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EXCAVATING THE IMAGINATION: THE ARABIC OF ’S PHANTASIA

By

Jessica L. Radin

A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Department of the Study of University of Toronto

@Copyright by Jessica L. Radin 2018

EXCAVATING THE IMAGINATION: THE ARABIC AFTERLIFE OF ARISTOTLE’S PHANTASIA

Jessica L. Radin Doctor of Philosophy Department for the Study of Religion University of Toronto

2018

ABSTRACT : This dissertation focuses on the afterlife of Aristotle’s work on the imagination, specifically in the

work of al-Farabi, Ibn Rushd, and . Drawing on previous scholarship that has

investigated the philosophical and psychological role of the imagination in Aristotle, this

dissertation considers the role that Aristotle’s had to play in later Arabic readings of

Aristotle. This dissertation demonstrates that it wasthe rich life of Aristotle’s Rhetoric in the

Arabic world that lead to a slow-burning association of imagination and . For al-Farabi,

Ibn Rushd, and Maimonides, the imagination is the psychological feature of human that

make us susceptible to persuasive speech. Since the images of imagination in human beings are

restrained and directed by the rational faculty, they can also be directed, although not restrained,

by the power of persuasive speech. The imagination allows human beings to imagine the world

differently from the way it is, but at the same time it is not intrinsically capable of ascertaining

which future or change is good. But human , with its deliberative powers, allows us to

distinguish between based on emotional triggers and habitual desires and the truly

remarkable innovations that can stem only from the partnership between imagination and reason.

In thought the evolution of the idea of the imagination was linked with an appreciation of

Rhetoric , absent in the Latin world, which manifested in concerns about persuasion,

manipulation, reactionary potential of the imagination. They turn to reason as a bulwark against

the power of desire and anger, and therefore the means by which we can avoid led entirely

by our emotions and the images that they invoke. ii

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

First and foremost, I must thank the members of my dissertation committee, who made this project possible. In addition to their critical input, they have all contributed to the direction and focus of my research and development as a scholar. Dr. Kenneth Hart Green has spent over half a decade talking to me, sometimes arguing with me, and in all situations demonstrating that academic discourse is most productive and meaningful when it is imbued throughout with respect. Dr. Amira Mittermaier has helped me navigate the shoals of the dissertation process, and raised questions about my interpretation of Arabic philosophy that, coming from her own specialty, have helped me read these with fresh eyes. Dr. Clifford Orwin has been a joyous sparring partner and challenger, someone who has reminded me of the detailed accuracy necessary to pull together the evidence for any kind of interesting conclusion – much of the linguistic analysis in this dissertation is the result of my desire, spawned in our conversations, to ensure that the linkage between thinkers is evident and established. Dr. Ruth Marshall has reminded me constantly that though this is a dissertation on classical and , the implications of my conclusions regarding rhetoric and imagination are important for understanding the modern political landscape. I must thank the entire Department for the Study of Religion at the University of Toronto, particularly Fereshteh Hashemi, Irene Kao, and Marilyn Colaco. Fereshteh knows all and looks after the graduate students as we stumble around blindly – nothing would get done in the Department without her. Irene and Marilyn keep us out of bureaucratic disaster and general bankruptcy. The entire department works to provide its students with the teaching opportunities that can be decisive on the job market, and I cannot thank them enough for the chances they took on me. I have only slowly learned how remarkable a Deparmtent I was privileged to study in – we are a community of scholars, bound together by our joys in our work and that of our colleagues, by the shared tragedies and losses of colleagues, and by care of each and commitment to scholarship. There are few places left in North American academia where I could say the same. I would also like to thank the Anne Tannenbaum Centre for Jewish Studies. Being a member of the Collaborative Program in Jewish Studies has widened the vistas of my research; not only has the Centre helped fund my research, it is a place where I have come to know colleagues in other departments who I never would have known otherwise. I have been overjoyed at the Centre’s willingness to support my research, be it in Toronto, St. Petersburg, or Beirut There are too many colleagues to list here, each of whom has contributed to my intellectual development and the retention of my sanity of the course of the PhD program. Special thanks for keeping me on-track and human go to Amy Marie Fischer, Rebecca Bartel, Zoe Anthony, and Jairan Gahan. For cutting me down to size as necessary and reminding of the delicacy and importance of language, I thank my colleague-for-life Nimrod Lin. For keeping things in perspective, for reminding me of all the fun that the world has to offer, and for showing me that I’m not the only deadline junkie in graduate school I thank the (hopefully) eternally recurrent Tomek Frydel. A speial thaks is due to Teresa Mercurio and L’Espreso Bar Mercurio. I’ve probably written half of my dissertation under the influence of your coffee and in the shade of your patio. Thank you for being such a welcome space and having such delicious macarons. My family has survived and even learned to joke about my occasionally disappearances into the black hole of research. My mother taught me to recognize and allow insanity when it is happening instead of wasting time pretending things are easy. My father raised me to meet my deadlines no matter what – may I live up iii

to his nickname for me, “the unstoppable force.” To my sisters, Lisa and Emmy; I cannot tell you how much your intelligent questions and critiques – whether about my work or the world around us – has made me understand the vital, contemporary nature of this research. Soon you both be in college, and I can’t wait to see you take on the world. (It doesn’t stand a chance.) Finally, to my partner Mark – there are no words sufficient for all that you have done. This would not exist and be what it is, nor would I be what I am, without you.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS iii

TABLE OF CONTENTS vi

ABBREVIATIONS AND NOTES ON PRIMARY TEXTS vii

INTRODUCTION 1

CHAPTER 1 11

CHAPTER 2 43

CHAPTER 3 81

CHAPTER 4 116

CONCLUSION 146

APPENDIX 1 151

APPENDIX 2 152

APPENDIX 3 153

BIBLIOGRAPHY 154

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ABBREVIATIONS OF FREQUENTLY CITED PRIMARY SOURCES

DA : Aristotle’s De Anima. Aristotle: De Anima . Trans and commentary by Christopher Shields. Oxford; Clarendon Press, 2016. Aristotle: De Anima . Edited with commentary by Sir David Ross. Oxford; Clarendon Press 1961. [Greek and English] On The . Trans. by W. S. Hett. Loeb Classical Library, Aristotle VIII . Cambridge; Harvard University Press, 1957 (revised from 1936). [Greek and English] All references are to the line numbers in the Loeb Classical edition of the text.

Rh : Aristotle’s Rhetoric . Rhetoric . Trans. and commentary by J. H. Freese. Loeb Classical Library, Aristotle XXII . Cambridge; Harvard University Press, 2006 (reprinted from 1926). [Greek and English] Al-Khatabah: al-tarjimah al-‘arabiah al-quadimah. (The Rhetoric: The Ancient Arabic Translation) Compiled and annotated by Abd Al-Rahman Badawi. Beirut; Dar al-Qalam, 1979. [Arabic] All references are to the section and line numbers of the Loeb Classical edition of the texts.

Medina : Al-Farabi’s Virtuous City . Ara’ ‘ahl al-madinah al-fadilah . (Opinions of the people of the Virtuous City). Ed. and trans. Richard Walzer. AlFarabi on the Perfect State . Oxford; Clarendon, 1985. [Arabic and English] Ara’ ahl al-medinah al-fadilah , ed. and trans. Amor Cherni, Opinions des habitants de la cité vertueuse . Paris; Darl Albouraq, 2011. [Arabic and French]

DT : Ibn Rushd’s Decisive Treatise . Kitab fasl al-maqal wa taqrir ma bein al-shari’ah wa al- hikma min al-ittsal. (The Book of the Decisive Treatise Determining the Connection between the Law and Wisdom.) Translation, introduction and notes by Charles E. Butterworth. Provo, Utah; Brigham Young University Press, 2008. [Arabic and English] Kitab fasl al-maqal (Decisive treatise) with its appendix (Damima) and an extract from Kitab al-kashf al-manahij al-adilla . Edited by George F. Hourani. Leiden, NE; Brill, 1959. [Arabic]

Guide : Maimonides’ The Guide of the Perplexed , vol I & II. Translated by Shlomo Pines. Chicago, IL: Press, 1963. Dalalat al-ha’irin . Ed S. Munk and I. Yoel. , 1931 [Judeo-Arabic Script]. Dalalat al-ha’irin . Translated from the Judeo-Arabic by Hussein Taha. Freiberg: Al-Kamal Verlag, 2011. [Arabic]

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INTRODUCTION

Abstract : In addition to providing an overview of the chapters that follow, this introduction discusses the choice of philosophers (Aristotle, al-Farabi, Ibn Rushd () and Maimonides) who are the context for the forthcoming discussion of the idea of imagination. It acknowledges the choice made in selecting these philosophers, and gives references to where those interested can find more about what is not discussed here.

In what follows, we will trace the evolution of the idea of imagination from Aristotle to Maimonides. To move from Aristotle (384-322 BCE) to Maimonides (1134-1204 CE) means passing through sixteen centuries, and this work in no way attempts to account for all the permutations of the imagination in that period in the innumerable contexts (intellectual and geographical) in which Aristotle’s imagination was analyzed. Instead, this work focuses on the interpretation of Aristotle and consequent evolution of the idea of imagination in three Arabic- speaking thinkers who acknowledged their debt to Aristotle, and to each other, more or less explicitly: al-Farabi (870-950), Ibn Rushd (known in the West as Averroes) (1126-1198) and Maimonides (known in the East as Musa Ibn Maimon) (circa 1135-1204).1 Thus, even between Aristotle and al-Farabi, there is a chronological vortex of more than a thousand years, years in which Aristotelian texts were interpreted by Neo-Platonic thinkers and other schools of thought, in which the Romans conquered much of the Mediterranean, in which developed in multiple directions, Christianity began to take root, and Islam emerged in a desert far from Athens.

Why, then, does this work examine four thinkers, only two who wrote concurrently, and all four of whom were distinctively different personalities from one another? The answer, at its simplest, is that all three of the Arabic-language interpreters of Aristotle acknowledged their debt to him, particularly in the fields of psychology (where they generally treat the imagination) and rhetoric that are of particular interest to us. Al-Farabi is often considered the founder of ,

1 I will generally use the term ‘Arabic-speaking thinkers’ in the work, instead of “Arabic thinkers” only for the reason that the philosophers under discussion are not, by most technical definitions, ‘Arab’. However, insofar as their education and cultural upbringing was largely Arabic-language and defined by Arabic educational and philosophical traditions, it is (if arguably) legitimate to call them ‘Arabic thinkers’, whether they be Muslim or Jewish, of Persian, North African, or actual Qureshi ancestry. 1 and his works contain citations, usually quite clear, to the very texts of Aristotle that discuss the imagination. Ibn Rushd and Maimonides both acknowledged a debt to Aristotle and in the case of Maimonides, a debt to Ibn Rushd, who Maimonides famously encouraged any student interested in Aristotle to read carefully.

What distinguishes these three thinkers, however, is not just the explicit nature of their debt to Aristotle, nor the fact that two very specific texts of Aristotle (De Anima and Rhetoric ) had an obvious impact on their thinking about imagination and human associations. What also distinguishes them is that they fall into what is usually called the ‘rationalist’ tradition of Arabic thought, which is to say that they believed in the uniqueness of human reason and its ability to either understand something about the Divine or that reason was a part of what made human beings acceptable vessels for Divine overflow and inspiration. They are often called elitist for establishing a hierarchy of human beings based on their intellectual capacity; writing against this hierarchy and challenging the primacy of reason is one of the most important philosophers that we will not be discussing in depth in the current work: al-Ghazali.

Chapter 1 lays the groundwork for an examination of Aristotle’s idea of imagination in later thinkers by conducting a close textual reading of the places where Aristotle seems to most clearly define the ‘imagination’. In an attempt to avoid reinforcing the relationship between the English ‘imagination’ and the Latin ‘imagio,’ this chapter consistently uses the transliterated ‘phantasia .’ The close textual reading of De Anima 3.3 in this chapter reveals that although Aristotle is at pains to define and categorize phantasia as a power, activity, or motion of the soul that fits into his otherwise well-ordered psychological structure, phantasia resists such classification. Although there does seem to be some relationship between phantasia and conviction ( ), Aristotle maintains that phantasia is not a discriminatory power or activity – in addition, it is not capable of being governed by reason, although reason may have a significant impact on it. The result is a concept of the imagination as a sort of free radical within the human soul, an in-between power that lacks both the sort of defined source and defined object that are necessary for other powers.

Chapter 2 examines how al-Farabi interprets Aristotle’s concept of the imagination. Because this chapter moves into the examination of Arabic texts, I revert to the use of ‘imagination’ in place of the Arabic quwwa mutakhayyilah , though only for grammatical and narrative . This chapter points out the etymological between al-takhayyul and phantasia , which do not share in the same type of root. Unusually for scholarship on al-Farabi, this chapter focuses on al-Farabi’s 2

Virtuous City : most commonly read for its later chapters on politics and governance, I argue that the first and largest part of the book concerns and psychology, both of which al-Farabi finds it necessary to discuss before transitioning into a discussion of political regimes. This chapter highlights two significant departures from Aristotle: first of all, al-Farabi’s emphasis on speech as the uniquely human activity and consequently an increased relevance of rhetoric, and secondly, his suggestion that in fact the imagination is a discriminatory and organizing faculty.

Chapter 3 moves to a discussion of Ibn Rushd, paying attention to his -described loyalty to Aristotle, to the political and religious context in which he conducted his work, and to the ways that Ibn Rushd differs from both Aristotle and al-Farabi. If al-Farabi thinks that rhetoric is dangerous in the public sphere, Ibn Rushd is more concerned with its effect in more private contexts, such as the communication between doctors and patients or teachers and students. Although both Aristotle and al-Farabi acknowledged that the imagination was a potential source of error, it is Ibn Rushd who conducts a careful analysis of error itself, classifying errors into those which are permissible, excusable, unwarranted, and worthy of punishment. Because rhetoric is a pedagogical tool that relies upon the shared imaginaries of a group, it is a dangerous tool in the hands of a corrupt ruler or teacher. The primary use of rhetoric and the images that arise in the imagination should be to train beginner students or generally uneducated people in the kind of reasoning that is the most easily understood – that is, reasoning that uses images and symbols – in order that the people’s intellect may improve to the point that they make and require leaders to make at least dialectical, if not demonstrative, arguments. Ibn Rushd’s imagination is clearly dangerous, because although it does evoke the possibility of something that is not-yet, unless it is trained and ideally governed by reason there is no way to tell the difference between the possible and impossible imagination, the possible and impossible future.

In Chapter 4, I conclude with an analysis of a very different thinker, Maimonides. Though Maimonides and Ibn Rushd lived in the same period and saw the same changes in empire with concurrent changes in official and in religious law, Maimonides was a Jew and as such subject to significantly more (and more dangerous) persecution than Ibn Rushd. But in addition to being on the ‘outside’ (which is to say, the only one of the three Arabic-language philosophers who did not at some point occupy an official advisory position in the Muslim court) Maimonides was also very explicitly a teacher. He taught not only through the codification and of law, but by means of parable, narrative (haggadah ) suggestion. Even more vulnerable to being

3 misunderstood than Ibn Rushd, insofar as the consequences of not being understood could well be death, Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed is a combination of philosophical questions and the evocation of particular narratives – his pedagogical method is displayed most clearly in the evocation of these narratives, which are the occasion for his etymological examination of single words and phrases. Focusing on two accounts of the Garden of Eden in the Guide , I argue that for Maimonides the imagination is simultaneously a characteristic of human beings (and thus divinely granted) which can lead us either into temptation (specifically the temptation to break the law) and the ‘positing power’ that enables human beings to cope with changes in the world. For Maimonides the imagination does often lead to error, particularly when it is mobilized by persuasive speech (such as the speech of the Edenic serpent), but it is also a part of the divine creation that is Adam- kind and which therefore should be respected as well as disciplined and restrained.

My conclusion emphasizes not only the way that the imagination evolved from a strictly psychological concept in Aristotle to an epistemological and political force in Arabic, but also acknowledges the conceptual debts that I bear towards the thinkers who have motivated me to write about seemingly disparate thinkers and personalities, and whose training – in person or by text – has taught me that when tensions and incompatibilities must be addressed, they do not necessarily need to be resolved.

There is, however, another issue with this dissertation, which is that in the selection of thinkers I have left out studies of two major Arabic philosophers and any number of other, less-obvious characters.

Al-Ghazali (1058-1011 CE):

Fundamentally, al-Ghazali’s thinking about the Divine is incompatible with that of the Arabic rationalists. Where they argued that perfection of reason was the best life of a human being, and the one that would bring them closer to of both and the world, al-Ghazali argued that using the human tools of reason, which can grasp only the things that exist in the world, cannot possibly understand the utterly ‘unlike’ which is God and the metaphysical world. Al-Ghazali is perhaps most famous for his attack on philosophers (philosophers here both the ancient Greeks and the “modern” Arabic thinkers who built on their work). In Tahafut al-falsafa or The Incoherence of Philosophy , al-Ghazali argues that the philosophers are guilty of

4 anthropomorphizing the Divine, and of attempting to use human talents to understand something so utterly unlike the human that their venture is doomed from the start.

Al-Ghazali’s criticism of philosophy contended that it was only by the absolute grace of Divine overflow that any human being could receive knowledge or understanding of the Divine, and no extensive training in , metaphysics, or any other branch of logical thought affected whether or not a given person would be granted knowledge of the divine.

This is, of course, a highly selective and insufficient overview of al-Ghazali’s thought. But it does point to one very important point: al-Ghazali believed that his illuminationist philosophy was less elitist because every human being (but really every male human being) was equally capable of become the receptacle of Divine overflow. The of the rationalist, who thought that knowledge of the most high required incredibly detailed knowledge of everything from the lowest building blocks of life upwards, denied – al-Ghazali argued – the fact that plenty of others could be granted knowledge of the Divine, and that the greatest example for any Muslim, the Prophet Mohammed was generally thought to have been completely illiterate at the time when he began to receive revelations via the Angel Gabriel. 2 The fundamental point is that anyone, of any status or education, could receive divine inspiration if they were spiritually (not intellectually) prepared for it.

We need to seriously re-consider who is more elitist, the illuminationists or the rationalists. Yes, the rationalists advocated a program of education that would be out of reach of all but the most geographically, economically, and socially privileged members of society. But what the rationalists did offer, even if it seemed impossible to follow, was a plan: their syllabi for the good student was something that any student who was either naturally inclined or had consciously disciplined themselves to study might be able to accomplish. The training of the rational faculty, and the

2 Historical scholarship has pointed out the fact that several of the characteristics associated with the Prophet Muhammad may be more mythic than historically accurate, calling into question two important elements of the orthodox Islamic picture of the Prophet: that he was illiterate, and that he never made any pagan offerings in Mecca, even in the period before Revelation. Those who question his illiteracy point to the fact that the longest Surah of the Qur’an concerns the necessity of written business (something that would have been of great importance to the Prophet as a trader), and those who question his monotheistic purity point to the social and economic role that offerings played in the pre-Islamic trading hub of Mecca. 5 discipline to restrain the appetitive faculty, is something that any person can attempt – though as al-Farabi points out, one’s ability to pursue this project of self-improvement always depends on whether one’s social and political world supports the development of ones moral and physical “constitution”.

But suppose, for a moment, that someone decided they wanted to understand the Divine: the rationalist philosophers give them a path to their goal. The rationalists say, “You may not be able to understand what you need to, in the end, but if you can understand it then you will have made steps towards understanding the of the world and what is beyond the world. Here are the steps.” Mystical philosophy, on the other hand, while focusing on the spiritual development of the individual through different practices and the study of religion itself, largely left the matter of divine inspiration up to the Divine – human beings have no real capacity to pursue that knowledge, unless it is granted to them from above. For the rationalists, the human being can at least prepare himself or herself and take action in order to become as perfect and ready for revelation as possible. In slim summary: the rationalists provided an active program of discipline and education that could theoretically lead any human being closer to revelation. The medieval mystics were in some ways not so different from the orthodox Calvinists and Puritan breathren who have been so influential in the United states; it is purely the will of God, independent of any human intervention, that decides who is bound for hell and who was bound for heaven, who is prone to corruption and who is blessed with revelation. This Calvinists and Puritan is consonant with certain orthodox Islamic conceptions of human and choice.

