence in science.”7
Philosophy is the knowledge of truth. Muslim philosophers, like the Greek, believed that truth is something over and above experience; that it lies immutable and eternal in a supernatural world. The definition of philosophy in al-Kindi's treatise on “First Philosophy” runs like this: “Philosophy is the knowledge of the reality of things within man's possibility, because the philosopher's end in his theoretical knowledge is to gain truth and in his practical knowledge to behave in accordance with truth.”
At the end of the treatise, God is qualified by the term “truth,” which is the objective of philo¬sophy. “The True One (al-Wahid al-Haq) is, then, the First, the Creator, the Sustainer of all that He has created. ...” This view is borrowed from Aristotle's metaphysics, but the Unmovable Mover of Aristotle is substituted by the Creator. This difference constitutes the core of the Kindian system.
Philosophy is classified into two main divisions: theoretical studies, which are physics, mathematics, and metaphysics; and practical studies which are ethics, economics, and politics. A later writer, quoting al-Kindi, gives the classification as follows: “Theory and practice are the beginning of the virtues. Each one of the two is divided into the physical, mathematical, and theological parts. Practice is divided into the guidance of one's self, that of one's house, and that of one's city.” 8
Ibn Nabata, quoting also al-Kindi, mentions only the theoretical divisions. “The philosophical sciences are of three kinds: the first in teaching (ta`lim) is mathematics which is intermediate in nature; the second is physics, which is the last in nature; the third is theology which is the highest in nature.”9 The priority of mathematics goes back to Aristotle, but the final sequence of the three sciences beginning with physics came from the later Peripatetics. Most probably al-Kindi was following Ptolemy, who gave a division of sciences in the beginning of Almagest.10 Mathematics was known to the Arabs from that time on as the “first study.”
The definition of philosophy and its classification, as mentioned above, remained traditional in Muslim philosophy. As Mustafa 'Abd al-Raziq puts it: “This attitude in understanding the meaning of philosophy and its classification according to subject-matter directed Muslim philosophy from its very outset.”11
First philosophy or metaphysics is the knowledge of the First Cause, be¬cause all the rest of philosophy is included in this knowledge.12 The method followed in the study of first philosophy is the logic of demonstration. From now on, logic will be the instrument of the philosophers in their quest for truth.
Al-Kindi's value as a philosopher was debated in ancient times because of the lack of logical theory in his system. Sa'id al-Andalusi says: “Al-Kindi wrote on logic many books which never became popular, and which people never read or used in the sciences, because these books missed the art of analysis which is the only way to distinguish between right and wrong in every study. By the art of synthesis, which is what Ya`qub meant by his writings, no one can profit, unless he has sure premises from which he can make the synthesis.”
It is difficult for us to give an exact idea concerning this charge until his logical treatises are discovered. But the fact that al-Farabi was called the “Second Master” because of his introducing logic as the method of thinking in Islamic philosophy13 seems to corroborate the judgment of Sa'id just mentioned.
INFINITY
The world in Aristotle's system is finite in space but infinite in time, be-cause the movement of the world is co-eternal with the Unmovable Mover. Eternity of the world was refuted in Islamic thought, since Islam holds that the world is created. Muslim philosophers, facing this problem, tried to find a solution in accord with religion. Ibn Sina, and Ibn Rushd were accused of atheism because of their pro-Aristotelianism; they assumed that the world is eternal. In fact, this problem remained one of the important features of Islamic philosophy, and al-Ghazali mentioned it at the beginning of his twenty points against the philosophers in the Tahafut al-Falasifah.
Al-Kindi, contrary to his great successors, maintained that the world is not eternal. Of this problem he gave a radical solution by discussing the notion of infinity on mathematical grounds.
Physical bodies are composed of matter and form, and move in space and time. Matter, form, space, movement, and time are the five substances in every physical body. (Res autem quae sunt in omnibus substantiis sunt quin¬que, quarum una est hyle, et secunda est forma, et tertia est locus, et quarta est motes, et quinta est tempus.) 29
Being so connected with corporeal bodies, time and space are finite, given that corporeal bodies are finite; and these latter are finite because they cannot exist except within limits.
Time is not movement; it is the number which measures the motion (Tempus ergo est numerus numerans motum) for it is nothing other than the prior and posterior. Number is of two kinds: discrete and continuous. Time is not of the discrete kind but of the continuous kind. Hence, time is definable as the supposed instants which continue from the past to the future. In other words, time is the sum of anterior and posterior instants. It is the continuum of instants.
Time is part of the knowledge of quantity. Space, movement, and time are quantities. The knowledge of these three substances and also the other two is subordinate to the knowledge of quantity and quality. As mentioned above, he who lacks the knowledge of quantity and quality will lack knowledge of the primary and secondary substances. Quality is the capacity of being similar and dissimilar; quantity, of being equal and unequal. Hence, the three notions of equality, greater, and less are basic in demonstrating the concepts of finitude and infinity.
The arguments against infinity are repeated in a number of al-Kindi's treatises. We give from his treatise “On the Finitude of the Body of the World” the four theorems given as proofs for finitude: -
- Two magnitudes30 of the same kind are called equal if one is not greater than the other.31
- If a magnitude of the same kind is added to one of the two magnitudes of the kind, they will be unequal.
