Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān (Arabic: حي بن يقظان "Alive, son of Awake"; Latin: Philosophus Autodidactus "The Self-Taught Philosopher"; English: The Improvement of Human Reason: Exhibited in the Life of Hai Ebn Yokdhan), the first Arabic novel, was written by Ibn Tufail (also known as Aben Tofail or Ebn Tophail), a Moorish philosopher and physician, in early 12th century Islamic Spain. The novel was itself named after an earlier Arabic allegorical tale and philosophical romance of the same name, written by Avicenna (Ave Cena) in the early 11th century,[1] though they had different stories.[2]
Ibn Tufail's Hayy ibn Yaqdhan had a significant influence on Arabic literature, Persian literature, and European literature after it was translated in 1671 into Latin and then into several other European languages.[3] The work also had a "profound influence" on both classical Islamic philosophy and modern Western philosophy,[4] and became "one of the most important books that heralded the Scientific Revolution" and European Enlightenment.[5] The novel is also considered a precursor to the European bildungsroman genre.[6]
Plot summary[edit]
| Avicenna (Ibn Sīnā) |
|---|
Ibn Tufail drew the name of the tale and most of its characters from an earlier work by Ibn Sina (Avicenna), but the plot was very different, and the book was a new and innovative work in its own right. Avicenna's story was essentially a thought experiment about the active intellect, personified by an elderly sage, instructing the narrator, who represents the human rational soul, about the nature of the universe.[2]
The plot of Ibn Tufail's more famous Arabic novel was inspired by Avicennism, Kalam, and Sufism,[7] and was also intended as athought experiment.[8] Ibn Tufail's novel tells the story of an autodidactic feral child, raised by a gazelle and living alone on a desert island in the Indian Ocean. After his gazelle mother passes away when he is still a child, he dissects her body and performs anautopsy in order to find out what happened to her. The discovery that her death was due to a loss of innate heat sets him "on a road of scientific inquiry" and self-discovery.[9]
Without contact with other human beings and solely by the exercise of his faculties, Hayy discovers ultimate truth through a systematic process of reasoned inquiry in seven phases of seven years each. Hayy ultimately comes into contact with civilization and religion when he meets a castaway named Absal. He determines that certain trappings of religion and civilization, namely imagery and dependence on material goods, are necessary for the multitude in order that they might have decent lives. However, he believes that imagery and material goods are distractions from the truth and ought to be abandoned by those whose reason recognizes that they are distractions.
Ibn Tufail's book reflects one of the main concerns of Muslim philosophers (later also of Christian thinkers), that of reconciling philosophy with revelation. At the same time, the narrative anticipates in some ways both Robinson Crusoe and Emile: or, On Education. The story of Hayy Ibn Yaqzan is also similar to the later story of Mowgli in Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book.
Philosophical themes[edit]
Hayy ibn Yaqdhan dealt with many philosophical themes, especially in regards to epistemology. The thoughts expressed in the novel can be found "in different variations and to different degrees in the books of Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Isaac Newton, and Immanuel Kant."[5]
Ibn Tufail's Hayy ibn Yaqdhan was written as both a continuation of Avicenna's version of the story and as a response to al-Ghazali's The Incoherence of the Philosophers, which had criticized many of Avicenna's views.[10] Ibn Tufail cited al-Farabi, Avicenna's Avicennism and al-Ghazali's Ash'ari theology as the main influences behind his work,[11]as well as his teacher Ibn Bajjah (Avempace), Ibn Tumart,[12] and Sufism.[7]
Seyyed Hossein Nasr summarizes thus the message of the book: “Hayy is the solitary of Ibn Bajjah, whose inner experience to reach the truth through the intellect (…) points to one of the major messages that lies at the heart of Islamic philosophy. That message is the inner accord between philosophy and religion and the esoteric role of philosophy as the inner dimension of the truths expounded by revealed religion for a whole human collectivity.”[13]
Empiricism, tabula rasa, nature versus nurture[edit]
