Ibn Tufayl Research Articles

Ibn Tufayl’s Hayy Ibn Yaqzan: The Natural Progression of the Mind and Intellectual Elitism

This paper argues that Hayy Ibn Yaqzan, the allegorical fable by Ibn Tufayl, provides a rational defense for monotheistic religions by emphasizing that the human mind can realize the absolute reality of existence through its dependence on itself without the influence of society, scriptures, or prophets. From this position, Ibn Tufayl engaged in a viral debate among Muslim thinkers – and Andalusian thinkers in general – at that time. That is, does revelation provide the only path to grasp the ultimate truth of our existence? Ibn Tufayl, among others, argued that both revelation and the human mind are paths to realizing the ultimate truth. To do that, Ibn Tufayl argued that human reasoning leads to the same core position of monotheistic religions; the claim that only one God created everything. However, despite Ibn Tufayl's defense of monotheism, his concept of the natural progression of the mind toward truth is problematic. His view implies that only a few people have the natural intellectual capacity to grasp the ultimate truth by depending on their minds, which introduces the problem of intellectual elitism. Finally, this paper offers ways to overcome the challenge Ibn Tufayl’s view faces. In its methodology, this paper relies on critical examination of primary and secondary sources relevant to Ibn Tufayl’s Hayy Ibn Yaqazan.

The Hayy Story of Ibn Tufayl as the Revelation of an Anomaly

Ortaçağ İslam siyasal düşüncesi hem din hem de felsefeyi kendisine konu olarak belirlemek durumunda kalmıştır. Din ve felsefenin, siyasal düşüncenin konusu olarak belirlenmesi, bu iki unsur ya da etkinlik arasında ne tür bir ilişkinin oluşturulması gerektiğine dair çabaların ortaya konulmasına neden olmuştur. Ortaçağ İslam siyasal düşüncesine katkıda bulunan filozofların çoğunluğu din ve felsefenin amaç bakımından müşterek oldukları için uzlaştıklarını, daha doğru bir ifadeyle uzlaş (tırıl)maları gerektiğini varsayarlar. Ne var ki, uzlaştırılmaya çalışılan tüm unsurların esasında birbirlerine karşıt olmaları ve hatta özsel olarak çatışmaları söz konusudur. Bu bakımdan din ve felsefeyi uzlaştırmaya çalışan İslam filozofu, aslında din ve felsefenin zımnen çatıştığına dair “ima türünden” bir anlayıştan hareket eder. Fârâbî’nin temel tezlerine dayanan Meşşâî gelenek takip edilecek olursa, İslam filozofu için bu uzlaşının gerçekleşeceği mekân erdemli toplum ve bu toplumun idaresi için gerekli olan sanat ise erdemli siyaset sanatıdır. Siyaset, varlıkların hakikatine ilişkin bilinmesi ve inanılması gereken ilkelerin (teorik felsefe) neler olduğunu bilen ve bu ilkelerin uygulama alanını ve bunların nasıl uygulanacağının (pratik felsefe) bilgisine sahip olan filozofun, medeni toplumu yönetmesini sağlayan sanattır. Ancak din ve felsefe uzlaş(tırıla)madığında, temel amacı hakikat olan filozof ne yapmalı, hem kendi hem de medeni toplumun mutluğu için ne tür bir yol tercih etmelidir? Bu sorudan hareket eden bu çalışma, alegorik bir tarzda kaleme alınan İbn Tufeyl’in Hayy bin Yakzan başlıklı öyküsünün din ve felsefe arasında çatışmayı konu edindiğini ileri sürmektedir. Bu çalışmanın amacı, din ve felsefenin çatıştığına dair yukarıdaki iddiadan hareketle filozofun kadim siyasal misyonu olarak tayin edilen medeni toplumun yöneticisi olma misyonundan feragat edişini ortaya koymaktır.

