The philosopher as an autodidact

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The philosopher as an autodidact ( Arabic حي بن يقظان, DMG Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān  'the living one, son of the watcher', Latin Philosophus Autodidactus ) is a philosophical island novel from the 12th century by Ibn Tufail . The work was written between 1169 and 1184 and demonstrates the Islamic Fitra concept and is about Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān , who grew up alone on a tropical island from childhood and was nourished by animals. Ḥayy develops slowly and eventually comes to the highest knowledge attainable for a person.

From the allegorical story of the same name, written around 1013 by Avicenna , only the famous title was adopted, as was not uncommon in Arabic and Persian literature of the Middle Ages.

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The work is characterized by a Hebdomadic narrative structure, although the seven-year cycles are sometimes not strictly adhered to.

One of the two birth stories of the title hero consists of a spontaneous generation . In this version, Ḥayy is born in a fermenting mud without the influence of mother and father. During its embryonic development, which is in harmony with the ideas of the philosopher and physician Avicenna (Ibn Sina), “the creative power of the active intellect” first creates the heart, followed by the brain and liver.

  • During the 1st phase up to his 7th year of age, Ḥayy is raised by a gazelle and introduced to basic feelings and sensations such as affection and solidarity and survival techniques such as foraging and self-defense. It is the time of childlike discovery.
  • In the 2nd phase up to the age of 21, he himself discovered some manual techniques, such as building a cave and dealing with fire. With the death of the gazelle he also learns that living beings consist not only of a body but also of a spirit . When the gazelle, his mother, dies, he dissects it to find out where life has gone, and finds the heart where he suspects life, a "breath" (also: Pneuma ), but which is now gone.
  • In the 3rd phase up to the age of 28 he is completely concerned with questions of logic and physics . He discovers the causality and suspects that everything must have a "reason". He begins to distinguish individuals from species, form from matter, and effects from causes. He divides his environment into categories , species and races . Because of his insight into a kind of "original reason" or the very last cause, he already has a foundation stone for the knowledge of God .
  • In the 4th phase up to the age of 35 he dedicates himself to cosmology . He realizes that there must be metaphysical reasons for the movement of the heavenly bodies, indeed of the whole world and of life. He searches for laws that regulate everything in the world and finds the laws of nature . But he sees even more clearly than before that everything has to come from somewhere, and his only goal is to get closer to the perfect being, the creator of heaven and earth.
  • In the 5th phase up to the age of 50 he meditates because he realizes that the instrument for knowledge of God cannot be instrumental or sensual, but must be similar to God himself. God must not remain an object to be known, so the knowing subject must rise to a level on which God can be known. For knowledge, a fusion of subject and object is necessary, which is knower, known and knowledge at the same time. Ḥayy also realizes that life should be led in three stages in order to achieve this realization:
  1. Similarity to unreasonable animals
    Insight into immediate necessities of life under the imposition of strict rules, including good environmental awareness: Ḥayy hardly eats meat and only ripe fruit, the seeds of which he replant (recognition of the need for harmony with the environment);
  2. Alignment with celestial bodies
    As in heaven, Ḥayy begins to move around itself
    (similar to the dancing dervishes ; imitation of God);
  3. Alignment with the attributes of God
    By turning entirely to meditation, Ḥayy only thinks of God so that he may have a vision of the heavenly world (development of an ascetic, philosophical, mystical way of life).

When Ḥayy was 50 years old, he met the pious Absāl, who came to Ḥayy's island to meditate. It turns out that the residents of the neighboring island agree with Ḥayy on all essential points on the questions he has always wanted to discuss with someone: the existence of God, the nature of the world and the destiny of man. But Ḥayy recognized the undisguised truth while it was being announced to the people of the neighboring island through a prophet , instructions and symbols. So they go to Absāl's home island, where the people belong to a “true region”, to teach them the undisguised truth about what is necessary.

Ibn Tufail concludes with the remark that several paths are possible to knowledge, both a more philosophical (as ultimately with Ibn Sīnā ) and a more religious (as in al--azālī ). As mentioned in the foreword, his novel also serves the symbiosis of these two philosophers. Furthermore, Ibn Tufail also considers it possible that other religions can also come to knowledge, such as Judaism and Christianity and not just Islam .

