The History of Philosophy in Islam

by T. J. de Boer

But there is a graded order in the world of Being. The material or substantial Form stands midway between mere Accident and pure (or separate) Form. Substantial Forms also exhibit varieties of degree,—intermediate conditions between potentiality and actuality. And, finally, the whole system of Forms, from the nethermost hylic Form up to the Divine Essence, the original Form of the whole, constitutes one compact structure rising tier upon tier.

Now the eternal process of Becoming, within the given System, presupposes an eternal movement, and that again an eternal Mover. If the world had had an origin, we might have reasoned from it to another and a similarly originated corporeal world, which had produced it, and so on without end. If again it had been a ‘possible’ entity, we might have inferred a ‘possible’ entity out of which it had proceeded, and so on ad infinitum. And according to Ibn Roshd, it is only the hypothesis of a world moved as a unity and of eternal necessity, that yields us the possibility of inferring a Being, separate from the world, yet eternally moving it, who in his continually producing that movement and maintaining the fair order of the All, may legitimately be called the Author of the world, and who in the Spirits that move the Spheres,—for every separate kind of movement demands its separate principle,—possesses agents to give effect to his activity. [[193]]

The essence of the First Mover, or of God, as well as of the Sphere-Spirits, is found by Ibn Roshd in Thought, in which unity of Being is given him. Thought which is identical with its object is the sole positive definition of the Divine Essence; but Being and Unity absolutely synchronize with such Thought. In other words, Being and Unity are not annexed to the Essence, but are given only in Thought, just like all universals. Thought produces everywhere the general in the particular. It is true that the universal as a disposition is operative in things, but the universal qua universal exists in the understanding alone. Or, in possibility (or potentiality) it exists in things, but it exists actually in the understanding,—that is, it has more Being,—a higher kind of existence,—in the understanding than in things.

If now the question is asked,—‘Does Divine Thought take in merely the general, or does it take in the particular too?’, Ibn Roshd replies, ‘It does not directly take in either the one or the other, for the Divine Essence transcends both of them. Divine Thought produces the All and embraces the All. God is the principle, the original Form, and the final aim of all things. He is the order of the world, the reconciliation of all opposites, the All itself in its highest mode of existence.’ It follows of course from this theory, that there can be no talk of a Divine Providence in the ordinary sense of the term.

5. Two kinds of Being we know: one which is moved, and one which causes motion, though itself unmoved,—or a corporeal and a spiritual. But it is in the spiritual that the higher unity or perfection of all Being lies, and that too in graded order. It is thus no abstract unity. The farther the [[194]]Sphere-Spirits are from the First, so much the less simple are they. All know themselves, but in their knowledge there is at the same time a reference to the First Cause. The result is a kind of parallelism between the corporeal and the spiritual. There is something in the lower Spirits which corresponds to the composition of the corporeal out of Matter and Form. What is mingled with the purely spiritual is of course no mere Matter, that could suffer anything, but yet it is something resembling Matter,—something which has the faculty of taking to itself something else. Otherwise the multiplicity of intelligibilia could not be brought into harmony with the unity of the Spirit which apprehends them.

Matter suffers, but Spirit receives. This parallelism, with its subtle distinction, has been introduced by Ibn Roshd with special reference to the human Spirit.

6. Ibn Roshd is firmly of opinion that the human soul is related to its body, as Form is to Matter. He is completely in earnest on this point. The theory of numerous immortal souls he most decidedly rejects, combating Ibn Sina. The soul has an existence only as a completion of the body with which it is associated.

As regards empirical psychology he has anxiously endeavoured to keep by Aristotle, in opposition to Galen and others; but in the doctrine of the “nous” he diverges from his master not inconsiderably, without being aware of it. His conception,—springing from Neo-Platonic views,—of the Material Reason, is peculiar. It is not a mere aptitude or capacity of the human soul, neither is it equivalent to the sensuous-spiritual life of presentation, but it is something above the soul, and above the individual. [[195]]The Material Reason is eternal, imperishable Spirit, as eternal and imperishable as the pure Reason or the Active Spirit over us. The ascription of a separate existence to Matter in the domain of the corporeal, is here transferred by Ibn Roshd,—following of course Themistius and others,—to the region of the spiritual.

The Material Reason is thus eternal substance. The natural aptitudes, or the capacity of the human individual for intellectual knowledge Ibn Roshd denominates the Passive Reason. That comes into being and disappears, with men as individuals, but the Material Reason is eternal, like Man as a race.

But a measure of obscurity remains, and it could hardly have been otherwise, about the relation between the Active Spirit and the Receptive Spirit, (if we may for the time use this last term for the Material Reason). The Active Spirit renders intelligible the presentations of the human soul, while the Receptive Spirit absorbs these intelligibilia. The life of the soul in individual men thus forms the meeting-place of this mystic pair of lovers. And such places differ very greatly. It depends on the entire capacity of a man’s soul, and on the disposition of his perceptions, in what degree the Active Spirit can elevate these to intelligibility, and how far the Receptive Spirit is in a position to make them a portion of its own contents. This explains why men are not all at the same stage of spiritual knowledge. But the sum of spiritual knowledge in the world continues unaltered, although the partition of it undergoes individual variations. By a necessity of nature, the Philosopher re-appears, without fail, whether an Aristotle or an Ibn Roshd, in whose brain Being becomes [[196]]Idea. It is true that the thoughts of individual men occur in the element of time, and that the Receptive Spirit is changeable, so far as the individual has a part in it; but considered as the Reason of the Human Race, that Spirit is eternally incapable of change, like the Active Spirit from the last Sphere above us.