Poetry Beyond Philosophy? Ibn Tufayl’s Alternative Schema

ABSTRACT James articulates and defends a Spinozist view of the interplay between poetry and philosophy: philosophy has an ineliminably poetic content, and poetry is an aid and support to philosophy. In this piece, I juxtapose James’s Spinozist schema with another schema available within Spinoza’s historical milieu. In Ibn Tufayl’s view, rather than poetry being an aid to philosophy, poetry opens to a world of experience that even the best philosophy cannot grasp. For flat-footed philosophers who think that philosophy can in principle have the last word on everything, poetics might give an approximate indication of a kind of experience that lies beyond it.

Haj ibn Jakzan - Ibn Tufejlovo remek-delo

Ibn Tufayl, the great Andalusian thinker of the 12th century, is important in the history of Islamic philosophical thought because of his masterpiece Hayy ibn Yaqzan. Ibn Tufayl's novel is one of the most translated texts of Islamic philosophy into Western languages. Hayy ibn Yaqzan is a story about a child born and raised on an island far from civilization and according to many historians of Islamic philosophy, it symbolizes the human soul on its developing spiritual journey towards eternal bliss. Ibn Tufayl's introduction to the book gives a unique insight into the thought background of this philosopher and shows how familiar Ibn Tufayl was with the ideas of prominent Islamic philosophers. The fact that Ibn Tufayl was not a student of any of the four philosophers he names in the introduction - Farabi, Ibn Sina, Ghazali and Ibn Bajja - justifies the choice of the translators of his book to give him the title of self-taught philosopher. Knowing that Hayy ibn Yaqzan is the story of a self-taught man, this nickname can be an additional sign that Ibn Tufayl wrote about himself in the novel. The main motive of Ibn Tufayl's Hayy ibn Yaqzan is the harmony of religion and science, that is, philosophy. Over time, Hayy unravels most of the most significant scientific achievements of Ibn Tufayl's time to finally devote himself to thinking about the origins of being. This thought development, before Absal, a symbol of religious revelation or mystical tradition, comes to the island, Hayy achieves independently without the help of other cognitive beings. Hayy's autodidacticism symbolizes the self-sufficiency of the rational method in dealing with the truth. From Absal, Hayy learns how to speak and learns about religious rituals, which he begins to practice. The pinnacle of Ibn Tufayl's skill in showing the harmony between religion and philosophy is reflected in the fact that Ibn Tufayl writes about philosophical discoveries in the allegorical language of religion.

Samar Attar. Review of the Vital Roots of European Enlightenment: Ibn Tufayl’s Influence on Modern Western Thought. translated by Aysenur Alper. Istanbul: Albaraka Publications, 2021.

Samar Attar. Review of the Vital Roots of European Enlightenment: Ibn Tufayl’s Influence on Modern Western Thought. translated by Aysenur Alper. Istanbul: Albaraka Publications, 2021.

Students of Revolution: An Essay on Ali Shariati’s Counter-Pedagogy

Though Ali Shariati is well-known as the “ideologue” of the Islamic Revolution of Iran, this essay considers Shariati conversely as a student of revolution. It begins by posing a distinction between the apprentice and the autodidact through reference to Ibn Tufayl’s Hayy ibn Yaqzan and introduces a third term, the collaborator, that is crucial to Shariati’s account of counter-pedagogy. The essay then reconstructs Shariati’s critique of the pedagogical state. There, he recalls resisting interpellation by learning from other pasts, refusing instruction, and learning from others. Finally, I show changes in how Shariati conceptualized self-transformation, from an autodidactic process of soul-searching to a collaborative process that gives soul to a collective. On becoming immersed in the sounds of his compatriots grieving the martyrs of struggle, Shariati attests to being a student of history: the curriculum of a people becoming, the history of struggle, and its instructors, those who modeled it, pivoted around a refusal to be instructed. Overall, this essay develops an account of media environments as informal pedagogical spaces.