I do not pretend that significant work is not waiting to be done on al-Ghazali, particularly in relationship to Ibn Rushd and Maimonides. But this is not the place where it will be done. Al- Ghazali will flash out at certain moments, the against whom both Ibn Rushd and Maimonides must write in order to defend their disciplinary . But they will be only occasionally flashes of illumination at the points where al-Ghazali comes into the clearest conflict with these thinkers – a more prolonged consideration of al-Ghazali’s place, particularly among his rationalist Arabic colleagues, is a project that requires long-term light to be shed upon this one philosopher in particular. 3

3 Only a few sources on al-Ghazali include I. A. Bello. The Medieval Islamic Controversy between Philosophy and Orthodozxy” and Ta’wil in the Concflict between al-Ghazali and Ibn Rushd. Leiden, 1989; Ahmad Dallal, “Ghazali and the Perils of Interpretation,” in The Journal of the American Oriental 6

The Other Absence: Ibn Sina (980-1037 CE)

The other philosopher notably absent from the present work is Ibn Sina, known in the West as . There is no doubt that Avicenna played a crucial role in the development of philosophy between al-Farabi and Ibn Rushd. In addition, some scholars have identified Avicennian influences on Maimonides (though that identification is still incomplete and sometimes questionable.) 4 Avicenna was not the mystic that al-Ghazali was, but he did still flirt with elements of , such as the possibility of non-discursive wisdom. In addition – and more importantly for Ibn Rushd – Avicenna departed significantly from Aristotle, and he was responsible for the multiplication of the faculties of the soul that Ibn Rushd would push back against in an attempt to remain faithful to Aristotle. There is no reason why a future chapter of this work, if it is transformed into a book, might not take up the question of Avicenna. But frankly, it is too large and would take this work in a direction that we have no intention for it to go.5 The goal of this text is to stick as closely as possible to the actual writing of medieval Arabic-speaking Aristotelians – it makes no pretense of delving into the possible impact of neo- as an independent philosophical stream.

No al-Ghazali and no Ibn Sina: Why Maimonides?

If this work had chosen to focus on another triad of Arabic-language thinkers (al-Farabi, Avicenna, Ibn Rushd; al-Kindi, al-Farabi, Avicenna, etc.) there would have been another linkage between the three of them, beyond their stated fidelity to Aristotle: they would all be Muslims, all engaged in

Soiety, Vol 1. No. 4 (2002): Ebrahim Moosa, Ghazali and the of the Imagination . University of North Carolina Press, (2005). 4 Among other moments, Schlomo Pines identifies Maimonides’ discussion of prophecy as a flash of light with Avicenna; it is unclear to me why this is an evocation of an Avicennian trope and not a nod to al- Ghazali’s Niche of Lights . 5 A few sources on Avicenna include Dimitri Gutas, Avicenna and the Aristotelian Tradition: Introduction to Reading Avicenna’s Philosophical Words , Leiden, 1988; Sobeit M. Afran, Avicenna: His Life and Works , London, UK; Allen & Unwin Press, 1958; Lacin elyazghi Ezzahar, notes on “Avicenna’s Compendium” in Three Short Treatises on Aristotle’s Rhetoric: The Commentaries of al-Farabi, Avicenna, and Averroes , Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 2015: pp.50-71. 7 the rapid, multivalent and heterogeneous development of the Islamic tradition from within. All three (whichever three they were) would be ‘critics from within.’ But quite consciously, I have instead chosen to end this work with a chapter of Maimonides, an Arabic-language Jew and one of the most highly regarded philosophical, pedagogical, and ethical thinkers in the Jewish tradition.

Inevitably, this dissertation moves through centuries of history. But history is not the same for all people. If one is a minority, persecuted for either holding heretical opinions within the (as Ibn Rushd might have) or because they are of another faith altogether, the of history is different. Both Ibn Rushd and Maimonides were relatively public figures from honored and historic houses – and both suffered under the Almohad regime. But they suffered very differently. Ibn Rushd may have (somewhat inadequately) tried to hide some of his opinions that might have seemed dangerously close to those of the mu’tazilites ... but Maimonides had to hide his family, his body, and his very life from death. Ibn Rushd became a teacher, advisor, and judge in the new Empire – a position that did not always protect him – but it was as a major player at court that he had to think about what he wrote and consider the impact of persuasive speech. For Ibn Rushd, persuasive speech could be used to manipulate and corrupt people’s thinking, and the imagination that gave a foothold to rhetoric had to be regarded with the same wariness that one might approach a wild animal, unsure of what it would end up doing.

Maimonides, on the other hand, lost the place of honor he could have expected in Andalusia and fled, moving around for over ten years before arriving in the Fatimid Empire of Egypt. At some point in his travels in North Africa he may have been forced to convert to Islam, and when he reached a place of some refuge in Egypt where he could take up the mantle of the Jewish community, he was prosecuted (though eventually acquitted) of having committed apostasy by converting to Islam and then returning to Judaism. 6 But not only did he become the head of the Egyptian Jewish community while living in Fustat in Fustat, he also became the personal physician to the Sultan’s representative. His advice to his community, and particularly his communications

6 In fact, Maimonides’ acquittal, based on the grounds that even if he had been seen in a mosque his conversion was obviously the consequence of duress and therefore invalid in the first place, is a moment of remarkable note. Important research might be done, using both Cairo Genizeh and other archives, concerning the court case itself. That valid conversion must include true was a relatively recent development – even Jewish converts to Islam who were accused of being secret were usually accused of continuing to practice Jewish rituals, not that they maintained a specific ‘belief.’ 8 to the base of the community in both Hebrew and a highly Classical (as opposed to dialectical) Judeo-Arabic, cannot be un-colored by his . 7

Other Invisibles

As this work should make clear, Ibn Rushd and Maimonides (in particular) lived in a period that was a Golden Age for scholarship, even if it was not as perfect as some have made it out to be. The number of writers, philosophers, and teachers from that period is extensive, and each one of them deserves at minimum an entire book, and some possibly an entire library. Because it is impossible to grant them even a part of their due in a work like this, they are absent from the text that follows – but not forgotten. They include, but are not limited to in Egypt, Ibn Tuffayl, Ibn Bajjah, and Yehuda Halevi, among others.

Two Short Notes

1. Gender. At several points in conducting this research I have been struck by fact that the years of work and reading have all circled around some men who probably wouldn’t eat with me, let alone have a philosophical discussion. I have debated the use of ‘gender-neutral’ pronouns, particularly because there are cases where both the author and addressee is assumed to be male – for example, al-Farabi’s use of emissions or spontaneous ejaculation as an example of muhaka (mimeses ). Any use of gendered pronouns in this work is not a mistake; it is a result of the occasional feelings of dislocation experienced while writing this work. I would not call them misogynists per se – and Ibn Rushd is even an advocate for women’s education – but to read them as a woman is to realize that you are reading them from a different place than they could have imagined.

2. History. If you are reading an author from a radically different place/time/paradigm than the author when they wrote, it begins to seem impossible to, as once advocated

7 Another example of this is his responsa concerning the Messiah, in which he is simultaneously clear that the penalty for claiming to be the Messiah is death and tells the Yemenite community that a person claiming to be a messiah is of so little note, and so unlikely to cause and upheaval, that the person should not be subject to the death penalty. 9

“understand the thinkers of earlier ages as they understood themselves.” What follows includes attention to the history and context in which each of these Arabic philosophers wrote. Without history, the horrible things, the fears and desires engendered by specific historical contexts cannot be known, and we cannot begin to consider the effects of those moments on an author’s thought. One example of this is the famed famine of Cairo that occurred between 1197 and 1202, a famine so bad that it is reported that children were being roasted and eaten, and that when someone was burned alive for cannibalism their bodies would be found the next day stripped of conveniently pre-roasted flesh.8 This was towards the end of Maimonides’ life, and I cannot help from wonder about both the physical and pragmatic trials that Maimonides also had to endure.

*

There is no more of an introduction that I can give, and I hope that I have here acknowledged some of the preferences, inclinations, and concerns that have gone into the writing of this dissertation. Some of the concerns that motivate this work have emerged only in the last two years – it used to be much harder to convince people that a dissertation on the uses and misuses of people’s imagination through fiery rhetoric was relevant. The relevance of people’s ability to be persuaded along one path even when reason gestures in a different direction is no longer ‘questionable’ in its relevance. But that too is a matter for the conclusion, after we have read Aristotle and his Arabic heirs, and once we gather some sense of the long and storied relationship between imagination and rhetoric.

8 See Kraemer, 343-346, as well as Maimonides’ Responsa 15 and 21. 10

CHAPTER 1

The Escape from Aristotelian Hierarchies: The Imagination in De Anima 3.3

Summary : In this chapter I analyze Aristotle’s pronouncements on the imagination in De Anima 3.3, and suggest that the De Anima is very fruitfully read next to Aristotle’s Rhetoric and the pseudonymous Rhetoric to Alexander . Acknowledging that this is a pseudonymous text, I argue that insofar as the Arabic heirs of Aristotle read and studied it as a work of Aristotle, and a logical work that must be included in any serious study of Aristotle’s readers. Reading Rhetoric with the De Anima demonstrates that while Aristotle never seems to completely pin down the imagination in the structure of human psychology, he recognized the force of the imagination in the persuasion and motivation of the populace. The imagination in Aristotle is largely an in-between faculty, distinct but indebted to memory and in an ambivalent relationship to judgment, in which are made present to us and are therefore subjectable to analysis.

Reading Aristotle’s account of phantasia involves dealing with both textual and contextual issues. Textually, the reader is faced with numerous questions involving not only the transmission of Aristotle’s work, but also the ways in which both Aristotle’s texts and pseudo- Aristotelian texts should be considered in light of their reception. An account of the Arabic reception of phantasia in particular cannot ignore the long-lasting impact of the pseudo- Aristotelian Rhetoric to Alexander (Balagha L’Iskander ), as well as the fact that, unlike in the Latin world, the Arabic collection of Aristotle’s logical works (the ) includes his works on rhetoric and poetry. 9 Given that the focus of this dissertation is the Arabic reception and interpretation of Aristotle, it is necessary to include as a work of Aristotle those texts which

9 This text, which was among the first translated into Arabic from Greek, contains practical advice and formed the backbone of the Arabic “Advice to Princes” (Sirr al-asrar ) body of literature. Despite the fact that it is generally agreed that it was not written by Aristotle, it was taken in the Arabic tradition as a work of Aristotle and is therefore essential to understanding how Aristotle was read in the Arabic tradition. On this work, see Dimitri, “On Graeco-Arabic Epistolary Novels,” Middle East Literatures, Vol. 12, No. 1 (2009): pp.59-70, and W. F Ryan and C. B Schmitte (editors) Pseudo-Aristotle, the Secret of Secrets: Sources and Influences . London, UK; Warburg Institute, 1982.

11 his medieval Arabic readers regarded as a part of his logical corpus. If we ignore the fact that Rhetoric to Alexander is counted as one of Aristotle’s texts and that Rhetoric is considered a logical text in toto by al-Farabi, Ibn Rushd, and Maimonides, then we cannot hope to understand how these Arabic thinkers understood Aristotle. 10

It should also be noted that the actual coherence of Aristotle’s account of phantasia is hotly debated to this day, and even how we ought to translate φαντασια. Whether phantasia corresponds precisely to ‘imagination’ is questionable, and it certainly is not a direct linguistic evolution; the English ‘imagination’ is an evolution of the Latin imagio , and while phantasia is linked to images it is not quite as simple as imago = imagio = imagination = phantasia . Phantasia , if we entertain the modern English terms that the word evokes, is related to fantasy, phantoms, and even the fantastic. However, the Arabic term that replaced it was not a transliteration of Aristotle’s Greek term but an already extant Arabic word that the translators of Aristotle’s work deemed appropriate. 11

We are therefore at a double disadvantage: not only do we encounter complicated philological and transmission issues, but we are also approaching the problem of understanding Aristotle in the 21 st century, heirs to a legacy of thinking about the imagination that is over 2,000 years old. For those who have been exposed to the likes of Shakespeare, Naguib Mahfouz, or Lady

10 It is notable that the Latin-derived distinction of Aristotle’s works in the logical (, , , Interpretation , Refutations used by , and ) still marginalizes Rhetoric and Poetics as beings works on ‘art.’ This topic is explored in depth by Deborah Black in and Aristotle’s Rhetoric and Poetics in Medieval Arabic Philosophy, Leiden Brill, 1990: pp.47. [Hereafter Black,] but it is also visible in the back-cover material of any Loeb Edition volume of Aristotle.

11 For most Arabic thinkers, phantasia is translated as takhayyul , which implies a relationship to dreams root). In common usage as a verb it can indicate a positive inclination towards a future that ﻝ.ﺍ.ﺥ the) has not (yet) materialized, or a negative reaction to something that has or could happen. In addition to the discussion of takhayyul and the quwwa mutakhayyilah this work, see Black Logic; Frede, “The Cognitive Role of Phantasia in Aristotle”; Frere, “Fonction représentive et représentation”; Gutas, The Graeco-Arabic Translation Movement ”; Labarriere, “Désir, phantasia et intellect.”

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Chatterley’s Lover , let alone Persepolis and How Mirka Got Her Sword Back , imagination is a creative and powerful force, particularly in literature, which is responsible for the remarkable ability of writers, painters, and even philosophers to think about things that are, that could be, and that might not. Given how much we value imagination across disciplines as a creative force that – while occasionally divorced from or dismissive of – propels human beings to create new things and gives rise to new perspectives, it is tempting to read Aristotle’s account of phantasia with an eye predisposed to recognize those indications of inspiration and creativity in Aristotle.

But this is not what a serious reading of Aristotle on his own terms will find, and unless we let go of the impulse to locate Aristotle as intellectual forefather and founder for our beliefs about the imagination, we will fail before the yardstick of probity. It is not Aristotle’s job to validate our own beliefs about imagination, and the attempt to find that validation in Aristotle can devolve into a wide-ranging interpretation in which Aristotle’s texts play little part. Aristotelian φαντασια is utterly unlike the imagination that is referred to (metaphorically) as ‘creativity’. 12 In what follows, a close reading of Aristotelian and pseudo-Aristotelian texts, φαντασια is specifically not ‘creative’ although it may be both radical and disruptive. To at least try to untangle the abiding influence of the Stagirite on subsequent Arabic-language thought, it is essential to aside our own projects and investments in the idea of the imagination in order to undertake a proper, scholarly examination of φαντασια.13 In what

12 I concede that φαντασια and “imagination” have certain affinities, but I remain uncomfortable with the ways this affinity has been articulated, particularly given the uniquely Latinate roots of ‘imagination.’ At this point in my research, I am unwilling to offer a hypothesis about what the relationship between Aristotelian φαντασια and modern concepts of the imagination might be, except that there probably is one and it is not what we think when we read about literary imagination in Auerbach’s Mimesis or Kermode’s Interpretation of Narrative.

13 The focus of the subsequent chapters will be primarily Aristotle in the Arabic tradition, in which it was the height of insult to accuse a thinker of having interpreted Aristotle incorrectly. To do so indicated either a deficiency of thought or in motivation - these are the kinds of arguments that Ibn Rushd mobilizes against his predecessors.

13 follows I will therefore use the transliterated phantasia .14 Phantasia is unique and provocative in Aristotle; it is not our ‘imagination,’ but it certainly is something else.

The term phantasia /φαντασηα (appearance or image) occurs throughout Aristotle’s texts, albeit primarily in his major psychological work, De Anima . 15 Perhaps this comes as no surprise – certainly in the contemporary West a discussion of the imagination’s role in psychology and seems entirely reasonable. But phantasia , as a term related to images, was barely a word when Aristotle wrote. The term is rare in , although Plato’s discussion of images in The and The should not be underestimated in terms of how they affected Plato’s pupil. There is a limited amount of scholarship on this point, in part because while references to phantasmata are scattered through Plato’s , phantasia is only used a handful of times, the majority of them (four times) in the Sophist and twice in Theaetetus . 16 Phantasma and phantasmata are referenced far more often in Socrates’

14 I would suggest that recollecting phantasia from the vantage point of “imagination” may limit the possible ways in which we can read these texts (see below). Richard Sorabji has consistently translated phantasia as ‘appearing’ and phantasma as ‘appearance,’ and there are a great many benefits to this approach. My concern with this translation is that it highlights the relationship between phantasia and vision. Although Aristotle explicitly connects his phantasia with sight (DA 3.3.429a.1-5) the post- Aristotelian idea of the imagination does not remain as specifically linked to sight as ‘appearance,’ in part because more attention is paid to the role of imagination in cognition. In addition, the Arabic term for imagination does not invoke the concept of ‘light’ as phantasia does phaos in Aristotle. So while ‘appearance’ is inadequate, something like a Heideggerian ‘appearing-for’ or ‘appearing-to’ might be a useful compromise.

15 Translations are my own but draw heavily on the Loeb Classical Library translation of W. S. Hett (1957), Sir David Ross (1961) and Christopher Shields (2016).

16 See Alan Silverman, “Plato on Phantasia,” in Classical Antiquity , vol. 10, no. 1 (1991): pp. 123-147. on the distribution of Plato’s use of the term, specifically at Silverman, 124.n4. See also Silverman’s identification of the only ‘clear’ definition as being in the Sophist , 264a4-7, and his claim on p. 142 that phantasia “is explicitly introduced as a combination of aesthesis and “judgment.” Silverman is not clear what term he is translating as judgment, though based on Sophist 229a it is likely to be doxa (doxaen ) which we translate in this chapter as ‘belief,’ or krinein (Theatetus 201a), which we translate

14 discussion of the arts – this may explain in part why Plato’s Socrates is more careful about distinguishing between eikonography and phantasia than many of his modern interpreters (Sophist 264c) – and it is also the case that in the later dialogues, Plato himself seems to carve out a positive role for phantasia that is still conditioned by the propensity for phantasia leading to error in incompletely rational people. Phantasia involves a combination of and belief or perception and judgment, but as Silverman notes, “while each sensory situation can yield only a single presentation, this presentation can give rise to numerous beliefs…this is a question of what the presentation is taken to be evidence for…Perusal of the texts on phantasia shows that Plato’s wariness about phantasia concerns the sorts of beliefs it is liable to induce in the average or non-philosophically minded observer.” (Silverman, 141) The problem of phantasia is that, as a combination of perception and belief, the images of phantasia incline one to believe that the perception is exactly what one thinks it is, giving rise to a belief in which the holder is absolutely convinced. In the rational or philosophical person, phantasia has the opposite effect – it causes one to recognize that one’s experience of the perception is not necessarily all that there is, and that one’s beliefs – however strongly held – may be simply one of a group of plausible beliefs based on an identical perception. For the vast majority of people,

...imagination relativized knowledge to subjective interest. And this self-referential program of the imagination defines the core in a host of undesirables: rhetoricians, sophists, poets. Alike they have a great facility in the imitation of truth…the intention is to please, to persuade, and to stimulate the passions; and to this end the imagination serves them well, for it resides in and appeals to the irrational parts of the soul. The imagination displaces reason as the ordering power of the soul, and does so by ignoring architectonic in favor of the standards (opinions) of the many or of the self. 17 in this chapter as ‘discrimination’ - he later uses belief as the translation of doxa , so this matter remains unclear.

17 Ray L. Hart, “The Imagination in Plato,” International Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 5, No.2 (1965): pp.436-461, see p. 448.

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As we will see below, and in the chapters that follow, the vulnerability of the imagination (perception taken up in the world) to rhetoricians is part of what Aristotle and his Arabic followers considered most problematic about imagination. It is not imagination as such that they consider reprehensible, but the degree to which the imagination displaces reason as the ordering power of the soul. Plato seems to find this displacement inevitable – Aristotle and his Arabic readers depicted a relationship between imagination and reason that was more argumentative and contentious.

But for Plato, who placed phantasia entirely on the sensible side of the Divided Line, phantasia was problematic only when it wasn’t governed by the rational soul. Proper attention to education in reason and logic would lead phantasia to become nothing more that the presentation of options to the self, options which were verified or discarded in the end by the rational part of the soul. For Aristotle, phantasia is more complicated than that. He cannot limit phantasia entirely to the realm of the irrational and sensible, or lift it up into the rational faculty; it remains something that we share in many ways with non-rational – and sometimes semi-rational – animals. Yes, phantasia governed by the rational soul is capable of stimulating cognitive and perceptual possibilities – but in his discussion of rhetoric, as we will see at the end of this chapter, Aristotle unearthed to a greater extent than Plato ever did the rhetorical vulnerability of imaginative beings who were also rational. It is Aristotle whose analysis of rhetorical logic demonstrated that the impulses, insanities, and inanities generated by the imagination couldn’t be controlled purely by education in logic and reason. This, perhaps, is why he found it so important to refer far more often to practical knowledge, to prudence, and to human beings’ ability to recognize how their beliefs affected their influence on the world around them.

