Islamic philosophy
has always had a rather difficult relationship with the Islamic sciences, those
techniques for answering theoretical questions which are closely linked with
the religion of Islam, comprising law, theology, language and the study of the
religious texts themselves. Many theologians such as Ibn Hazm, al-Juwayni and Fakhr
al-Din al-Razi
presented accounts of Islamic theology which argued for a particular theory of
how to interpret religious texts (see Islamic theology).
They
tended to advocate a restricted approach to interpretation, rejecting the use
of analogy and also the idea that philosophy is an objective system of enquiry
which can be applied to anything at all. Most theologians were Ash‘arites (see Ash‘ariyya and Mu‘tazila),
which meant that they were opposed to the idea that ethical and religious ideas
could be objectively true. What makes such ideas true, the Ash‘arites argued,
is that God says that they are true, and there are no other grounds for
accepting them than this.
This had a particularly strong influence on ethics
(see Ethics in Islamic
philosophy), where there was much debate between objectivists and
subjectivists, with the latter arguing that an action is just if and only if
God says that it is just. Many thinkers wrote about how to reconcile the social
virtues, which involve being part of a community and following the rules of
religion, with the intellectual virtues, which tend to involve a more solitary
lifestyle. Ibn Miskawayh
and Al-Tusi developed
complex accounts of the apparent conflict between these different sets of
virtues.
Political
philosophy in Islam looked to Greek thinkers for ways of understanding the
nature of the state, yet also generally linked Platonic ideas of the state to
Qur’anic notions, which is not difficult given the basically hierarchical
nature of both types of account (see Political philosophy in
classical Islam). Even thinkers attracted to Illuminationist philosophy
such as al-Dawani wrote
on political philosophy, arguing that the structure of the state should
represent the material and spiritual aspects of the citizens. Through a strict
differentiation of role in the state, and through leadership by those skilled
in religious and philosophical knowledge, everyone would find an acceptable
place in society and scope for spiritual perfection to an appropriate degree.
Particular
problems arose in the discussions concerning the nature of the soul (see Soul in Islamic philosophy).
According to the version of Aristotle which was generally used by the Islamic
philosophers, the soul is an integral part of the person as its form, and once
the individual dies the soul disappears also. This appears to contravene the
notion of an afterlife which is so important a part of Islam. Even Platonic
views of the soul seem to insist on its spirituality, as compared with the very
physical accounts of the Islamic afterlife.
Many of the philosophers tried to
get around this by arguing that the religious language discussing the soul is
only allegorical, and is intended to impress upon the community at large that
there is a wider context within which their lives take place, which extends
further than those lives themselves. They could argue in this way because of theories
which presented a sophisticated view of different types of meaning that a
statement may have in order to appeal to different audiences and carry out a
number of different functions (see Meaning in Islamic philosophy).
Only the philosopher really has the ability to understand this range of
meanings, and those who work in the Islamic sciences do not know how to deal
with these issues which come outside of their area of expertise.
While those
skilled in dealing with the law will know how to adjudicate between different
legal judgements, we need an understanding of the philosophy of law in Islam if
we are to have access to what might be called the deep structure of law itself
(see Law, Islamic
philosophy of). Similarly, although the Qur’an encourages its followers to
discover facts about the world, it is through the philosophy of science that we
can understand the theoretical principles which lie behind that physical
reality (see Science in
Islamic philosophy).
Many of the
problems of religion versus philosophy arose in the area of aesthetics (see Aesthetics in Islamic
philosophy). The rules of poetry which traditionally existed in the Arabic
tradition came up against the application of Aristotle’s Poetics
to that poetry. One of the interesting aspects of Islamic aesthetics is that it
treated poetry as a logical form, albeit of a very low demonstrative value,
along the continuum of logical forms which lie behind all our language and
practices. This is explained in studies of both epistemology and logic (see Epistemology in Islamic
philosophy; Logic in
Islamic philosophy).
Logic came to play an enormous role in Islamic
philosophy, and the idea that logic represents a basic set of techniques which
lies behind what we think and what we do was felt to be very exciting and
provocative. Many theologians who attacked philosophy were staunch defenders of
logic as a tool for disputation, and Ibn Taymiyya is unusual in
the strong critique which he provided of Aristotelian logic. He argued that the
logic entails Aristotelian metaphysics, and so should be abandoned by anyone
who wishes to avoid philosophical infection.
However, the general
respect for logic provides the framework for the notion that there is a range
of logical approaches which are available to different people, each of which is
appropriate to different levels of society. For the theologian and the lawyer,
for instance, dialectic is appropriate, since this works logically from
generally accepted propositions to conclusions which are established as valid,
but only within the limits set by those premises. This means that within the
context of theology, for example, if we accept the truth of the Qur’an, then
certain conclusions follow if we use the principles of theology; but if we do
not accept the truth of the Qur’an, then the acceptability of those conclusions
is dubious.
Philosophers are distinguished from everyone else in that they are
the only people who use entirely certain and universal premises, and so their
conclusions have total universality as well as validity. When it comes to
knowledge we find a similar contrast. Ordinary people can know something of what
is around them and also of the spiritual nature of reality, but they are
limited to the images and allegories of religion and the scope of their senses.
Philosophers, by contrast, can attain much higher levels of knowledge through
their application of logic and through their ability to perfect their
understanding and establish contact with the principles which underlie the
whole of reality.
