Arabic philosophy

whose loyalty to Islam must either be based on some formof fideism

or must be disingenuous. Yet this dilemma and its dangerous horns

should be rejected for a more sympathetic understanding of Averroes

as a devotee of the most sophisticated and dominant religion of his

historical culture, Islam. A distinguished scholar and religious qa¯dı¯,

Averroes’ devotion to Islam and its religious practices was never significantly

questioned in a way prominent to historical scholarship.

Rather, it is apparent that Averroes held the world and its First Principle,

God, to be through and through rational in nature, such that

human rational endeavors are understood to be the keys to the most

complete knowledge and happiness open to human beings.His philosophical

thought includes important roles for religion in the development

of human powers toward their fulfillment in the highest

intellectual insight into God and his creation, even as it gives critical

assessment to the truth and efficacy of religious arguments and

statements.

notes

1 Druart [141].

2 Averroes, Taha¯ fut al-taha¯ fut, ed. M. Bouyges, S.J. (Beirut: 1930), 427–8;

Averroes [140], 257–8.

Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006

Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006

198 richard c. taylor

3 See G. Endress, “Averrois Opera: A Bibliography of Editions and Contributions

to the Text,” in Aertsen and Endress [134], 339–81.

4 See C. Burnett, “The Second Revelation of Arabic Philosophy and

Science: 1492–1562,” in C. Burnett and A. Contadini (eds.), Islam and

the Italian Renaissance (London: 1999), 185–98.

5 See E. Renan, Averro`es et l’averro¨ısme, in OEuvres compl`etes de Ernest

Renan, ed. H. Psichari, vol. III (Paris: 1852); A. von Ku‥ glegen, Averroes

und die arabische Moderne: Ansa¨ tze zu einer Neubegru¨ ndung des

Rationalismus im Islam (Leiden:1994). Also see von Ku‥ glegen, “A

Call for Rationalism: ‘Arab Averroists’ in the Twentieth Century,” Alif

(Cairo) 16 (1996), 97–132.

6 See O. Leaman, Averroes and his Philosophy (Oxford: 1988) and O.

Leaman, A Brief Introduction to Islamic Philosophy (Oxford: 1999).

7 Averroes, Taha¯ fut, 427–8; Averroes [140], 257–8. Translation slightly

modified; Arabic added.

8 Averroes, Sharh. al-burh¯ an li-Arist.

u¯ , in A. Badawı¯ (ed.), Ibn Rushd,

Sharh. al-burh¯ an li-Arist.

¯ u wa-talkh¯ıs.

al-burha¯n (Grand Commentaire

et Paraphrase des “Secondes Analytiques” d’Aristote) (Kuwait: 1984),

184; Latin In Aristotelis Opera Cum Averrois Commentariis (Venice:

1562; repr. Frankfurt a.M.: 1962), vol. I, pt. 2, bk. 1, Comment 9, 32rA.

At 32vD Averroes quotes Aristotle’s text that true conclusions can be

made from false premises, though those conclusions are per accidens.

The next Comment argues that the conditions for demonstration must

be met completely.

9 In this translation I follow A. El Ghannouchi, “Distinction et relation

des discours philosophique et religieux chez Ibn Rushd: Fasl al

maqal ou la double v’erit ’ e,” in Averroes (1126–1198) oder der Triumph

des Rationalismus: Internationales Symposium anla¨ sslich des 800.

Todestages des islamischen Philosophen, ed. R. G. Khoury (Heidelberg:

2002), 139–45; see 145.

10 See chapter 4 above; and al-F ¯ar¯ab¯ı, Tah.

s.

ı¯l al-sa‘a¯da, in Rasa¯ ’il al-Fa¯ ra¯bı¯

(Hyderabad: 1926/1345 A. H.), 29–36; “The Attainment of Happiness,”

in Alfarabi’s Philosophy of Plato and Aristotle, trans.M. Mahdi (Ithaca,

NY: 1969), sect. iii, 34–41. Cf. Walzer [77], ch. 17, 276–85.

11 Averroes [139], 49. Translation slightly modified.

12 For detailed discussion of this rendering of Aristotle, Prior Analytics,

I.32, 47a8–9, see Taylor [148].