Aristotle discusses phantasia in both his psychological and his political works – in the Arabic reception of Aristotle; the political implications of the imagination were primarily ascertained via Aristotle’s Rhetoric and Rhetoric to Alexander .18 Sorting out the relationship between

18 While later Arabic philosophers did not have copies of Aristotle’s Politics , they had, and esteemed, Rhetoric and Rhetoric to Alexander . Both texts were essential to those who were trying to extrapolate or explain the writings of Aristotle on topics as diverse as prophecy and geometry.

16 phantasia and various other habits, powers, faculties, and affections of the soul must draw widely on Aristotle’s corpus, and such an undertaking is beyond the scope of the present project which is focused on the medieval Arabic reception and interpretation of phantasia .19 However, it is widely accepted that De Anima 3.3 is Aristotle’s ‘final’ statement on phantasia . Even those who call for a wide-ranging account of Aristotelian phantasia recognize its centrality. 20 By teasing out the opening sections of De Anima 3.3, the following investigation will encounter some of Aristotle’s most constant concerns: the persistency of error 21 , the relationship between the sensible 22 and rational faculties of the soul, and the possibility of thinking what is not.

19 The works of Michael Wedin, Mind and Imagination in Aristotle . New Haven, NY; Yale University Press, 1988 and Dennis L. Sepper, Understanding Imagination: The Reason of Images. Studies in History and , Vol 33, Netherlands: Springer Press, 2013 are particularly comprehensive contributions to the field.

20 Malcolm Schofeld, who wants to write against this claim and the consequent dismissal of other passages in Aristotle concerned with the imagination, nevertheless focuses almost exclusively on 3.3. (See Schofeld, “Aristotle on the Imagination” in Aristotle on Mind and the Senses , ed. G. E. R. Lloyd and G. E. L. Owen, Cambridge, UK; 1978). Gerard Watson reiterates the claim regarding the centrality of De Anima 3.3, but his analysis actually moves around 3.3, focusing on the preceding and following chapters to the benefit of his analysis (see ““Φαντασια in Aristotle, De Anima 3.3” The Classical Quarterly , vol. 32, No. 1 (1982): pp.100-113). We are not particularly concerned here with those who call the authenticity of the text into question (such as Dennis Ross in Aristotle: De Anima. Vorlesungen und Schriften, Oxford, England; Clarendon UP, 1961), if only because such a question is irrelevant to those who inherited this Aristotelian text.

21 On error, see Victor Caston, “Why Aristotle Needs Imagination” Vol. 41, No. 1 (1996), pp.20-55; on sensation and perception, Wedin and Sepper; on thinking the unlike see Seth Bernadete, “Aristotle, De Anima 3.3-5” in The Review of Metaphysics, vol . 28, no. 4 (1975); pp.611-622; Martha Nussbaum, Aristotle’s De Moto Animalium , Princeton, NJ; Princeton University Press, 1978; Richard Sorabji, “The Ancient Commentators on Aristotle,” in Aristotle Transformed: The Ancient Commentators and their Influence, edited by Richard Sorabji, Ithaca, NY; Cornell University Press, 1990: pp.1-30.

22 Aesthesis /aesthemata will be translated in what follows as either sensation/sensible or perception/perceivable.

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Aristotle himself certainly suggests a definitive quality to his account of phantasia in De Anima , referring the reader to it in De Memoria ,23 But De Anima is not about phantasia ; it is about the soul, and its sections are intended to cover an investigation into the specifically human soul capable of both sensation (which the human shares with animals) and reason (which belongs to human beings alone). Phantasia appears at a mid-point in the investigation, as Aristotle is winding up his discussion of sensation (DA I and II) and about to take up the intellect. (DA III.4-10) De Anima 3.3 is a difficult text to parse. Even committed Aristotle scholars find frustrating, fragmentary, and even sometimes a bit embarrassing the torturous, interlinked, and sometimes seemingly contradictory nature of Aristotle’s comments on phantasia . 24 Unfortunately for those readers, it is difficult to discount the importance of Aristotle’s remarks concerning phantasia generally and in De Anima 3.3 specifically. As Victor Caston notes, “Aristotle is clearly articulating something of key importance to his psychology. But the exact nature of his aims and results is hotly disputed.” 25 According to Martha Nussbaum, readers who have identified Aristotle’s goal as the explanation of error and memory have tended, on this basis, to what she calls the image view (IM). Broadly speaking, the IM explanation of error in Aristotle is that it is a result of the decay of sensation due to time or corrosive sensations. As a result, error enters into human thought and perception based on its chronological and subjective distance from the original sensation. Much less attention has been given to the relationship between phantasia and thinking. 26 Phantasia is doubtless linked with memory (anamnesis ) but it is not identical to memory, and it affects and is affected by thinking ( ) in a way that memory is not. This chapter is less concerned with the

23 The specific reference by Aristotle above is to De Memoria , 449b.30. All references to De Memoria will be to Richard Sorabji’s 1974 translation, unless otherwise indicated, and identified by DM .

24 Schofield finds certain passages embarrassing (although Michel Wedin contends this is more the result of Schofield’s theory than a deficiency in Aristotle). Ross suggests (although his arguments have been largely surmounted) that De Anima 3.3 is the work of an editor stringing together statements aphoristically.

25 Victor Caston, “Why Aristotle Needs Imagination” Phronesis , Vol. 41, No. 1 (1996): p.20.

26 Nussbaum, De Motu Animalium , 221. There have been several recent contributions to the nature of this other relationship, notably that of Wedin and Sepper.

18 relationship between phantasia and memory, and more with the relationship between phantasia and thinking. If we accept, as Aristotle seemed to accept de facto , that phantasia and memory are distinct if interlocking powers, our question is the relationship between phantasia and nous : how does phantasia , weighed down as it is by the possibility of error, contribute and in certain cases make possible our functioning as rational and social animals?

Aristotle’s most focused investigation of phantasia takes place in De Anima 3.3 and it is to this text that we will be primarily addressing our attention. 27 The text opens (without reference to phantasia ) by bifurcating the soul into motion (kinesei ) and the various powers of discrimination (krinein ). (DA 427a.17) 28 Divided in this way, both thinking (νοεΐν, noesis ), understanding (φρονεΐν, phronesis ) and perception (αισθάνεσθαι, aesthesis ) belong to the same discriminating (bouletike) part of the soul. 29 But, as Aristotle points out, grouping thinking and sensation together elides the fact that they are different in the one way that is most important to the lover of wisdom: their ability to lead to error. His predecessors contended that understanding (phronesis ) and perception are fundamentally the same because – as in the example of Empedocles – the ability to make judgments depends on perception. 30 Because his predecessors considered perception and thought to be the same, they could not account for

27 Even those who argue that an analysis of phantasia in DA 3.3 is not sufficient for an adequate understanding of the concept in Aristotle (Caston, Schofield) are convinced, rightly I would say, regarding its necessity for understanding phantasia in the context of the human soul.

28 It is not until later in the text that Aristotle will identify the specific characteristics of the soul mentioned here - thinking (noien ), understanding (phronein ), and perceiving (aisthenestha ) as discriminatory (krinein ) - and offer greater insight into what it means to be a discriminatory power. See DA 3.3.428a-428b.10.

29 The identification of the primary division of the soul into the active and the discriminative faculties is one that is emphasized by (see below) as well as by Christopher Shields in his recent translation and commentary on De Anima (see Shields 55 and commentary, p. 277.)

30 There is a particular translation problem in this section: I would translate DA 3.3.427a.18-19 as, “thinking is the discrimination (krinein ) of perception, as thinking is an understanding (phronein ) of perception.”

19 errors in thought that were not the result of simply corrupted perception of the sensibles. (DA 427b.1-5) Aristotle however is not one to let error slide – he is seeking to understand how human beings err not only in those faculties that they share with animals but in rational thought, and how that crown of humanity can lead it astray.

As the transitional chapter between Aristotle’s discussion of perception and thought in De Anima , it is not surprising that this is where tensions regarding the similarity and/or difference between perception and thought collide. Perception, we are reminded, is an activity in relation to the sensible object (αιδθητον) and the sensible object is available to a particular operation (i.e., a specific sense) and object (sensible) (DA 3.3.429a); this perception or perceptions form the building blocks of thought. The first of these standards is almost instinctively self-evident. I cannot actually see red unless there is red in front of me and unless I have eyes to see it. All other ‘experiences’ of red – in memory or as ‘fire’ – are perceptions. The perception of proper sensibles is the perception that “is true or is the least misleading.” 31 The senses only perceive what is like them – thus the faculty of sight perceives color, since sight and color are alike in their dependence upon the transparency of light. 32 Sensation searches out an object, requires an object, in fact exists actively only in the presence of an object. Unless the organs of sense are themselves corrupted by infirmity, overpowering force, or sleep, there is no place for error. 33 On the other hand, these perceptions are perhaps the least useful for rational and complex thought, insofar as human beings do not live life in relation to the perception of the partial qualities of proper sensible objects – red, sweet, rough – but in relation to more complex perceptions of whole sensible objects like fire, cake, and pavement. If one’s ability to act in the world is predicated only on the perception of color, taste, and texture no perception would be wrong, but neither would a person be able to judge the proper attitude to take towards fire as opposed to ketchup.

31 DA 428b.19-20. Translation modified.

32 Sepper, 211.

33 For a longer discussion of nature of sleep and its relationship to human faculties, including prophecy, see Richard Sorabji, Aristotle’s ‘; above, ft.52 and infra.

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The most reliable object of sensation is a simple sensible, like redness or sweetness, which clearly corresponds to a particular sensitive power. But the next level of sensation pertains to objects in which the simple sensibles inhere as attributes – at this level of sensation we can perceive fire, a perception which involves sensation of color, touch, and even potentially sound. Since the perception of the sensible object cannot be attributed to a specific sense, the object can be “thought falsely”, or misidentified. (DA 428b.20-24) 34 Error is possible at moment that a sensible becomes a perception and object of thought – for objects of thought are by their nature in thought classified and organized in relationship to one another, according to certain discriminations that are made in the rational faculty concerning their similarity or difference from one another. Thus, errors can emerge from memories which are corrupted by distance from the perception, but error can also result if the rational faculty’s ability to discriminate, classify, and order perceptions is based on a false opinion or judgment. One may believe that a particular incident occurred in childhood even though the people one remembers being present are adamant that it never happened. Or, in the second case, if the rational faculty does not know how to distinguish between causation and correlation it cannot possibly organize various perceptions in a way that demonstrates the relationship between them accurately. For example, if the unemployment rate rises at the same time as there is an influx of refugees and immigrants, the two facts could be related by their correlation or causation.

Leaving aside the movement characteristic of the soul for a moment, Aristotle begins De Anima 3.3 by emphasizing the difference between thought, understanding, and perception. He does not actually introduce “phantasia” until somewhat later, at DA 427b.15. The reason that he began by making a distinction between thought and perception, rather than opening the book with a preliminary definition of phantasia itself, is explained by the fact that Aristotle here introduces phantasia as distinct from both thought and perception. (DA 427b.15-16) This is one of those moments when Aristotle seems to commit himself to contradictory positions. In the course of the next short passage (427b.15-428a.1) Aristotle mentions phantasia for the first

34 Aristotle also posits a third type of sensation, concerned with the number and activity of the complex sensibles and how they work together. These perceptions are the most dubious of all, for reasons that require further clarification. (DA 428b.22-26) This will be what al-Farabi term the ‘common sense,’ but it remains relatively vague in Aristotle.

21 time and makes a whole series of linkages whose order is nearly impossible to distinguish. Phantasia is different from perception and from thought; it is the result of perception, and the foundation of belief; but phantasia and belief are not identical, because human beings have the capacity to fantasize at will but belief is involuntary. (DA 427b.15-28) In other words, belief in what an object is/not is an involuntary and necessary condition of being in the world. Aristotle tells us that phantasia and hupolepsis (ΰπόληψις, often translated as conceptions) are the two species of thought (DA 427b.28-30); that phantasia requires perception (αιδθησις); and that hupolepsis requires phantasia . 35 Pace standard translations, and many good translations of other works, this is a passage in Aristotle where consistent translation is essential. Having apparently discarded the notion that imagination is the same as conception (hupolepsis ) at 427b.16, he proceeds to suggest that there may be more to it than a simple exclusion, since there are multiple types of conceptions. At 427b.25 he notes: “There are many kinds of conceptions (hupolepsis ); scientific knowledge ( ), belief (doxa ), and understanding (phronesis ), and their opposites, which require additional analysis (logos ).” 36 Both Hett and Ross translate hupolepsis as ‘judgment,’ while Shields’ 2016 translation offers ‘conception’; in either case Aristotle here specifies three types of hupolepsis ; episteme which is translated as science (Hett) or knowledge (Ross and Shields), with a result that we are justified in using the awkward amalgamation ‘scientific knowledge; doxa , which Hett and Ross

35 Nested under hupolepsis are the powers that Aristotle associates with noesis : prudence (φρονησις), knowledge (επιστήμη) and opinion (δοξα). Of particular note is the almost identical characterization of the powers of thought (noien ) and hupolepsis , and in particular the identification of two of the three powers with discrimination in the passage which is the primary focus of this chapter.

36 Translation modified. The three translations of De Anima 3.3 compared in this chapter, that of Hett, Ross, and Shields, all have difficulty with this passage, as becomes immediately apparent, above. What they all share, unfortunately in my opinion, is an under-reading of the last clause in the sentence, “…περί ως της διαφοράς έτερος έστω λόγος.” Aristotle is not simply saying that he’ll talk about the different modes of conception (hupolepsis ) some other time - he is saying that each of those variations deserve an analysis on their own. In other words, the nature of these sub-categories is not purely incidental, but is actually relevant to the discussion at hand.

22 render ‘opinion’ and Shields renders ‘belief’ 37 ; and phronesis , about which there is not even a majority opinion concerning the translation – Hett offers ‘prudence,’ Ross “practical knowledge,’ and Shields ‘understanding’. For the purpose of clarity, in what follows the relevant terms will be translated consistently in the following manner:

Ϋπόληψις: hupolepsis , conception

Επιστήμη : episteme , scientific knowledge

Δοξα : doxa , idea, opinion

Φρονησις: phronesis , practical understanding or knowledge, prudence 38

Phantasia seems at this point to be indispensable to thought, and to be strongly influenced by sensation, without belonging to either of those catch-all categories by which the Classical soul was bifurcated. In what follows we shall attempt ascertain whether Aristotle’s statements about these relationships are indeed paradoxical or whether their paradoxical appearance forces the reader to investigate the topic more carefully.

37 In this dissertation I try to consistently translate doxa as idea or notion rather than belief or opinion, since the English ‘belief’ implies necessarily some conviction about and attachment to the belief - in modern usage, ‘an idea’ is far more value-neutral. As Chris Rock noted in the film Dogma (Kevin Smith director, 1999), “I think it’s better to have ideas. You can change an idea. Changing a belief is trickier.”

38 That these definitions are largely in line with those of Shields is not accidental - in many ways his recent translation is sensitive to the complications of the imagination in a way that earlier translators were not. However, it is tempting to preserve the translation of phronesis as “practical knowledge” or “prudence”, since both of those words give a sense of the embeddedness in the world of the knowledge indicated by phronesis; both English words also act as moments when the work of later thinkers can be heard as a far-off echo. ‘Understanding’ is preferable, however, as long as it is understood in contrast to the scientific knowledge which is demonstrative but largely sterile, and belief that seems possible to maintain in the absence of evidence: understanding is understanding-in-the-world, and therefore both practical and prudent.

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If phantasia is neither thought nor perception, one way to approach phantasia ’s distinctiveness is by recognizing what thought and perception do have in common. While the objects of sensation and thought are different (thought being possible in the absence of a sensible), both faculties consist in activities that have objects. 39 Granted, these objects are different: the sense- object (αιδθητον) is perceived by the senses, while the thought-object (το νοητον) does not require the immediate input of the senses. 40 But for all the objects that Aristotle speaks of, he never refers to an object of imagination (φανταστον). And since Aristotle has defined faculties as being identifiable in terms of the objects to which they are directed, the absence of a phantasia -object indicates that phantasia cannot be treated as a full faculty. 41 The correspondence that Aristotle suggests between perception and reason consists of the fact that both the sensitive and rational faculties engage in activities regarding specific objects. 42

In addition to not delimiting the appropriate object of phantasia , Aristotle does not indicate an activity proper to phantasia . The closest he comes is his statement at 428a.1-2 that “phantasia is that in of which an appearance (phantasma ) is formed in us.” But contrary to what some scholars have suggested, I do not read this as a claim that the function of imagination is the production of images. Phantasia does not “produce” images, but it does describe the way that we are present to images. If it was the function of phantasia to produce images, then the object of phantasia would be sensibles (or common sensibles) and the result would be more like the image, or eikon . But sensibles cannot be perceived without a perceptive organ to which they correspond, and phantasia does not have such an organ. Such a claim over-reads the active role of phantasia , and ignores Michael Wedin’s cogent reminder that, as noted above, Aristotle

39 DA 431b.20-29. See also Sepper, 241-245.

40 It would be more appropriate to say that the thought-object seems to be the form of the sense-object in cognition, but this takes more explication than is possible here. By acknowledging this distinction I in no way intend to underestimate the role that perception plays in thought, as I hope will become evident below.

41 Wedin, Mind and Imagination , 59.

42 See below. David Ross, in his notes on DA 3.3.429a.15, concurs on this point, although he does little in the way of drawing out the implications of phantasia being different from both sensation and reason.

24 never identifies an ‘object of imagination’. That it does not have either an object or an activity disqualifies it as a faculty of the order of perception and thought.

While Aristotle seems content to leave phantasia without a proper object (suggesting only that it requires perceptions generally), he does try harder to identify the activity that characterizes phantasia . Pace Sepper, the distinction that Aristotle makes is not between thinking and discriminating acts, but between motion and discrimination. 43 De Anima 3.3 began with the distinction between the soul’s motion and the soul’s discrimination; at 428a Aristotle returns to the suggestion that phantasia is involved in discrimination – and while Aristotle seems to suggest that phantasia is involved in the discriminatory activity of the soul, that relationship is cast into doubt by the passage that follows, in which Aristotle explains why phantasia is not one of the ways that we understand what is right and what is wrong. The discriminative powers of the soul are defined at DA 427:

If phantasia is that in virtue of which an appearance [φαντασηα] comes to be in us (ημιν γίγνεσθαι), but not something spoken of in a metaphorical way 44 , it [may be] some power or habit by which we discriminate the right and wrong (καθ ην κρίνομεν και αληθευηεν η ψευδόμεθα); and such are the powers of sensation (αιδθησις), opinion (δοξα), knowledge (επιστήμη), and intellect (νους).

In this passage Aristotle lays out the powers of discrimination or judgment in order to consider whether phantasia is compatible with any of them. It is important to note that he does not include memory in this list, having already discussed the role of memory and the passivity of the soul in relationship to memory. Recently, the theory has been advanced that Aristotle’s concept of phantasia is an appropriation and reconfiguration of memory in Plato. The fact that

43 Sepper, 212. That the central division in Aristotle is between motion and discrimination is attested in Heidegger, Basic Principles of Aristotelian Philosophy , which will be discussed below.

44 What Aristotle means by ‘metaphorical’ is a matter of debate. Wedin suggests that the non- metaphorical imagination is the topic of 3.3 and the ‘metaphorical’ imagination must be associated with imagination as it subserves rational animals.

25 this is an enormously difficult claim to defend should not detract from our ability to discern the gleams of insight. 45 Phantasia and memory (ἀνάμνησις) have a great deal in common: neither is possible without images, and the images that are a feature of both subserve the rational faculty. If Aristotle was not at such pains to discuss them separately, the appeal of such a combination might be irresistible. But he does maintain this distinction, even reiterating it in the course of his treatise on memory.

De Memoria contains a protracted analysis of images – it must, since “memory, even the memory of objects of thought, is not without an image.” (DA 449b.46-47) But the language of the image is more complex than even those who attempt to complicate it in the service of IM have been able to grasp. 46 While Aristotle consistently uses the term ‘phantasma’ in De Anima , he uses both phantasma and eikon (εἰκών) to refer to images in De Memoria .47 The two terms, while related, are not synonymous.