In his Hayy ibn Yaqdhan, Ibn Tufail was the first to demonstrate Avicenna's theories of empiricism[citation needed] and tabula rasa as a thought experiment in his novel, as he depicted the development of the mind of a feral child "from a tabula rasa to that of an adult, in complete isolation from society" on a deserted island. The Latin translation of his work, entitled Philosophus Autodidactus, published by Edward Pococke the Younger in 1671, inspired John Locke's formulation of tabula rasa in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding,[14] which went on to become one of the principal sources of empiricism in modern Western philosophy, and influenced many Enlightenment philosophers, such as David Hume and George Berkeley. The theory of tabula rasa later gave rise to the nature versus nurture debate in modern psychology. According to Nasr, however:
Conditions of possibility[edit]
In Hayy ibn Yaqzan, Ibn Tufail was also "the first author in the history of philosophy to ask himself the question" of the "conditions of possibility" of thought. He asked himself the questions "how does thought manifest itself" and "what is structure?"[15] His answer was that "the most humble experience is already, by itself, structured like a thought."[16]
Materialism[edit]
Hayy determines that certain trappings of civilization, namely imagery and dependence on material goods, are necessary for the multitude in order that they might have decent lives. However, he believes that imagery and material goods are distractions from the truth and ought to be abandoned by those whose reason recognizes that they are distractions. Hayy's ideas on materialism in the novel also have some similarities to Karl Marx's historical materialism.[15]
Molyneux problem[edit]
Ibn Tufail also foreshadowed Molyneux's Problem, an unsolved problem in philosophy proposed by William Molyneux to Locke, who included it in the second book of An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Ibn Tufail wrote the following in Hayy ibn Yaqzan:[17][18]
Influence and legacy[edit]
Hayy ibn Yaqdhan had a significant influence on Arabic literature, Persian literature, and European literature,[3] and went on to become an influential best-seller throughoutWestern Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries.[11] The work also had a "profound influence" on both Islamic philosophy and modern Western philosophy.[4] It became "one of the most important books that heralded the Scientific Revolution" and European Enlightenment, and the thoughts expressed in the novel can be found "in different variations and to different degrees in the books of Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Isaac Newton, and Immanuel Kant."[5] George Sarton considered the novel "one of the most original books of the Middle Ages."[19]
Middle East[edit]
In the late 12th century, Avicenna's original Persian version of Hayy ibn Yaqzan inspired Shahab al-Din Suhrawardi to write Story of Western Loneliness, in which he began the story from where Avicenna ended Hayy ibn Yaqzan.
In the 13th century, Ibn Tufail's Hayy ibn Yaqdhan inspired Ibn al-Nafis to write the first theological novel, Al-Risalah al-Kamiliyyah fil Siera al-Nabawiyyah (The Treatise of Kamil on the Prophet's Biography), known in the West as Theologus Autodidactus,[20] written as a critical response to Ibn Tufail's Hayy ibn Yaqdhan and in defense of some of al-Ghazali's views.[10] Theologus Autodidactus was also based on a feral child living on a desert island but the plot later expanded beyond this setting and evolved into the first example of a science fiction novel.[21] Ibn al-Nafis' novel was also later translated into English in the early 20th century as Theologus Autodidactus.
In 2001, an Arabic animated cartoon, Hay - The Gazelle Child, was produced as an adaptation of Ibn Tufail's Hayy ibn Yaqdhan.[19]
Europe[edit]
A Latin translation of Ibn Tufail's work, entitled Philosophus Autodidactus, was first published in 1671, prepared by Edward Pococke the Younger, who had completed the translation prior to 1660.[22] The novel inspired the concept of tabula rasa developed in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690) by John Locke, who was a student of Pococke,[23][24] and who referred to his translation as a "novelty".[3] Philosophus Autodidactus also inspired Robert Boyle, another acquaintance of Pococke, to write his own philosophical novel set on an island, The Aspiring Naturalist.[25]
The first English translation of the novel was published by George Ashwell in 1686, based on Pococke's Latin translation.[26] The first English translation of the Arabic original, entitled The Improvement of Human Reason: Exhibited in the Life of Hai Ebn Yokdhan, was published shortly after by Simon Ockley in 1708,[27] followed by two more English translations. Baruch Spinoza also read the work and soon encouraged a Dutch translation, which was published by his friend Johannes Bouwmeester in 1672.[3][14] Another Dutch translation, De natuurlijke wijsgeer, was published by Adriaan Reland in 1701.
