Philosophy-RAG-demo/transcriptions/HoP 185 - Follow the Leader - Philosophy under the Safavids.txt

 Hi, I'm Peter Adamson and you're listening to the History of Philosophy podcast, brought to you with the support of King's College London and the LMU in Munich. Online at www.historyofphilosophy.net. Today's episode, Follow the Leader, Philosophy under the Safavids. Like a policeman following two silverware thieves with holes in their pockets, we have reached another fork in the road. The last time I used this joke, we were branching off into the Islamic world, leaving for later the philosophical traditions of medieval Christendom. Now almost 70 episodes and about a millennium later, we are remaining within the Islamic world, but following three more or less simultaneous, mutually interacting political realms. Furthest west is the Ottoman Empire, with its capital in Istanbul, formerly the Byzantine capital city Constantinople. The Ottomans emerged just after the coming of the Mongols and the fall of the Seljuks in the 13th century. To the east, beginning in the early 16th century, India fell under the Islamic rule of the Mughals. And in the middle there is Persia, which at the same time became the home of the Safavids. We are going to cover all three, beginning in this and the next couple of episodes with the Safavids, which among these three empires is the one most celebrated for its contribution to the history of philosophy. Indeed, the Safavids give us the only Muslim philosopher from these later centuries who has received much attention in modern day European scholarship, namely Mullah Saadra. Because of his importance, we'll be devoting several episodes to him. In this episode, I want to look at a few other thinkers of the Safavid period, because Saadra wasn't the only game in town. Which town? Well, you might expect it to be Shiraz, given our recent focus on that city and the fact that Saadra himself was born there. But the scholars who did some of the first studies of Safavid philosophy—I'm thinking especially here of Henri Cobain and Seyyed Hossein Nasr—used the phrase school of Isfahan to refer to Saadra and the other philosophers of this period. Towards the center of modern day Iran, several hundred miles due south of Tehran, Isfahan was indeed a significant center for scholarship. Mullah Saadra studied there, as did other philosophers I'm going to mention in this episode, yet Shiraz remained important, and the city of Qom played host to Safavid thinkers too. More to the point, it isn't so clear that the Safavid thinkers necessarily formed a school. As we saw, members of the so-called school of Shiraz were in fact united by nothing so much as mutual loathing. The Safavid thinkers collectively described as the school of Isfahan may not have been as hostile to one another as Dawani and the Dashtakis had been in Shiraz, but they did disagree profoundly on the key philosophical issues of their day. In particular, one of Mullah Saadra's most distinctive positions in metaphysics was developed in direct opposition to his teacher, the greatest Safavid thinker apart from Saadra himself, a man by the name of Mir-da-mad. So, if we think of a school as a tradition of thought united around a set of doctrines, perhaps those of the school founder as with the Epicureans in Hellenistic philosophy or the Asherites in Islamic kalam, then the Safavid thinkers were not a school. Yet they did share much in common with one another, above all in terms of the sources that influenced them. Mullah Saadra's thought is a remarkable confluence of several currents flowing from earlier Islamic intellectual history. He draws on the eviscienizing kalam that had been so vibrantly and contentiously pursued at Shiraz just at the dawn of the Safavid period. He is also heavily influenced by Sufism and by the illuminationist tradition inaugurated by Suhrabadi. Finally, he exemplifies one of the most striking features of Safavid philosophy, a resurgence of interest in the Greek philosophical works that had been translated into Arabic so long ago. No thinker of the period fused these traditions as powerfully and influentially as Saadra did, but in his choice of inspirations he was very much a man of his time and place. Of course, we shouldn't overlook the most obvious commonality of the Safavid thinkers, which is that they were Shi'ite Muslims, of the Twelver variety. They could hardly have been otherwise, living as they did under Safavid rule. Safavid rule began in the early 16th century, right where we left off in the episode about Shiraz. In fact, the younger of the two dashtakis, Khayyath ad-Din, lived well into the Safavid period, dying in 1541. Safavid power expanded as far as Shiraz already in 1504, and thereafter Khayyath ad-Din was on good terms with the rising power. He was even invited by the Shah of the Safavids to rebuild the old observatory at Maragha, where At-Huzi and his students had done so much to advance the study of astronomy and philosophy more than two centuries ago. Khayyath ad-Din turned down the offer, claiming that the stars were not auspicious for such an undertaking, a reminder that just as in Europe the story of astrology continued to be intertwined with the story of astronomy in the Islamic realms. Along with anyone else who wanted to pursue a scholarly career under the Safavids, Khayyath ad-Din espoused the beliefs of the Twelver branch of Shi'ite Islam. This form of Shi'ism is still dominant in modern-day Iran, and in geographical terms too there is a rough equivalence between Iran today and the domain controlled by the Safavids in the 16th century. Just to keep this at the front of our minds, from here on out I'm going to refer to