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Ibn Sīnās ‘Essay on the Secret Of Destiny’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 December 2009

George F. Houkani
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Extract

On several occasions in his writings Ibn Sīnā discusses the problem of destiny (al-qadar), by which he means primarily the problem of reconciling the divine determination of human acts and characters with the rewards and punishments of the after-life, in such a way as to safeguard God's justice to man. This aspect of the problem of theodicy had arisen long before his time out of statements of the Qur'ān and Traditions, and had been settled in their own fashions by Mu'tazilite and predestinarian theologians. Ibn Slna as a philosopher could hardly avoid offering a solution, if only to satisfy the doubts of his Muslim public; but he goes beyond a perfunctory answer, and seems to show a genuine interest in finding an intellectually convincing solution consistent with his own philosophy.

Type
Articles
Information
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 29 , Issue 1 , February 1966 , pp. 25 - 48
Copyright
Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London 1966

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References

1 Ed. and paraphrased by Mehren, A. F., Traiteés mystiques … d'Avicenne, IV, Leiden, 1899.Google Scholar

2 Ed. 'Ahmad, Abdullāh b. al-'Alawī in Majmū' rasā al-shaykh al-ra' is …, Hyderabad, 1353/1934,Google Scholar fourth treatise. Also in Majmū'at al-rasā'il, Cairo, 1328/1910, 243–9.Google Scholar Translated from the Hyderabad edition by Arberry, A. J. in Avicenna on theology, London, 1951, 38–41, ‘Predestination’.Google Scholar

3 See Brockelmann, C., GAL, I, 456,Google Scholar Suppl., No. 49; Anawati, G., Mu'allafāt Ibn Sinā, Cairo, 1950, 240–1,Google Scholar No. 181; Mandavi, Yahya, Fihrist nuskhahā-ye musannafāt-i Ibn-i Sīnā, Tehran, 1954, 9–10; Majmū rasā'il …, Hyderabad, editor's note after the text.Google Scholar

4 One more at the British Museum: see below, B(2). One other supposed copy, listed as Istanbul, University 9658.3, fols. 9–15, could not be traced by Anawati or myself in the collection.

5 Title as in I, except for his Om. B(1), B(2). A.

6 B(1), A. B(2). Names om. I.

7 B(1), A. add. B(2). Om. I.

8 B(1). Om. B(2), A, I.

9 All MSS; Hyd. , Brockelmann, GAL, 456, Suppl., No. 49, a mistaken reading of B(1). or understood by Arberry, Avicenna on theology, 38, ‘to make known’; possible because shaddas are often omitted in MSS, and attractive because revealing a secret is more easily condemned than merely knowing it, and because Ibn Sīnā's reply refers to teaching. But absence of the shadda in the four MSS creates a presumption for and this is confirmed by parallel accounts. Abū Ja'far b. Bābawayh (d. A.D. 922), reporting Ja'far al-Sādiq: ‘He who attempts to seek knowledge of it goes contrary to Allah's command’, ete.—Risālat al-i'tiqādaāt, VII, 16, Najaf, 1924, 102, as tr. by A. Jeffery, Islam: Muhammad and his religion, New York, 1958, 154. A hadith about Salman al-Fārisī-reference not traced: The three Traditions of 'Ali quoted below forbid knowledge; the one of Muhammad forbids teaching. If knowledge is forbidden teaching is also forbidden a fortiori, which allows room for all the Traditions, but this is not true in the reverse case.

10 A, I. Om. B(1), B(2).

11 A, I. B(1), B(2).

12 A, I. Om. B(1), B(2).

13 A, I. B(1). B(2); same meaning, but is regular, see below.

14 A, I; both om.

15 B(1), A, I. B(2).

16 I. See Goichon, A. M., Lexique de la langue philosophique d'Ibn Sīnā, Paris, 1938, No. 429, examples 4 and 5. Cf. Ibn Rushd, Tahāfut al-tahāfut, ed. M. Bouyges, Beirut, 1930, indexes. B(1), B(2). A.Google Scholar

17 B(1), B(2): better sense; good and evil are objects, produced. A, I: good andevil as subjects, producing elements of the world.