- Two magnitudes of the kind cannot be infinite, if one is less than the other, because the less measures the greater or a part of it.
- The sum of two magnitudes of the kind, each of which is finite, is finite.
Given these axioms, every body, being composed of matter and form, limited in space, and moving in time, is finite, even if it is the body of the world. And, being finite it is not eternal. God alone is eternal.
SOUL AND INTELLECT
Al-Kindi was confused by the doctrines of Plato, Aristotle, and Plotinus concerning the soul, especially because he revised the parts translated from Plotinus' Enneads, a book which was wrongly ascribed to Aristotle. He borrowed from Plotinus the doctrine of the soul, and followed the model of Aristotle in his theory of the intellect. In a short treatise “On the Soul,” he summarizes, as he says, the views of “Aristotle, Plato, and other philo¬sophers.” In fact, the idea expounded is borrowed from the Enneads.
The soul is a simple entity and its substance emanates from the Creator just as the rays emanate from the sun. It is spiritual and of divine substance and is separate and distinct from the body. When it is separated from the body, it obtains the knowledge of everything in the world and has vision of the supernatural. After its separation from the body, it goes to the world of the intellect, returns to the light of the Creator, and sees Him.
The soul never sleeps; only while the body is asleep, it does not use the senses. And, if purified, the soul can see wonderful dreams in sleep and can speak to the other souls which have been separated from their bodies. The same idea is expounded in al-Kindi's treatise: “On Sleep and Dreams,” which was translated into Latin. To sleep is to give up the use of the senses. When the soul gives up the use of the senses and uses only reason, it dreams.
The three faculties of the soul are the rational, the irascible, and the appetiti¬ve. He who gets away from the pleasures of the body and lives most of his life in contemplation to attain to the reality of things, is the good man who is very similar to the Creator.
Another treatise on the intellect played an important role in medieval philosophy, both Eastern and Western. It was translated into Latin under the title De Intellectu. The purpose of this treatise is to clarify the different meanings of the intellect (`aql) and to show how knowledge is obtained.
Aristotle in his De Anima distinguished between two kinds of intellect, the possible and the agent. The possible intellect receives intellection and the agent intellect produces intelligible objects. The latter intellect is described by Aristotle as separate, unmixed, always in actuality, eternal, and uncorrupted.
Alexander of Aphrodisias in his De Intellectu holds that there are three kinds of intellect : the material, the habitual, and the agent, thus adding a new intellect which is the intellectus habitus or adeptus. The intellectus materialis is pure potentiality and is perishable. It is the capacity in man to receive the forms. The intellect in habitu is a possession, which means that the intellect has acquired knowledge and possessed it, i, e., has passed from potentiality into actuality. To bring a thing from potentiality to actuality needs something else to act as an agent. This is the third intellect, the agent intellect, also called the intelligencia agens and considered by some interpreters to be the divine intelligence which flows into our individual souls.
When we come to al-Kindi we find not three intellects but four. He divided the intellect in habitu into two intellects, one is the possession of knowledge without practising it and the other is the practising of knowledge. The first is similar to a writer who has learnt handwriting and is in possession of this art; the other is similar to the person who practises writing in actuality.
We quote the opening paragraph of his treatise: “The opinion of Aristotle concerning the intellect is that it is of four kinds:
- The first is the intellect which is always in act.
- The second is the intellect which is potentially in the soul.
- The third is the intellect which has passed in the soul from potentiality to actuality.
- The fourth is the intellect which we call the second.”32
What he means by the “second” is the second degree of actuality as shown above in the distinction between mere possession of knowledge and practising it.
A complete theory of knowledge is expounded in the rest of the treatise. There are two kinds of forms, the material and the immaterial. The first is the sensuous, because the sensibles are composed of matter and form. When the soul acquires the material form, it becomes one with it, i. e., the material form and the soul become one and the same. Similarly, when the soul acquires the rational forms which are immaterial, they are united with the soul. In this way, the soul becomes actually rational. Before that it was rational in potentiality. What we call the intellect is nothing other than the genera and species of things.
This intellectual operation is again illustrated in al-Kindi's treatise on “First Philosophy.” He says: “When the genera and species are united with the soul, they become intellectibles. The soul becomes actually rational after its unity with the species. Before this unity the soul was potentially rational. Now, everything which exists in potentiality does not pass to actuality save by something which brings it from potentiality to actuality. It is the genera and species of things, i. e., the universals... which make the soul which is potentially rational to be actually rational, I mean, which get united with it.”33
Al-Kindi abruptly passes from the above epistemological discussion to an ontological one concerning the oneness of the universals and their origin. The universals are the intellect in so far as they are united with the soul. Thus the question arises whether the intellect is one or many. It is one in one respect and many in another.
This is his full account: “And as universals are many, as shown above, so is the intellect. It seems to us that the intellect is the first plurality. But it is also one, because it is a whole, as shown above and oneness is applied to the whole. But the true oneness (wahdah)34 is not of the intellect.”
Following the doctrine of Plotinus, al-Kindi passed on to the metaphysical plane of the One. As mentioned above, he confused Aristotle's metaphysics of Being with that of Plotinus.' For this reason he was unable to elaborate a coherent system of his own. This was what al-Farabi, the Second Master, was able to do.
Selasa, 12 November 2024