Arab Modernism as World Cinema: The Films of Moumen Smihi by Peter Limbrick

Reviewed by: Arab Modernism as World Cinema: The Films of Moumen Smihi by Peter Limbrick Terri Ginsberg (bio) Arab Modernism as World Cinema: The Films of Moumen Smihi by Peter Limbrick. University of California Press. 2020. 302 pages. $90.00 hardcover; $34.95 paper; also available in e-book. Pressure has been placed on Arab film scholars to "delink" from Western and Eurocentric frames of intelligibility in the name of decolonial epistemologies. The ensuing debate is not new in academic circles, but it is undergoing a contemporary reconditioning as postcolonial states in the Middle East region turn to hybrid forms of nationalism fostered by neoliberal investment imperatives dominated by the Gulf states and Saudi Arabia in collaboration with the United States and Israel.1 The contemporary call to break with the West claims a different structural base than a similar call issued over thirty years ago by Egyptian political scientist Samir Amin, for whom "delinking" from the West was a revolutionary matter of transitioning from capitalism to socialism and carried no rejectionist position vis-à-vis European theory, in particular Marxism.2 For Amin, dismantling neocolonialism would require a radical internationalism, not today's reactionary isolationism whose interests lie in consolidating local and regional entities into competitive blocs within the global capitalist system. [End Page 214] The importance of Peter Limbrick's Arab Modernism as World Cinema: The Films of Moumen Smihi becomes evident within this context. Limbrick focuses his text on the overlooked Moroccan independent filmmaker Moumen Smihi, whose entire cinematic oeuvre and artistic life stands as a counter to contemporary currents. Smihi was born in Tangier, attended a French lycée, and frequented local ciné-clubs before pursuing higher education and cinematic training in France. There he was exposed to existentialist philosophy and poststructuralist theory, including works by Jean-Paul Sartre, Jacques Lacan, and Roland Barthes, and to the revolutionary writings of Karl Marx. Smihi interpreted the significance of these works in the context of twentiethcentury Nahda (Arab Awakening) intellectuals such as Taha Hussein, considered by many the founder of Pharaonism, and Tawfiq al-Hakim, both giants of modern Egyptian literary culture, and in light of medieval philosophers of Islamic classical thought, such as the ninth-century theologian Al-Jahiz, who theorized evolution from the perspective of anti-sectarian rationalism, and the twelfth-century philosopher and novelist Ibn Tufayl, who argued for the interrelationship of religious and rational thought. Smihi went on to make films almost completely outside of the commercial structures and neocolonial state funding and distribution networks that continue to overdetermine the political aesthetics of Arab cinema. He has thus been able to formulate a cinematic intertext that integrates European modernist modalities—the neorealism of Roberto Rossellini, the ciné-ethnography of Jean Rouch, and the poetic realism of Pier Paolo Pasolini—while emphasizing their Arab influences and articulations. These include the Egyptian new realism of Salah Abu Seif and, especially, the literary arabesque. Through what amounts to a deconstruction of European modernism, Smihi's films enable what Limbrick calls a radicalization of Arab subjectivity: a renewed sense of Nahda founded upon an uncanny illumination of the proverbial Western civilizational narrative as it bypasses Islamic classicism and dissimulates its European scholastic appropriation—a tack now being followed on its obverse by the reactionary calls for delinking. Limbrick reading Smihi advances this "new Nahda" as against contemporary irredentism as a means of restoring European modernism to its historical moment—the intellectual legacy of Islamic rational philosophy. In turn, modernism and its profoundly transnational character are redeemed for Arab, not only Moroccan or Egyptian, cinema. Smihi's deconstructionism appears most saliently at the formal register of his films. For Limbrick, Smihi's films reconfigure Alexandre Astruc's caméra-stylo for the purpose of reconciling modernist ciné-écriture with the Defeat-conscious realism famously advocated by Tunisian cinéaste Nouri Bouzid as a remedy to the Arab world's cultural colonization.3 Such reconciliation is facilitated by intellectual montage, noncausal digressions, and a cinematography that resists omniscience and moral absolutism, recalling both early Soviet filmmaking and a certain immanentism attributable to some forms of Islamic textuality—for example, those related to Sufism. In this [End Page 215] way, Smihi's...