There were also two German translations of the novel, the first based on the Latin translation and the second based on the Arabic original.[26] One of these translations was read by Gottfried Leibniz, who praised it as an excellent example of classical Arabic philosophy. In Paris, Pococke's agent also wrote to him stating that he "delivered a copy to theSorbonne for which they were very thankful, being much delighted with it."[3][14]
In 1719, one of the English translations of Hayy ibn Yaqdhan inspired Daniel Defoe to write Robinson Crusoe, which was also set on a deserted island and was regarded as thefirst novel in English.[28] [3][29][30][31] In turn, Robinson Crusoe had an "enormous impact" on the thought of the Enlightenment.[32] In 1761, an anonymous Crusoe story was printed in London, entitled The Life and Surprising Adventures of Don Antonio de Trezannio, much of which was conveyed or paraphrased from Ockley's translation of Hayy ibn Yaqdhan. Ockley's translation was also published again in 1804 by Paul Bronnie in London. Despite Hayy ibn Yaqdhan originally being written in Islamic Spain, the first Spanish translation of the novel wasn't published until 1900, by F. Pons Boigues in Zaragoza. An accurate French translation was also published that same year by Prof. L. Gauthier atAlgiers.[26]
The story of Hayy ibn Yaqdhan also anticipated Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Emile: or, On Education in some ways, and is also similar to the later story of Mowgli in Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book. Both Rousseau and Kipling were likely to have been influenced by Hayy ibn Yaqzan.[33][citation needed][dubious ] Other early modern European scholars and writers who were also influenced by Philosophus Autodidactus include Melchisédech Thévenot, John Wallis, Christiaan Huygens,[34] George Keith, Robert Barclay, the Quakers,[35] Samuel Hartlib,[25] Karl Marx,[15] and Voltaire.[33]
North America[edit]
The English translation of Hayy ibn Yaqdhan was known to the Royal Society and the New England Company in North America by 1721, when Cotton Mather's The Christian Philosopher cited Hayy ibn Yaqdhan as an influence. Despite condemning the 'Mahometans' as infidels, Mather viewed the protagonist of the novel, Hayy, as a model for his ideal 'Christian philosopher' and 'monotheistic scientist'. Mather also viewed Hayy as a noble savage and applied this in the context of attempting to understand the Native American 'Indians' in order to convert them to Puritan Christianity.[36]
Solitude and Understanding
From its earliest
centuries, Islamic philosophy engaged ancient Greek thought in the form of
Plato and Aristotle. Like the later medieval Christian theologians, Islamic and
Arabic thinkers sought to reconcile reason and the revelation of their
scripture.
In
eleventh-century southern Spain, Arabic philosophers achieved a thriving
intellectual center in the cultural milieu of al-Andalus (Andalusia). Ibn
Tufayl (ca. 1110-1182), called Abubacer in the West, inherited Aristotelian
rationalism and the philosophy of Ghazali, Farabi, his teacher Ibn Bajjah
(Avempace), and the celebrated Ibn Sina or Avicenna.
This
vigorous school of thought had mastered the Greeks but also criticized logic
and mathematics, affirming the human soul's innate capacity to discover not only
natural law but to reach the most abstruse mystical doctrine. Ibn Tufayl
presented this view in an intriguing essay that posited human solitude as an
essential method for acquiring the highest knowledge.
Hayy
Ibn Yaqzan
Ibn
Tufayl's Hayy Ibn Yaqzan was derivative in basing its title and
several characters on Avicenna. "Hayy Ibn Yaqzan" (the name means
"Alive, son of the Awake, the Vigilant") was the title of a work by
Avicenna, and the two other characters of the tale, Absal and Salaman, are also
the names of characters in Avicenna's work. But Ibn Tufayl offered a novel
presentation for his recapitulation of philosophical ideas.
The
purpose of his narrative is to point to esoteric doctrines, beyond philosophy
and reason, in order to attract the discerning, as Ibn Tufayl puts it. But he
affirms that is it presented in a veiled way in order to discourage the
foolish. This is a standard disclaimer safely affirming religious conformity.
