Ibn Bajjah

Ibn Bajjah ابن باجة Abu Bakr Muhammad Ibn Yahya Ibn al-Sayegh ( Arabic أبو بكر محمد بن يحيى بن الصايغ ) (born c. 1095, , Zaragoza, Spain died 1138/39, Fès, Mor) was an Andalusian-Arab Muslim philosopher, poet and physician who was known in the West by his Latinized name, Avempace.

Life

Ibn Bajjah ابن باجة Abu Bakr Muhammad Ibn Yahya Ibn al-Sayegh (known as Avempace, Avenpace or Aben in medieval Latin) was born in Saragossa, in what is today Spain, around 1095. His name signifies “son of the goldsmith.” Ibn Khaqan, a contemporary writer, relates that Ibn Bajjah was a student of the exact sciences and was also a musician and a poet. He was also a philosopher and an apparent skeptic. He served as vizier to the amir of Murcia, before going to Valencia and then Saragossa. Among his students were Ibn al-Imam and Ibn Rushd (Averroes). He is said to have rejected the Koran, to have denied the return to God, and to have regarded death as the end of existence. After the fall of Saragossa, around 1118, he went to Seville, where he wrote several treatises on logic. He then went to Xativa, where he is said to have returned to Islam in order to save his life. Finally he retired to the Almoravid court at Fez, Morocco, where he died in 1138. In Akhbar al-hukama' (Information About Wise People), al-Qifti mentions that Ibn Bajja died from being poisoned by rival physicians.

Thought and Works

Ibn Bajjah was the earliest known representative in Spain of the Arabic Aristotelian-Neoplatonic philosophical tradition, and played a prominent role in introducing the ideas of Plato and Arisotle and the Islamic philosophers, al-Farabi, Ibn Sina (though Ibn Bajja never directly spoke of him), and al-Ghazali, to the West.. His main contribution to Islamic philosophy was his ideas on soul phenomenology, unfortunately not fully developed before his death. Ibn Bajjah’s thought, particularly the idea of perfection as a state in which the mind comes into contact with the Active Intellect (Divine Intellect) and becomes itself an intellect (the Acquired Intellect (Intellectus Adeptus), influenced Ibn Rushd (Averroes), Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas. Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas both mention Avempace and his teaching in their works. They probably became acquainted with his thought through the works of his disciple Averroes, though certain passages in the "Contra Gentiles" suggest that Aquinas may have read the "Valedictory Letter" firsthand.

Most of Ibn Bajjah’s writings were not completed because of his early death. His student, Ibn al-Imam, edited his teacher's works in 1135 (534 a.h.), including treatises on mathematics and medicine, commentaries on Aristotle and al-Farabi, and original philosophical treatises. The most important of these treatises are Tadbir al-mutawahhid (Management of the Solitary), Risalat al-wada' (Essay on Bidding Farewell) and Risalat al-ittisal al-'aql al faal bil-insan (Essay on the Conjunction of the Intellect with Human Beings). He commented on several of Aristotle's works, notably on the "Physics", "Meteorologica", "De Generatione et Corruptione", portions of "Historiae Animalium" and "De Partibus Animalium". His works on philosophy included logical treatises, a work "On the Soul", "The Hermit's Guide" (Munk translates the title "Regime du Solitaire"), "On the Union of the Intellect with Man", and a "Valedictory Letter" (Cited in Latin as "Epistola de Discessu" and "Epistola Expeditionis"). Ibn Bajjah’s summaries of Aristotle on a variety of subjects have survived, most of them still in the manuscript form, in the Escorial Library.

Ibn Bajjah had a vast knowledge of the “exact sciences” of medicine, mathematics and astronomy. Even his critic, Ibn Tufayl, described him as possessing 'the sharpest mind', 'the soundest reasoning' and 'the most valid opinion' of those who followed the first generation of Arabic thinkers in Spain. He was also a renowned poet.

The Human Soul

Like his Eastern predecessors, al-Farabi and Ibn Sina, Ibn Bajja viewed philosophy and the use of reason as the means by which the human intellect could reach its ideal, by becoming one with the agent intellect. His understanding of the human soul was based on two concepts: al-ittisal (conjunction), the state in which the human intellect comprehends the agent intellect; and al-tawahhud (solitude or union), referring to the complete oneness in spirit of those who achieve this ideal, and the isolation of the philosopher from a society which is lacking in knowledge. Ibn Bajjah believed that the human soul developed through three stages corresponding to the lives of plants, animals and the human mind. The plant stage represents embryonic life, when the soul receives nourishment and grows. The soul then moves on to the animal stage, the stage of sensation, movement and desire. Finally the soul acquires thought, and the capacity for rational speculation. Ibn Bajjah described the essence of human nature as 'aql (reason or intellect), which is either potential or actual. Potential intellect has the capacity to acquire its proper object, intelligible forms (as-sura al-'aqliyya); actual intellect is completely identified with its object. To be in “conjunction” with the universals in the Agent Intellect, is to experience ultimate human happiness and to 'witness' the truth. The “happy ones” are 'numerically one with no difference among them in themselves whatsoever,' and are only differentiated from each other by their “instruments,” or their physical bodies. The “happy ones” are incorruptible and eternal, because they are identified with intelligibles which are incorruptible and eternal, and are numerically one because they are all identified with the same intelligibles. In al-Ittisal, Ibn Bajja compared truth, or the Active Intellect, to the light of the sun. The multitudes of the people grasp the sunlight as reflected in a mirror which catches its reflection from the water. Theorists grasp the sunlight as it is reflected in water; the philosophers grasp it in itself.