18 A, I. Om. B(1), B(2).

19 B(1), A, I. B(2).

20 B(1), B(2), I. A.

21 B(1), A, I. B(2).

22 B(1), B(2), A, I. Hyd.

23 B(1), A. I. B(2).

24 B(2), A, I. B(1): ‘unavoidable’; meaningful in itself, but misses the Neoplatonic doctrine of evil.

25 For spelling, cf. Fārābi, Falsafat Aristūtālis, ed. M. Mandi, Beirut, 1961, p. 59, lines 5 and 7; Ibn Rushd, Fasl al-maqāl, ed. G. F. Hourani, Leiden, 1959, n. 171. B(1), A, I.

26 B(1), B(2): possible as a loose expression, ‘commandments’ for ‘what is commanded’. I; best sense and grammar.

27 B(1), B(2). add. A, I.

28 B(1), A, I. B(2).

29 B(1), A, I. B(2).

30 B(1), B(2). Om. I. A. Hyd.

31 Emend. B(1), B(2), A. I, with sound understanding. ‘He imagined’ would refer this and all the preceding passage to Plato, whereas the views are more like Ibn Sīnās.

32 B(2), I. B(1). A.

33 B(1), A. B(2), possible as passive of Om. I.

34 Emend. B(1), B(2), A, I. Cf. Qur'ān XXI, 73, .

35 I. B(1), B(2), A.

36 Supplied for sense. Om. B(I), B(2), A, I. A negative sentence complements the preceding one; an affirmative one merely repeats it, substituting a vague present tense for the clear past tense of the preceding sentence. could easily have been omitted after .

37 Past tense like below, end of paragraph. B(1), A, I.

38 B(1), A. Not clear in I.

39 B(1), A, I.

40 I. Om. B(1), B(2), A.

41 B(1), A, I. B(2).

42 I. B(1), B(2), A.

43 B(1), B(2), I. A.

44 B(2), probably B(1). I, omitting or .

45 add. B(2).

46 B(1), A, I. B(2).

47 Emend., to follow , like B(1), B(2). Om. A, I, with other words. The change from singular to plural can stand more easily as a careless but natural transition.

48 B(1). Om. B(2), A, I.

49 B(1). , B(2). Om. A, I.

50 All MSS. emend. Hyd., to accord with . But the text continues masculine, with , etc., so evidently Ibn Sīnā made an illogical change of gender, perhaps thinking of .

51 B(2), I. B(1), A.

52 B(1). A, I.

53 The essay has been previously translated by Professor Arberry (see p. 26, n. 2). I should not have thought of repeating the work of the prince of translators, were it not for the faulty Hyderabad edition at his disposal. A preliminary translation by myself, from the same edition, was published prematurely in Muslim World, LIII, 2, 1963, 138–40.Google Scholar

I have inserted numbers and letters in square brackets, to show what seem to be the divisions of the argument and facilitate the analysis which follows.

54 These Traditions do not explain the meaning of the original saying, they merely reaffirm the prohibition.

55 ‘Report’ (huslith) seems to hint that after-life Reward and Punishment in the usual sense are only traditional doctrines, not known by science. This view is confirmed below, and elsewhere, e.g. Shifā': Ilāhiyyāt, ed. Madkur, I., Musa, M. Y., Dunya, S., and Zayed, S., Cairo, 1960, IX, 7, pp. 414 ff.Google Scholar

56 ‘Truly’, i.e. according to the Neoplatonic system of causal determination, not the voluntaristic conceptions of Muslim kalām, Mu'tazilite and other. Thus Ibn Sina's ‘destiny’ should not be called ‘predestination’.

57 All the words put here within quotation marks are Islamic religious expressions which Ibn Sīnā is interpreting in his own way.

58 al-hakim, the epithet of Aristotle.

59 This correction would not be justified if the author were here concerned with proving an after-life from Reward and Punishment as previously known facts, used as evidence. He might then conceivably have reasoned in the order of implication: ‘;[2] we know there are Reward and Punishment of the soul after death; [3] such Reward and Punishment imply a life of the soul after death’. But in this essay Ibn Sīnā is taking the existence of an after-life of the soul as an accepted premiss; the appropriate order of exposition is therefore from the general assertion of a state [3], the after-life, to a specification of that state [2], certain experiences in that life. I have called Ibn Sīnā's order ‘logically inappropriate’, rather than simply ‘illogical’, just for this reason, that in another context ‘[2] implies [3]’ would have been logical.

