 Hi, I'm Peter Adamson and you're listening to the History of Philosophy podcast, brought to you with the support of the LMU in Munich, online at www.historyoffilosophy.net. Today's episode, Fantasy Island, Im Baja and Im Tufe. An engineer, a geologist, and an economist are stranded on a desert island. They have some precious food, but it is all lodged in tin cans. Somehow, they need to get at the food before they starve to death. Let's find a sharp rock and use it to open the cans, suggests the engineer. No, let's put them in the surf and let erosion do the work for us, suggests the geologist. The economist smiles at their naive proposals and says, why not just assume we have a can opener? Ah yes, the remote desert island, mainstay not only of joke tellers and cartoonists, but also a long-running BBC radio program and more than a few films. Perhaps you yourself have wondered how you might fare if stranded alone on an island. I think that if I had my copy of Plato's collected dialogues, I'd be just fine, at least until my utter practical incompetence led me to die of starvation, thirst, or exposure, whichever came first. That's assuming that I wound up on the island at my current, relatively advanced age. If I had arrived as a newborn infant, I could have done much better. Even without a copy of Plato's dialogues, I might have transformed myself into a perfect philosopher and visionary mystic. All I would need is a little bit of help from a gazelle. I take this optimistic assessment of my chances from one of the most memorable and entertaining philosophical texts produced in the Islamic world. Its title is the name of the main, and almost only, character, Hayy ibn Yaqdan, which means living, son of awake. Its author was Ibn Tufail, who lived in 12th century Andalusia, serving two Almohad caliphs in the city of Granada. Apart from his philosophical island fantasy, he composed poetry in support of the Almohads, and also wrote a poem on medicine. Unlike the setting of his most famous work, no man is an island, and Ibn Tufail was certainly a product of his intellectual environment. I already mentioned in the introductory episode on the Andalusian philosophy that Hayy ibn Yaqdan seems to reflect Almohad ideology. As for Ibn Tufail's philosophical influences, he lets us know a good deal about this himself, in a fascinating preface he wrote to Hayy ibn Yaqdan. If you read this book, which you should, don't give in to the temptation to skip straight to the island story. From the preface, we can see that there are basically three main philosophical influences on Ibn Tufail. First, Avicenna. This may come as no surprise to you given how much I have emphasized Avicenna's wide-reaching influence in previous episodes. But, as I also mentioned in the introduction to philosophy in Spain, Avicenna's works were rather incompletely transmitted to Andalusia. Ibn Tufail seems to know them as well as anyone in Spain. The very title Hayy ibn Yaqdan is taken from a symbolic treatise written by Avicenna, and he tells us in the preface that he has been able to consult Avicenna's healing. He adds, though, that this is not necessarily the crucial text for understanding the thought of the great sheikh. Rather, one should turn to his Oriental philosophy and realize that Avicenna's system leads one to mysticism. So, here we see Ibn Tufail playing a significant role in creating the image of a mystical Avicenna, whose Sufi-style insights were captured above all in the mostly lost work on Oriental wisdom. In presenting mystical vision as an attainment beyond what philosophy can offer, Ibn Tufail is betraying that he has had a little bit of help too, not from a gazelle but from Al-Ghazali. This is his second main philosophical source, as he explains in the preface. Again, his textual knowledge here is incomplete, but he knows enough about Al-Ghazali to complain that his works tend to be inconsistent, leaving us in the dark as to Al-Ghazali's most deeply held beliefs. Ibn Tufail worries that the most decisive texts may be unavailable to him in Andalusia. Nonetheless, he is convinced that Al-Ghazali was one of those who reached the highest stages of mystical knowledge, stages Ibn Tufail himself has only been able to glimpse. When we turn to the island story of Ha'ibn Yajdan, we see this influence from Avicenna and Al-Ghazali playing itself out and culminating in a portrayal of the mystic at work. But, before we do turn to the story, I want to dwell for a bit on Ibn Tufail's third main influence, a man named Ibn Bajja. Ibn Tufail is rather critical of him, seeing him as a limited mind, incapable of the mystical heights reached by Avicenna and Al-Ghazali. But, Ibn Bajja deserves more credit than that. He was the first Muslim thinker in Andalusia who wholeheartedly adopted the Aristotelian style of philosophy that will reach its fulfillment in the writings of Iverroes. Ibn Bajja harks back to a pre-Evacennan phase in the history of philosophy, adhering more to the style of thought we found in Al-Farabi. In this, he was again anticipating Iverroes, who likewise takes over philosophical themes from Al-Farabi, such as the demonstrative nature of philosophy compared to the rhetorical and symbolic discourse of religion. Of course, Iverroes also carried on