this region as Iran, rather than Persia. So who were the Safavids? They take their name from a figure of the Mongol period named Safi ad-Din. He died in the year 1334. He was no conqueror, but the head of a Sufi order which came to be named after him. Only decades after Safi ad-Din's death did this group, the Safavids, begin to assert Twelver Shi'ism. Through the 15th century, the Safavids increasingly became a military, and not just spiritual force. Finally, a leader named Ismayu, the first Safavid Shah, established a base and a new state in Azerbaijan. The power of the Safavids spread from there, gaining hold over Iran within about a decade. They had laid claim to an ancient land, but their legitimacy was not recognized by all other Muslims. To the contrary, Safavid history would be marked by constant struggle against the Ottomans, who were staunch proponents of Sunni Islam. The upshot was, among other things, a new context for the development of philosophy. Of course it was nothing new that Shiite Islam should be intertwined with philosophy. We've seen how the previous major Shiite state, the Fatimids of Egypt, sent out missionaries to spread acceptance of the Ismaili form of Shi'ism in the 10th and 11th centuries. Here I should perhaps take the opportunity to mention one Ismaili who I didn't cover back in episode 135, where I talked about some of these other missionaries. This was a man by the name of Nasir Khosrow, a fascinating character who was about a generation older than Avicenna and a generation younger than Al-Ghazali. Like Avicenna, he hailed from Khurasan. His embrace of Ismailism led him to give up on his career as a tax collector to take up the new career of collecting converts for the Ismaili cause. Nasir Khosrow traveled to Fatimid Egypt and then extensively throughout the Islamic realms. In fact, his best-known book is one that recounts his travels. But like other missionaries sent out by the Fatimids, he also wrote on philosophical subjects. In one work, Nasir Khosrow explains the harmony between Ismaili teachings and the doctrines of the philosophers on a wide range of issues, such as creation, God's oneness, aspects of the physical world, and logic. He exploits the traditional Ismaili contrast between an exoteric and esoteric teaching. The philosophers have delivered the former, attaining to truths gleaned through human reason rather than divine inspiration. The Ismailis, with their recourse to the teachings of the Imams, of course have access to the interior or esoteric truths. Moving forward, we've already looked at another great Shiite thinker of the 13th century, At-Tuzi. We saw how he alternated between Ismaili and Twelver Shi'ism and colored his philosophical writings with Shiite ideas. Yet At-Tuzi did have Sunni students, and his philosophical works were enthusiastically commented upon by Sunni theologians. Naturally, Shiite scholars were drawn to his more specifically Shiite writings. For instance, he composed a creed of Shiite belief which became the subject of commentary and glosses by numerous later authors, including our new friends, those old enemies at Shiraz. And his immediate circle of students included not just Sunnis but also Shiites. The most outstanding example was a man named Alamah al-Hili. He studied with At-Tuzi and another of At-Tuzi's students, the logician al-Qatibi, presumably at Maraghah. In a further exploit, al-Hili is credited with helping persuade one of the Mongol rulers to convert to Twelver Shi'ism in the early 14th century, a full 200 years before the more historically momentous shift toward Shi'ism under the Safavids. Al-Hili represents a different side of Shiite intellectual history than what we found with the earlier Ismailis. Whereas they were inspired by Greek philosophy, especially the works of Neoplatonism that had been translated back in the time of al-Kindi, al-Hili was more impressed by the work of Islamic theologians. He drew especially on the ideas of the Mu'atazilites, a nice example of the fact that kalam doctrines had appeal across the Sunni-Shiite divide. Here's an example. You might remember that the Mu'atazilites disagreed with their rivals, the Asharites, over the question of how morality is grounded. Is an action good because God commands us to perform it? Or is it that certain actions are intrinsically good, and God commands us to do them because He recognizes their goodness? The second option was the one taken by the Mu'atazilites, and on this, as on many other topics, al-Hili follows their lead. He gives a nifty argument against the Asharite theory that things become good because God commands them. Anyone who does anything, al-Hili says, must have some reason or motive for what they are doing. If you have such a reason for doing something and the power to do it, then the action will follow. For instance, if I love Buster Keaton movies, that gives me reason enough to watch one tonight. It is because I think watching his movies is a good thing to do that I watch them. But what would be God's reason for commanding something if He doesn't already see it as a good thing to command? The Asharite position leaves God without any motive to act upon. God would be like a Hollywood star getting too little help from the director. He'll have no motivation and will thus be unable to act at all. So what about Safavid dominated Iran? What sort of Shiite philosophy are we going to find here? Something more like the Neo-Platonism inspired ideas of the earlier Ismailis, which saw philosophy as the exoteric complement of the inspired message of the Prophets and Imams? Or perhaps the kind of Shiite Mu'atazilism espoused by al-Hili? Even though the Safavid thinkers are Twelver