On Dilemmas Regarding the Origin of Human and the Nature of the Realm in Ibn Tufayl's Hayy b. Yaqzan

In this study, you can choose to determine the philosopher's preference for human origin and the nature of the realm through Ibn Tufayl's "Hayy b. Yaqzan". This aim is primarily asserted in the work on the adventure of coming to the world and the nature of investment. At the beginning of the work, Ibn Tufayl discusses how the human came to the world through the character of Hayy. In this context, it talks about self / soil derivation and biological occurrence from parents. Ibn Tufayl reflects a number of scientific and religious explanations that existed before him. The subject preference of the philosopher who conveys his own proofs of both assumptions is the second dilemma given to us, the theories given about the nature of the world. In this context, the philosopher conveys the ethos of the philosophical argument and the creation theories of the religious argument. When he chooses his own evidence and dilemmas in his work, he thinks about it. We will try to determine the philosopher's preference (if any) by analyzing which of these proofs is consistent.

مکانه العقل عند فلاسفة المغرب ( ابن باجة وابن طفیل نموذجاً )

يوضح هذا البحث مکانة العقل عند ابن باجة وابن طفيل، ويبين أن کليهما قد أشادا بالعقل، ورفع من قيمته وقدرته في الوصول إلى اليقين. فنجد أن ابن باجة قد جعل العقل هو العنصر الحاسم في فلسفته، وذلک واضح من خلال عرضي لفلسفته في النفس، والأخلاق، والمعرفة، والسعادة، واللذة، والاتصال. فابن باجة يرکز على أن النفس العاقلة هي أفضل وأشرف أنواع النفوس. والأخلاق عنده مبنية على أساس عقلي، ومصدر الإلزام الخلقي عنده مصدر عقلي، والمعرفة الصحيحة إنما تکون عن طريق العقل، والسعادة الحقيقية إنما تنال بالعقل، واللذات الحقيقة هي اللذات العقلية، والاتصال يکون عن طريق التدرج من المحسوسات إلى المعقولات، وکذلک ابن طفيل يؤکد من خلال قصة حي ابن يقظان على أن الإنسان يستطيع بعقلة دون معلم أو مرشد أن يصل إلى ما وصل إليه الدين، والأخلاق والسعادة والاتصال عند ابن طفيل مبنية على أساس عقلي تأملي This research clarifies the position of the mind according to Ibn Baja and Ibn Tufayl, and shows that both of them praised the intellect and raised its value and ability to reach certainty. We find that Ibn Bajjah made reason the decisive element in his philosophy, and this is evident through my presentation of his philosophy of the soul, ethics, knowledge, happiness, pleasure, and communication. Ibn Beja stresses that the rational soul is the best and honorable type of soul. Morals for him are based on a rational basis, and the source of moral imperative for him is a mental one, and correct knowledge is through the mind, and true happiness is attained by the mind, and the true self is the mental pleasures, and the connection is through the gradation from the tangible to the intelligible, and Ibn Tufail confirms through The story of Hayy Ibn Wakzan states that a person can intellectually without a teacher or guide to reach the level of religion, morals, happiness and communication according to Ibn Tufayl are based on a mental and reflective basis.

«Философская робинзонада» Ибн ан-Нафиса

The present article reviews the philosophical and religious teaching by Ibn al-Nafis – a prominent doctor and thinker of the 13th century. The study was carried out on the basis of his treatise ‘Kamil’s Message in Prophet’s Sirah’ which is the last classical work written in the genre of a ‘philosophical robinsonade’. The author analyzes the content of the aforementioned work and carries out a detailed research of the connection of ‘Kamil’s Message’ with earlier traditions within the Arabic Muslim thought as well as with the theory of the ‘father of sociology’ Ibn Khaldun, which appeared several decades later. It is shown that Ibn Nafis’s theology matches, on the whole, the traditional Maturidi theo­logical doctrine, while its natural, philosophical, and anthropologic views are a deve­lopment of the legacy of Mutazilite Mutakallimes and Arabic peripathetics (especially, Ibn Tufayl). Ibn Nafis’s conception of society and the sense of social processes forestalls the concepts by Ibn Khaldun. In particular, Ibn al-Nafis develops the dichotomy of ‘city inhabitants’ and ‘desert inhabitants’, the category of ‘livelihood’ and a theory of the influ­ence that geographical and climate factors have on peoples. Ibn Nafis also explores pat­terns in historical process and the impact that tyrannical governors and economic rela­tions have on it. The author also discusses Ibn al-Nafis’s eschatological ‘futurology’ ac­cording to which the end of the world is approaching in virtue of natural reasons that, in their turn, will come about as the result of the peculiarities of the course of human history.