the characteristic Baghdad school activity of writing commentaries on Aristotle. We'll see next time that Ibn Tufail knew Iverroes, and supposedly even played a role in launching the commentary project that would take up so much of Iverroes's time and energy. So, it is natural to see a smooth sequence of three major Muslim philosophers in Spain, Ibn Bajja, Ibn Tufail, and Iverroes. Natural, but misleading, not only because it leaves out other Muslim Andalusian thinkers, but also because Ibn Bajja and Iverroes have much more in common intellectually with each other than with Ibn Tufail. It would be better to think of Ibn Tufail not as the second of three Aristotelians, but as the proponent of a mystically spiced Avicennism that finds itself inserted into the Farabianism of Ibn Bajja and Iverroes. He is, if you will, the chorizo in their peripatetic paella. Yet, Ibn Tufail does take over at least one major theme from his Spanish predecessor. Ibn Bajja wrote on a range of philosophical and scientific topics, including logic and medicine. He also contributed a work on the nature of the intellect, which, as we'll be seeing, influenced the notorious theory of intellect put forward by his successor Iverroes. But his best-known work is entitled Rule of the Solitary, and it's no coincidence that Ibn Tufail's island story is all about a solitary philosopher. Like Al-Farabi's major works, Ibn Bajja's Rule of the Solitary combines metaphysical speculation with political philosophy. But his views on politics seem to be considerably more pessimistic than those of Al-Farabi. He sees the cities of his time as irredeemably corrupt. So he focuses not on the perfect prophet and philosopher-ruler of Al-Farabi's theory, but on the isolated philosopher living amidst a morally bankrupt population. Ibn Tufail's support for the ruling Almohads did not prevent him from expressing a similarly bleak view about the prospects of bringing philosophical wisdom to Muslim society. Enough background, let's finally begin our island visit and look at the narrative of Ibn Tufail's Hayy ibn Yaqdan. The strangeness and intrigue of the text is immediately evident, as it starts with not one, but two stories about how Hayy ibn Yaqdan came to be on the island in the first place. One story tells of how on a different, nearby island, the sister of a mighty king conceived a child in secret. Fearing scandal, she placed the infant in a chest which she sent floating away across the sea. The child, Hayy ibn Yaqdan, thus came to his island where he was the only inhabitant. The second alternative story is very different. It explains that the island lies in an ideal climate, just so that its earth is capable of spontaneously giving rise to a human. Ibn Tufail describes the process in considerable detail, with a bubble forming inside the earth and dividing into parts that will become Hayy's organs. This is one of several passages where we can see Ibn Tufail showing off his medical knowledge. Another more memorable one is only a few pages away, and will feature the most appealing character in Hayy ibn Yaqdan, a gazelle. It is thanks to the gazelle that Hayy survives in his island paradise. And by the way, it is thanks to the Arabic language that we have the word gazelle, which in Arabic is ghazal. Ibn Tufail makes a point of saying that with the arrival of the gazelle, the two alternative stories come together. She either finds the baby washed up on shore, or discovers him after he is spontaneously generated. From then on, we have a united narrative in which the gazelle nourishes the baby. Her actions are described in strikingly sympathetic terms. She has lost her own foal, which was snatched away by an eagle, and treats Hayy as a surrogate child. She also seems to be quite clever, realizing that she needs to crack open shelled fruits to feed Hayy and to keep him warm at night. I can feel Hayyawatha the giraffe starting to get jealous, so I'll hasten on to the tragic scene in which the gazelle dies. As she lies on her deathbed, Hayy is nearly overcome with grief, but resolves to try to cure her. Using a sharp stone as an impromptu scalpel, he cuts into his adoptive mother's chest in search of the diseased part. Kids definitely don't try this at home. He's unable to save her, but does manage to discover some rudimentary anatomy, learning about the placement of the lungs and the ventricles of the heart. Further investigation performed on other animals leads our medical prodigy to the conclusion that life is maintained through a kind of warm air, pervading through the body from its center in the heart. This is what Galen called pneuma, meaning breath. Showing an early talent for philosophy, Hayy also concludes that the rest of the body is nothing but an instrument for this controlling substance. At this stage though, our budding scientist and philosopher still fundamentally sees himself as an animal, like his gazelle mother. In fact, he is mortified to notice that he is completely naked, whereas other animals are well clothed with fur or feathers. Aiming to rectify this shortcoming, he garbs himself in eagle feathers. The other animals find this intimidating. It is only the first of several steps that will ultimately see Hayy attain mastery over the living things on