Shiites, the answer turns out to be that they are much closer in spirit to the Ismailis. Neo-Platonism sees an unexpected resurgence under the Safavids, with a renewed interest in the doubly ancient texts of authors like Plotinus. Already antique figures when translated into Arabic in the 9th century, Plotinus and other Greek thinkers at first received careful attention but then suffered centuries of neglect in the wake of Avicenna, like silent movie stars after the invention of the Tawkis. That changes now. Mullah Sadr and other Safavid thinkers were deeply influenced by Neo-Platonism. They were especially fascinated by the so-called theology of Aristotle, the Arabic version of parts of Plotinus's writings that had passed into Arabic under the name of Aristotle. Many of the surviving manuscripts of the theology of Aristotle come from Iran, and that's no coincidence. It was even made the subject of a major commentary in the 17th century. The author of that commentary, a student of Mullah Sadr's son-in-law, was named Sa'id Qummi. His name means that he came from the Iranian city of Qum, a major scholarly center then and now. But the renewed appetite for Greek sources did not mean that Avicenna was no longer on the menu. Safavid thinkers continued to write glosses and commentaries on his writings as well. So what we're seeing here is a mix of the old and the new, or rather a mix of the extremely old with the fairly old, given that Avicenna himself had died in 1037, half a millennium before the heyday of the Safavids. To this already heady brew, the Safavid thinkers add two more ingredients, Sufism and Illuminationism. Ibn Arabi and Suhrabadi were long dead by the time of Safavid Iran, but their ideas remained alive and well. We find this combination of influences already in a man who provides us with continuity between the achievements of Mullah Sadr and the earlier disputations in Sadr's home city of Shiraz. The younger dashtaki Ghiyath-a-Din had a student named Najmadin-a-Nairizi whose thought has all the hallmarks of Safavid philosophy. Whereas it's possible, but not certain, that the dashtakis were sincere Shiites, A-Nairizi was totally committed to the Safavid religious agenda. In his writings he even curses the first three caliphs of Islam, whom Shiites see as having held power when it should have passed to Ali. This was the sort of thing that really annoyed Sunni Muslims like the Ottomans. When he turns to doing philosophy, A-Nairizi seems to be carrying on where the dashtakis left off. He is a staunch advocate of Avicenna, as they were, and continues the practice of writing commentaries on earlier thinkers such as Atouzi. We also find him writing glosses on earlier commentaries, like on al-Jurjani's commentary on the major theological treatise by al-Iji, and, I like this, a set of glosses on al-Jurjani's glosses to a commentary devoted to the standard logical textbook of al-Qatibi. Eat your heart out of Arowiz and Gersonides. They are known to us as the commentator and his super commentator, but these guys are writing super super super commentaries. Texts our recent interview guest Rob Wisnowski once suggested to me should be called super duper pooper commentaries. Notice by the way that A-Nairizi's Shiism doesn't stop him from commenting on Sunni scholars. That broad-mindedness extends to his other interests, which show him moving towards the wider philosophical tastes of later Safavid thinkers. He knows and uses the theology of Aristotle, is influenced by Sufism, and, most tellingly, engages with the illuminationist works of Sukhravati and his followers. Of course, he writes commentaries on them. But bearing out my earlier warning that commentaries are not necessarily slavish recapitulations of the texts being commented upon, A-Nairizi is actually very critical of Sukhravati. One area where he takes issue with Sukhravati is political philosophy. Naturally, Shiite thinkers tend to have a different approach to political legitimacy than Sunnis would. They believe that our allegiance is due to the imams chosen by God and identified through their family connection to Ali. Sukhravati held that political rulership is rightly wielded by a kind of perfect philosopher, a virtuous man who masters both the argumentative and mystical sides of wisdom. In his commentary, A-Nairizi speculates that with this line of argument Sukhravati was probably trying to lay claim to political power for himself. No wonder Saladin had him killed. Furthermore, A-Nairizi adds, there seems to be no general connection between political success and wisdom. Though there are occasionally wise rulers, we can easily think of rulers without wisdom and of wise men who had no power. Here, A-Nairizi names Noah of Ark fame. He was wise, but possessed no political authority. The political ruler may be the shepherd of his flock, but apparently if your followers are literally a flock, that doesn't count. Underlying this dispute with Sukhravati is A-Nairizi's conviction that political dominion is bestowed by God. For him, politics is a game of follow the leader, and the rightful leader is the Imam, appointed by divine fiat. Even the Safavid Shahs rule as a mere substitute in the absence of the true ruler, the Imam. Fortunately for A-Nairizi and his fellow scholars, those Shahs had a fairly friendly attitude towards philosophy. Like so many other potentates of the Islamic world before them, they sought out intellectuals and scholars to grace their court. Good examples are the teachers of Mullah Jadra, by the names of Mir Damaad and Shaykh Bahai. Both of them were not only philosophers and theologians, but held the position of Shaykh al-Islam, given to the foremost legal