The
protagonist Hayy ibn Yaqzan grows up from infancy to adulthood on a uninhabited
island. Essentially he is a feral or wild child. The infant Hayy is discovered
and nurtured by a doe, fed on doe's milk. By presenting this prototype human
being as a solitary, a social tabula
rasa, Ibn Tufayl can show his reader how reason guides the human intellect
naturally and that learning follows the same logical path identified by the
methods of the philosophers. Moreover, the solitude of the uninhabited island
is a model of the natural development of the mind in the absence of the diversions
and distractions of society.
Hayy's
youngest years are socialized by the doe's kindness, gentleness, and nurturing.
Upon her death, the young Hayy suffers the taunts and attacks of other animals
until he moves into a cave and discovers fire. Hayy sees fire as a symbol of
the inner fire or warmth that animates living things, the inner life-source.
Hayy confirms this insight, propelled by curiosity: he dissects animals
(beginning with the dead doe) out of the desire for knowledge, concluding that
warmth is an animating spirit.
All
animals, despite their diversity into species, are "one in reality,"
the maturing Hayy concludes. "All bodies, whether they are animate or
inanimate, are one thing."
Continuing
this logic, Hayy progresses from animating factor to the existence of the soul
that is superior to corporeality. Says the narrator:
Seeing
the whole universe as in reality one great being, and uniting all its many
parts in his mind by the same sort of reasoning which had led him to see the
oneness of all bodies in the world of generation and decay, Hayy wondered
whether all this had come to be from nothing, or in no respect emerged
from nothingness but always existed.
In
effect, Hayy had reached the consideration of Aristotelian prime mover or
non-corporeal cause, which he calls the Necessarily Existent.
Hayy
had learned that his ultimate happiness and triumph over misery would be won
only if he could make his awareness of the Necessarily Existent, so continuous
that nothing could distract him from it for an instant ... attainment of the
pure beatific experience, submersion, concentration on Him alone whose
experience is necessary. In this experience the self vanishes; it is
extinguished, obliterated -- and so are all other subjectivities.
Thus
Ibn Tufayl insists that mystical experience is the highest form of knowledge
and can be attained through reason and disposition. In his allegory, Hayy
reaches this conclusion (or the author, accepting it already, uses the story to
demonstrate it).
But
Ibn Tufayl shows the second most important factor in the successful quest for
understanding: self-discipline. To cultivate and maintain self-discipline, the
naturalness of the state of solitude is requisite. There is the direct
influence here not only of Arabic thinkers already cited but of the Sufi
tradition that saw reason (both in its limits and its compelling logic)
together with nature leading to the culmination of individual purpose: mystical
union.
As
the narrative continues, Hayy's self-discipline unfolds self-discovery. Hayy is
presented discovering what weakens and distracts spirit, what worsens vices. He
limits himself to actions that gain him food and physical safety. He eats only
what is sufficient to stave off hunger, attempting to control appetite. He
deduces that he should spend a minimum of time on the appearance of his
dwelling. He finds positive the experience of "never allowing himself to
see any plant or animal hurt, sick, encumbered, or in need without helping if
he could." Hayy concludes that cleanliness matters. And he decides to
imitate the Necessary Existent by at least approximating the behavior of the
celestial beings or bodies rotating in the night sky in solitude and silence.
Tirelessly
he battled against the drives of his body -- and they fought back. But when for
a moment he had the upper hand and rid his mind of tarnish, he would see with a
flash what it was like to reach this third type of likeness to the stars.
The
third type of likeness contrasts to the two other types, to the inanimate and
animate beings on earth.
Hayy
then sought to cut off sensory experience in order to pursue mystic ecstasy.
This he discovered in a crude way by making wide circular motions (like
celestial beings) with his body until he had lost the senses and imagination --
a clear early reference to the secretive whirling practice of Sufi dervishes.
But ultimately Hayy learns to cut off the senses and imagination in the
stillness and silence of his dwelling place: a cave.
The
cave is the model of a new kind of learning, as Ibn Tufayl's translator notes.
The
cave in our [Western] tradition, which owes more to Athens on this point than
to the East, is a symbol of darkness and dogmatic slumber, not of personal
enlightenment but of ignorance and unconcern. The great awakening is the moment
when a solitary individual stumbles out of the hidden darkness of the cave and
away from the cave-thoughts into the sunlight.