60 See al-Mughnī fi abwāb al-tawhid wa 'l-'adl, part 6.1, ‘Justice and injustice’, ed. al-Ahwani, A. F. and Madkur, I., Cairo, 1962.Google Scholar

61 fa'in kāna 'l-'iqā, Kitāb al-ishārāt, ed. Dunya, S., Cairo, 1960, 742.Google Scholar French tr. Goichon, A.-M., Livre des directives et remarques, Paris, 1951, 463.Google Scholar

62 Ed. Mehren, Ar. pp. 1–2. For another form of the problem of divine justice—the uneven distribution of worldly fortunes—see Risālat al-arzāq, ed. Ritter, H., Majallat al-Majma' al-'Ilmi al-'Arabi (Damascus), xxv, 2, 1950, 203–9.Google Scholar

63 Ilāhiyyā, IX, 6, p. 418.Google Scholar Cf. Ghazālī, , Tahāfut al-falāsifa, ed. Bouyges, M., Beirut, 1927, 250: according to the philosophers the purpose of the celestial souls is to draw near to God by occupying successively every possible position in the universe and thus actualizing every potentiality in turn.Google Scholar

64 Ilāhiyyāt, IX, 6, p. 417.Google Scholar

65 op. cit., pp. 418, 421.

66 op. cit., p. 418. The double privation is of the good that is normally found in material things and the good that might conceivably have existed in place of the evil. The single privation is of the latter only.

67 Sirr al-qadar, [1];Ilāhiyyāt, IX, 6, p. 421.Google Scholar

68 Ilāhiyyāt, IX, 6, p. 418.Google Scholar Cf. Dānesh-nāme-ye Alā'ī, French tr. Achena, M. and Massé, H., Le livre de science, I, Paris, 1955, 215. Cf. St. John of Damascus, De fide orthodoxa, IV, 21: God created people who He knows will sin; but if He had refused to create them, evil would have won a victory in preventing the creation of some people with potentialities of good.Google Scholar

69 Ilāhiyyāt, IX, 6, pp. 420–1.Google Scholar Cf. Plato, Timaeus, 73 ff., for the original example: bone in the body is useful by its hardness, but this involves inflexibility which makes it liable to be broken. For a short critical comment on this type of argument, see my article ‘Averroes on good and evil’, Studia Islamica, XVI, 1962, 22–3.Google Scholar

70 Arzāq, 206.

71 Ishārāt, II, 736; tr. Goichon, 460.

72 Methods of ethics, seventh ed., London, 1907, p. 60, n. 1; cf. p. 202.Google Scholar

73 For this footnote, see p. 39.

74 See Nader, A. N., Le système philosophique des Mu'tazila, Beirut, 1956, 263–4, and references, p. 264, n. 1.Google Scholar

75 A critical analysis of later Ash'arite claims is made by Makdisi, G., ‘Ash'arī and the Ash'arites in Islamic religious history’, Studia Islamica, XVII, 1962, 37–80, and 1963, 19–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

76 Ilāhiyyāt, IX, 7, p. 423.Google Scholar

77 See Phaedo, 80–2; Phaedrus, 246–56; Respublica, X, 613–20. But Plato puts his accounts of the after-life in the form of myths, and includes in them a Judgment and a choice as well as an element of necessity.

78 Ilāhiyyāt, IX, 7, pp. 423 ff.Google Scholar

79 cf. Risālat al-qadar, Ar. pp. 17–20: God does not need to stick to His word in executing uselessly the exaggerated Promises and Rewards announced in revelation. To imagine Him as a vain despot is the result of weak anthropomorphic analogies.

80 At the end of the Risāla fi māhiyyat al-salāt ‘Treatise on the nature of prayer’, two of the manuscripts have a final paragraph in which it is claimed that the work was written ‘in less than half an hour, amid many distractions’: Mehren, Traités mystiques, III, ii, p. 42. As the treatise covers 15 pages in the edition, this is barely possible, in the absence of shorthand dictation. The paragraph is bracketed by Mehren.

