FAITH AND REASON IN ARABIAN

THOUGHT

BR. WILLIAM N. JULAO, JR.,MMMP

INTRODUCTION

Most of the medieval thought is an

attempt to reconcile the domains of
philosophy and theology, of faith and
reason.

The philosophical orientations were quite

diverse, since at different times and at
different places they were exposed to
different philosophers. Even when they
relied upon the same philosopher-
Aristotle, for example- they were exposed
to different interpretations of his writings.
Arabian Philosophy
Arabian philosophers
became important
because they
produced influential
commentaries on
Aristotle which many
Christian writers
depended for their
understanding of
Aristotle.
Arabian Philosophy
Under the leadership of
Muhammad there was
established the vast
Moslem Empire with
cultural centers in Persia
and Spain, where during
the ninth through the
12th centuries significant
philosophic activity took
Muhammad (570-632)
place.
Avicenna
Avicenna was born in
Persia in 980, was a
phenomenal scholar. He
had studied geometry,
logic, jurisprudence, the
Koran, physics, theology,
and medicine, becoming a
practicing physician at age
16.
He was an author of many works and
although his works centered on Aristotle, it
shows some Neoplatonic influences as well as
original formulation of problems.
Avicenna’s Doctrine of Creation
Avicenna began with an assumption
that whatever begins to be must have a
cause.
Possible things- are things that requires a
cause.
A cause which is also a possible being
must be caused by a prior being.
Prior being too must have a cause, but
there cannot be an infinite series of such
causes.
Avicenna’s Doctrine of Creation

God

Prior Being

Cause

Possible
Things
Avicenna’s Doctrine of Creation
God is the first cause whose being is not
only possible but necessary, having its
existence in itself and not from a cause.
God is the apex of being, has no
beginning, always is in act, and
therefore has always created.

According to Avicenna then, creation

is both necessary and is eternal.
Psychology
In Aviccena’s psychology , he
wanted particularly to account
for humanity’s intellectual
activity.
Central to his theory was the distinction between
the possible intellect and the Agent Intellect.

To account for this distinction, Aviccena employed

his neoplatonic view of the gradations of beings,
placing people under the lowest level of angelic
beings or intelligences.
Psychology
According to Aviccena, God creates a
single effect, and this single effect is
called intelligence, the highest angel,
but this Intelligence in turn creates a
subordinate intelligence.
There are nine such intelligences in descending
order, each one creating (1) the one below it and
(2) The soul of successive sphere.
The ninth intelligence, then creates the 10th
and final intelligence, and this is the Agent
Intellect that creates the four elements of the world
and the individual souls of the people. The agent
intellect not only creates the souls or minds of men,
it also “radiates forms” to these created minds.
Psychology
What Aviccena was saying is that since a
person’s mind has a beginning, it is a possible
being; therefore, a person has a possible
intellect. Here Avicenna made a sharp
distinction between existence and essence,
saying that there are two different things in
creatures.
That is because a creature’s essence is distinct from
his existence , his essence is not automatically
fulfilled, and it is certainly not given existence by
itself. The essence of the human mind is to know,
but it does not always know. The intellect is
capable of knowing, its essence is to know, but its
knowing is only possible.
Psychology
The intellect is actually created without any
knowledge but with an essence or possibility
for knowledge. The existence of knowledge in
human intellect requires two elements,
namely,

1. The bodily senses through which we perceive

sensible objects internally and the powers of
retaining images of objects in the memory or
imagination internally.
2. The power to discover the essence of universal in
individual things through the power of abstraction.
This abstraction is not performed by the human intellect
but is the work of the Agent Intellect which illumines the
human mind to enable it to know, thereby adding existence
to the mind’s essence.
Averroes
Averroes
-Was born in 1126 in Cordova,
Spain.
-studied philosophy,
mathematics, jurisprudence,
medicine, and theology.
-became a physician

He spent much of his time writing his famous

commentaries, for which reason he became known
in the Middle Ages as The Commentator.

He spent his last days in Morocco, where he died in

1198 at the age of 72.
Averroes
He considered Aristotle the greatest of
all philosophers, going so far as to say
that nature had produced him as the
model of human perfection. For this
reason, he structured all his works
around Aristotle’s texts and ideas. At
some points disagree with Aviccena.
For one thing whereas Aviccena argued that creation is
eternal and necessary, Averroes denied altogether the
idea of creation, saying that philosophy knows no such
doctrine.
Averroes also rejected the distinction between essence
and existence.
He held that the form of a person is the soul, but that
soul is a material and not a spiritual form.
Averroes
What confers special status to
humans among animals?
According to Averroes, unlike the lower
animals, humans are united through
knowledge of with the Agent Intellect.
Averroes denied that people have separate possible
intellects. He therefore explicitly located human
knowledge in the universal Agent Intellect and denied
the doctrine of immortality. For this reason that the
Christian thinkers thought his teachings impious.
But his influence was immense, and Aquinas frequently
quotes from his works. Still, Averroes had little respect
for theology and went to great lengths to distinguish the
domains of philosophy and theology, of faith and
reason.
Averroes
Philosophy and theology each have
function, said Averroes, because there
are different kind of people whom
they respectively serve. He envisioned
three groups of people:
1. The majority of people live by imagination and not
by reason.

2. The group of theologians who differ from the first

group only in that while they have the same
religious beliefs, they attempt to device intellectual
supports for them as their justification.

1. This is the superior group that is consists of the

philosophers who constitute a small minority