Impact history

In the Islamic Middle Ages, the novel by ʿAlā 'addīn Ibn an-Nāfis was received parodically.

The novel, which can best be translated into German as “Lebender, Sohn eines Wächers”, was published in England in 1671 in an Arabic edition with a Latin translation by Edward Pococke as “Philosophus autodidactus ”. The entry of the text into the European history of philosophy and literature may, however, be dated earlier. Baltasar Gracián's El Criticón (1651–57) had relevant parallels even before Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe (1719) . In 1726 a German translation was published by Johann Georg Pritius with the title "The self-taught world⸗Weise". In May 1763 thanked Moses Mendelssohn in Gotthold Ephraim Lessing for the "release" of the Philosophus Autodidactus ; the first German translation based on the Arabic original was published in the same year under the title "Der Naturmensch" by Lessing's friend Friedrich Nicolai .

expenditure

  • The Arabic text on Wikisource.
  • The Living Son of the Vigilant. Transl. And ed. by Léon Gauthier. Catholic Press, Beirut 1936.
  • Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān li-Ibn Sīnā wa-Ibn Ṭufayl wa-Suhrawardī. Edited by Aḥmad Amīn. 3rd edition Cairo 1966.
  • Translations
    • Hayy Ibn Yaqdhan. A Muslim island novel. Edited and edited by Jameleddine Ben Abdeljelil and Viktoria Frysak. Edition Viktoria, Vienna 2007, ISBN 978-3-902591-01-2 .
    • The philosopher as an autodidact. A philosophical island novel. Transl. And ed. by Patric O. Schaerer. Meiner, Hamburg 2004. ISBN 978-3-7873-1797-4 (with an introduction to the history of philosophy and a commentary).
    • The great Robinson. Translated and provided with an afterword by Otto F. Best . Matthes & Seitz, Munich 1987, ISBN 3-88221-367-1 .
    • The History of Hayy Ibn Yaqzan. Translated by Simon Ockley, introduced by AS Fulton. Chapman and Hall, London 1929 ( online, without introduction ; PDF file; 4.6 MB).

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Matthias Perkams : A historical overview of them Islamic philosophy to Averroes. In: Heidrun Eichner, Matthias Perkams, Christian Schäfer (eds.): Islamic Philosophy in the Middle Ages. P. 45.
  2. ^ Gotthard Strohmaier : Avicenna. Beck, Munich 1999, ISBN 3-406-41946-1 , pp. 85 f., 129 and 137.
  3. ↑ Cf. introduction to the Schaerer translation of Der Philosopher als Autodidakt , Hamburg 2009, pp. LXI ff.
  4. ^ Gotthard Strohmaier : Avicenna. Beck, Munich 1999, ISBN 3-406-41946-1 , p. 120 (quoted).
  5. ↑ See Schaerer translation pp. 99-108.
  6. ↑ See introduction, Schaerer translation 2009, p. LXXIV.
  7. ↑ Friedrich Niewöhner : The model primitive man. An equally enigmatic and beautiful classic: Ibn Tufail's philosophical novel in a new interpretation (= review by Lawrence I. Conrad [Hrsg.]: The World of Ibn Ṭufayl: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān. EJ Brill, Leiden, New York, Cologne 1996 ). In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , March 20, 1997, No. 67, p. 15.
  8. ↑ Hans Rudolf Velten : Self-thinking and self-didactics. The European recording of Ibn Tufail's Hayy Ibn Yaqzan (Philosophus autodidactus) as a model of the oriental world wise. In: Scientiae et Artes. The imparting of old and new knowledge in literature, art and music. Volume 2. Edited by Barbara Mahlmann-Bauer. Wiesbaden 2004, pp. 1077-1098.
  9. ↑ Otto F. Best: Afterword. "... so that you can see what we saw ..." In: Ibn Tufail: The Ur-Robinson. Matthes & Seitz, Munich 1987, pp. 171–232, here p. 215.
  10. ↑ Abu Dschafar Ebn Tofail: The nature man or story of the Hai Ebn Joktan. An oriental novel. Translated from the Arabic by Johann Gottfried Eichhorn . Nicolai, Berlin, Stettin 1783 - digitized version of the BSB .