A particularly rich
blend of philosophy flourished in al-Andalus (the Islamic part of the Iberian
penninsula), and in North Africa. Ibn Masarra defended a
form of mysticism, and this type of thinking was important for both Ibn Tufayl and Ibn Bajja, for whom the
contrast between the individual in society and the individual who primarily
relates to God became very much of a theme.
The argument was often that a
higher level of understanding of reality can be attained by those prepared to
develop their religious consciousness outside of the framework of traditional
religion, a view which was supported and became part of a highly sophisticated
account of the links between religion and reason as created by Ibn Rushd. He set out to
defend philosophy strenuously from the attacks of al-Ghazali, and also to
present a more Aristotelian account than had been managed by Ibn Sina.
He
argued that there are a variety of routes to God, all equally valid, and that
the route which the philosopher can take is one based on the independent use of
reason, while the ordinary member of society has to be satisfied with the
sayings and obligations of religion. Ibn Sab‘in, by contrast,
argued that Aristotelian philosophy and logic were useless in trying to
understand reality since those ideas fail to mirror the basic unity which is
implicit in reality, a unity which stems from the unity of God, and so we
require an entirely new form of thinking which is adequate to the task of
representing the oneness of the world.
A thinker better known perhaps for his
work on history and sociology than in philosophy is Ibn Khaldun, who was
nonetheless a significant philosophical writer; he presents an excellent
summary of preceding philosophical movements within the Islamic world, albeit
from a conservative (Ash‘arite) point of view.