The Hermit’s Guide

The original text of "The Hermit's Guide" is lost, but, Moses of Narbonne, a Jewish writer of the fourteenth century gave a detailed account of it. The purpose of the treatise was to show how man (the hermit) could, by the development of his own powers of mind, attain a union with the Active Intellect. Ibn Bajjah distinguished two kinds of action: animal action, which is a product of the animal soul; and human action, which is a product of free will and reflection. A man who smashes a stone because it has hurt him performs an animal action; a man who smashes the stone so that is will not injure others performs a human action. The first step in the moral progress of the hermit is to learn to be ruled by will and reason, so that his actions may all be human. Having attained this, the hermit must strive for higher perfection, so that his actions may become divine, by comprehending the spiritual forms, which ascend in increasing degrees of incorporeity from the ideas of the individual soul, through the ideas of ideas, then through abstract ideas of things, up to the Active Intellect itself, which is an emanation from God. The mind which has come into contact with the Active Intellect becomes itself an intellect, the Acquired Intellect. A knower, or happy person, may exist in society in either a “virtuous city,” whose members are all complete in knowledge, or a “nonvirtuous city” inhabited by the unenlightened multitudes. In a nonvirtuous city, the perfected person must live in isolation from the rest of society, because his complete knowledge makes him a 'stranger' or a 'weed', whose opinions are contrary to the opinions of society as a whole.

External links

• Muslim Philosophy on Ibn Bajjah
• Catholic Encyclopedia: Avempace

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Al-'Alawi, J.D. (1983) Mu'allafat Ibn Bajja (Ibn Bajja's Works), Beirut: Dar ath-Thaqafa
• al-Qifti, A. (c.1172) Akhbar al-hukama' (Information About Wise People), ed. J. Lippert, Leipzig: Maktabat al-Mutanabbi, 1903. OCLC: 23491358
• Avempace, Massimo Campanini, and Augusto Illuminati. 2002. Il regime del solitario. Classici della BUR, L.1381. Milan: Biblioteca Universale Rizzoli. ISBN: 8817127574 9788817127578 9788817127578 8817127574

• Avempace, and Miguel Asín Palacios. 1946. El régimen del solitario. Madrid: [s.n.]. OCLC: 1634096

• Averroës, Aḥmad Fuʼād Ahwānī, Ibn al-Ṣāʼigh, Isḥāq ibn Ḥunayn, and Kindī. 1999. Talkhīṣ Kitāb an-Nafs. Manshūrāt Maʻhad Tārīkh al-ʻUlūm al-ʻArabīyah wa-al-Islāmīyah, 59. Frankfurt am Main: Institute for the History of Arabic-Islamic Science at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University. ISBN: 3829860625 9783829860628 9783829860628 3829860625 OCLC: 53784024
• Chemli, Mongi, and Avempace. 1969. La philosophie morale d'Ibn Bâjja (Avempace) à travers le Tadbîr al-mutawaḥḥid (Le régime du solitaire). Tunis: Imprimerie. N. Bascone & S. Muscat. OCLC: 33498029
• Fakhry, Majid. 2003. Islamic philosophy, theology and mysticism : a short introduction. Oxford, England: Oneworld. ISBN: 185168252X 9781851682522
• Goodman, L. (1996) Ibn Bajjah, in S.H. Nasr and O. Leaman (eds) History of Islamic Philosophy, London: Routledge, ch. 21, 294-312. ISBN: 0415056675 9780415056670 9780415056670 0415056675 0415131596 9780415131599 9780415131599 0415131596 041513160X 9780415131605 9780415131605 041513160X
• Lettinck, Paul, Abū al-Khayr al-Ḥasan ibn Suwār Ibn al-Khammār, and Avempace. 1999. Aristotle's Meteorology and its reception in the Arab world : with an edition and translation of Ibn Suwār's Treatise on meteorological phenomena and Ibn Bājja's Commentary on the Meteorology. Aristoteles Semitico-latinus, v. 10. Leiden [Netherlands]: Brill. ISBN: 9004109331 9789004109339
• Lettinck, Paul, and Avempace. 1994. Aristotle's Physics and its reception in the Arabic world : with an edition of the unpublished parts of Ibn Bājja's Commentary on the Physics. Aristoteles Semitico-latinus, v. 7. Leiden: E.J. Brill. ISBN: 9004099603 9789004099609 9789004099609 9004099603 OCLC: 29668459
• Lomba Fuentes, Joaquín. 1989. Avempace. Colección "Los Aragoneses", 2. Zaragoza: Diputación General de Aragón, Dept. de Cultura y Educación. ISBN: 8477530696 9788477530695 OCLC: 22198327
• Marcinkowski, M. Ismail. "A Biographical Note on Ibn Bajjah (Avempace) and an English Translation of his Annotations to al-Farabi's "Isagoge".", in Iqbal Review (Lahore, Pakistan), vol. 43, no. 2 (April 2002), pp. 83-99.
• Sezgin, Fuat, and Avempace. 1999. Ibn Bājja Muḥammad ibn Yaḥyā ibn aṣ-Ṣaʼigh : texts and studies. Frankfurt am Main: Institute for the History of Arabic-Islamic Science at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University. ISBN: 3829860838 9783829860833 9783829860833 3829860838 382986082X 9783829860826 9783829860826 382986082X

See also

• List of Arab scientists and scholars

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