The Child in the Pentimento: A Restoration of the First Social Contract in Ibn Tufayl’s Hayy Ibn Yaqzan

ABSTRACT In this paper I offer a restoration of the first layer in the portrait of political liberalism in order to see whether western liberalism can accommodate the subjectivity of children. In this early pentimento we find a social contract theory conceptualised by Ibn Tufayl, at the heart of which is the reasoning child in nature. In Hayy Ibn Yaqzan we not only have the political philosophy of the social contract, but a subjectivity that is more modern than indeed the later Enlightenment pentimenti as depicted by Locke, Rousseau and Defoe.

Loneliness As Self-Improvement: Ibn Tufail’s Hayy Ibn Yaqzan and Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe

There are several kinds of loneliness: assumed, forcible, imposed, morbid, or “collective”. Loneliness may be creative, or empty; there is even loneliness with nothing at stake, as there is meaningful loneliness, and vulgar loneliness. All seem to share something – the ordeal of being with oneself, the fear that one will not be able to bear it in the end. In Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, loneliness becomes the protagonist’s tutor, he lives with loneliness and survives. In The History of Hayy Ibn Yaqzan, the Andalusian novelist and philosopher Abu Bakr Ibn Tufail shows how reason can develop independently of the influence exerted by society. The two writers introduce two types of Robinsons, such as the medieval Hayy ibn Yaqzan, in the philosophical novel of the 11th century, the self-taught philosopher of the Grenadian Ibn Tufayl and the modern European Robinson Crusoe, as Daniel Defoe shows him in his renowned 18th century novel. The two protagonists present two completely different attitudes to society, the world, thought and God: attitudes that, being characteristic of the historical moment of each one, mark, at the same time, two dimensions of the human being.

ÂLEMİN YARATILMASI PROBLEMİ: İBN TUFEYL-KANT KARŞILAŞTIRMASI

The problem of creating the world is one of the most controversial issues in philosophy and theology. This problem related to one hand the nature of time and on the other hand issues that difficult such as, the will of God and the relationship between God-time. This nature of the problem led to the emergence of two basic approaches, one defending the eternality of the world and one defending the creation of the world. However, the difficulties in choosing one of these have led to the emergence of a third opinion, such as at this topic we cannot be get knowledge within the limits of reason. The two most typical advocates of this view are Ibn Tufayl and Kant. The similarity between the two philosophers on this subject led to the assertion that Ibn Tufayl was the pioneer of Kant. However, both the lack of direct statements that Kant was influenced by Ibn Tufayl and some objections made it necessary to make an assessment on this claim. In this framework, it seems necessary to evaluate first, whether it is possible for Kant to be influenced by Ibn Tufayl. Secondly, the views of the two philosophers on the subject should be compared in terms of content. Consideration of these issues will provide a basis for us to evaluate the claims regarding the interaction between Ibn Tufayl and Kant.