scholar under the Safavids. There are some nice stories which put them together in royal company. In one of them, Mir Damaad and fellow thinker Shaykh Bahai are riding along with the great Safavid ruler Shah Abbas. Mir Damaad was, it would seem, full figured, and his horse was lagging behind the others. When the Shah teased him that Shaykh Bahai was outpacing him, Mir Damaad replied that the Shaykh's horse was just running fast with joy to have such an eminent rider. The Shah then rode ahead and mentioned that Mir Damaad's corpulence was slowing down his horse. Shaykh Bahai tactfully replied that the steed was simply having trouble carrying the weight of so much knowledge. But enough horsing around. Let's consider one of Mir Damaad's weightier ideas, in fact the one for which he is best known, the idea of perpetual creation. The theory was put forth in Mir Damaad's treatise Al-Khabasat, meaning Blazing Embers. Given his approach to horsemanship, I guess there is not much danger of confusing it with Imel Brooks' western Blazing Saddles. His idea of perpetual creation returns us to a problem we thought about a lot when discussing the formative period of philosophy in the Islamic world, namely the question of whether the universe has always existed. As we saw, thinkers ranging from the early philosophers Al-Kindi and Sa'ad-i-Agaon to the great Sunni theologian Al-Ghazali refused to accept that the universe is eternal. They believed that there was no way to reconcile its eternity with the idea that it was produced by a freely chosen act of divine creation. Since Mir Damaad was influenced by both Avicenna and the Neoplatonic texts that were coming back into vogue in the Safavid times, he was unsurprisingly more inclined to think that the universe is eternally emanated from God, like rays of light from a source of illumination. What Mir Damaad brings to this debate is a new way of thinking about the relationship between God and the universe. Avicenna had reasoned that if the universe necessarily proceeds from God, and God is eternal, then the universe too must be eternal. Taking advantage of some terminology he finds in Avicenna himself, Mir Damaad offers a different view. We should actually distinguish between three levels of reality. The humblest things are subject to time. These will be things that come and go, like you, me, giraffes, and the vain hope that Arsenal will win the league next year. The most exalted thing is, of course, God, who is eternal in the sense of being utterly beyond time. To mark this special status, Mir Damaad uses the Arabic word sarmad. But this is rather mysterious, isn't it? How can a timeless God relate to things in our world which are happening at certain times? How could He perform an action to create the universe, or for that matter anything else, at a specific time if He is timeless? And how can He timelessly know about things that are happening in time? Mir Damaad solves this age-old problem by positing a kind of transitional status between temporality and timeless eternity. For this he uses another Arabic word dahr, which we might translate as perpetuity. This term refers specifically to the relationship between the timeless God and the temporal events in the world. God in Himself is timeless, but His action is perpetual, lasting forever but still relating to things that are happening at certain times in the created universe. Nothing in the universe lasts forever and unchangingly, but the universe as a whole has always been here since it is the result of God's perpetual creative act, hence the phrase huduth dahri, or perpetual creation. You might wonder whether there is more going on here than mere wordplay. Does it really help, philosophically speaking, to assign different words—eternity, perpetuity, and time—to these three levels? Yes, because the different words mark out different kinds of before and after. The perpetual is after the eternal, only in the sense of causal dependence. For instance, God's creative act had to be caused by Him since it was up to Him whether to create. It was, to put it in Avicennan terms, contingent whether or not God would create anything at all. But the perpetual does not involve the before and after of time, which we see in things like giraffes and arsenals' chants at winning the league title, things that begin to be and pass away. Though this point was implicit to some extent in Avicenna, Mir Dhamad has made a real advance in clarifying the distinction between causal and temporal priority. So what came after Mir Dhamad himself? As we'll see in a few episodes, he was influential beyond the Safavid realm, his works being read enthusiastically in India. And his name is still one to conjure with among scholars in modern-day Iran. But his most immediate legacy came, well, immediately, in the shape of his student Mullah Sadr. Sadr shares much with Mir Dhamad, not only in terms of their influences but also in their own distinctive philosophical ideas. For instance, we'll see Sadr radicalizing Mir Dhamad's idea that the created universe is in constant change by developing the even bolder theory that all of creation is changing or moving in its very substance. But on one topic, Sadr turned decisively away from his teacher, deciding that Mir Dhamad backed the wrong horse in the centuries-old debate over Avicenna's distinction between essence and existence. This will be our focus next time as we turn to the greatest thinker of Safavid Iran. Try to keep up as we enter the home stretch in our look at the later philosophical tradition in the Islamic world, reaching the milestone that is Mullah Sadr, next time on The History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps. you