One particular characteristic of the eikon is important for the current investigation: the eikon is defined by its characteristic of likeness. Eikon , literally, means a likeness; in fact Plato

45 This is the position of Krisanna Scheiterman in “Images, Appearances, and Phantasia in Aristotle,” Phronesis , vol. 57 (2012), pp.251-278. I am deeply skeptical of Scheiterman’s claim that Aristotelian phantasia is equivalent to Platonic anamnesis ; her suggestion that memory in Plato involves all the primary features of phantasia in Aristotle does not explain why and how phantasia in Aristotle is fundamentally different for humans and for animals. Scheiterman’s project does serve to illuminate the close link between memory and phantasia , though her analysis overreaches itself.

46 This is a particular problem for Scheiterman. Although her intentions are to revise an enriched form of IM, her lack of attention to the non-discriminatory, non-affirmative and non-denying character of phantasma in phantasia means that her images, however complex, remain caught within the dichotomy of the sensory/rational.

47 De Memoria contains Aristotle’s sole use of “imagination-object,” φανταστον, at DM 450124. Wedin makes a strong case that textually and interpretively this should be read as a reference to objects of memory, not imagination. (Wedin 61-62)

26 contrasts the phantasma (image or appearance) with the eikon (copy). 48 The eikon is a non- sensible re-presentation of a specific sensible. It is therefore wholly dependent upon sensible perception, and its importance stems from the fact that in an eikon sensory perception may persist (albeit in another form) past the presence of the sensible object. The eikon plays a specific role in the rational or organized operation of memory, recollection.

The distribution and evaluation of sense-impressions according to likeness and resemblance is the work of recollection. (DA 451b.29-4512a.12 ) Recollection involves the construction of graduated and causally-linked sequence whose order explains (causally) the starting point from which recollection began. One interesting indication made by Aristotle is that it is not simply ‘a’ starting point, but a point between two other points (the ‘B’ of ABC). (DA 452a.24 ff.) In order to truly understand something like, for example, “bees hives are collapsing,” you would have to begin first with a comparison to something in experience, the closest overlapping moment in which beehives were not collapsing. Aristotle’s emphasis on the mid-point stems from his observation that in the course of investigations a mid-point, neighboring on two other points, is far more efficient kind of understanding, since by starting with B we should attain understanding of it in relationship to both A and C. (DA 452a.17) Perhaps what is most fascinating about recollection is that the process of recollection is self-sustaining and renders the one who recollects capable of independent and continuous evaluation of the recollections. 49

This structure of recollection seems to lend itself to the notion that, since the starting point of the investigation is the mid-point (B of ABC) as the vantage point for calling up past perceptions, understanding the final point H involves a sort of predictive knowledge. However, I do not think it is necessary, as some have, to read a theory of prediction into the third point. Aristotle does indicate that B is the starting point in the construction of a continuous causal sequence, but it would be overbearing to discount on this ground his insistence that recollection is of the past. The third term of ABC, I would suggest, is not an extension of knowledge into the future by means of a sneakily predictive power riding on the back of recollection. Full

48 DM . The contrast in Plato occurs in Sophist 236b.4: the reference to Plato is in Nussbaum, 243. See also Sorabji, 2-5.

49 DM 452a.4; Sorabji, 27-31.

27 comprehension of the statement “beehives are collapsing,” does not involve some type of inspired knowledge; the effects of the collapse and its causes are both components of that comprehension. If it is possible to read any notion of prophecy into this moment of Aristotle, it must at least be a kind of prophecy that is characterized by right knowledge of the present and an understanding of the causal impact of the present, not an ability to ‘predict’ the future, or the result of some type of divine overflow. Rational souls “hunt for the successor, starting in our thoughts from the present or from something else, and from something similar, or opposite, or neighboring.” (DA 451b.18) This may be an interesting psychological explanation for the predilication and affection for fortune- and future- telling exhibited by human beings, but future-prophecy is certainly not located in his account of recollection.

The process of recollection is not simply the re-presentation of copies: it requires a process of comparison evaluation that identifies the objects of perception as “similar, or opposite, or neighboring.” If we note a change in the temperature of the ocean, Aristotle exhorts us to identify the moment before the change and how the change has affected us. If we choose a clear starting point we can understand the nature of the change undergone. (DA 452a.24) This is the comparison of ‘likeness’ which, for Aristotle, forms the body of memory. In order to think of triangles, one forms a mental picture of a triangle and focuses on certain parts of it over others. If we remember a triangle, it is because there is some strong affinity between that memory-image and the aspect of a triangle upon which we are focused. Interestingly, the remembrance occurs solely because of the strength of the sensory imprint – perhaps when I think of a triangle I am reminded of old toys with triangles, or a ‘v’ of flying birds. (Either could be instructive and contribute to my thought.) The memory-image has a direct affinity with the object of thought. In this way we may come to realize implications of the thought – to architecture, for example. But the memory-image is already closed off when it is invoked in thought, since it only comes about through the movement of likeness. Sorabji makes the point that, for Aristotle, memory requires that the object of thought “is remembered not in its own right (kath’hauto ), but in virtue of an incidental association (kata sumbebekos ).”50

50 Sorabji, 79.

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Memory is a form of perception in the absence of the perceptible, and therefore requires both the elapse of time and an association with the perceptible object. Recollection is the specific activity of memory in the service of thought; it involves the deployment and organization of memory-images in a causal and explanatory structure. Memory requires imagination, or at least images that are in us – but unlike imagination that belongs to almost all animals, recollection is a rational operation of which far fewer animals are capable. 51 I take this to mean that while phantasia may impact memory, by the time the rational being engages in recollection the indiscriminate and unevaluated imagination has already come to have meaning and consequences which may seem so natural that their coming into being is hidden.

Phantasia , as we have seen, does not have such an identifiable object for Aristotle. But neither does it have a proper activity. Scheiterman is guilty of a problematic gloss when she claims that Aristotle defined phantasia as “a capacity for producing images.” 52 In De Anima 3.3, phantasia is not engaged in the production of images but rather is that “by virtue of which images appear to us.” 53 This more passive gloss is supported by Wedin’s observation that Aristotle never refers to ‘objects of the imagination’ (φανταστον). 54 Phantasia is not responsible for producing images, rather it is a motion of re-presentation whose lack of proper objects allows it to participate in the imaging of all objects. What it means for phantasia to have no proper object is that it cannot be a faculty, or in Wedin’s phrase, it is a functionally incomplete faculty. 55 It cannot exist without sensation, but it is not sensation; it is necessary

51 Sorabji, 41.

52 Scheiterman, “Images, Appearances, and Phantasia in Aristotle,” spec. 252, 272-73. I would render the exact same passage in Aristotle as “that through which images appear in us.”

53 DA 428a.1. Using Sepper’s translation of γίγνεσθαι as “come into being” helps to clarify the tone of this phrase.

54 De Memoria contains Aristotle’s sole use of “imagination-object,” φανταστον, at DM 450124. Wedin makes a strong case that textually and interpretively this should be read as a reference to objects of memory, not imagination. (Wedin, Mind and Imagination, pp.61-62)

55 Wedin, Mind and Imagination, pp.47-57.

29 for thought, but it is not thought. What is the activity of phantasia that makes it both dependent upon perception and indispensable to thought?

If we return to the passage from 428a that we have mined for indications about the relationship between phantasia and phantasmata , we can see that this is also the passage in which Aristotle sets to work determining whether phantasia can be association with the activities of discrimination:

such are the powers of perception (αιδθησις), belief (δοξα), scientific knowledge (επιστήμη), and thought (νους). (DA 428a.1-5)

It is interesting to note that in this passage Aristotle identifies the discriminatory powers as almost – but not exactly! – the same powers he identified as discriminatory in the beginning of De Anima 3.3. In the opening passage, the discriminatory powers are perception, thinking, and understanding. Here, the discriminatory powers have been expanded from three to four, but not inclusively; here we have perception and thinking, but no mention of conception (hupolepsis ) as the umbrella category for these powers, or phronesis , practical understanding. In that opening passage, Aristotle was concerned with establishing (contra his predecessors) that phantasia was neither thought nor perception. In this second passage, he again seems committed to proving that imagination is none of the powers of discrimination, and he spends the greater part of what follows on establishing precisely this. Imagination is not sensation because a) images appear in the absence of the sensible object, and b) because images can be misleading. 56 For both of these reasons, imagination cannot be explained simply as a different kind of sensation. As Aristotle puts it:

If phantasia cannot be sensation because images are misleading in ways the senses are not capable of, the same quality of being potentially

56 As often as possible I will translate ψευδεις as ‘misleading’ rather than false. As we will see in the chapters that follow, there is a distinction between the untrue or false and the misleading or bad that is significantly relevant to how Aristotle’s Arabic-speaking readers understood the political and ethical implications of the imagination. Pseudeis , or false, is translated in the Arabic to kadhib , a word which shares a root with ‘lying’.

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misleading means it cannot be scientific knowledge (episteme ) or an activity of the intellect (nous ). (DA 428a.15-428b)

The only remaining option is for imagination to be an activity of opinion (doxa ), opinion which has taken the places of the understanding (phronesis ) that was identified with discriminating in the opening passage. The connections between phantasia and doxa are striking: like phantasia , belief may be either true or false. This, Aristotle warns us, is a misleading resemblance. Opinions can be either true or misleading because the conviction which they express may or may not be founded on good reason – but they are human and not animal because however corrupt, the formation of opinions requires thought that is at least resembling the rational. I cannot have an opinion about something unless I have a belief about what it is, and that belief is grounded in reason (even if that reason in erroneous or corrupted). My belief that my spouse needs to wear a jacket is preceded by my conviction that if he goes outside he will be cold. My conviction is produced by my understanding of the causal sequence of events that precede it – for example, my knowledge of my spouse’s cold tolerance and my knowledge of the current outside temperature. Reason undergirds the conviction (or concept) that is necessary for belief. (DA 3.3 .428a.19-20) If I were to say that I ‘imagine he needs a coat’ it would be a thoroughly modern, possibly metaphorical, and certainly un-Aristotelian use of the term. My belief, however certain I am of it, may be truthful or misleading. Belief is a discriminatory power of the rational soul, and thus belongs only to rational beings even when they are wrong. In contrast, phantasia belongs to (nearly) all animals, including those who are non-rational.57 Thus, phantasia cannot be synonymous with belief, although it does seem to correspond to those ordered convictions whose result is belief.

In this passage and the explication that follows it, Aristotle has tried to rule out possibility that imagination is simply a particular manifestation of one of the discriminative (κρίνομεν)

57 While I have not provided a distinctive discussion of the role and place of imagination in animals, and different manifestations of imagination in higher- and lower-order animals in Aristotle, the distinction between human and animal imagination should be highlighted throughout this chapter; it is essential the difference between an animal imagination that is ungoverned by reason, and the human imagination whose effects can be disciplined by reason.

31 powers. This is certainly no accidental gesture on Aristotle’s part. By proving positively that phantasia is not a discriminative power, Aristotle can identify it with the other operation of the soul, movement (κινεσις): “phantasia is thought to be type of motion.” (DA 3.3.428b.11) Heidegger distinguishes krinein and kinein as “the ‘setting apart and determining’ and the ‘moving-itself’ in the world….[κρινειν and κινειν] provide the ground for the further concrete distinguishing of being-in-the-world.” 58 (HA , Chapter 2) Motion is common to all living things in Aristotle’s thought, and it necessarily implies change. Heidegger’s suggestion is that motion (kinesis ) is an orientation towards the world that is unsure if it is for or against (as it would be if it was a discriminative affection). Instead it is a non-discriminatory grasping of the world that makes the emergence of determinate objects possible. Movement, understood always in relationship to change, is how sensible objects are present in the world. (HA 8787) In the barest of outlines, Heidegger’s argument is that movement cannot be understood on the basis of the sensible object, but that movement is the condition for the sensation of the object at all. (HA #27b) Movement of an object does not reveal the object through comparison with the object at rest, but is the condition for the appearance to arise in us. (HA #27c) The suggestion is that it is not the sensible itself that becomes the form of thought, but the sensation which is perceived as moved or being-in-the-world. For Heidegger, it is in movement and change that this- worldliness is established. This understanding of kinesis requires us to re-evaluate one of Aristotle’s seemingly clear statements: “phantasia would be a motion (κινεσις)…of objects which can be sensed (αιδθανομένοις)… produced by the activity (ενέργειαν γιγνομένα) of the sense.” 59

Understood in this way, it is possible to conceive of the movement that characterizes phantasia in the absence of a determinate object. Phantasia does not produce, organize or store the perception of sensible objects; but it may be the pre-discriminatory affection towards what is sensed before it becomes ‘a sensible object’. As a sensible object, what is sensed must be amenable to location in a causal sequence; the construction of this sequence, based as we have

58 Heidegger, Basic Concepts of Aristotle , trans. R. D. Metcalf and M. B. Tanzer, Bloomington, IN; Indiana University Press, 2009; Chapter 2. Heidegger is here referring to De Anima 3.2 427a.17.

59 DA 3.3.428b.11, 429a.1-2

32 seen on identifying features of likeness, recollects sensible objects not in-themselves but in relation to other objects. If phantasia is “neither affirmation or denial,” it may be precisely the absence of that affirmation or denial, the encounter with the world that does not take for granted its being-at-home or having a settled position between its cause and its effect. Perhaps Aristotle’s account of phantasia does thereby clarify one problem in his philosophy: how to account for the thinking of the unlike, of otherness. If phantasia is a movement by which perceptions as images are available to us, then phantasia makes those images available in a pre-discriminatory manner, as something whose relationship to what is known in the world is yet to be determined. If phantasia does not discriminate, that means that it is not the organizer and archivist of perception, but that by virtue of which our perceptions are flexible, changeable, and capable of being placed in a variety of different and changing relationships to other perceptions. It is this kind of philosophy that echoes “modernist” religious approaches to the interpretation of .

On par, Aristotle’s account of phantasia lends itself to condemnatory conclusions regarding the value of imagination for the rational soul. Granted, the images that arise in phantasia are necessary for every type of higher functioning, inclusive of both memory and intellect. But it is precisely in phantasia that error is not only possible, but defended from correction by reason. This leaves phantasia in the unwelcome position of being important but despised, immanent but unwanted. Phantasia may be necessary, but it does not fit comfortably into Aristotle’s wider project, and as the source of the plague of erroneous convictions it must always be regarded with suspicion. Insofar as desire acts upon phantasmata which are undetermined and available to discrimination in their re-production, they are susceptible to the determination of their orientation by desire. Phantasia governed by desire is the phantasia in non-rational animals – and the way that phantasmata and desire feed one another can strengthen desire to the point that it interferes with the possibility of rational animals to control desire.

Phantasia is in rational and non-rational animals but it is in them differently . In non-rational animals phantasia is subject to the discrimination of sensation and desire. In rational animals, phantasia may be deliberative (βουλευτική). 60 If phantasia in non-rational animals provides a

60 DA 3.3.434a.4-7; Wedin, Mind and Imagination , 147ff.

33 venue for desire, what is it in rational animals? In rational animals, phantasia does not serve only the desires stimulated by sensation; it can also be taken up by reason and calculation. In Aristotle’s account of reason, it has been difficult to ascertain whether it is possible for something to be known which is not “like, opposite, or neighboring.” Might phantasia not explain the possibility for thinking something other or unlike? After all, deliberative imagination is a rethinking of our orientation in the world and a conceptualization of a world that is different from what we believe it to be.

The consequences of phantasia , understood as a motion by which perceptions are available to us in their least pre-determined form, prior to their organization and categorization as beliefs or memories, are radical and, from a certain social – one might even say political – perspective distinctly dangerous. In the few pages that follow I would like us consider how phantasia renders human beings susceptible to manipulation – in short, because phantasia is a pre- discriminatory re-presentation of perceptions, phantasia are susceptible to being organized, categorized, and understood in whatever the most convincing manner is. The art that provides the most effective means for the solidification of phantasia (those perceptions of the world in a particular way), and which is capable of retroactively casting one’s perception in a particular light, organizing it so as to encourage a particular belief is the art of persuasion: the art of rhetoric.

ARISTOTLE’S RHETORIC

Aristotle’s Rhetoric is one of his single longest texts, and, if one is attempting to map it out, one of the most complex. If students consider Aristotle burdensome to read because he is constantly dividing something into two, and subdividing the two into three parts each, and each of those three parts into four types… well, Rhetoric demonstrates that desire for completeness and order as well as any text in the Aristotelian corpus can. He refers to phantasia rarely, but when he does it is very instructive; for example, he writes that “if pleasure consists in the sensation of a certain emotion, and imagination a [weakened] sensation, then both the man who remembers and the man who hopes will be attended by an imagination (phantasia ) of

34 what he remembers or hopes.” (Rh I.xi.6) 61 In other words, here Aristotle is at pains to separate imagination from memories, suggesting that anyone who has memory or hope is influenced by the weakened sensation – the desire and dislike – that remains a part of the perception in memory. And it is in part for this reason, though not exclusively, that Aristotle identifies understanding or practical knowledge (the phronesis of De Anima ) as the most commanding type of knowledge, largely because the evidence of experience is more convincing to the mass of people than the evidence of scientific deduction. (Rh I.xi.27) Thus the persuasive power of rhetoric, which as we will see below is the most important of the kingly arts, is in great part reliant upon the imagination (the perception-in-the-world) of his audience. It is by accessing the imagination via the memories and hopes of the audience that the speaker is able to convince those who listen.

Rhetoric is divided into three types – epideictic, forensic, and deliberative. (Rh I.iii) 62 Epideictic rhetoric involves speech about what is past; dead people, historical moments, lost territories. It casts those images of the past into a particular light: the dead person may be a hero or a traitor, the moment one that we escaped or that we should aspire to, the territory one that must be re-gained at all costs or which is of little consequence. It should be obvious that the master rhetorician, in persuading people about the nature of some shared past, is also preparing the way for deliberative rhetoric – persuasion about a particular course of action. That persuasion or conviction should be built from common sense or understanding (phronesis ), virtue (arete ), and goodwill or friendship. (Rh II.i.4)

61 Aristotle’s discussion of art (specifically painting, sculpture, poetry) is as imitative - the term he uses to describe the imitations that result from these areas as eikons , not phantasma. (Rh I.xi.23)

62 These are the standard terms for the three-fold division of rhetoric, and essential for understanding the relationship between human imagination and the best form of rhetoric. Deliberative (soumboules ) is rhetoric that accommodates advice and is considered carefully; it therefore utilizes and is directed towards the rational faculty of both speaker and audience. (See also Rhetoric to Alexander [RA] Edited and translated by David C. Mirhady, Loeb Classical Library , Aristotle XVI, Cambridge; Harvard University Press, 2011: 16.7-10).

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Aristotle seems clear that the master rhetorician ought to avoid targeting emotions and strong feelings. (Rh I.i.6, II.ii.1 cf.) The reason why is two-fold: practical and prudent. Conviction based on strong emotion is liable to fade, as other facts, rationales, and experiences modify or force one to rethink those feelings – thus, if one is engaged in deliberative rhetoric about the best course of action, one might be able to generate a lot of immediate support (to go viral, if you will). Yet this type of support may fade, and if the course of action ends up taking significant time or encountering challenges (or even more powerfully, requiring sacrifices) then that support is likely to wane. The second problem of emotion-targeted rhetoric is that it is unpredictable, and strong feelings once mobilized within a like-minded group may evolve to support or abhor other things as an unforeseen consequence. (This is perhaps the case with some contemporary liberal social movements; from a desire to protest the unfairness of the system, some ended up believing, like their counterparts on the right, that the only solution was to destroy the system; this conviction, once generated, can be mobilized by any political figure if he is conscientious enough in pushing that emotional button.) However it is worth noting that despite his relatively explicit criticism of emotional appeals as a form of rhetoric, the majority of rhetorical methods that he outlines do depend on some form of emotion; in particular goodwill, and to a lesser extent virtue, are defined according to emotional and appetitive desires. (Rh II.i)

Deliberative rhetoric (as opposed to the epideictic or forensic) is the type of rhetoric that is most appropriate to the statesman or leader. (Rh I.i.10) Deliberative rhetoric is speech which seeks to convince the hearer of a particular course of action – it may occasionally mobilize people towards a goal, but it is easier to mobilize people towards concrete actions in the service of a goal, and less reliable to convince them of a goal and then have to convince them at each stage what actions should be taken to maximize that goal. Deliberative rhetoric, like all forms of rhetoric, grounds itself in things that are commonly known and provides a full and clear explanation of why a certain type of action is called for. It is not necessarily the sexiest form of rhetoric, being the most and detailed of the forms of rhetoric, but it is also the least likely to be misleading accidentally, and the most difficult to use if one intends to intentionally mislead.