81 Abū 'Ubayd al-Jūzjānī's biography of Ibn Sīnā, in editor's introduction to Mantig almashrigiyyīn, Cairo, 1328/1910, pp. hā, yā; tr. Arberry, Avicenna on theology, 19, 22.

82 Persecution and the art of writing, Glencoe, Ill., 1952, 30.Google Scholar

83 Ibn Sīnā's introduction to Mantiq al-mashrigiyyīn, 4. Cf. Ibn Tufayl, Hayy b. Yagzān, ed. L. Gauthier, Beirut, 1936, Ar. p. 4: ‘the secrets of the oriental philosophy mentioned by the eminent shaykh Abū 'Ali b. Sīnā’.

84 Ishārāt, ed. Dunya, 903–4; tr. Goichon, 525.

85 Māhiyyat al-salāt, ed. Mehren, , III, ii, p. 42.Google Scholar

86 Ilāhiyyāt, X, ii, p. 443.Google Scholar

87 Māhiyyat al-salāt, ed. Mehren, , III ii p. 42.Google Scholar Immediately after this he forbids the essay to be circulated, as noted above: which seems in conflict with the method just stated, or at least unnecessary. It is hardly if at all possible to make a clear-cut division of all of Ibn Sīnā's works into the three types mentioned, and to find a consistent policy throughout his writings. The question of his esoteric methods is complex and needs further study. On the symbolic method of the ‘Hayy’ eycle of mystical fables see Corbin, H., Avicenne et le récit visionnaire, 2 vols., Tehran and Paris, 1954.Google Scholar For a comprehensive introduction to esoteric writing in Islam see Keddie, N. R., ‘Symbol and sincerity in Islam’, Studia Islamica, XIX, 1963, 27–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

88 Ishārāt, ed. Dunya, 790–3. Goichon, 485, translates: ‘Ensuite, découvre le sens de l'allégorie si tu en es capable’. Tūsxsī, commentary ad loc. (in Dunya), understands al-ramza as siyāqat al-qissa ‘the thread of the story’.

89 Ilāhiyyāt, X, 2, p. 443, referred to above.Google Scholar

90 Ilāhiyyaāt, X, 2, p. 443.Google Scholar

91 Persecution and the art of writing, 36.

92 al-Jam' bayna ra'yay al-Aakimayn Aflātūn al-ilāhi wa Aristūtālīs, ed. Nader, A. N., Beirut, 1960, 84.Google Scholar Cf. Talkhīs Nawāmis Aflātūn, ed. Gabrieli, F., in Plato Arabus, III. Compendium Legum, London, 1952, 4.Google Scholar

93 Jam', 85.

94 T. Fahd, art. ‘pjafr’, Encyclopaedia of Islam, second ed.

95 See Nasr, S. H., An introduction to Islamic cosmological doctrines, Cambridge, Mass., 1964, 209–12, referring to Ibn Sīnā's al-Risāla al-Nayrūziyya fī ma'āni al-hurūf al-hijā'iyya, in Tis'rasā'il, Cairo, 1908.Google Scholar

96 ‘Picatrix’ das Ziel des Weisen von Pseudo-Magritī, tr. H. Ritter and M. Plessner, London, 1962, p. lix. The ‘Encyclopedia’ was earlier than Ibn Sīnā and known to him.

97 The self-contradiction is in Maimonides. But his explanation will not take the outsider very far. See L. Strauss, Persecution and the art of writing, ch. iii.

98 Dalalat al-hā'irin, ed. S. Munk, Jerusalem, 1929, 3; as tr. by S. Pines, The guide of the perplexed, Chicago, 1963, 6.

99 Introduction to the Qur'āan, Edinburgh, 1953, ch. v, and his translation, 2 vols., Edinburgh, 1937–9, passim.

100 B(1) has overlines above certain quotations and the beginning words of [c] and [e]-obvious divisions since they start with amma ' as for '. B(2) has them for ' The shaykh said ', and the second and third premisses-three major divisions. In neither case can we attach any relevant significance to these crude and incomplete attempts at paragraphing. There is always a hope that one or more of the unexamined manuscripts will have preserved something more original.

101 Jam', 84–5.

102 Persecution and the art of writing, 75.