Al-Maʿarrī’s Esteem in the Islamic West: A Preliminary Overview

ABSTRACT The blind poet and iconoclast Abū l-ʿAlāʾ al-Maʿarrī (d. 1058) is one of the most important figures in classical Arabic literature. He had an especially strong following in the Islamic west (Iberia and North Africa). But despite that following, and despite studies on the western response to other eastern Arabic poets, al-Maʿarrī’s legacy has thus far received inadequate attention in scholarship, a fact that obscures a major aspect of his reception. This article helps fill this knowledge gap by exploring al-Maʿarrī’s works that were popular in Iberia and North Africa, as well as responses to those works and the readers who did the responding. The results show rupture in some areas, as in the particular works singled out by Andalusī and Maghribī readers, and continuity in others, as in al-Maʿarrī’s overall reputation. The article concludes with a discussion about al-Maʿarrī’s importance to Arabic literary production in the Islamic west. Abbreviations: EI2 = Encyclopedia of Islam, Second Edition, ed. P. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C.E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel, W.P. Heinrichs (Leiden: Brill online, 2012); EI3 = Encyclopedia of Islam, THREE, ed. Kate Fleet, Gudrun Krämer, Denis Matringe, John Nawas and Evertt Rowson (Leiden: Brill, 2015-2018); BA = La Biblioteca de al-Andalus, ed. Jorge Lirola Delgado, José Miguel Puerta Vílchez, volumes I–VII (Almería: Fundación de Ibn Tufayl de Estudios Árabes, 2004); TQ = Taʿrīf al-qudamāʾ bi-Abī l-ʿAlāʾ, ed. Ṭāhā Ḥusayn et al., (Cairo: Wizārat al-Maʿārif al-ʿUmūmiyyah, 1944, repr. 1965).

Disobedient Practices: Textual Multiplicity in Medieval and Golden Age Spain ed. by Anne Roberts, Belén Bistué

Reviewed by: Disobedient Practices: Textual Multiplicity in Medieval and Golden Age Spain ed. by Anne Roberts, Belén Bistué Shon Hopkin Roberts, Anne and Belén Bistué, editors. Disobedient Practices: Textual Multiplicity in Medieval and Golden Age Spain. Juan de la Cuesta, 2015. ISBN: 978-1-58871-261-5. Anne Roberts and Belén Bistué’s volume provides numerous examples of subversive literary discourse from the Iberian Peninsula. The volume holds together nicely by focusing on literary works with purportedly veiled meanings [End Page 125] or redirections of purpose, even though the composite of the chapters ranges extensively over centuries of time and a variety of historical situations. The first section of the book gathers together examples of philosophical and religious multiplicity. Emilio González Ferrín analyzes Ibn Tufayl’s The Self-Taught Philosopher, written in the 1160s, as the first European novel. González Ferrín questions the characterization of Ibn Tufayl as one who supported rigidity and exclusivity in a time when Almohad fundamentalism held sway. For the author, Ibn Tufayl wrote carefully and subversively. Although Ibn Tufayl covered his novel with a veneer of Avicennism to make it acceptable in the eyes of the power structure of his day, he also showed an “ethical personalism” that ran contrary to the orthodoxy of his time. According to González Ferrín, Ibn Tufayl shows his true colors by quoting eastern authorities such as al-Gazali, a problematic figure due to his mystical tendencies. Ferrín also shows the influence that Ibn Tufayl’s work had on subsequent European novels (including Robinson Crusoe, Gulliver’s Travels, and The Jungle Book, among others) and on strands of philosophical thought. Michelle M. Hamilton provides the next study, “From Conversion to Consolation: Iberian Christian, Jewish, and Muslim takes on the Trinity,” which shifts the conversation forward over three hundred years from the previous chapter. Hamilton discusses the writings of the Mancebo de Arévalo, a Muslim who lived and wrote of a wise woman, the Mora de Úbeda, who used an allegory to teach a Nasrid prince how to focus on the eternal state of his soul and not on worldly affairs. In so doing, Arévalo used and repurposed a Christian concept that originated in St. Augustine and that had been used by Ramón Llull, Alfonso de Valladolid, Vicente Ferrer, and other authors to try to persuade Muslims, Jews, and Christians to believe in the Trinity. In the sixteenth century this fundamentally Christian allegory about Memory, Will, and Intellect (joined by Reason) had been transformed by the Mancebo into an allegory to strengthen Muslims in their own religious faith. The textual multiplicity analyzed by Hamilton thus demonstrates the existence of countercurrents against the push for unification in fifteenth-century Spain, and how an embattled group absorbed concepts intended to convert Muslims to Christianity and instead transformed those ideas into texts designed to strengthen the faith of Muslims. In chapter 3, Francisco Peña Fernández moves forward into the seventeenth century, demonstrating how a Spanish play, El justo Lot by Álvaro Cubillo de Aragón, reimagined the story of Lot to subversively push back against the authority [End Page 126] of the king. In the play, Aragón avails himself of the New Testament phrase that calls Lot a just man to position Lot as a hero. Lot’s actions no longer work against the will of God. Rather, Lot’s designs undermine and subvert the authority and power of a vicious king. Cubillo’s use of a biblical text and Christian reasoning allows him to give a seemingly moral, orthodox lesson—obedience to God, which sometimes implies disobedience to worldly powers—all the while offering a veiled critique of the current monarch. It should not be surprising that the majority of the play’s messages that push against earthly authority are uttered by biblical prophets, particularly since the Old Testament abounds with descriptions of unrighteous monarchs and includes stories like that of Esther, in which a righteous individual carefully manages a king’s attitude in order to protect her own people. In his discussion, Peña Fernández provides extensive and nuanced commentary on how to interpret the...