13 Averroes [139], 51.

14 Averroes, Taha¯ fut, 151–2; Averroes [140], 90. Creation ex nihilo is

also denied in the Long Commentary on the “Metaphysics”: Averroes,

Tafsı¯r ma¯ ba‘d al-t.abı¯‘a, ed. M. Bouyges (Beirut: 1949), 1497–1505;

Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006

Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006

Averroes 199

Engl. trans. at Averroes [137], 108–12; Latin in In Aristotelis Opera

cum Averrois Commentariis, vol. VIII, 304rD–305vI.

15 Averroes [139], 57.

16 Averroes, Taha¯ fut, 582; Averroes [140], 360.

17 Averroes [139], 75.

18 Ibid.

19 Ibid.

20 Averroes [139], 61.

21 Taylor [216].

22 Ibn Rushd (Averroes), al-Kashf ‘an al-mana¯hij al-adilla fı¯ ‘aqa¯ ’id almilla

(Beirut: 1998), 118–19; English trans. Averroes [136], 79ff.

23 See M. Geoffroy, “L’Almohadisme th’eologique d’Averro`es (Ibn

Rushd),” Archives d’histoire doctrinale et litte´ raire du moyen aˆ ge 66

(1999), 9–47.

24 Averroes [135], 433.Mytranslation. For other texts, see S. Harvey, “The

Quiddity of Philosophy according toAverroes and Falaquera:AMuslim

Philosopher and his Jewish Interpreter,” in J. A. Aertsen and A. Speer

(eds.), Was ist Philosophie imMittelalter? (Berlin: 1998), 904–13. Also

see Taylor [146].

25 Ibn Rushd (Averroes), Middle Commentary on Aristotle’s “Prior Analytics”

(Arabic), ed. M. M. Kassem, with C. E. Butterworth and A. Abd

al-Magid Haridi (Cairo: 1983), 226.

26 These are (1) the Epistle on the Possibility of Conjunction, trans. K. P.

Bland (New York: 1982); (2) Epistle #1 On Conjunction and (3) Epistle

#2 On Conjunction, ed. and trans. in M. Geoffroy and C. Steel (eds.),

Averroe`s, La be´atitude de l’aˆme: e´ditions, traductions et e´ tudes (Paris:

2001); (4) De Separatione Primi Principii, inC. Steel andG. Guldentops,

“An Unknown Treatise of Averroes against the Avicennians on the

First Cause: Edition and Translation,” Recherches de th´eologie et

philosophiem´edi ´evales 64 (1997), 86–135; and (5) the Commentary on

the “De Intellectu” of Alexander, in M. Zonta, “La tradizione guideoaraba

ed ebraica del De intellectu di Alessandro di Afrodisa e il testo

originale del Commento di Averro` e,” Annali di Ca’ Foscari 40.3 (2001),

17–35.

27 Epitome de Anima (Arabic text), ed. S. G’omez Nogales (Madrid: 1985),

108. G’omez Nogales has also translated his edition as La psicolog´ıa

de Averroes: comentario al libro sobre el alma de Aristo´ teles (Madrid:

1987).

28 Epitome de Anima, 124.

29 Averroes [138], 111–12.

30 Averroes [135], 387. The account which follows is based on 387–8.

Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006

Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006

200 richard c. taylor

31 Averroes [135], 409.

32 Averroes [135], 411–12.

33 Averroes [135], 439.

34 “[W]ithout the imaginative power and the cogitative [power] the intellect

which is called material understands nothing” (Averroes [135],

450).

35 “[T]hat in virtue of which something carries out its proper activity is

the form, while we carry out our proper activity in virtue of the agent

intellect, it is necessary that the agent intellect be forminus” (Averroes

[135], 500). Also see 439. On “our final form,” see 444–5, 485–6, 490.

36 In the Long Commentary on the “Metaphysics”: Averroes, Tafsı¯r ma¯

ba‘d al-t.ab¯ı‘a, 1599.7.

37 See Davidson [208], 220ff.

38 Averroes, Tafsı¯r ma¯ ba‘d al-t.abı¯‘a, 313ff.; see also 1279ff.

39 See C. Baz’an, “Was There Ever a ‘First Averroism’?” in Miscellanea

Mediaevalia 27 (Berlin: 2000), 31–53.

Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006

Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006

john walbridge

10 Suhraward¯ı and Illuminationism

suhraward￣ı and his career

One is tempted to romanticize Suhraward¯ı.1 Indeed, there is no particular

reason to avoid romanticizing himas a personality. He lived the

life of a wanderingwise man, and his story involved a prince, a magic

gem, the fabulous Saladin, and a tragic early death.We can see himas

his contemporaries saw him – probably as he saw himself – as a figure

out of philosophical folklore, the like of whom had not been seen

since Apollonius of Tyana. However, in my view it is a grave error

to examine his philosophy, Illuminationism, through romantic spectacles,

for Suhraward¯ı, despite his own attempts to mystify his project,

was a hardheaded philosophical critic and creative thinker who

set the agenda for later Islamic philosophy. Al-Ghaz¯ al¯ı’s attempt to

make religion independent of reason and Averroes’ Aristotelianism

left little trace in later Islamic thought, but Suhraward¯ı’s critique of

Avicenna’s ontology and of Aristotelian epistemology and his solutions

to these problems were his successors’ starting points. The

modern description of his philosophy as “theosophy” does not do

justice to the rigor and philosophical influence of his thought.2

Suhraward¯ı was probably born around 1154 in the village of

Suhraward near Zanj ¯an in northwestern Iran.3 We know nothing

of his family or ethnic background. He first appears in Mar¯agha, a

nearby city, where he studied logic and philosophy with Majd al-D¯ın

al-J¯ıl¯ı, a scholar of moderate prominence who also was the teacher

of the famous theologian Fakhr al-D¯ın al-R¯az¯ı. Later he studied with

Fakhr al-D¯ın al-M¯ard¯ın¯ı, either in M¯ard¯ın in southeastern Anatolia

or in Isfahan. M¯ard¯ın¯ı was a prominent teacher of medicine and the

rational sciences and apparently a S.

u¯ fı¯. In Isfahan he studied Ibn

201

Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006

Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006

202 john walbridge

Sahla¯n al-Sa¯wı¯’s Bas.a¯ ’ir, an innovative text on logic, with the otherwise

unknown Zah¯ır al-F ¯aris¯ı (or al-Q¯ar¯ı). He seems to have spent

his twenties wandering in central Anatolia and northern Syria in

search of patronage. His books written in this period are dedicated

to various local dignitaries.

At some point in these wanderings Suhraward¯ı abandoned the

Avicennian Peripatetic philosophy that he had learned from his

teacher and became a Platonist. It was, he tells us, his mystical exercises

and a dream of Aristotle that led to his conversion. He does not

explain in detail the mystical experiences, though they seem to have

been connected with the apprehension of the Platonic Forms.4 As for

the dream, Aristotle appeared to him one night, shining with light.

Suhraward¯ı had been struggling with the problem of knowledge.

Aristotle explained that the key to understanding knowledge was

self-consciousness – the basis of the doctrine of knowledge by presence,

of which I will say more presently. After he had finished his

explanations, Aristotle began praising Plato. Startled by the extravagence

of the praise, Suhraward¯ı asked Aristotle whether any of

the Islamic philosophers had reached that rank. It was only the

ecstatic mystics like Bist. ¯am¯ı and Tustar¯ı who were worthy of the

great philosopher’s notice.5

In 1183 he came to Aleppo, which had just been captured by

Saladin. It is said that he entered the city in clothes so shabby that he

wasmistaken for a donkey driver. He took up residence at amadrasa,

where the director quickly realized that he was a man of learning and

tactfully sent his young son with a gift of decent clothes. Suhraward¯ı

brought out a large gem and told the boy to go to the market and have

it priced. The boy came back and reported that the prince-governor,

a teenaged son of Saladin, had bid 30,000 dirhams for it. Suhraward¯ı

then smashed the gem with a rock, telling the boy that he could

have had better clothes had he wished.6 Suhraward¯ı was soon under

the protection of the prince. He finished his most important work,

The Philosophy of Illumination, three years later on September 15,

1186, on an evening when the sun, the moon, and the five Ptolemaic

planets were all in conjunction in Libra.7

Suhraward¯ı’s ascendancy over the prince, al-Malik al-Z. ¯ahir,

aroused the jealousy of various local scholars. The magical powers

and mystical attainments that he is said to have flaunted cannot

have helped relations. Complaints reached the ear of Saladin.

Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006

Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006

Suhraward¯ı 203

Suhraward¯ı’s philosophy would have sounded like Ism¯a‘¯ılism to

Saladin and his conservative religious advisors, and Aleppo was of

great strategic importance, especially with the looming threat of the

Third Crusade. Accordingly, Saladin ordered Suhraward¯ı’s execution,

and the young prince reluctantly acceded. Suhraward¯ı probably died

in 1191, though the accounts are contradictory.8 The circle of disciples

who had accompanied him scattered, and not even their names

are recorded.

suhraward￣ı’s writings and the transition from

peripatetic to illuminationist philosophy

There is a major difficulty in interpreting Suhraward¯ı’s thought. He

is known as Shaykh al-Ishra¯q, which means – we will tentatively

(and tendentiously) say – “the master of illumination” or, less dramatically,

“the founder of the Illuminationist school.” The question

is, what might that mean? In the introduction to The Philosophy of

Illumination Suhraward¯ı says:

Before I wrote this book and during the times when interruptions prevented

me from working on it, I wrote other books in which I have summarized

for you the principles of the Peripatetics according to their method . . .

I also have composed other works, some in my youth. But the present work

has another method and a shorter path to knowledge than their method. It

is more orderly and precise, less painful to study. I did not first arrive at

it through cogitation, but rather it was acquired through something else.

Subsequently I sought proof for it so that should I cease contemplating the

proof, nothing would make me fall into doubt.9

Combining this statement with what we know about Suhraward¯ı’s

surviving works, we can divide them into four classes:

(1) juvenilia;

(2) mystical works, notably a number of allegories;

(3) works expounding the principles of the Peripatetics according

to their methods;

(4) The Philosophy of Illumination.

Probably half or less of the bulk of Suhraward¯ı’s writings has been

published and only The Philosophy of Illumination and the allegories

have received serious scholarly attention, so anything we can

Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006

Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006

204 john walbridge

say about his works as a whole is necessarily tentative. So far,

Suhraward¯ı’s statement about his works has been understood in two

quite different ways.

The approach popularized by the late Henry Corbin, the scholar

most responsible for bringing Suhraward¯ı to the attention of world

scholarship, focuses on the mystical and mythical elements of

Suhraward¯ı’s thought. The “Peripatetic” works are simply an exercise

for those unable to pursue serious mystical – or to use the term

popularized by Corbin, “theosophical” – investigations. Therefore,

the works of Suhraward¯ı worthy of serious attention are the mystical

allegories and The Philosophy of Illumination less its first book,

which deals with logic and the critique of the Peripatetics. By this

account, Suhraward¯ı was a reviver of the wisdom of the ancient

Persians, as indicated by his use of light and darkness as fundamental

philosophical concepts and by his invocation of various Zoroastrian

sages and gods. Thus, Corbin translated the title of The Philosophy of

Illumination as “Le livre de th’eosophie orientale” and spent a good

deal of time talking about the importance of “spiritual geography”

in Suhraward¯ı’s thought.10

This was not how Suhraward¯ı was understood by most of his

successors in the Islamic world. For both followers like Qut.b al-

D¯ın al-Sh¯ır ¯az¯ı and critics like Mull¯a S. adr¯ a, he was a philosopher

who had made certain specific contributions in metaphysics, ontology,

and epistemology. Suhraward¯ı had begun with a critique of the

standard philosophy of the day, the Peripatetic system of Avicenna,

and attacked it on several major points. First, while attempting to

clarify the murky Aristotelian conception of being, Avicenna had

made a distinction between essence and existence and then assumed

that a real distinction must correspond to this mental distinction.