his island. He learns to control fire, to hunt, and so on. Before long, his superiority over other animals becomes clear through less practical means as Hayy starts to engage in theoretical investigation about the world around him. He works out a theory of the four elements, and comes to understand the animal and plant kingdoms as wholes, or unities. In a rather lovely image, Hayy compares the soul-breath divided among all animals to a single quantity of water that has been meted out in individual portions to each living thing. He then compares the life principle of plants to water that has been frozen because of their more rudimentary nature. Ultimately, he sees that the whole cosmos, from the elements and living things on up to the heavenly bodies above, is a single unity. All of this seems to prepare the way for a more intense experience of oneness Hayy will have later on, when he has a mystical union with God. It is indeed God who next attracts Hayy's attention, as he comes to see that the entire universe must have an incorporeal first cause. Hayy gets to this conclusion much as he came to the island in two alternative ways. It is unclear to Hayy whether the physical universe has always existed, so first he assumes that it has not. In that case, there must have been some immaterial cause that brought material things into being. The other option is that the universe has existed eternally. In that case, it has been given an infinite power for motion and existence. But no body can contain infinite power, so the power must have been bestowed on the universe from an immaterial cause. This is pretty good work on Hayy's part, because he has on his own managed to rediscover the arguments for God's existence offered by Islamic theologians and by Aristotle, who was the author of the infinite power argument. Of course, we can't give the same credit for originality to Ibn Tufail, who was just weaving these traditional arguments into his island narrative. Nonetheless, Ibn Tufail is doing something unusual and important here. He is effectively telling us that the eternity of the universe debate does not need to be resolved. If you can prove the existence of an immaterial first cause either way, then it becomes unnecessary to decide the eternity question. We'll find a similar position later on, in Maimonides and in Aquinas. Once he has proved God's existence, Hayy really begins to see himself as superior to the other animals. They have no awareness of such a first cause, but busy themselves with mere bodily survival. Hayy also realizes that his true self is not, after all, a physical breath pervading his body, but a soul, which is like God in being immaterial. In this respect, he can see himself as partaking of the perfection of the celestial bodies, which affect the lower world through their motions. At this point, then, he's managed to figure out the basics of the Platonized Aristotelian theory already familiar to us from so many thinkers in the Islamic world. But Hayy's next conclusions will seem rather less familiar. Reflecting on the fact that he has an animal nature, yet also similarity to the heavens and to God, he resolves to become as perfect as possible at all three levels. At the animal level, he decides to become a vegetarian, to avoid thwarting God's will by destroying what he has created. He also imitates the heavenly spheres, which carry out God's providential order by going around his island and caring for animals and plants. He even goes so far as to prevent plants from having their growth stunted by excessive shade. In a notorious passage, he also spins around in imitation of the heavenly motion, something often seen as an allusion to the spinning dance of certain Sufis. I want to dwell instead, though, on what one might call the ecological ethics of this part of the story. There aren't many medieval authors who pay any attention to animal ethics. The other main example we've seen so far is Arazi, who insisted that we should avoid harming animals. Even more rare is to include care for plant life, as Ibn Tufil does here. It's worth noting that Hayy is said to reach these ethical conclusions by reflecting on divine providence. The old Platonic injunction to imitate God insofar as is possible has become a reason to care for the environment. But Hayy's Green Period is short-lived. He soon turns his attention away from nature to its creator, and decides to retreat into a cave on the island in order to contemplate God. The cave is a significant detail. It might call to mind the cave in which the Prophet Muhammad first received the revelation, or the pivotal moment in the career of the Al-Muhad founder Ibn Tumart when he conceived his religious mission after meditating in a cave. After days without food or even motion in the cave, Hayy achieves an experience of complete unity with God. In terms clearly drawn from the Sufi tradition, Ibn Tufil speaks of all things disappearing for Hayy, with only God remaining. Ibn Hayy's own self is dissolved in this mystical union. Of course, this is not something Ibn Tufil can describe adequately. It is something that we would need to experience ourselves. Ibn Tufil compares skeptics who reject this transcending of reason to bats who are blind in the light of the sun. Ironically, this