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According to Aristotle, his predecessors have been extremely vague about rhetoric, referring to it in a sideways manner and in generally disorganized fashion. Aristotle’s goal is to demonstrate rhetoric is an art (tekne ) that proceeds according to identifiable rules – if this is the case, it must be concerned with constructing the various types of proofs that make language persuasive. As usually it is the demonstrative proof that leaves the least possibility of doubt, Aristotle writes that, “rhetorical demonstration is an enthymeme, which, generally speaking, is the strongest of rhetorical proofs…and…the enthymeme is a kind of syllogism.” (Rh I.i.11) The proofs which are established by rhetoric may, in the end, be “demonstrative”, but they are also fundamentally ethical, by which Aristotle means that the establishment of such proofs rests upon the speaker’s ability to understand the concerns of their audience and to be regarded by them in sharing those same imperatives – they are known “scientifically” but also publicly. 63

The less convincing form of rhetoric is induction, i.e., persuasion by means of an example from which the right path is ascertained. The enthymeme is a more solid form of argumentation because it is, according to Aristotle, a syllogism, albeit a particular “rhetorical syllogism” (ενθύμημα συλλογισμός). While examples may be persuasive, the conviction aroused by a rhetorical syllogism will be much stronger. Rhetorical syllogisms include maxims, and the syllogism itself (now composed of two terms rather than the customary syllogistic three) involves illuminating the consequences of the maxim. In the example provided by Aristotle himself:

“There is no man who is really free” …is a maxim, but then with the next verse it is an enthymeme: for he is the slave of either wealth or fortune.

In other words, the rhetorical syllogism or enthymeme resembles the demonstrative syllogism, but only at some distance. It is as though one took a classical demonstrative syllogism:

Socrates is a human being All human beings are mortal Socrates is mortal.

63 This differs from his use of the term in Posterior Analytics.

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And then proceeded to remove the middle term, leaving one with “Socrates is a human being/Socrates is mortal.” In this example, the mortality and universality of humanness is so well known that few would question the abbreviated, rhetorical form of the syllogism, even though what has been erased is in fact the most empirically discernible and demonstratively important part of the syllogism. The rhetorical syllogism proceeds from some well known and agreed upon premise and proposes a conclusion on the basis of that premise which may seem wholly convincing and a natural product of the premise; the problem of rhetoric, evidenced in Aristotle and his Arabic readers, is that the conclusion draws on the conviction of the hearers regarding the first premise and elides the term of the syllogism which might call the conclusion into doubt, particularly when, in deliberative rhetoric, the conclusion is a course of action. For example, it might be generally accepted that “too many citizens of the polis have no jobs.” The problem is that in rhetoric – as seen on television, radio, Twitter, and any other media – the conclusion provided is often a result of politics rather than a process of deduction. Different people might find equally convincing the conclusion that “therefore we should halt all immigration to the polis,” or “therefore we must train citizens better for the jobs of the future.” In either case, there is an elided middle term in which the paucity of employment is linked either to population shifts or employment preparedness. Either argument might be persuasive, but it takes for granted a middle term upon which the relationship between the first and final terms is based.

In Rhetoric , forensic (dikanikon ) or legal ( , νόμιμον) rhetoric is the least discussed of the three types; it is the persuasive speech that is appropriate to courts and is usually carefully limited and bound by the type of speech that a given court considers appropriate – it is therefore unable to become a simple appeal to emotions without encountering some objection, and since it is spoken before a judge its most un-anchored claims are themselves allowed or discarded at the moment of utterance. The hope, of course, is that because rhetoric is thus restrained the judge, or even the jury, will make their decision on the basis of deliberation, rather than as a result of emotion. However, Aristotle’s discussion in the Rhetoric about forensic rhetoric and forensic proofs demonstrates particular attention to the problem of law and flexibility, and the interpretation of law. He writes that, “If the meaning of the law (nomos) is equivocal (amphibolous ), we must turn it about, and see in which way it is to be interpreted so as to suit the application of or expediency, and have recourse to that. …to 38 seek to be wiser than the law is just what is forbidden in the most approved laws.” (Rh I.xv.9- 13) Aristotle here acknowledges the possibility that a law might be unclear, in which case it must be subject to interpretation, but to claim that the law is invalid in toto or to break the law in the belief that one is wiser than the law not permitted. 64 Significantly more details about forensic rhetoric, particularly as it pertains to the proposition of, support for, and repeal of law are available in Rhetoric for Alexander .65

The pseudonymous Rhetoric to Alexander (which would later appear as an Aristotelian text in Arabic under the name Balagha l’Iskander ) is textually distinct from Rhetoric , an analytical exposition of the types, divisions, and subdivisions of rhetoric. 66 Highly technical, Rhetoric is concerned with the functioning of rhetoric and the details that go into persuading anyone about anything. Rhetoric to Alexander is less a handbook, and more a monologue, consisting of

64 We will see in our discussion of Ibn Rushd (below, Chapter 3) a particular restatement of this view, one that echoes the Greek with remarkable precision.

65 Two points are important here; in Rhetoric to Alexander pseudo-Aristotle expands the utility of forensic rhetoric to political leaders (rather than everyday participants in lawsuits), perhaps because the ruler himself needed to be prepared to defend proposed law in a court of law. Secondly, it is notable that while the transliteration of the Greek rhetorica into Arabic does occur, this text has been transmitted not as Rhetorica l’Iskander but Balagha l’Iskander ; ‘balagha’ generally indicating a particularly convincing or rich form of speech. It is also not found under the title of ‘jadal ,’ the other indigenous Arabic term used to refer to rhetoric.

66 It is now accepted that Aristotle was not in fact the author of the Epistle or Rhetoric to Alexander - many have posited that the actual author was a colleague of Aristotle who also tutored Alexander, Anaximenes, although some doubt remains about that, and even more about the writer of the introductory Epistle. However, because Rhetoric to Alexander was an accepted part of the Arabic corpus of Aristotelian works, it deserves to be included in this analysis of the relationship between rhetoric and imagination. Both parts of the text were considered a vital part of Aristotle’s work, and our further investigation of al-Farabi, Ibn Rushd, and Maimonides cannot be complete without understanding some of this work.

39 pseudo-Aristotle’s speech to one who is not only in a position of power, but is a ruler. 67 The author writes:

…your speech may be able to guide the cities subject to your kingship with a view to advantage. For, simply stated, law is speech defined according to the common agreement in a city, revealing how everything must be done.

This implies that in civic terms, there is no higher authority than common agreement. Then the author specifically distinguishes this work from Rhetoric by noting that in this work he will not be providing specifics and committing to “discussing only what I can relate to life in general, that is, how we are difference from the rest of the animals…All the rest of the animals utilize appetite and passion and so on, but none of the rest except human beings utilizes speech.” (RA 10-11)

In these few lines we can see the way that rhetoric, persuasive speech, is supposed to ideally function. The value of speech is inestimable, since it is the activity that distinguishes humans from other animals – the rational faculty is internal and it can be communicated (if at all) through speech in which the participants recognize the working of the rational faculty. Human beings speak to one another, individually or in groups, and by that speech (rather than by force or pheromones) convince others. The rest of the writing to Alexander must be understood through this lens. Speech is the most powerful weapon that Alexander has, and pseudo- Aristotle is seeking to reflect on that in ways that may be educative for Alexander. 68

67 I recognize that the opening letter is considered even farther removed from Aristotle than the text itself - however, insofar as both were received as the same text, I consider what is said in both introduction and text to have exerted influence over the Arabic readers of Aristotle.

68 It is fascinating to note that the introductory letter closes by responding to a request by Alexander that Aristotle not allow others to read Aristotle on rhetoric, ostensibly because it is too dangerous. In a lovely passage, in which he acknowledges those who might use it for wrong-doing and hopes that will not occur, Aristotle in fact, at least a little bit, rejects Alexander’s request. He writes: “You have written directing me that none of the rest of the people should obtain this book, although you know that just as parents love their own children more than adoptive parents do, so also those who have invented

40

Now, in the text pseudo-Aristotle provides a stunning example of doing exactly what he said he wouldn’t. If he didn’t want to burden Alexander with examples, then it is notable that he provides a whole plethora. He provides not only examples, but actual pull-quotes, intended to persuade people about religion (its increase, maintenance, or marginalization). He gives examples of the ways people can be persuaded to go to war, noting that his examples of how to convince people to war generally coalesce into “recommending going to war by minimizing the points of our opponents and making the most of our own points by amplification.” (RA 2.28)

Rhetoric to Alexander also specifically takes up the question of the relationship between law and speech – as seen above, he considers law to be “speech defined by the common agreement of the city.” (RA . 4, 1.8, 1.13) So rhetoric is not only effective because it is addressed to an imagining populous, it is capable of turning that imagination towards either good or bad impulses and actions. It is by means of rhetoric that the self-identity of a population as a legal entity is created, maintained, and adapted, and if the leader is corrupt or lacking in necessary , he not only turns the imagination of the people towards bad actions but he is capable of enshrining those impulses and desires into law.

The rhetorical syllogism is the framework for rhetorical arguments – but there is one more type of syllogism, the imaginative syllogism, which is often veiled by the rhetorical argumentation but is a fundamental element of rhetorical element. The imaginative syllogism (which Aristotle discusses most explicitly in the Poetics ) is unlike the rhetorical because it does not aim at achieving assent. The imaginative syllogism may take the same form as the rhetorical syllogism, but instead of arriving at a conclusion it involves placing the propositions in proximity such that one is lead to investigate the very ground of that proximity – this, for example, is the type of syllogism to be found in poetry and literature.

In language, phantasmata are communicated without implying an opinion on the part of the speaker, a pre-judgmental experience of being in the world. The verbal cues that indicate a discretionary distance between judgment and perception (‘it appears that,’ ‘it may be that,’ ‘it something love it more than those who share in it. Just as parents die for children so do inventors for their words.” (RA .14)

41 is possible that’) allow human beings to express the possibility of things being un-like what they seem to be. Deliberative phantasia re-shuffles the images on the basis of rational calculation, just as sensible imagination tends to organize images in relation to pleasure and . Deliberative rhetoric, based in part on the imaginations of the population turned to a purpose and invested with meaning, is the tool of those who exhort the population to action. What role phantasia plays in the philosophical and political work of the Arabic commentators on Aristotle (both Jewish and Muslim) will depend largely upon how they read Aristotle. Their commitment to imagination and rhetoric, as we will see, is part and parcel of their commitment to law, their attempt to accommodate divine law within the Aristotelio-prophetic context in which they found themselves, and their desire to understand how law, and the populations that they govern, might be both rational and faithful.

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CHAPTER 2

The Epistemological Edge of Politics in al-Farabi’s Virtuous City

Summary : This chapter on al-Farabi identifies some of the lesser-read psychological elements of al-Farabi’s Virtuaous City , and specifically the portion in which al-Farabi clearly echoes the Aristotelian text of De Anima . However, there are two major differences in al-Farabi’s analysis of the imagination: for al-Farabi, the imagination performs a judging and discriminating power, participating in our affinity or disinclination towards a thing or idea. At the same time, where Aristotle emphasizes ‘reason’ as the distinctive quality of the human being, al-Farabi identifies the distinguishing action of the human being as speech and communication. Rhetoric, as the art of persuasion, is something that everyone is inevitably subject to – the imagination itself is what is capable of thinking about new things or structures that do not exist yet; rhetoric is the art that persuades people whether those imaginations are plausible or not.

To transition from Aristotle to al-Farabi involves leaping over twelve centuries, as well a whole host of historical events that significantly impacted the thinking of al-Farabi. The most obvious difference between the two is that while in Aristotle religion simply involves the practicing and honoring of the , religion in al-Farabi is primarily the religion of Islam, a religion that did not emerge until nine hundred years after the death of Aristotle and three hundred years prior to al-Farabi. The distinction is not only a historical difference but results in a qualitate and rhetorically different estimating of the role of religion. Only about a generation before al- Farabi there took place one of the most momentous events in the history of the development of the relationship between Greek philosophy and Islam: the Mihna, which took place under Caliph Ma’mun in 833 and can very properly be called an Inquisition, as it involved the Caliph putting a varied group of religious and popular leaders “to the question.” The question itself was derived from the contrary contentions that arose from the increasing impact of Greek philosophy and increasing power of Islam, and while it may look innocuous, ‘the question’ is a loaded bullet, indicating one’s relationship to the divine, physics, and metaphysics: Is the Qur’an created or eternal?

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The belief that the Qur’an was created was not accompanied by any diminishment of its divine status, but was based upon the belief that, as Julie Andrews once proclaimed from the mountains, “nothing comes from nothing, nothing ever could.” 69 At some point either God created the text or the text itself was created, even if it was a creation by man under divine inspiration in order to coalesce the laws of God into a single, divine object. On the other hand, suggesting that the Qur’an is eternal highlights the extent to which it is independent of human intervention – even at the level of having the appropriate prophet at the appropriate time. Both answers revolve around questions of Being – can something be created that never existed, i.e., Being from not-Being? Or is all there is all that was and ever will be, because nothing can come into being which does not exist and nothing that has Being can go out of being. 70

However, on a more popular level, this question was perceived as having relevance vis-à-vis the ability of human beings to interpret, and even create, law. Those who believed the Qur’an was created tended to believe in the ability of human beings to interpret its consequence, while those who believed it was immortal were more inclined to literal understanding of the law. In 833, in one of the few (and disastrous) moments when philosophers saw their work taken up explicitly by the rulers, the Caliph Ma’mun decided that not only did he agree that the Qur’an was created, but that belief in its immortality indicated a possible lack of loyalty to earthly authorities. Therefore, asking the religious authorities that were springing up in droves this question allowed Ma’mun to pressure religious figures to recognize his authority.

Things, of course, did not go as planned. When those ‘put to the question’ answered wrongly, they were often imprisoned, tortured, and occasionally executed. In roughly 834/5, the highly regarded religious authority Ibn Hanbal was put to the question, and upon declaring that the Qur’an was eternal, imprisoned and tortured for about a year and a half. It may have been in a time with no live streaming or Twitter, but Ibn Hanbal’s arrest resulted in thousands upon thousands marching for his release, a groundswell of support that Ma’mun could not resist. He

69 Robert Wise (Director), The Sound of Music , UK; A Robert Wise Production of Roger and Hammerstein’s Argyle Enterprises, 1965.

70 On the philosophical importance of this question, see John Abdallah Nawas, Al-Ma’mun, the Inquisition, and the Quest for Caliphal Authority, Atlanta, US; Lockwood Press, 2016; pp.16-19.

44 released Ibn Hanbal in 836, which effectively marked the end of the Mihna (though it would not officially conclude until 838) – but the afterlife of this conflict would continue to be felt by philosophers and jurists for centuries 71 . The mu’tazilites , the name given to the theological followers of Greek philosophy and who adherence to the credo of Qur’anic createdness, lost political and popular support, and forms of that could be traced back to them were often considered dubious purely by association. 72 This incident as a whole raises the question of the advisability of military or militated enlightenment or modernist movements, which often create a dramatic backlash.

The Mihna took place under the Abbasid Caliph Ma’mun in the East – but only some 80 years earlier there had been no , only the Umayyad Caliphate that traced its ancestry to the tribe and family of the Prophet Muhammad. Between 747 and 750, the Abbasids

71 A longer text, such as a book, would trace the way that Ibn Hanbal’s school of law was a resource for , who was a resource for Ibn Wahab and many of the most strictly or radically ‘literal’ readings of the Qur’an. The imprisonment of Ibn Hanbal was not simply an unpopular and miscalculated political move – it may have directly influenced the development of contemporary ‘literalist’ and conservative movements. There may be no greater example of the potential for disaster when philosophy and religion butt heads than the Mihna and the millennia that followed. For a more detailed analysis of the Mihna, see Bennison, p.230; for a discussion of the Hanbali school of law, see Wael B. Hallaq, A History of Islamic Legal Theories: An Introduction to Sunni Usul al-fiqh, Cambridge, UK; Cambridge University Press, 1997; ‘Abd Al-Rahman al-Jaziri, Islamic Jurisprudence According to the Four Sunni School, translated by Nancy Roberts, Canada; Fons Vitae, 2001; Muhammad Abu Zahra, The Four Imams: Their Lives, Work and School of Jurisprudence, translated by Asha Bewley, edited by Bewley, Abdalhaqq and Muhammad Isa Waley, London; UK; Dar Al Taqwa, 2010. See also the interspersed commentary on Hanbali rulings and method in Muhammad Hashim Kamali, Principles of Islamic Jurisprudence, Cambridge, UK; The Islamic Texts Society, [1989] 2011; Bennison, 248-256.

72 Overall, while there is significant and important scholarship on the Mihna, it rarely addresses the Mihna as the culturally, politically, and religiously pivotal moment it was. Aside from the Shi’a - Sunni schism (which was structurally and qualitatively different) the Mihna was the first theologico-political conflict between Muslims since Karbala, and such a conflict is specifically prohibited in Islam. Very few works take into account the long-term impact of the Mihna and backlash against it as it pertains to the status of the mu’tazilites and the status of Greek logic and philosophy in the Islamic world generally.

45 rose up in revolt, and executed most of the prominent Ummayads. One of the few to escape was ‘Abd al-Rahman Ibn Mu’awiya, a grandson of the second-to-last Ummayid Caliph. After five years fleeing for his life in North Africa – reliant upon support from his mother’s Berber family as well as Yemenis in the region, ‘Abd al-Rahman landed in Andalusia and in a year had recruited an army that marched on, and successfully seized, the city of Córdoba. As conqueror he took the title ‘amir,’ and he proclaimed the independence of his lands almost immediately ceased the practice of invoking the Abbasid caliphs in the Friday prayers in Córdoba.73 It was not for another 150 years, after the time of al-Farabi, that Córdoba reached its pinnacle under ‘Abd al-Rahman’s descendent, ‘Abd al-Rahman III – designated Amir in 912, in 929 he took the final step of having himself declared Caliph, the Protector of the Faithful, and therefore the Andalusian Umayyad Caliphate equal (if not superior) to that of the Abbasids in the East. 74 Because of the contentious relationship between the two caliphates, few Andalusis went to Damascus or Baghdad – they did, however, go on the haj to Mecca and more importantly Medina, which was the hometown of the founder of the Maliki school of Law, Malik Ibn Anas. 75 The Maliki school is the oldest of the four major schools of Sunni law, and his school was based in the established practices of Medina, the first of all Muslim- governed cities. It thus combined elements of devotion to a literal understanding of the Qur’an and specifically Medinan hadith with a highly practical approach to law. It should also be noted that it was in Medina that the so-called ‘Constitution of Medina’ was promulgated, which explicitly accepted Jews and Christians as protected citizens of the Islamic polity provided that they supported the Prophet and were loyal to the city. 76

The persecution of the mu’tazilites after their persecution of other Muslims in the Eastern (Abbasid) Caliphate contributed to the re-arrangement and movement of Muslim populations that could now choose to live under a different ‘Protector of the Faithful’ and under one whose

73 Hugh Kennedy, Muslim Spain and Portugal: A Political History of al-Andalus , Malaysia; Addison Wesley Longman, 1996: pp.30-32.

