Ibn Bāğğa's Commentaries on al-Fārābī's Letter and Five Aphorisms

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to provide evidence that Ibn Bāǧǧa’s commentaries on al- Fārābī’s logical writings reveal a perpetuation of al-Fārābī’s logic in Andalusia and that they also assist us in the recognition of the nature and achievement of this logic. Ibn Bāǧǧa’s Introduction or Eisagoge is a commentary on al-Fārābī’s introductory Letter (Risāla) and the Five Aphorisms (Khamsa Fuṣūl), as well as subsequent logical treatises of al-Fārābī. Ibn Bāǧǧa, in agreement with al-Fārābī, presents logic as consisting of five syllogistic arts, rhetoric, poetry, dialectic, sophistry and demonstration. These arts are constituted by both the form and matter of logic, the matter referring to the five syllogistic arts in which the form of logic is employed. Ibn Ḫaldūn later testifies to this comprehensive account of the five syllogistic arts articulated primarily by al-Fārābī but also in some measure by Ibn Sīnā, and says that, by his time, this account of the syllogistic arts had been replaced by a more limited account of logic. Ibn Ḫaldūn explains that this revised logic separates the form of logic from its matter, discards the matter of logic, and destroys the pillars of logic. This revised notion of logic, Ibn Ḫaldūn says, is in conformity with the methods of kalām and he observes in this version that “the books and methods of the ancients [Aristotle and his commentators] are avoided, as if they had never been, although they are full of the results and useful aspects of logic, as we have stated”. Ibn Bāǧǧa’s commentaries attest to a continuation of the older, more comprehensive, and more Aristotelian account articulated by al-Fārābī, and Ibn Bāǧǧa provides key insights into the recovery of the nature and excellence of al-Fārābī’s logic.