The doctrine of the philosophers of Islam on matter and spirit

There descended to you from the loftiest station — a dove, possessed of pride and of withholding Veiled from the eye of every knower — yet she it is who unveiled and wore no veil (Ibn Sīnā)

The doctrine of the philosophers of Islam on matter and spirit

The Arabian peninsula shone with the light of the Arabian Prophet — God bless him and his household and give them peace — and Islam appeared, its foundation the profession of the unity of the True Originator and the declaring of Him free of every incapacity and defect. And the world, in the view of the Muslim whom the sound Qur'anic teachings had reared — with its earth and its heaven and what they contained of animal and plant and inanimate thing — was subject to the divine power: the Maker does what He wills and decrees what He desires. Then, when the dawn of the second and third centuries broke and the age of Arab-Islamic civilisation came, the Muslims turned their resolve to the translation of the books of philosophy which the advanced nations had composed, such as the Greeks, the Romans, the Persians and the Indians; and there spread among the Muslims philosophical views and intellectual principles, which a body of the scholars of the Muslims received with firm faith and settled conviction. And men excelled in those philosophical sciences and framed a philosophy composed of the Greek principles and the Islamic teachings — and these are the philosophers of Islam, the greatest of them being the philosopher Ibn Sīnā (1), and Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad al-Fārābī (1), and Ibn Rushd of al-Andalus of the flying renown; and another party of the Muslims followed in their traces and undertook their defence. And since the principles of Greek philosophy and its sisters comprised foundations of paganism which contradict the principles of the Islamic religion, whose foundation is the profession of unity, a people appeared who framed rational principles in accord with the Islamic principles, and undertook the demolition of whatever in those views contradicted the rules of the Islamic law — and these are the theologians (mutakallimūn) of Islam, the greatest of them being the Proof of Islam Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazzālī (2), and Naṣīr al-Dīn Muḥammad al-Ṭūsī (1), and the learned Ḥasan ibn al-Muṭahhar al-Ḥillī (2), and Fakhr al-Dīn Muḥammad ibn ʻUmar al-Rāzī (3). And the struggle between the two parties was of a severity the like of which is not known in the history of learning; and the door of allegorical interpretation (taʼwīl) of the glorious Book of God was thrown open at the beginning of the scholarly movement, each buttressing his own view by it — and the Book of God is innocent of any accord with false views and corrupt principles.

As for the first party, that is, the philosophers of Islam, the followers of the philosophers Plato and Aristotle: their doctrine is the eternity of an original matter, in accordance with the view of the two philosophers, and the denial of the creation of a thing out of nothing (4). They call it prime matter (hayūlā) (5), or the unformed element. And the real originated thing — that is, the coming-to-be of a thing out of nothingness — is, for them, void by the judgement of necessity. Abū ʻAlī the philosopher has a rational demonstration for the establishing of this matter, that is, of prime matter, and it is this: that the body in itself is continuous, and that separation has a receptivity in it; and it is impossible that what receives separation should be continuity in itself, since a thing does not in itself receive its own non-being. So continuity must have a locus that receives separation, and that locus is prime matter, while continuity is the form. And Ibn Rushd buttressed the eternity of matter in respect of species, and its origination in respect of form, with verses from the glorious Book, and sought thereby to deny real origination, that is, the emergence of a thing out of sheer nothingness — as in His words, exalted be He: “And He it is who created the heavens and the earth in six days, and His throne was upon the water”, which requires, by its outward sense, an existence before the bringing into being of the heavens and the earth, and that is the throne and the water; and His words, exalted be He: “Then He turned to the heaven, and it was smoke”, which requires, by its outward sense, the origination of the world by a divine will out of a prior matter, and that is the smoke of the world. And he says: “There is nothing in the outward sense of the Law that establishes that God, exalted be He, was existent with no existent created thing” (1) — that is, together with nothingness, as the theologians alleged.

And as for the second party, that is, the theologians: their doctrine is the origination of matter by a real origination — that is, matter is, for them, brought out of sheer nothingness by a hidden eternal power whose secret has not been disclosed to this day.

