The rational soul
idea · 6 works · 13 mentions · 22 anchored passages
al-nafs al-nāṭiqah · النفس الناطقة · the rational soul · the angelic soul · النفس · a separate soul · al-nafs al-malakiyah · al-nafs al-malakīyah · rational · the faculty that apprehends universals
in the texts
Mukhtaṣar fī ʻilm al-nafs al-insānīyah
The soul insofar as it reasons and grasps universals, the aspect of the soul in which contraries can coexist and which each person indicates when pointing to himself.
the rational soul is nothing but that to which each one of mankind points
Therefore that in which the two did come together is not a body — and it is the rational soul
the soul (*nafs*) is rational (*nāṭiqah*) and intellects the universal intelligibles (*al-maʻqūlāt al-kullīyah*).
Kitāb al-Safīnah al-Nūḥīyah fī al-sakīnah al-rūḥīyah
Al-nafs al-nāṭiqah, the human soul, classified as the only terrestrial soul that is neither a body nor subsisting in a body.
They affirmed no terrestrial soul that is neither a body nor subsisting in a body other than this one, save that a number of the later thinkers said that the satans are immaterial terrestrial souls.
and they affirmed a separate soul whose work is the attaining of perfection.
And if it makes the good pure and unmixed, it is the soul at peace, the angelic;
Risālat baqāʼ al-nafs baʻda fanāʼ al-jasad
The intellectual part of the soul, to which alone Plato and Aristotle are said to grant immortality and endurance.
so immortality belongs properly to the intellectual part of the soul, that is, to the rational soul (1).
but among the materialists it arises from cerebral operations, the brain being the source of the intellectual faculties;
(As for the Rational Soul)
Risālah fī ʻilm al-akhlāq
The highest human faculty, knower of universals and rightful ruler of the other two souls; its mastery constitutes virtue and its likeness is kingship.
The first is the rational faculty, which apprehends universals primitively, and it is called the angelic soul (al-nafs al-malakīyah).
and if the subjects are weak, susceptible of being set straight and brought into balance — so that, were the matter supposed otherwise than we have described, the welfare of the king and the soundness of the subjects' condition would be impossible — just so, justice of character is not ordered in the human world save by the rational soul's having mastery over the other two souls, disposing of them …
al-Saʻādah fī falsafat al-akhlāq
The rational soul, identified with the heart, whose light illumines the lower soul.
It is the intermediary between the heart, which is the rational soul, and the body;
The soul at peace (al-muṭmaʼinnah) is the one whose illumination by the light of the heart is complete, so that it has stripped off its blameworthy attributes and taken on the praiseworthy traits, and has turned wholly toward the side of the heart, racing in its ascent toward the side of the world of holiness, holding itself clear of the side of defilement, persevering in the acts of obedience, at …
The soul that reproaches (al-lawwāmah) is the one that has been illumined to the measure in which it has been roused from the slumber of heedlessness;
Risālat al-Wāridāt
Al-nafs al-nāṭiqah, the immaterial human rational soul: exempt from sensory motion and therefore from generation and corruption, enduring as Being endures, active according to its rank, and governing while embodied.
and since the Real in all its degrees is active, as has preceded, and the soul thereby has the rank of act, its full manifestation is in the world of intellection and of the acquisition of character — like a sultan’s son who yearns for his father’s rank but, by reason of his own deficiency, withdraws into some quarter and displays his sovereignty there, consoling himself with it and taking pleasur …
But when they pass away and it becomes bare, it returns to the governing of the plant and ascends to humanity, and so on, out of its longing for its own degree of governance over this world.
so the human rational souls endure with the endurance of Being.