The Story of Islamic Philosophy by Bashier Salman H

Author:Bashier, Salman H. [BASHIER]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781438437446
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Published: 2011-08-19T16:00:00+00:00

It is interesting how Ibn Bājja seeks to establish a synthesis between the physical movement of man's eye and his spiritual capacity, and how he seeks to locate this synthesis in that part of the human being that Aristotle regards the noblest, and that contains the human of the eye,37 the resemblance of which is an image-reflecting mirror. Indeed, it is in the context of discussing imaginal or intermediate forms that a proper synthesis can be sought between the physical and the spiritual because the intermediate form is “a middle between material and conceptual existents.”38 Being in the middle, the intermediate form possesses two relationships: a particular relationship to the sensible and a universal relationship to the person who apprehends it. This is to compare with the universal form, which possesses only one particular relationship to the person who apprehends it.39 This means that when the person turns to the apprehension of the universal form, the form actually returns to itself. Returning in the part of universals, however, does not mean that the concept makes a move. The concept is permanent and fixed compared to the sensible form, which is the agent of change and ceasing.40 Ibn Bājja says that in none of its states, the concept resembles things that are in motion. For example, when Zayd's form changes from a state of nobility to a state of wickedness, this change is something that is like moving, but it is not motion. ʿAmr is the one who moves from imagining one spiritual intermediate form that belongs to Zayd to another form that is also acquired by ʿAmr. Zayd's concept remains fixed. The bodily imaginal or intermediate existence seems to have moved from one state to another because of its proximity to the sensible. Concepts, however, have no relationship whatsoever to bodily existence. Otherwise, if Zayd is noble and ʿAmr is wicked, then the unifying concept will be both noble and wicked, which is absurd.41 This explains the significance of the intermediate forms in the process of acquiring knowledge and Ibn Bājja's rather enigmatic statement that there is nothing in the human being's walking that is for the sake of his universal form and that his actions belong to his intermediate form.42

Ibn Bājja arrives here at what he describes as an extremely serious difficulty. Although he says that the concept of a human being is the purest of all concepts,43 he is undoubtedly hesitant about the nature of the human being in general. This is because human nature seems to be an intermediary between the nature of the everlasting and the nature of the generated or the nature of that which continues incessantly in time (having neither beginning nor end) and that which is generated and corrupted. The human being in this sense follows the way of nature. “For nature does not move from one genus to another except by intermediation, as this is witnessed in all genera of existing substances. For there is an intermediate existent between inanimate things and plants such that man cannot judge whether this is a plant or an inanimate thing.

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