Ibn
Tufayl stands at a crossroads between Muhammadan and Platonic conceptions. For
him the cave is not the social womb but the sacred solitude of a man and his
creator. Yet the mission imparted is not public recognition but private
enlightenment. The means remain those of Muhammad, but the end has become the
end of Islamized philosophy: salvation by the intellectual approach to God.
The
two models of the cave are explicit in their differences. In Plato's Republic,
the cave is darkness and ignorance contrasts with coming out of the cave into
sunlight and enlightenment. But here Ibn Tufayl proposes that the cave is not
darkness but inner solitude and reflection, and coming out of this womb-like
symbol is not to embrace public and social life but for one's self-knowledge
and understanding.
The
cave retains this image of inner exploration and enlightenment in the Far East,
linked, perhaps, to geography. Caves are prominent in the traditions of India
and Tibet. But the cell, the anchorhold, the hut and cottage, are all related
to the same configuring of places of nurturing solitude. Such places of
solitude have the same function in the entire range of solitary perception, be
it enlightenment or harmony with nature.
At
this point, Ibn Tufayl's Hayy
Ibn Yaqzan reaches the end of
the first of two sections, though the author does not so delineate his
narrative.
Comparative
settings
The
story of living on an uninhabited island or in social isolation conjures
comparison with a number of later well-known instances of literature and
speculation, ranging from those concerning human origins and human nature on
the one hand and narratives of shipwreck, abandonment, survival, and social
isolation on the other.
The
abstract philosophical tale of Iby Tufayl is the historically first of a series
of such reflections on the nature of human behavior and learning. For though by
modern psychological criteria, the intellectual development of Hayy as feral
child is quite impossible, Ibn Tufayl's purpose is to offer the trajectory of
right thinking given the absence of contrived culture and society. Ibn Tufayl
attempts to show that natural reason alone can engender ethics and a knowledge
of the universe that is in harmony with revelation, in this case the revealed
scriptures of Islam.
But
a feral child, will, of course, not develop in the trajectory of the
protagonist Hayy. As Rousseau notes in the preface to his own parallel
tale, Emile, or An Education (1762), "a man left to himself
from birth would be more of a monster than the rest." A child left on his
own in the wilderness will develop only the animal nature that is at the core
of our evolutionary development. However, Rousseau does not see socialization,
given its present form, as yielding much better results than being left in
nature.
Prejudice,
authority, necessity, example, all the social conditions into which we are
plunged, would stifle nature in him and put nothing in her place. She would be
like a sapling by chance sown in the midst of the highway, bent hither and
thither and soon crushed by the passers-by.
Rousseau
is more emphatic in his celebrated opening phrases of Emile.
God
makes all things good; man meddles with them and they become evil. Man forces
one soil to yield the products of another, one tree to bear another's fruit. He
confuses and confounds time, place, and natural conditions. He mutilates his
dog, his horse, and his slave. He destroys and defaces all things; he loves all
that is deformed and monstrous; he will have nothing as nature made it, not
even man himself, who must learn his paces like a saddle-horse, and be shaped
to his master's taste like the trees in his garden.
For
Rousseau the perversion of human nature by society is only offset by the close
nurturing of a kind and attentive mother, who alone can engender the
psychological values that will make the child perceptive, thoughtful, and
ultimately independent and free. Ibn Tufayl's version of a mother for his
purposes is represented by the mother doe, meeting the infant's own biological
and psychological needs in conformity (given the different context) to the
criteria of Rousseau. Ibn Tufayl took the Arabic tradition of child-rearing
(for example, two years minimum of breastfeeding) and applied its practices to
the beneficent surrogate mother of his character Hayy.
Hayy's
development from feral to thinking, acting human being has parallels in
literary lore, such as Kipling and Burroughs, the British writers. Rudyard
Kipling's Mowgli (in The
Jungle Book, 1894) is a feral
child raised by benign jungle animals in the recesses of India, the one country
where reports of feral children were most numerous. Edgar Rice Burroughs
presents a feral Caucasian boy in the African jungle who would be called
Tarzan. In neither case are these fictional characters more than literary
entertainments, of course. There is no interest on the part of these authors to
explore deeper issues of social isolation and human development. But they
attest to the enduring interest in the topic.