And the learned Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī has a rational demonstration for the origination of matter and of the bodies configured out of it, one and all: and it is that bodies and matter are never disjoined from particulars whose origination the self-evident has decreed, and whatever is of this description must be originated. And motion, which is among the most proper of the properties of matter, is itself originated; for we understand from the passage (1) of a thing from one state to another — which is the meaning of motion — nothing but the priority of the state passed from over the state passed to, a temporal priority in which the prior and the preceded do not coexist. And what is preceded by another with a temporal priority is preceded by nothingness, because the meaning of the non-coexistence of the prior and the preceded is that the prior exists and the preceded does not exist; and being preceded by nothingness is the meaning of origination.

And this demonstration goes against the well-known rule of Lavoisier, since the establishing of the motion from which matter is not separated, nor it from matter, requires the origination of matter out of sheer nothingness.

And their doctrine — that is, the doctrine of the Muslim theologians — concerning the soul is agreement upon its immortality and its not perishing after the perishing of the body. And it is, for them, a power among the unknown powers; and they hold that the body is a condition in its being made to overflow, as Aristotle holds that, and that it is not existent before the existence of the body, as Plato goes to.

— Notes —

[12] (1) Ibn Sīnā, who died in the year 428 A.H. — 980–1036 — whom the Europeans call (Avicenne), is Abū ʻAlī al-Ḥusayn ibn ʻAbd Allāh ibn Sīnā al-Bukhārī,

[13] known as the Chief Master, one of the great philosophers of Islam. He was born in the village of Kharmaythan in the year 370 A.H., and was keen of wit, the singular man of his age. His father moved to Bukhārā, which in those days was thronged with scholars, in the time of Nūḥ ibn Manṣūr of the kings of the Sāmānid state. He died at Hamadhān in the year 428, in his fifty-eighth year; and his writings exceed a hundred, most of them translated into the Western languages.

[13] (1) He is Abū Naṣr Muḥammad ibn Ṭarkhān. He was born at Fārāb in the districts of Khurāsān in the year 260, and died at Dimashq of Shām in the year 339 A.H. His writings are of the greatest importance. And he is among the greatest philosophers of Islam.

[13] (2) He is Abū Ḥāmid ibn Aḥmad. He was born at Ṭūs in the districts of Khurāsān in the year 450 and died there in the year 505, after playing an important part in the religious and philosophical movement of his age. And when the affair of the free thinkers appalled him, he wrote in defence of the Islamic religion his three works: Iḥyāʼ al-ʻUlūm, and Maqāṣid al-Falāsifah, and Tahāfut al-Falāsifah. And philosophy among the Arabs began to decline and dwindle before al-Ghazzālī's thrusts, and its trace all but effaced itself in the East after Ibn Sīnā; but it rose again in al-Andalus, and Ibn Rushd the grandson was among the pillars of this rising.

[14] (1) Who died in the year (672).

[14] (2) And he is Ḥasan ibn al-Muṭahhar al-Ḥillī, the pupil of Naṣīr al-Dīn, known as Āyat Allāh. His books and his views are of the greatest importance, and he is among the most eminent of authors. He composed many books on the principles of jurisprudence and on jurisprudence according to the four schools and the school of the Shīʻah, and on philosophy and theology and logic and astronomy; and he commented upon Naṣīr al-Dīn's book al-Tajrīd and made its subtle meanings plain. He died in the year 728.

[14] (3) He is Fakhr al-Dīn Muḥammad ibn ʻUmar al-Rāzī, one of the great men of learning. He has famous writings, some of which have been translated into the foreign languages; and his philosophy was religious and doctrinal. He died in the year 606.

[14] (4) The Qur'an's disagreement with this view is not established, after what has come in it: “Or were they created out of nothing?” — since the interrogative is, upon verification, one of denial. H. N.

[14] (5) Prime matter, for Locke — the philosopher, author of the book An Inquiry into the Human Understanding, born in the year 1632 and died in the year 1704 — is necessary and inseparable.

[15] (1) How so, when there has come: “God was, and there was nothing with Him”? H. N.

[15] (2) This and the like of it establish its origination individually, not what they call specifically; so it does not conflict with its eternity as prime matter. H. N.