Two Iberian Cases of Intellectual Mysticism

Two Iberian Cases of Intellectual Mysticism

Hayy ibn Yaqzan: A Philosophical Novel by Ibn Tufayl

This is the philosophical tale Hayy ibn Yaqzan, named after the hero of this story and written by the Muslim philosopher Ibn Tufayl (1105-1185). It was the first Arabic novel, and anticipated such European works as Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe and Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Emile, as well as the thought of a number of western philosophers including Locke and Kant. This paper will bring out the philosophical themes contained within the novel, centred on those key philosophical questions of ‘what can we know?’ and ‘how can we know?’. These questions have been with us since the beginning of philosophy and continue to be important today with such contentious debate concerning the veracity of non-empirical experience.

The process of civilization in ibn Tufayl's Hayy ibn Yaqzan

Originally written as a philosophical work, Ibn Tufayl's Hayy ibn Yaqzan incorporates in its story many elements that could be regarded as elements of the civilizational process in modern times. In this paper we will analyze these elements of the civilizational process and try to reassemble them into a clear theory of civilization. In order to conduct these analyses, the elements found in the story will be contrasted and perceived through the concepts of civilization found in the works of Ibn Khaldun and Arnold J. Toynbee. The resulting conclusion will point out many similarities between these authors in conceiving civilizations, especially in the notions of the development of intellect and the unity of humankind. But it will also show us the crucial divergence in the importance and existence of society and its binding elements such as 'aṣabiyya. Still, Ibn Tufayl's uniqueness and originality will be seen in his tripartite definition of existence and his own take on the goal/s of the civilizational process.

Philosophy of Floating Foundations: The Island and Ethical Formation in Ibn Tufayl’s

Whereas Al-Jāhiz and Al-Mas’ūdi place final authority in the Qur’an, in Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān , Ibn Tufayl submits even Scripture and Tradition to the validation of the experience of the rational intellect, philosophical knowledge and intuitive wisdom. Consequently, Ḥayy’s (Life’s) journey is a philosophical endeavor which privileges rational experience and intuition over the symbolic veils of societal tradition and imitates the scientific methods of the geographer, who holds the primacy of personal experience over oral and written testimony. The imagined WāqWāq Island of Ibn Tufayl’s text, as an antipode to the philosophical space of authoritative knowledge (civilization), is thus inextricably linked to a growing knowledge and imagination of the sea, facilitated by advancements in cartography and extensive networks of maritime exchange. As such, the beginning of philosophy and reason, and the purest path of ascent toward the divine, is perhaps possible only on floating foundations, in the midst of the sea.

Ibn Tufayl: Living the Life of Reason by Taneli Kukkonen

Ibn Tufayl: Living the Life of Reason by Taneli Kukkonen