However,
one survival tale does attempt to address some deeper issues, but in doing so
must sacrifice the device of feralness. Daniel Defoe's Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1719) depict a mature young man
thrust into the solitude of a desert island after shipwreck. Defoe was
reportedly influenced by the report of a marooned Alexander Selkirk, who in
1712 published an account of his experiences. But, coincidentally, Ibn Tufayl's Hay Ibn Yaqzan was translated into English for the
first time in 1713. Because Defoe was such a voracious reader, it is not
unlikely that he had read Ibn Tufayl as well.
Of
Selkirk's model tale, Defoe scholar John Richetti notes:
Selkirk's story celebrates the
virtues of isolation: regression to a primitive or natural state accompanied by
sentimental, unworldly contentment in delicious solitude.
Selkirk
himself related that, as Richetti notes, he "frequently bewailed his
return to the world" which could not "with all its enjoyments,
restore him to the tranquility of his solitude."
Similarly,
Rousseau's tutor of Emile allows young Emile to read only one book, namely
Defoe's Robinson Crusoe,
for to Rousseau Crusoe's island is a "virtuous retreat from social
corruption." It is Defoe's setting that Rousseau appreciated.
But
to Defoe's character the island is an odious prison and a providential test of
worthiness. Crusoe is a reluctant candidate for solitude. Unlike Ibn Tufayl's
Hayy or even the mariner Selkirk, Defoe's Crusoe constantly laments his fate
and prays to God for deliverance. Defoe's tale is often presented as a lesson
in acquiring survival skills, of ingenuity and physical adaptability, but there
is no intellectual component to Crusoe's progress. Crusoe has already brought
his cultural and social values with him, and they are merely suspended on the
island, while Crusoe awaited rescue and return to society.
Crusoe
having survived and progressed in skills and self-confidence, applying
technology and entrepreneurship, the island becomes a productive colony and
material resource to Crusoe. The reader might well be disappointed at the end
of the novel to learn that Crusoe's solitude has only been a device for his
turn of fortune and real goal of making money. Upon rescue, Crusoe profits from
selling the loyal Xury into slavery and is pleased to learn that his Brazilian
plantation, with its slave labor, is doing nicely. As Richetti notes:
Crusoe's
transformation from terrified and confused survivor to colonial master and
avenging overlord of his island marks Robinson Crusoe as one of the key modern
myths of English and even of European culture.
The
baggage of social and cultural values carried into solitude or fictional
settings of isolation are further explored by modern writers such as William
Golding in his Lord of the
Flies. In this novel, adolescent boys shipwrecked on an island revert to
the worst instincts, lacking social authority to enforce order. This cautionary
tale proposes not so much a vision of solitude but a vision of society in its
barest form. The predatory behavior on the uninhabited island is to be taken as
human's natural tendency and the violent potential of aggression and power when
stripped of the contrivances of class, caste, and civilization (civilization as
in "civitas," meaning city or city life).
In
Golding's scenario there is no opportunity to explore refinements of reason and
the attainment of enlightenment, for his characters are already formed,
immaturely incapable of profound thought. The necessity of sheer survival
easily overwhelms the group. The scenario is what Rousseau predicted of the
collective. But Crusoe, alone, doesn't get much further intellectually from his
experience, either.
Hayy
Ibn Yaqzan: Conclusion
The
second part of Ibn Tufayl's Hayy
Ibn Yaqzan makes a thoughtful
foray into the social dimension of his now finely-honed protagonist,
anticipating what the later writers cited above do in laying out social
consequences for their respective protagonists.
By
now, Hayy is fifty years old. The narrator describes an island near Hayy's
uninhabited one. The character of the people in this society "where true
religion reigns," -- that is, Islam -- is shaped by their culture, as
would be expected, and religion is an integral part of this culture. Absal
"loved contemplativeness in Law" and deeply "devoted himself to
the quest for solitude." On the other hand, Salaman, also the island's
ruler, accepts the necessity of the Law and its literalness, and enjoys
mingling in society.
Absal
was attracted to the uninhabited island and went "to live there in solitude."
For a while his path does not cross Hayy's, but one day Absal glimpses Hayy
from afar and assumes him to be "another anchorite who had come to the
island, as he had, in search of solitude." But when they encounter one
another again they don't know what to make of each other.