74 Kennedy, Muslim Spain , pp.80-84.

75 Ibis , p.40.

76 Ibid, see also Mohammad Abu Zahra, The Four Imams, pp. 64-81.

46 school of Law promoted harmony among a heterogeneous citizenry. Later philosophers (as we will see with Ibn Rushd and Maimonides) made clear what they considered the errors of the mu’tazilites to be – al-Farabi seems to have felt no such compunction, or perhaps, writing not long after the greatest intra-Muslim conflict since the Sunni/Shi’a schism, al-Farabi simply did not wish to touch the issue explicitly with a ten-foot pole. In either case, al-Farabi wrote in an era when it was painfully obvious that the affiliation of philosophers with political leaders could result in a disaster, and that mobs of enraged people were to be avoided. 77 He himself was something of an itinerant philosopher – claimed by at least three people, the Turks, Persians, and Khazakhs – most often as an intellectual teaching where he could and only occasionally as a teacher with official affiliation to the powers-that-be. Even when he did teach in court, it is unclear what his status was, and it appears to have been almost always unofficial. 78

At the same time that al-Farabi was negotiating the religious and political movement of his time, he was the fortunate beneficiary of a translation movement that had already transformed

77 That the Mihna occurred before al-Farabi’s birth, and that he does not speak of it directly, does not indicate that it was not part of what he knew – in fact, his – relative – silence on the mu’tazilites in comparison with Ibn Rushd and Maimonides may reflect the recentness of the disaster. It is important to note, for context, that the Mihna was largely called off, and the mu’tazilites increasingly persecuted, because the Caliph imprisoned Ahmad Ibn Hanbal for refusing to acknowledge the createdness of the Qur’an, an action which spurred a mob of thousands to descend upon Ma’mun and - ultimately successfully - demand his release. See Abu Zahra, The Four Imams , pp.407-417. The theory that the Mihna was driven by the mu’tazilite affiliation of the caliph is questioned interestingly in Nawas, The Inquisition , pp.77-81 – but even if the impetus for caliphal support was , it certainly came to be linked with the mu’tazilite rationalist . .

78 Ezzaher, Introduction, in Three Arabic Treatises on Aristotle’s Rhetoric: The Commentaries of al- Farabi, Avicenna, and Averroes. Translated with Introduction and notes by Lahcen Elyazghi Ezzaher. Carbondale; Southern Illinois University Press, 2015: pp.12-13. It is interesting to note that al-Farabi held back from the highest official positions – taking on the role of teacher and medical advisor, in much the same way as Maimonides. Being a part of the hierarchy meant a target, as Ibn Rushd would discover towards the end of his life when he was disavowed by the caliph under pressure from the religious elite, sent into exile, and his books burnt.

47 an enormous amount of Greek philosophy into Arabic. There is no evidence that al-Farabi himself understood Greek (perhaps Arabic, Turkish, Kurdish, and Persian were sufficient) but there is evidence that he had access to a large corpus of translated works by 900 CE. A great deal could be said about the mediation of this transition, including the mediation of Greek texts into Arabic via Syriac and Christian translation. Though the period(s) of transition are not the focus of this chapter on al-Farabi, it is worthwhile to note some elements of it, as the lively and often non-linear history of transmission affects the vocabulary of al-Farabi’s writings on ‘imagination’ and rhetoric. 79

The first text of Aristotle’s to become relatively widely available in Arabic was his Topics . Received in Arabic as The Book of Dialectic, or Kitab al-Jadal , Aristotle’s Topics was translated into Arabic multiple times, twice from Syriac and once from Greek. As a compendium of debates, one might question why this text took priority over others. Dimitri Gutas points out that the commission of this text cannot be understood separately from the political need for instruction in argumentation for a leader who needed to constantly address the challenges to religious and temporal authority posed by Jews, Christians, and certain branches of Islamic thought. 80 In general, the first texts translated were primarily pragmatic and utilitarian – works on medicine, administration, and the like. 81 Close behind were texts that were written as part of the ‘advice to the Prince’ genre – Topics , Rhetoric , and the Rhetoric to Alexander were considered part of this literature, and consequently received significant attention.

79 Thee important works on translation of Greek to Arabic in this period and specifically in terms of philosophical vocabulary include Dimitri Gutas, The Graeco-Arabic Translation Movement in Baghdad and Early Abbasid Society (2 nd -4th /8 th -10 th c.) , New York NY: Routledge, 1998; Alfred L. Ivry, “The Arabic Text of Aristotle’s ‘De Anima ” and its Translator,” Oriens , Vol. 36 (2001); Shukri B. Abd, Aristotelian Logic and the Arabic Language in alFarabi , Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1991.

80 Dimitri Gutas, The Graeco-Arabic Translation Movement, pp.60-69.

81 Ibid, also Oliver Leaman, Islamic Philosophy: an Introduction , 2nd edition, CambridgemUK; Polity Press, 2009: p.15.

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It is well established that by the time al-Farabi reached maturity at the end of the ninth century, most of Aristotle’s Organon had been available in translation for some time. Sometimes they arrived through Syriac (as was the case for the Categories and Topics ), sometimes through Persian (De Generatione and ), and often directly from Greek into Arabic. Al-Farabi himself at one point divides Aristotle’s works into two categories; the first corresponds roughly to the Organon but includes Sophistics , Rhetoric , and Poetics .82 Because the De Anima was translated several times, it is particularly difficult to ascertain the terms in Arabic that correspond to the logical and technical terms in Aristotle. 83

Two translations of the De Anima were extant by the time of al-Farabi; one, the production of the translation school of Hunayn Ibn Ishaq, may have been influenced by translators using al- Farabi’s paraphrase of the Rhetoric or Rhetoric to Alexander . The second translation, as determined by linguistic evidence, was an earlier version issued by the House of al-Kindi and was possibly in circulation at the time of al-Farabi’s studies.84 There was no standard Greek- Arabic philosophical lexicon being shared among the Baghdad translators – they attempted to standardize their usage of certain terms, but the difficulties of finding equivalent words are apparent in the variations. The only reliable way to ascertain what Arabic term is being used in place of a Greek word is to identify specific passages in Arabic texts that are obvious citations or elaborations on specific passages in Aristotle. Such is the case with identifying the Arabic phrase that took on the weight of phantasia : we must look at the places where al-Farabi invokes specific passages of Aristotle, and take our cue from the terms that he used.

Phantasia , translated into imaginatio in Latin, made an early impression on the English ‘imagination,’ and therefore discussion of imagio and imagination seem as though they are reflections of one another. The Arabic word is audibly and even perhaps conceptually unique.

82 Ezzaher, 13; Black, Logic , 1-12 and “Imagination and Estimation”; Vagelpohl, Chapter 2. The second category is variously referred to as the ‘ethical’ or artistic works.

83 Al-Farabi himself played a large role in helping to codify the Arabic philosophical lexicon. See specifically Leaman, Islamic Philosophy, 5-6.

84 Ivry, “The Arabic Text of Aristotle’s ‘De Anima ’”, pp. 59-77, p. 69-60; Ezzaher 12-14,

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The translation house of al-Kindi (c. 800-875) most often rendered Greek phantasia as wahm , particularly in their translations of Aristotle’s Metaphysics and Theology ,85 though they did sometimes use the term takhayyul or variations. Takhayyul was the term used by Hunayn b. Ishaq in the translation of Galen and a translation of Plutarch’s Platica Philosophorum. al- Farabi consistently uses ‘takhayyul ,’. Hunayn’s translation of Aristotle uses both variations. 86 Pace Richard Walzer, who translates al-quwwa al-mutakhayyilah as “representation” more or less consistently, a more appropriate translation for this term is phantasia or at least imagination. 87 Al-quwwa al-mutakhayyilah refers to the faculty that is the particular topic of De Anima , and al-quwwa al-mutakhayyilah is the faculty is structurally analogous to it in the psychological analysis of al-Farabi’s Madinah , Chapters 10 and 14. It shares a root with the word for dreaming, and is also the term for activity of the mind that takes place in sleep.

The preceding chapter’s discussion of Aristotle highlighted the role of phantasia as a border- faculty and motive rather than deliberative power. I want to suggest that al-Farabi’s understanding of the quwwa mutakhayyilah is both similar and importantly different. Phantasia is obviously different in some ways, because it is not identified as a ‘power,’ as such, in Aristotle. Al-Farabi is also much clearer about the judgment and discriminating activity of al-quwwa al-mutakhayyilah than Aristotle is. As we noted above, Aristotle at times seems at pains to separate phantasia from the discriminating powers – as a result, phantasia in Aristotle seems to be almost pre-affect, an image available and changing. Phantasia in al- Farabi, however, is an activity that involves both judgment and movement.

85 The Theology of Aristotle , like Rhetoric to Alexander , is a pseudonymous work but one that was accepted as part of the Aristotelian corpus at the time. See below, on page 42 and footnotes.

86 Walzer, 385.

87 This is also the position taken by Black and by Amor Cherni, who translates “la puissance imaginative.” Walzer does use ‘imagination’ on occasion, and particularly in his commentary in the discussion of this faculty. ‘Imagination,’ for all the dangers of such a loaded term, is still more indicative of the rich subject matter than ‘representation.’ As seen, al-Farabi clearly considers imagination to involve judgment and discrimination, at least in the human being. In Heideggerian terms, if imagination is a way of being-absent-in-the-world for Aristotle, for al-Farabi it is the sight of our embeddedness in the world.

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Al-Farabi’s ‘Mabadi ara’ ahl al-madinah el-fadilah (Opinions of the People of the Virtuous City) is most famous as a political work. 88 In this, one of his last works, al-Farabi outlines the nature of the ideal and less than ideal cities, detailing the character of the rulership of better and worse political communities, and providing a hierarchy of political regimes arranged according to their ability to lead the citizens of the city towards what is just and good. In the history of political thought, it is where the madinah appears alongside the polis .89 That it is a massively important political text is not in dispute. But the careful reader might be drawn to the fact that the majority of the text (fourteen out of a total of nineteen chapters) is not specifically concerned with the medinah , its goals, aims, or requirements. In fact, taken as a whole these fourteen chapters cannot be credibly termed ‘political’ in direct sense the term. The first nine chapters discuss and science, and Chapters 10-14 focus on psychology and the soul. These first chapters, which students and scholars rarely read together with the last, explicitly political part of the text, demonstrate that while philosophy may be necessary for politics, politics is also necessary on philosophical terms. If we take Madinah as

88 Al-Farabi, ‘Mabadi ara’ ahl al-madinah al-fadilah (Opinions of the people of the Virtuous City), ed. and trans. Richard Walzer. Al-Farabi on the Perfect State, Oxford: Clarendon, 1985. Also Ara’ ahl al- medinah al-fadilah , ed. and trans. Amor Cherni, Opinions des habitants de la cité vertueuse , Paris: Darl Albouraq, 2011. [Madinah.]

89 The variety of English titles for this text are testimony to the challenge of translating even the title, let alone the contents. The adjective al-fadilah has been translated as perfect or best, but the Arabic is not actually a superlative (al -afdal ) and would be clearly translated as ‘to which one is inclines,’ or ‘that is preferred.’ Far more importantly, there is no genuinely satisfactory way to translate al-madinah . To translate it as city, or state, or even polis would be to elide the particular resonance of the word in the Arabic and Islamic world. In the cultural and social world of al-Farabi, to speak of the city - al- madinah - is to speak of The City, Medina, the first place in which a Muslim population governed itself. I make no claims about al-Farabi’s religiosity, but it would be disingenuous to suggest that Medina is not at least opaquely evoked in his discussion of al-madinah. For that reason, in-text references to this work will refer to Madinah . References to Walzer’s commentary will refer to author and page number. Translations here are my own, though they draw on both Walzer’s English translation (originally printed in 1985) and the more recent French edition of Amor Cherni, which in many cases seems to provide a more sensitive translation of the Arabic.

51 a whole, it is a comprehensive portrait of the world, working its way through different types of knowledge – from the demonstrative or scientific to the psychological to the political. The references of al-Farabi to the parts of the soul in these four chapters draw heavily on Aristotle. It is therefore in these chapters that we can both identify the lexical shifts between al-Farabi’s Arabic and the original Greek, and where it is clear that al-Farabi simply follows Aristotle and where he seems to diverge from the Master somewhat.

The justification for such a genealogy is partially the clarity with which al-Farabi identified his debt to Aristotle. In his Theology of Aristotle 90 al-Farabi attributes to Aristotle and many of the tropes which appear throughout his work, including the questions that must be posed in order to obtain knowledge and the proper ranking of sciences and the types of knowledge they require. 91 As appealing as such a reading of the Master by the Second Teacher – as al-Farabi was later known – the story of the transmission of Aristotle into Arabic is more complicated. Al-Farabi is known to cite Aristotle at moments clearly inspired by the work of Neo-Platonic commentators on Aristotle, and he diverged from Aristotle in important ways. 92

Al-Farabi begins Chapter 10 with a concise overview of the ascending hierarchy of the faculties of the soul that largely mirrors his earlier summary of Aristotle’s position. 93 The

90 The Theology is a pseudonymous text, this one a mis-attributed translation of Plotinus’ Enneads ; the version available to al-Farabi would have been complete in the Mihna-adjacent 830s and 40s. For the history and mystery surrounding this text, see Peter Adamson, The Arabic Plotinus: A Philosophy Study of the “Theology of Aristotle,” London, Uk; Duckworth Press, 2002; Gerhardt Endress, Proclus Arabus; Zwanzig Abschitte aus der Institution Theologica in Arabischer Übersetzung, Beirut; Orient- Institut der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft, 1975.

91 Al-Farabi, The Philosophy of Aristotle , trans. Muhsin Mahdi, New York, NY: Free Press of Glencoe, 1962. See specifically the section 15 on rhetoric and 92-99 on the rational soul.

92 It feels almost needless to say that none of the Arabic philosophers expressed (or should be expected to have expressed) any explicit diversion from Aristotle – their stated goal seems to have been to remain as close to Aristotle as possible. This is particularly the case for al-Farabi’s reader, Ibn Rushd.

93 Philosophy of Aristotle , 2. Al-Farabi’s discussion is not identical in the two places, and specifically regarding the faculty of imagination.

52 human soul is composed on five faculties: the nutritive, the sensitive, the imaginative, the -performs the functions that al (ﺍﻟﻘﻮﺓ ﺍﻟﻐﺎﺫﻳﺔ) appetitive, and the rational. The nutritive faculty Farabi considers the lowest standard to be adjudged living – to take nourishment, specifically, and to move towards water. Plants eat too – the nutritive power points to inherently consuming is more complex because it (ﺍﻟﻘﻮﺓ ﺍﻟﻨﺰﺍﻉ) nature of all living beings. The appetitive faculty receives sensibles from all of its extensions (the organs of the senses). The common sense amalgamated the information received by the senses such that something purple and cold is correctly perceived as a frozen grape and distinguishable from a grape popsicle – the appetitive quality is that motion towards either the grape or the popsicle. The appetitive faculty accompanies the senses, and consists of a positive or negative inclination toward the objects of perception – it identifies a sensation as something one might “desire or hate”. 94 The imaginative faculty is the faculty in which those things that are hated or desired are placed in relationship to one another, such that they influence the course of action of an individual in relationship to them. So in al-Farabi, sound judgment is not limited to the rational faculties – it in fact begins at the most animalistic levels. However, the ability of reason to judge perceptions is because they are presented to reason by the quwwa al-mutakhayyilah itself.

Once the nutritive and appetitive faculties have emerged, the next is the quwwa mutakhayyilah. It is worthwhile to provide al-Farabi’s first description of this faculty in full:

And with the senses and after sensation, another faculty emerges in in yuhfaz ) what has been impressed 95 on the ,ﻳﺨﻔﻆ) him and that memorizes soul by the senses when the sensible faculty is divorced from its witness -al ,ﺍﻟﻘﻮﺓ ﺍﻟﻤﺘﺨﻴﻠﺔ] of sensible things. This is the faculty of imagination quwwa al-mutakhayyilah ]. By this faculty, he links [yurakkab ] some of the sensibles with each other and disconnects [yufassal ] others

94 Madinah , 10 1-15.

95 Lit. ‘Drawn on’

53

,ﻛﺎﺫﺑﺔ] according to different structure and details, some being false s’adiqah ]. 96 ,ﺻﺎﺩﻗﺔ] k’adhibah ] and some being trustworthy

The imagination here described has a great deal in common with Aristotle’s phantasia . It occupies more or less the same place in the hierarchy of the faculties as phantasia did for Aristotle, at a borderline post between perception and intellect. 97 Imagination is always dependent on the of sensibles, but it is equally tied for al-Farabi to the absence of those necessary perceptions. Imagination does its work in the absence of the sensibles, which still constitutes its matter. In the imagination, these ‘absent sensibles’ are not simply recalled, but are organized and placed in relationship to one another according to associations or antipathies. 98 In other words, the work of the imagination is already more than the reproduction of an image: it is, as it was for Aristotle, part of how sensibles come to be understood in relation to one another. As in Aristotle, the rational faculty (in al-Farabi, the quwwa n’atiqaah ) arises after the imaginative faculty. And as in Aristotle, the intellect is what makes possible the pursuit of the sciences.

Yet what may be most distinct in al-Farabi’s definition of imagination is that it involves an element of judgment and organization that Aristotle was wary of. As we saw in chapter one, Aristotle is cautious about associating phantasia with discrimination, though it does appear to have some of those qualities. 99 In al-Farabi, imagination has a stronger relationship to reason,

96 Madinah 10.2. I have translated k’adhibah and s’adiqah provisionally here: ‘falseness’ because of the association of a kdhib with a lie, and the sadiq with ‘trustworthy’ because of the status of the sadiq its ,(ﻗﻨﺎﻉ) as a friend one can rely on. However, the association of sadaqah (belief) with conviction relationship to the Arabic jameel , or beautiful, and it relationship to the the power of representation al-quwwa al-tasawwur ) is part of the reason that it is discussed further on p. 22, why these ,ﺍﻟﻘﻮﺓ ﺍﻟﺘﺼﻮﺭ) language pairs return in the analysis of Ibn Rushd and Maimonides above, and the reason for the inclusion of the terminology chart in Appendix III.

97 See discussion of DA 427-428, above 34.

98 As in Aristotle, the organization of perception involves the identification of what is like, similar, and opposite. See DA 452a and discussion of the passages (ABC) above, circa page 18.

99 See DA 428a and above.

54 which, while it does not result in a necessarily positive estimation of imagination does make more room for the positive potential of the imagination (particularly in the case of pedagogy).

Al-Farabi displays enormous subtlety in his characterization of the relationship between imagination and reason. In the passage above, he described the results of the work of the imagination as being either “false” (k’adhibah ) or “true” (s’adiqah). Only a few lines later, he describes the intellect as that which makes possible the knowledge of “good” (jamyl ) and “evil” (qabyh ). 100 In other words, the imagination may be misleading or trustworthy, and the reason provides knowledge of the beautiful and ugly. In neither case does al-Farabi refer to right and wrong. 101 However, this translation of s’adiqah fails to reflect the logical and technical usage of the term in Arabic philosophy, as well as the context of the Arabic language at this point – s’adiqah is an adjective derived from the same root as nouns for a close friend.102 Thus we see al-Farabi already making a distinction that will be taken up by Ibn Rushd and to an even greater degree by Maimonides, between the “right and wrong” on the one hand, and the “fine and bad” on the other. The two pairings imply an important category difference in the epistemological understanding of the world such that something scientifically determined to be ‘right’ may in fact be ‘bad’ if it is imposed upon or proposed to a wide population.

100 These are the translations of Walzer. If we instead translate the two pairs (ka’dhib and sa’diq , quabiyh and jameel ) as “misleading and believable” and “ugly and beautiful” then al-Farabi’s division foreshadows Maimonides’ distinction between “right and wrong” and “good and bad.”

101 The words commonly used for correct and wrong, sahih and ghalat , do not appear in these passages. See Appendix III for an attempt to clarify the relationship and parallels between various word pairs.

102 See Black, Logic, 74-78 and discussion below. It is also worthwhile to note that there are a number of levels of friendship in Arabic – in ascending order, and excluding some, from acquaintanceship to apostolic understanding, Arabic the qa’rib , the rafiq , the sadiq , and the sahib . Sahib in the Islamic context is linked with the inner circle of the Prophet Muhammad, as-sahb al-rusul . Rafiq just means someone who often is doing the same thing as you, and qu’rib someone who perhaps has some familial but more often obligatory relationship. The sadiq is the one who is believed, whose understanding as a friend goes beyond the surface-level. It is matter of further comparison to see whether there is a textual relationship between these four times of people and the four sons of the Jewish Passover Haggadah .

55

Both the nutritive and sensitive faculties are spread out throughout the body, and the bodily extension of the faculties fulfills the requirements of their respective ruling faculty. In the case of the nutritive faculty, the ruling faculty is the requirement of nature. The subordination of the organs to the heart, the subordination of blood to the liver, and the functions that each fulfill are necessary for the preservation of bare life. In the sensitive faculty, the ruling faculty is the al-hess al-mushtaraq) or the ability to combine simple sensibles ,ﺍﻟﺤﺲ ﺍﻟﻤﺸﺘﺮﻙ) common sense like temperature or color into a shared perception. The world must be perceived rather than simply apprehended, and that aggregation of apprehensions into perceivable objects is the function of the sense in which lights and colors and sounds resolve into a manageable object that might be either simple, or compound. 103 It is active as long as the senses are active, and is 'at rest' when the senses are at rest.