analogy is drawn from Aristotle, who is so often presented as the main rival to mysticism in philosophy. That would seem to give Ibn Tufil a pretty good place to end his story. If he did end here, his tale would be thoroughly Avicennan, at least on his understanding of Avicenna. What Hayy learns on his island is more or less what you could learn from reading Avicenna. Galenic anatomy juxtaposed with an immaterialist theory of soul, a necessary first cause, which may give rise to an eternal universe, all crowned with the mystical union Ibn Tufil sees as the culmination of Avicenna's philosophy. Also deeply Avicennan is the idea that a sufficiently talented person, even if abandoned on the island without a single book, could become a perfect philosopher. We saw how Avicenna presents himself in his autobiography as a largely self-taught thinker. Hayy ibn Yaqdan can be seen as a dramatization of this idea that the philosopher can do it all on his own, dispensing not only with blind acceptance of authority, or taqlid, but even with revelation itself. We might think back to the second account of Hayy's arrival on the island. The spontaneous generation theory is like a physical version of Hayy's self-guided journey to enlightenment. And, by the way, which philosopher in the Islamic tradition considered it possible for humans to be spontaneously generated? Avicenna, who thought it was possible at least in principle. Since humans are generated when forms are sent from the agent intellect to suitably prepared matter, humans could arise by chance if matter just happened to be concocted in the right way. All this is daring on Ibn Tufil's part. We can imagine his much admired source al-Ghazali applauding the rejection of taqlid, but reacting with horror to the idea that prophecy is superfluous. If we keep reading, though, we'll see that Ibn Tufil has made room for religion in his tale. He refers back to the other island, presupposed by the first story, which had Hayy being conceived normally and abandoned by his mother. On this island is a corrupt society. It has a religion, which here remains unnamed, but as in Al-Farabi it seems obvious that the unidentified generic religion is meant to represent Islam. The wickedness of this island society provokes two virtuous men to opposite reactions. One, named Salaman, follows the scriptures of that society literally and tries to bring his fellow citizens to a more faithful religious life. The other, Absal, is given to a more figurative understanding of the scripture. But he despairs of communicating the hidden truths he has discovered to his benighted countrymen, so he leaves his island, and seeking solitude, comes to Hayy's island. The two meet in scenes apt to remind us of Robinson Crusoe's encounter with Friday. By the way, it's thought that an early modern English translation of Hayy ibn Yaxzan may have influenced Defoe and given him the idea for a Robinson Crusoe. Once Absal has encountered Hayy and taught him to use language, the two realize that they share the same beliefs. Hayy becomes a follower of Absal's faith, showing that philosophy and mysticism do not require religion, but do not rule it out either. Absal, meanwhile, accepts Hayy as a profound teacher. The two agree to return to Absal's island in an attempt to disseminate the truths they have come to understand. But they find that even the most enlightened members of the populace are unable to accept their teaching. Only now does Hayy realize why Absal's religious texts involve so many prohibitions and detailed practical instructions. The members of this society need such guidance, whereas the spontaneous philosopher Hayy does not. The happy end, such as it is, has Hayy and Absal sailing into the sunset to return to seclusion on their island. As Ibn Bajja would say, the two of them will there practice the rule of the solitary. It strikes me as significant that the second island, where Absal and Salaman dwell, is first introduced within the framework of the tale about the king's sister. In the spontaneous generation version of the tale, there need be no second island. Perhaps Ibn Tufa is telling us something here. The second island introduces the element of politics and religion to the narrative. The implicit message may be that the more fairy tale version of the story, with Hayy's mother placing him in a chest and setting him adrift on the water, is more acceptable and convincing to most people. In other words, it relates to the scientific account of spontaneous generation the way that religion relates to philosophy. That's just a guess on my part. In any case, from the juxtaposition between Hayy's path to enlightenment and the religion of Absal, it's clear that for Ibn Tufa, religion is indeed a rhetorical version of philosophical truth. Revelation needs to be understood figuratively, and is filled with guidance for non-philosophers who need to have their hands held to avoid going astray. In this, Ibn Tufa does not just look back to Al-Farabi, he also looks ahead to his colleague and the greatest Muslim thinker of Andalusia. Don't leave me stranded next time, as we begin to look at the man known to medieval authors simply as the commentator. It's Avarawis, here on The History of Philosophy, without any gaps. .