Eventually,
recognizing their common purpose, the two hermits get along for years. Absal
teaches Hayy to speak and Hayy shares both his survival skills and his
philosophic and mystic insight. Hayy could not comprehend society or the use of
rituals and laws of which Absal tells him, finding them superficial in the
light of mystical experience.
One
day the two sail to Absal's city. Absal encourages Hayy to teach his spiritual
methods to Absal's curious friends and Hayy is enthusiastic. Hayy makes a
sincere effort but is rejected by Absal's friends. After a while Hayy gives up
his efforts. He assesses his encounter with society. Society, he concludes, is
a catalog of passions, worldliness, arrogance, stubbornness and ignorance. People
cling to factions and pass their lives in base materialistic pursuits. "He
saw clearly and definitely that to appeal to them publicly and openly was
impossible."
He
saw that most people are no better than unreasoning animals, and realized that
all wisdom and guidance, all that could possibly help them was contained
already in the words of the prophets and the religious traditions. None of this
could be different. There was nothing to be added.
Hayy
had not reverted to a fundamentalism wherein obedience and conformity to
scripture and tradition were sufficient. Nor was his a fideism of the cynic.
Rather, he concluded that for the overwhelming majority of people, this outward
conformity to religious ritual and doctrine was as far as they could venture in
addressing basic philosophical questions. For them, no interpretation was the
best interpretation.
In
the next sequence of the tale, Hayy is ushered before Salaman and his closest
advisors. He tells them that they should
hold
fast to their observance of all the statutes regulating outward behavior and
not delve into things that did not concern them, submissively to accept all the
most problematical elements of the tradition and shun originality and
innovation.
Thus
the intelligent or enlightened person in such a society as Hayy encounters --
and by extrapolation all societies -- will not teach or proselytize, as Hayy
decided not to do, having failed in his initial enthusiastic ventures. But
mingling with society in a tactful fideism was not Hayy's preference either, as
already suggested.
He
had taught society how to reach the heights, but society is not interested in
the heights; it could at least maintain the good in its culture, a perennial
core that all cultures can access. Why debate the merits of one scripture or
practice versus another when each is sufficient for maintaining the good in
each culture, for the majority of its people. This was the gist of the
broad-minded philosophy of medieval Arabic thinkers. The benevolence and
tolerance of their presence in medieval Spain produced a high point in world
cultural history.
Ibn
Tufayl's narrative ends with Hayy and Absal returning to the uninhabited island
to resume their eremitism and practices. In this manner of concluding his tale,
Ibn Tufayl appreciated the lesson of the great philosopher Ghazali himself, who
had recommended withdrawal from society for reasons of conscience and moral
consistency, to avoid the inevitable hypocrisies of social intercourse. Ghazali
himself had spent the last sixteen years of his life reclused from society and
its activities in order to follow the path of mystical experience. And it is
what Ibn Tufayl recommends as well.
And
so, concludes Ibn Tufayl of Hayy and Absal, the hermits "served God until
man's certain fate overtook them."
Conclusion
The
Muslim and Arabic philosophers advocating solitude are perhaps no more
mainstream in their tradition than those of Christianity and are less known in
the West. Yet Ibn Tufayl recognized and pursued, even in the structure of a
didactic tale, important themes promoting the benefits of solitude, adding an
important contribution to questions of human nature, social development, and
mystical thought.
¶
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES
Ibn
Tufal's Hayy Ibn Yaqzan was first translated into English in
1708 by Simon Oakley and is revised, with an introduction, by A. S. Fulton.
London: Chapman and Hall, 1929. Subsequent translations are Ibn Tufayl's Hayy ibn Yaqzan: a
Philosophical Tale, translated with introduction and notes by Lenn Evan
Goodman. New York: Twayne, 1972; The
Journey of the Soul: the Story of Hai bin Yaqzan, translated by Riad
Kocache. London: Octagon, 1982; Two
Andalusian Philosophers, translated with a introduction and notes by Jim
Colville. London: Kegan Paul, 1999; and much abridged in Medieval Islamic Philosophical
Writings, edited by Muhammad Ali Khaldidi. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2005.
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