As in Aristotle, the leap that differentiates everything above it from the sensitive faculty is the ability to function without a specific organ of sensation and retain the sensation even when it is not actually sensing. The imaginative faculty performs its function even when it is not being immediately supplied with material. As al-Farabi later establishes, the imagination can become significantly more efficient when the input from the senses is minimal. (Madinah 11.4; 14.1) The imaginative faculty that requires the existence of sensibles does not require ongoing sensation to remain at work – the retention of the sensibles, judgment concerning them, and the consequent ordering and organization of perception can be independent from natural influences.

Like the nutritive and appetitive faculties, the faculty of representation is located in the heart. Unlike the nutritive and sensitive faculties, the imaginative faculty is not spread out in the body – it receives no imprint directly from the senses. When the imaginative faculty takes up a perception of light, there is no blindness, and it does not burn when it takes up heat. In distinguishing the imaginative faculty from the natural faculties, al-Farabi reiterates his initial description of the imaginative faculty almost verbatim.

103 Madinah 10.4

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[The quwwa almutakhayyilah ] retains the sensibles when they are no longer presented to sense-perception, and by its very nature controls the sensibles and exercises judgment over them [mutaha’kimah ‘lyha ]: for it isolates [tufrad ] them from each other and links [turakkab ] them with each other in various ways, so that it happens that some of the things imagined agree with what is perceived [yattafaq…an takwn mw’fqah] and some differ [mukhalifah ] from what can be felt. 104

As in the first passage, the imagination has the retentive quality of not resting upon the immediate input of the senses – it is at least at one remove. The imaginative quality retains, but what it retains are the sensibles, more and less complex, that are received from the sensible faculty, which brings the independent sensibles into organization with one another. The sensible quality of fire, when received into the imagination, is not accompanied by the heat of the original, a sensation or experience that does affect the appetite. The associations formed in the imagination are not made in the sensible experience of burning flesh – but the heat of the fire is inseparable from the object understood in the world. In this second passage, al-Farabi expands on the nature of the recombinatory activity of the imagination – the imagination has a great deal of leeway in order to make associations. The imagination must exercise judgment over the sensibles, associating them in particular combinations and relocating them as experience (and reason) demand. In Aristotle and his later commentators, the association with belief and conviction (doxa and phronesis ) are part of what distinguishes the imaginative faculty from the faculties situated solely in the natural world. One of the reasons that the imagination is less reliable than the senses is because it is bringing something of cognition into play. 105

104 Madinah , 10.4. Here is another interesting language pair: at 10.1 the faculty of the imagination is responsible for linking together (rakkab ) and breaking apart (fassal ) whereas here the distinction is between linking (rakkab ) and isolating (farad ).

105 For the striking similarities with Alexander of Aphrodisias, see Alexander’s Commentary on De Anima . The most important consequence of this connection, in Aristotle and even more so in al-Farabi, is that imagination is not simply a muddled quasi-animalistic thinking of images, it inherently calls

57

For al-Farabi, the judgmental quality of imagination is the linkages or relationships it forms – this concerns not only similarities and differences, but also causal relations. When an object is perceived as painful, the appetitive inclination is to move away from that object. In the imagination what is retained from sense perception is organized, such that ‘fire’ must be set into relationship with other images of other sense perceptions like an oven, the sun, or an ice cube. The moment of resolving a sensible object into a recognizable and actionable perception involves a decision about the relationship between sensible objects, and the extent to which decisions of the imaginative faculty can be influenced by the appetitive faculty and the sensitive faculty raises doubts about the trustworthiness of the conclusions that we arrive at about perception.106

The descriptions of the imaginative faculty that al-Farabi offers at Madina 10.1 and 10.4 differ from Aristotle not only through addition, but also through modification. In the first passage, al-Farabi describes imagination as capable of forming associations that are sometimes trustworthy and sometime deceitful. In the second passage, al-Farabi’s reference to the questionable results of the imaginative faculty is almost nonchalant: “some of the things imagined agree with those perceived by the senses and others differ from them.” The imaginative faculty is not subservient to sensibles but controls them, and in this passage the danger of imaginative error seems less urgent. Al-Farabi uses the language of closeness and distance, not of truth and lying. He seems remarkably unconcerned with the possibility of admitting that conformity to the senses is not in itself the yardstick for evaluating the benefits and potential dangers of the imaginative faculty – in fact it is the imagination that is capable of taking into account the specific knowledge of the intelligible that means that a sensibly based orientation towards an object could be misleading.107 upon the rational and deliberative faculties in order to conduct the judging and ordering of the images that arise in it.

106 The question of sources and reasons are a part of the group of questions that al-Farabi insisted must be asked in order to achieve understanding of a thing–in this context, those questions must be asked of the activity of the faculty itself.

107 The particular difficulty that many people have in changing their opinion in the light of new evidence is part of what makes people animalistic. The ability to change that opinion, to find new evidence that

58

In the first definition (Madinah 10.1), the activity of the imagination is primarily the ability to re-present to perception the sensibles in their absence. There appears to be no reason why any one association decided by the imagination would be preferable or more trustworthy than any other. The only discriminatory activity is that of the appetitive faculty on the imagination that inclines the faculty towards or away from an object. Without the immediate access to the natural world through the sensibles, and with no appeal to the cognitive sciences that al-Farabi has mentioned, the ‘trustworthiness’ of such associations is called into question. In the second definition at Madina 10.4, imagination is a judging and actively discriminative faculty. As such, it has some defense against the more insistent urging of the appetite, the ability to deliberate concerning what is significant for understanding the rational association amongst sensibles. By discriminating among the sensibles, the imagination can associate vodka and water by virtue of their effects and then reorganize perceptions of gin and vodka such that, despite their apparent differences, they fall into the category of ‘neighbors’ by virtue of their potential effect and consequences.

Even at this early stage, the primacy and self-sufficiency of theoretical knowledge is foreshadowed. But as we shall see, the fact that theoretical knowledge is best and primary and self-sufficient as knowledge, that self-sufficiency is qualified by what al-Farabi describes as the necessity for what is theoretically true to be communicated in practical and meaningful terms – in other words, theoretical knowledge must inform practical knowledge. Unlike the sensible faculties, the rational faculty has no organs of apprehension and it is therefore as immune to the influences of sensation. Unlike the imaginative faculty, which al-Farabi will shortly argue provides the matter for cognition, the rational faculty serves no other power. 108 However, just because the rational faculty does not provide matter for another faculty does not mean that it operates in isolation from the other faculties, specifically the imagination. The faculties of nutrition and sensation have both a ruling faculty and auxiliary faculties. Sensation occurs through the auxiliary organs spread throughout the body, and each of those organs has is compelling and admit that compulsion, is a sign of the reason that is unique to human beings. The imagination has to be able to ‘judge; in order to deal adequately with the sensibles before it, just as Harry Potter was forced to wrap his mind, and actions, around the existence of Platform 9 ¾.

108 Madinah 10.3-4.

59 the responsibility for a particular apprehension. Sight occurs through the eyes, texture or temperature through touch. Al-Farabi suggests that the ruling faculty of sensation is the faculty in which all the sensible perceptions are brought together (the common sense). The ruling faculty of the senses as al-Farabi describes it here does not exercise judgment or even control over the perception of the senses or their collection. It is active as long as the senses are active, and when the senses are at rest, so is the common sense.

One faculty that al-Farabi integrates into his hierarchy of the soul’s faculties far more formally that Aristotle is the appetitive faculty. In Aristotle, the appetite (orexis ) is primarily to be found in De Anima 2.2, where he identifies phantasia and orexis as the results of sensation – it is in phantasia and orexis that “pain and pleasure” and therefore “desire” arise. (DA 2.2.414a-b) In much simpler terms, al-Farabi states that the appetitive faculty (quwwa nazwiy’a ) is the inclination towards or away from an object. Its effect is to provoke changes and adaptations in relation to the object. It is as a result of this inclination that “desire or hatred for a thing occurs.” 109 The strength of the appetitive faculty towards or away from a thing gives rise to the -that strives to fulfill the demands of the appetite. To anticipate the example that al (ﺍﻻﺭﺍﺩﺓ) will Farabi will use in Chapter 14, the inclination towards sexual pleasure gives rise to the will to gratification, as a result of which the body undertakes certain actions in order to fulfill the appetitive desire that it has already logged as being linked to specific sensations. Or more prosaically, it explains the relationship between a desire to see something and opening one’s eyes, or how someone hungry from fasting can unintentionally break that fast. While this does account for the strange but powerful urges that affect human activity, the appetite is not solely the instigator of self-indulgence. Appetition can be towards the objects of sensation (sweet, clean), or imagination (bi al-takhayyul ), or reason. Appetition and the movement that it inspires involves an object of the will: when this is something which can only be obtained by sense- perception, activity and an exertion of will on the auxiliaries of the sensible faculty will be necessary (such as opening one’s eyes). When the appetition is towards knowing an

109 Madinah 10.6.

60 intelligible, the motion will consist of the use of power of thought (quwwa fikriyyah )110 and of the use of the logical arts in the process of deduction and examination. When appetite is directed towards something that is imagined, it can be towards that object as past and as a relationship to that object (hope or wish), or towards a production of the faculty of representation itself. 111 In other words, the inclination towards or away from something may be either the result of perception or a result of reason, or even result from the work of imagination solely upon itself. When appetition is towards an object of the imagination, it is towards something which is a) physically absent, b) not necessarily but possibly an illustration of something that is true, and c) whose quality as desirous or hateful is established by its relationship with other things. In all cases, what is remarkable about the appetite is that it is subject to persuasion and to education.

In the case of an appetite for an object, it is relatively simple to persuade a human being that their appetite for the object in question is mistaken or should be changed; this is the kind of persuasion that tells people who have heartburn to avoid tomatoes, even though they love tomatoes, or that makes smokers want to quit even though they enjoy smoking. Thus the appetite may be initially towards the object, but reason may present compelling enough evidence that the appetite turns away from the object. When the appetite is towards the imagination, it is towards objects of sensation which have not only material but also political or spiritual consequences; thus the appetite for smoking may not turn towards hatred purely because of the physiological consequences, but because it is hated by God, because it is a waste of money better spent otherwise, or simply if all the smokers that one knows are untrustworthy or dangerous people.

This first passage in Chapter 10 of Madinah , in which al-Farabi sketches out the relationship between the powers of the soul in the first paragraph, also ends with a restatement of those

110 There are multiple words in Arabic for thinking, each of which indicates a different level of ,(ﻅﻦ) thun ,(ﻓﻜﺮ) conviction or . In ascending hierarchy of certainty or conviction, there is faker .(ﺍﻋﺘﻘﺪ) and ‘ataqid

111 Madinah , 10.8: shi ma tarkabbahu el-quwwa el-mutakhayyilah . An alternative translation would be “that which is connected by the imaginative faculty.”

61 powers. The ruling faculty of nutrition is the matter of the sensing faculty, while the form of the faculty of nutrition and the ruling faculty of the sense is the matter for the imaginative faculty, which is in turn the form of the ruling faculty of the sense. The imaginative faculty itself is the matter for the rational faculty, and while the rational faculty is the form of the imaginative faculty it is not itself matter for any other faculty. In other words, the sensitive and imaginative faculties are composed of both matter and form: their matter consists of the information that they provide to the faculty that rules them, and their form is that by which they rule the lower faculties. 112 What is in the common sense is therefore the matter of imagination, and the images of the sensibles organized by the imagination are the matter for reason. Reason, of course, is not subject to the same limitations. There is no faculty higher that might command it, and to which it would need to render the result of its activities. The rational form is the “final form” in which the entire trajectory of faculties reach their perfection.

In Chapter 10, al-Farabi has identified some of most important characteristics, and two major powers, of the imaginative faculty. The imaginative faculty 1) retains the imprints of the sensibles in their absence 2) organizes and associates the non-sensible perceptions. This second activity is the discriminative and judgmental power of the imagination, and al-Farabi’s clarity on this point is surely one way in which al-Farabi differs from the Master. But al-Farabi also includes, within his discussion of the imagination, an activity whose relationship to the imagination is very different from what it is in Aristotle. This is the activity of muhaka , the Arabic term that is used in place of the Greek mimesis .

Chapter 14 opens with an echo of Aristotle’s famous statement on phantasia , that it is “intermediate between the faculty of sense and the rational faculty.” 113 According to al-Farabi the result of this intermediacy is that the imaginative faculty is constantly buffeted by the demands of both sensitive and rational faculties. The influx of sensible perceptions and the need to retain and organize both sensible and theoretical perceptions strains the capacity of the

112 Madinah , 10.9.

and in Aristotle, “φαντασία ”ﻭ ﺍﻟﻘﻮﺓ ﺍﻟﻤﺘﺨﻴﻠﺔ ﻣﺘﻮﺳﻄﺔ ﺑﻴﻦ ﺍﻟﺤﺎﺳﺔ ﻭ ﺍﻟﻨﺎﻁﻘﺔ“ See DA 427, and above in al-Farabi 113 γάρ έτερον αισθησεως και διανοιας.”

62 imagination to make correct judgments. 114 Consider the case of someone who is attempting to conceive of the planet Earth as a whole, and who is constantly inundated both by experiences and by laws of physics and astronomy that might not correspond directly to experience – the result could be a mental chaos in which one becomes convinced that the planet is of a certain type because that explanation is the most persuasive and simple, and does not require one to engage in a potentially endless analysis that incorporates both sensible and theoretical knowledge.

For the imagination then, sleep is something of a rest for the imagination. In sleep, the faculties of sensation and reason are not at work – the imagination is then “on its own” (fard ). 115 Imagination in this state – easily recognizable in the experience and appearance of sleep but not entirely limited to sleep – can conduct the association of non-sensible perceptions at a slight remove from the insistency of sensation, reason, and appetite. The second of imagination’s activities, the organization and association of sensibles, is theoretically capable of exercising the best judgment when the rest of the faculty is at rest. But this is only a theoretical island of calm: a new activity is about to be almost awkwardly introduced. Al-Farabi writes:

But in addition to the preservation of the pictures of the sensibles and the association of sensibles with one another it displays a third activity, namely mimesis [muhaka ]. This activity is different from the other faculties of the soul, being capable of ‘imitating ’ [qadr ‘ala muhaka ] the sensibles that have remained preserved [mahfooz ] in it. 116

Richard Walzer’s commentary on Madinah , which identifies Chapter 14 as “[Imagination] and Divination”, suggests that muhaka is an activity that occurs in sleep. While it is indeed true that it is more powerful in sleep, the text does not suggest that that is exclusively active in dream states, even for those who are not prophets. The notion that muhaka occurs only in sleep seems predicated in part on the notion that the most relevant Aristotelian texts for

114 Madinah , 14.1.

115 Ibid.

116 Madinah , 14.2

63 understanding this chapter are Aristotle’s De Insomnis and De Divinatione .117 And yet there is no particular textual evidence to suggest that muhaka is a subsidiary effect of sleep on representation. 118 Muhaka is not an activity (f’ail ) limited by sleeping or wakefulness per se, but it is affected by that which affects the imagination more generally: sensation, reason, and the appetite. It is therefore most likely to express itself when sensation and reason are less active. Sice this section is littered with references to prophecy it seems reasonable to look for further explication of the imagination in Aristotle’s works concerning prophecy, but this is not a particularly fruitful avenue of research. The first objection is that it is not even certain that al-Farabi had a copy of the Parva Naturalia . Although there are reports that al-Farabi wrote a treatise , such a work has never been located. According to Walzer, the best aid to understand al-Farabi’s thought in relationship to his sources is through the work of Ibn Rushd, but it would be a mistake to suggest that their theories of prophecy – or imagination – are quite that symbiotic. However commonplace it is among later philosophers to discuss the imitative function of dreams on the basis of these texts, there is little positive evidence that they serve that role for al-Farabi. 119

A more productive path down which to trace al-Farabi’s description of muhaka and its relationship to imagination is via Aristotle’s Rhetoric and Poetics . Al-Farabi’s Treatise of Poetry and Treatise on Rhetoric has long been considered relevant to the study of literature and politics; while not disputing their relevance to these fields, their limitation to the political and ‘artistic’ disciplines has resulted in an understanding of mimesis as an act of creative or

117 Walzer, 414.

118 I make a distinction between the activity of muhaka itself, which is not limited to sleeping, and the revelatory state that involves the perfection of muhaka in addition to every other faculty and power of the soul.

119 And even if there was evidence that al-Farabi had access to the Parva Naturalia , that would not exclude other texts of the Organon from consideration as source material. After all, while the Parva Naturalia does discuss imagination, its discussion of imitation is largely restricted to the treatise concerning prophecy. Rhetoric and Poetics , however, are both explicitly concerned with the nature and function of mimesis . Mimesis and muhaka form the Greek to Arabic bridge between the imagination as a characteristic of the soul and rhetoric as the material manifestation of that characteristic.

64 reproductive imagination. But as Deborah Black has established, both of these texts were a canonical part of the Aristotelian Organon and were considered topics for rational analysis.120 If we take seriously Black’s argument that the Rhetoric and Poetics formed a part of the logical corpus, then we must also consider what it means for mimesis to have a logical role – or that the logical role of this power is in part a result of how distinct the Arabic power is from the Greek. 121

The Arabic term translated as mimesis is muhaka – in a non-technical context it could be translated (as Walzer has a tendency to do) as imitation. However the hesitation of Walzer and others to use this designation indicates some of the ambiguity of the term, philosophically and etymologically. Mimesis is an improvement over ‘imitation’, but it is still the transposition of a Greek term that does not entirely align with the Arabic terminology. Coming from the Arabic muhaka should be recognized as a term related to speech. It is not so much about ,ﺡ.ﻙ.ﻭ root visually or actively re-presenting something, but evoking something. If Aristotle said that the term phantasia was a derivation from the term ‘to see’ (something which is not true of the Arabic takhayyul with its association with dreams), the term mimesis implies a physical eikonography while muhaka implies a verbal evocation.

In Chapter 14, al-Farabi describes muhaka as the activity of ‘imitating’ the sensibles within the faculty responsible for their retention and organization. The activity of muhaka should therefore be distinguished from the simpler function of re-presentation previously attributed to the imagination or even to the mimetic power of the imagination in Aristotle. It is not simple an imitation, but an evocation – this particular feature of the imagination re-appears later in al- Farabi’s discussion, but it is accompanied now by another form of making-present. In 14.5, al- Farabi writes that “by this action [muhaka ] the quwwa al-mutakhayyilah sometimes serves as

120 See Black, Logic , 1-15.

121 Muhaka then is not ‘simply’ aesthetic–it is also epistemological. It is the role that muhaka plays in the acquisition and organization of knowledge at the rational level that we are concerned with here.

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As noted previously, the 122 ”.(ﺍﻟﻤﻨﺒﺔ ﺷﺒﻪ) and sometimes as stimulant ,(ﺷﺒﻪ ﺍﻟﺤﺎﺯﻝ) reminder appetitive faculty is usually the motivation for actions – it is the birthplace of will, the inclination towards or away from something that stimulates the positing and pursuit of whatever activity will accomplish that goal. The imagination is sometimes the faculty in which the sensibles that motivated the appetite, and the actions that resulted, are retained and organized in relationship to one another. But sometimes the imagination has a more active role to play. According to al-Farabi, when the body is inclined to be aroused, it may lead to actual desire in the appetitive faculty, which in turn will seek the gratification of that desire through the activities designed to result in sexual gratification. Evocation in the imaginative faculty, however, is capable of pre-empting cognitive recognition of a distinct desire of appetite; when the state of potential arousal is present, muhaka moves directly to the activities and actions that result in the gratification of that arousal. The arousal is, in this situation, not the result of a desire in the appetitive faculty but a response to a state that (could) lead to that desire. The sexual gratification is accomplished not because of sexual desire but because something in what was perceived evoked in the imagination the perception that had not yet been received, moving directly to the result. In other words, when it is influenced by sensation and experience muhaka is a king of spontaneous emission – physically, and perhaps cognitively as well. 123

Muhaka , then, is more than a re-presentation of an object, or a place, or a person, or an activity: it accomplishes the fulfillment of a desire that has not even occurred. This is muhaka engaged

122 I have diverged significantly from Walzer’s translation here. The words that describe these different appearances are hazil and munabbah –while hazil might be translated as reminder, Walzer’s use of the term mimesis seems uncalled for and perhaps confusing in context.