Suhraward¯ı attacked this assumption, arguing that conceptions such

as existencewere i‘tiba¯ rı¯, products of themind. Suhrawardı¯’s successors

accepted his critique ofAvicenna, but disagreed as to whether his

solution was adequate. Mull¯a S. adr¯ a, for example, held that in fact it

was essence, the differences among things, that was i‘tiba¯ rı¯. Second,

Suhraward¯ı criticized Avicenna’s Aristotelian conception of knowledge

by abstraction of forms. Instead, he argued that knowledge was

essentially the unmediated presence of the thing known to the conscious

knower. This theory was the basis of his use of mysticism

as a philosophical tool. This criticism and solution was generally

Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006

Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006

Suhraward¯ı 205

accepted by his successors. Finally, Suhraward¯ı argued that philosophical

cosmology required the assumption that existents could differ

in intensity as well as in kind. Again, this theory was immensely

influential among his successors.

Suhraward¯ı made various other criticisms of the prevailing

Avicennian Peripateticism: a reassertion of the doctrine of Platonic

Forms, an attack on the Peripatetic theory of essential definition,

and an attack on the Peripatetic theory of matter, for example.

These were obviously philosophical positions, understood as such by

Suhraward¯ı’s successors. Moreover, The Philosophy of Illumination,

by universal agreement the most important of Suhraward¯ı’s works,

was understood by his successors through a series of philosophically

oriented commentaries, notably the commentary of Shahrazu¯ rı¯, its

adaptation by Qut.b al-D¯ın al-Sh¯ır ¯az¯ı, and the annotations by Mull¯a

S.

adr¯a. These commentaries translated its novel philosophical terminology

into the standard philosophical language of Avicenna so

that, for example, “barrier” becomes “body” and “managing light”

becomes “soul.”11 The legitimacy of this procedure was not, so far as

I know, questioned from within the Islamic philosophical tradition,

though it has been by some modern scholars.

Whether or not they were correct to label Suhraward¯ı a

“theosophist,” Corbin and his followers were quite correct in stressing

the importance of the passages in Surhaward¯ı’s writing concerning

his philosophical genealogy. Suhraward¯ı clearly saw himself

as the reviver of the most ancient tradition of philosophy. Modern

scholars for the most part would see the genealogy of Islamic philosophy

as going back to Aristotle as understood by his later commentators

with some Neoplatonic influence through stray texts like

the Theology of Aristotle. There was perhaps some slight influence

from other Greek philosophical schools and from other nations in

politics and ethics. Later on, there was influence fromS.

u¯ fism, with

Suhraward¯ı being one of the important instances.

Suhraward¯ı saw things differently. There were three ancient

sources of philosophical thought: the Egyptians, the Indians and

Chinese, and the ancient Persians. Themainstream of Islamic philosophy

derived ultimately from Egypt, from the philosopher-prophet

Hermes Trismegistus, also called Enoch or Idr¯ıs.12 Empedocles had

studied in Syria and Pythagoras in Egypt and Mesopotamia. The two

of them were the founders of the tradition of “divine philosophy” in

Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006

Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006

206 john walbridge

Greek philosophy. Socrates and Plato were under their influence,

and Aristotle was, of course, the student of Plato. The followers of

Aristotle took his philosophy in two directions. The Aristotelians

best known in the Islamic world were those who pursued only the

superficial aspects of his thought. Their champion wasAvicenna, and

Suhraward¯ı himself had belonged to their school. However, there

were also Aristotelians – including Aristotle himself in his later

years – who carried on the divine philosophy of Plato, which is represented

in such works as the Theology. In the meantime, there was

also a Pythagorean tradition that survived in Egypt and was associated

with the alchemists of Panopolis. Its Islamic representatives

were the S.

¯ uf¯ı alchemist Dh ¯ u al-N¯ un al-Mis.

r¯ı and his student Sahl

al-Tustar¯ı. Second, there was the tradition of the ancient Persians,

represented by various pre-Islamic Persian sages and by the ecstatic

PersianS.

u¯ fı¯s Abu¯ Yazı¯d al-Bast.a¯mı¯, al-H. alla¯ j, and al-Kharaqa¯nı¯. The

exact position of the Chinese and Indians, the third source of philosophy,

is less clear. Probably, Suhraward¯ı saw them mostly as having

parallel traditions of wisdom whose influence on Islamic philosophy,

such as it might be, was either through the Iranians or through

Pythagoras, who was thought to have journeyed in the East and to

have had followers in India. Suhraward¯ı was thus the first of the