123 As al-Farabi will discuss later in Madinah 17.2, muhaka is an evocation of symbols and signs capable of communicating what is necessary or even true to those who are not philosophers or the friends of philosophers. Muhaka reproduces the truth via symbols that are well known, but since what is well known differs by people, different people may and are even likely to express the same truth in different symbols. Al-Farabi notes that while demonstrations leave no room for contradiction or argument, truth known through symbols can be subject to objection and it is possible for someone to point out a fallacy. (Madina 17.3) In other words, while symbols are necessary for communication, they are also a vulnerable form of argument and admit of dissent.

66 with what is sensible and with the appetite. But muhaka can also be evoked by intelligibles present in the rational faculty. 124 Evocative activity effectively translates the intelligibles (which are not actionable in themselves) into the things that most perfectly resemble them. The perfect is evoked by what seems to be, or even is, the best of the natural world, and the defective and corrupt intelligibles by what is ugly to look at. As a more general example, the knowledge of justice is of no utility whatsoever unless it is understood to be in the things of the world: behaving justly requires the evocation of Justice itself in the sensible world, where justice can be pursued on a practical rather than theoretical basis.

The activity of muhaka outlined in these passages by al-Farabi suggest that it is by this activity that demonstrative are translated (albeit always imperfectly) into the sensible world. 125 It can also undermine and circumvent the hierarchy of the faculties (as well as the hierarchy of the sciences and relationship which they reflect). What is the nature of this relationship, and how does muhaka move from being an epistemological shortcut (or sometimes short-circuit) to playing the political role for which it is so well known?

In the first place, muhaka implies speech, the thing which al-Farabi identifies, over and over again, as the activity unique to human beings. He does not argue with the contention that only human beings have theoretical reason, but the manifestation of the individuality of human beings is through speech. Speech is the fundamental level of communication – hence why all propositions and premises cannot abridge the rules of language so that they become impossible for the reader to understand. There are five types of speech, al-Farabi writes: rhetorical, poetic, the power to evoke what has happened or been felt or been believed in the past, demonstrated mastery of language itself, and writing. 126 “Rhetoric,” al-Farabi writes, “is the means of

124 Notably, al-Farabi spends a great deal more time talking about spontaneous ejaculation than he does in discussing the role muhaka has to play in the dissemination and translation of truth.

125 Madinah 14.6.

126 Kitab al-Huruf , Section 138. In this section writing is indeed categorized as a method of speech – so ‘speech’ should be understood as verbal communication, whether it is vocal or inscribed. However the fact that al-Farabi mentions ‘rhetoric’ and ‘mastery of language’ separately indicates that his categories do not map directly onto those of Aristotle, in which the types of speech are subtypes of

67 persuading the public” using things that the public already accepts or is convinced of, and in a way that convinces the public to act in a particular way. 127

Human beings, for al-Farabi, are therefore unique theoretically because of their capacity for theoretical reason, and unique practically in their ability to speak and thereby convince others of a theoretical truth. Readers of al-Madina will notice immediately the clearly delineated hierarchies that al-Farabi has been at pains to describe in his discussion of nature and in the psychological discussion of the faculties of the human soul. Those familiar with the Greek texts will not be surprised to find that these hierarchies often map onto one another, such that the faculties of the soul are more or less analogous to the hierarchy of knowledge. 128 and that the types of instruction or evidence are similarly structured. 129 The acquisition of knowledge requires the mastery of the science most appropriate to that knowledge, and that mastery requires the use of the logical tools most appropriate to it. Broadly speaking, knowledge for al-Farabi is divided into the knowledge of natural things and the knowledge of what is beyond (and often but not always above) natural things. In the Tahsil as-Saadah , al-Farabi suggests that the investigation of living beings, and particularly of rational beings, is necessary in order to understand the relationship between things that are natural and things that are not purely natural – be they either divine or created by hand. To understand the soul of rational beings one must proceed logically, asking what the rational being is and how they came to be, what they require and what they are for, and what the logical and demonstrative evidence for their really is.130 That al-Farabi followed his own advice in the analysis of al-Madina is

rhetoric. Instead, rhetoric is its own type of speech, equivalent to the ‘deliberative rhetoric’ of Aristotle that persuades regarding goals and actions.

127 Ibid.

128 Madinah 10.1, 14.5; cf. Ihsa ulum 54.

129 There is not a one-to-one correspondence. However, reason, theoretical knowledge of the intelligibles, demonstrative proofs, and demonstrative logic consistently occupy the pinnacle of the hierarchy; appetitive sensation, perception, and the more ‘subjective’ forms of logic that focus on assent tend to occupy the lower rungs.

130 Tahsil , 17, Mahdi 57.

68 evident: he touched on the distinguishing feature of the faculty of imagination (Madina 10.1), the activity that it consists of (Madina 10.2-5), and the subservient function that it serves (Madina 10.9). 131 As a result of this investigation, the reader should now understand that the human being, however material, is not wholly subject to the temperatures and imprints of the sensibles; the intelligibles make possible the perfection of natural science, and it is in the realm of the imagination that theoretical truths acquire their potential manifestation. The result of an investigation into the soul, and into the relationship between reason and sensation, should lead to the recognition that reason is not itself ‘natural,’ that “rational principles also supply many things to natural beings other than those supplied by nature.” 132 What imagination and more specifically muhaka make possible is the inscription of supra-rational principles, such as justice, onto the natural world. Via the activity of muhaka , the rational principles are transcribed by the imagination into perceptions, objects, and things of nature. It is then through the activity of muhaka in the natural world (now overlaid with intelligibles) that the rational being who cannot access the perfect truth on their own is preserved from degradation and even have some hope of benefiting from the world. 133

In Tahsil as-Saadah al-Farabi introduces the city in the stark terms for which he is famous. The problem that is solved by the city is that the multiple needs of humans being cannot be attained without “exploiting a large number of [other] natural beings and until he manipulates them to render them useful to him for arriving at the ultimate perfection he should achieve.” 134 In other words, without exploiting other beings both as products and producers, human beings cannot attain the knowledge, understanding, comfort, and strength that they should strive for.

131 Al-Farabi re-iterates this procedure in Madina 17.1, with a far clearer emphasis on the ultimate arrival of the citizen of the city at the knowledge of the city itself.

132 Tahsil 18, Mahdi 23.

133 In the plainest terms: perfect knowledge of natural science and of the things of nature must include correct knowledge regarding the relationship between intelligibles and sensibles. (And since that relationship is constructed, there’s really nothing natural about any of it.) Such things are real, even if man must will them.

134 Tahsil 18, Mahdi 23.

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By the writing of Madinah , al-Farabi’s opinion of the city – or at least his description of its utility – seems to have softened slightly. While the Tahsil seems to focus almost exclusively on fulfilling the needs of the one who is in pursuit of his own perfection, in Madinah al-Farabi explicitly acknowledges that the relationships of mutual utility that characterize living in the city exist between and among all citizens.

Al-Farabi has become famous for his pragmatic approach to the science of politics. After all, it is not the gathering together into groups that makes rational beings distinct: “it is the innate nature of this animal to seek shelter and to dwell in the neighborhood of those who belong to the same species, which is why he is called the social and political animal [al-hayyawan al- madani ].” 135 There is nothing particularly praiseworthy or shameful about being a political animal, and there is nothing here to distinguish human politics from that of the wildebeest. Unique to the rational animal is the logical analysis of these decisions, and the application of intelligible principles that filter experience, and the speech in which both logical analysis and application of principles can be communicated within the community.

One might note at this point that the perfection of the rational faculty as the highest faculty and least subservient faculty does not mean that it is self-sufficient. Yes, the perfection of the intelligibles is in part derived from the fact that intelligibles acquired in the rational faculty do not serve as the matter for any other faculty. Yet al-Farabi presses the intelligibles back into service. Are the perfect intelligibles perfect in themselves, as al-Farabi seems to suggest in the philosophical portions of Madinah ? Or do they, and the rational beings in which they arise, remain imperfect for as long as they fail to achieve perfect manifestation as practical intelligibles?

Theoretically, the perfect theoretical truth is perfect in itself and for itself. But for al-Farabi rational truths and philosophy are always tethered to the necessity and necessities of the city. This is necessary for at least three reasons; first, because of the pragmatic need for a city

135 Tahsil 18, Mahdi trans. 57. This is distinct from the description of the human being as political in Aristotle’s Politics, which was probably unknown, or possibly known only in fragments, by Arabic translators.

70 organized in such a way that the philosopher has the material needs required for the exercise of his art. 136 Secondly, in addition to fulfilling the material needs of the people, the city is the condition of possibility for the training and education in what is good that enables the people to attain happiness. 137 And lastly, al-Farabi explicitly states that a purely is defective. He says that, “to be a truly perfect philosopher, one has to possess both the theoretical sciences and faculty for exploiting them for the benefit of all others according to their capacities.” 138 All three of these points are entirely valid, and al-Farabi goes even farther, suggesting that the philosopher who fails to exploit his knowledge for the benefit of others is either mutilated (bitra’ , lit. amputee, or perhaps more communicatively ‘disabled’) or useless (batil – alternative translations include ‘false and ‘cowardly’). 139 All of these arguments are valid, insofar as they draw upon a consistent theme in al-Farabi, that is, his continuation of the Platonic insistence that the philosopher cannot avoid the cave.

Unfortunately, the extent to which political philosophers have emphasized the importance of the practical or applied theoreticals, and their consequent focus on the importance of political science, has often come at the expense of thorough investigations of al-Farabi’s psychological/epistemological work. Scholars concerned with metaphysics and have often taken great offense at such readings of al-Farabi.

136 Madinah 16.2; for the inevitable decline and death of a city without philosophers, see Madinah 15.14.

137 Siyaseh Madanyah 83, Mahdi 43.

138 Tahsil 87, Mahdi 54. See also Tahsil 93, Mahdi 55-61; for the distinction between the mutilated philosopher as the one who engages in the theoretical sciences without being equipped to do so, and the false or useless philosopher, who masters the theoretical sciences without ever becoming capable of (or knowing that he is supposed to) make the insights so gathered serve the community.

139 Tahsil 93, Mahdi 5-61. The disabled philosopher as the one who engages the theoretical sciences without being equipped to do so, and the false or useless philosopher, who masters the theoretical sciences without ever becoming capable of making (or knowing that he is supposed to make) his knowledge and insights available for the improvement of the community.

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Dimitri Gutas in particular is well known for his criticism of how al-Farabi has been read by political thinkers. Gutas, whose attention to history and scholarly rigor has produced the seminal text on the transmission of Greek philosophy into Arabic, is unstinting in his criticism of those who identify a tradition of political thought in Arabic. 140 He has argued that there is, in fact, only a very limited tradition of political thought in the Arabic philosophical tradition (he excludes virtually all but al-Farabi), and that the notion that the relationship between politics or religion on the one hand and philosophy on the other is a dominant theme of Arabic scholarship is a recent, and “Orientalist” invention. 141

The claims made in the 20 th century that medieval philosophy was politically risky and inflected throughout by that risk were based, he suggests, on a combination of Orientalist prejudice and incorrect facts. Gutas details how the Arabic philosophers famous for having been persecuted were persecuted not for their philosophical beliefs but as a result of their political positions and the vagaries of political life. 142 The intimation of his critique is that, from a historical vantage point at least, we should separate the various roles these thinkers played: the “philosopher” must be separated from the “judge.” Yet it is not as simple as Gutas makes it sound to separate philosophical and political beliefs, particularly in the Arabic and Islamic tradition in which philosophical beliefs very early on transformed themselves into a political that led to the torture and detention of thousands. 143 While this is even more clear in the case of Ibn Rushd, even in al-Farabi we can see that al-Farabi recognizes the political ramification of his metaphysical and psychological investigations of the world; in other words, for al-Farabi, understanding the world and the nature of the people that inhabit it is essential to understanding how people can live together in the world. It is an under-reading

140 Gutas, Greek Thought, Arabic Culture.

141 Dimitri Gutas, “The Study of Arabic Philosophy in the Twentieth Century: An Essay on the Historiography of Arabic,” Journal of Middle Eastern Studies , Vol. 29, No. 1 (May, 2002), pp. 5-25.

142 Ibid, 20; 23.

143 For example, the Mihna. For sources on that see above, page 34 and notes.

72 of al-Farabi and his successors to suggest that their philosophical and political characters can be fully distinguished from one another.

Gutas presents as evidence two of the oft-referenced models of the persecuted philosopher, Suhrawardi and Maimonides. He argues that these thinkers were persecuted not for their philosophy but as a result of their political affiliation or religion. It is notable that he does not mention Ibn Rushd in this context, who was demoted, exiled, and his books publicly burned a decade before his death. Philosophy has always been bound up with politics – most benevolently as the teacher of kings, and more starkly in the interpretation of law and medical research, which are imperial ventures. 144 In fact, Gutas himself highlights the complex political factors at work in the translation movement that made these texts available in Arabic and the sometimes shaky position that philosophers held in relationship to the caliphs who had works translated for them, published their works, appointed them, paid them, and sometimes fed them. 145

More recent scholarship, and particularly the groundbreaking work by Deborah Black, has taken seriously the fact that politics is a constant theme in al-Farabi, and has demonstrated precisely why political philosophers have erred in not taking seriously the metaphysical and psychological detail of so-called “political works.” In Logic and Aristotle’s Rhetoric and

144 Not all of Gutas’ criticisms are wholly without foundation. His criticism of Leo Strauss’ reading of al-Farabi (in Strauss’ “Farabi’s Plato”) may be quite legitimate. Gutas refers to al-Farabi as “a particularly inappropriate philosopher if one wishes to document Strauss’ thesis,” that due to the precarious political position of the Arabic philosophers they often had to downplay or disguise their more radical theories. It is in fact difficult to ascertain where al-Farabi might be suggesting that such a multivalent is appropriate or necessary (although his emphasis on prudence forms a bridge with the principled backbone of Strauss’ theory of writing.) Strauss’ most explicit discussions of al- Farabi in “Farabi’s Plato” and “Quelques remarques” read al-Farabi through the lens of other thinkers– notably Maimonides and Ibn Rushd. Much of that work is insightful and stimulating–unlike Gutas, I’m not sure that what may have been a slight over-reach on this particular point invalidates either Strauss’ overall theory, or even casts serious doubt on Strauss’ other readings of Farabi.

145 Gutas, Greek Thought, Arabic Culture , spec. Chapter 4 and Chapter 6.

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Poetics , Black establishes the primacy of Aristotle’s Organon as the fundamental text of logic for the Arabic philosophers, and makes a well-evidenced case that both Rhetoric and Poetics were considered part of the Organon , and therefore as works of logic. Two terms are used by al-Farabi in referring to effects of logic: tasawwur (conception) and tasdiq (assent). For al- Farabi, to conceive of something “is to have their sketched in the human soul as they exist in truth.” 146 What is meant here is defined largely in relationship to the second end of logic: assent, or tasdiq . To assent to a proposition is to express agreement with or belief in that proposition and, as Black points out, tasdiq is predicated not upon obtaining certain verifiable knowledge, but upon the act of voluntary acquiescence that it requires. To obtain assent is to obtain someone’s agreement, regardless of whether or not that assent is based on “the objective truth of the proposition which is known.” 147

At the beginning of this investigation into al-Farabi, we noted that Richard Walzer’s translation of al-Medina made an interesting choice. Walzer translated the productions of the imagination as being potentially either “true” or “false.” The term that he translated as truth was sadiq . Reading sadiq as ‘trustworthy’ or ‘believable’, or even more loosely as ‘productive of assent’ changes the question regarding the imagination. It is no longer a matter of ascertaining how or why the imagination may go ‘wrong’, but of identifying the means by which it produces assent.

The analysis of muhaka in Chapter 14 of Madinah suggested that the activity of muhaka involves, in engagement with the natural world, the circumvention of conscious deliberation; engaged with the intelligibles, it translates that which is theoretical into something that can be engaged with on a material level. In both cases, the activity of muhaka involves the acquiescence of the soul. In acceptance of the rational intelligibles muhaka makes possible the instantiation of intelligible knowledge such that the communities that grow up in those imitations are held to, or led onto, the path of happiness and truthfulness. Such training or teaching of the population takes place through the laws and practices instituted by the virtuous king, on the one hand, and the virtuous religion, on the other. But undergirding the citizens’

146 Political Regime, 89.

147 Black, Logic, 76.

74 original acceptance of the law or of the practice is the act of , a consent evoked particularly by rhetoric, the primary and most effective means of political communication. 148

There are things in muhaka where are not to be found in mimesis , let alone in the English ‘imitation.’ Muhaka implies ‘speaking to’ or ‘speaking out’, different postures of persuasion. When influenced by the intelligibles, this “speaking to” out of the organizational faculty of the imagination convinces things that are utterly dissimilar at the level of reason – Justice and feeding the poor, perhaps – that they stand in relationship to one another. Even more remarkable is the fact that this is not, for al-Farabi, a purely manipulative and exploitative move. The relationship to law, to duties, to particular ideals and practices, should in fact stimulate the cognitive development of those who do not grasp Justice, but know it is bad to steal.

As it is affected by perception, however, muhaka is far more dangerous. When motivated by perception, “speaking to” can short-circuit the process of deliberation and even will. In practical terms, muhaka motivates the activity of the will to specific actions based on the inclinations of the appetite in combination with the common sense and imagination, before any desire for a certain outcome or deliberation upon it is undertaken. The example of sleep in important because it obvious that in sleep the appetitive and deliberative faculties are at rest – sleepwalking and nocturnal emissions are physical manifestations of muhaka’s influence when it is unchecked by the other faculties. And yet, as an essentially communicative activity, muhaka becomes more influential on the actions of human beings when they are in fact awake.

In the Book of Poetry and Book of Dialectic , al-Farabi refers consistently to muhaka as the activity that the rhetorician or poet is engaging in. The master of these arts should be able to present a convincing syllogism to his audience. He or she should be able to present the

148 As noted above, in Madinah 17.2 the evocation (muhaka ) of symbols is the best way to communicate a truth to a large audience; it is also the most effective, since the commonly understood symbols of a people are precisely the most convincing.

75 syllogism in such a way that the audience assents to the final term. 149 The speaker’s intention is not to establish the objective truth of the premises or of the proposition, but to garner the assent of his or her audience. The means that the rhetorician and poet use to encourage that assent is the evocation of a reaction to the premises and conclusion which is not subject to objective verification and which bypasses the (often appetitive) deliberation on those premises and their relationship to one another. The mimetic activity of the imagination makes possible the activity of rhetorical speech, the bringing together of two, perhaps highly charged but logically unrelated premises with the goal of obtaining assent to another proposition.

In the best-case scenario, the rational faculty and the imaginative faculty have the dialectical relationship of form and matter. The imaginative faculty, particularly because it is one step removed from the sensibles, advances its perceptions as one of possibilities. Things could, after all, always be different: the organization of perceptions in the imagination is subject to the sensibles and the appetites associated with given sensibles, as well as the demands of the intelligibles and the appetite for intelligibles. That input affects the compositions and contours of the associations constructed by the imaginative faculty, which are then available as the potential framework for the material evocation of intelligibles.

But even as the imagination makes possible the communication of intelligibles (a faulty communication but one that is essential to both the intelligibles and which serves the same goal as philosophy), it also makes possible the corruption of the soul. If the of the soul is to ascend through the level of knowledge to the understanding of pure intelligibles, via sensation, deliberation, appetite, and will, the right connection made at the right time can halt the soul at the level of a nutritive or sensitive animal. Persuasive speech can also convince people that something is a fait accompli when it has not happened yet, and by doing so cause it to happen

149 As Black details magnificently, the difference between the imaginative syllogism and the demonstrative or dialectical syllogism is precisely that it takes the form of the enthymeme; the enthymeme might be best described as a syllogism in which the central premise is absent. In addition, al-Farabi, Ibn Rushd, and Maimonides are all clear that the imaginative syllogism (and for that matter, the poetic syllogism) are only effective insofar as they have a reservoir of “widely accepted” truths to draw from.

76 without calling in to the equation whether or not such an outcome is actually desired or prudential. Political rhetoric is dangerous for precisely this reason: it relies absolutely upon the virtuousness of the politician, because the very same type of speech can lead those who are persuaded towards what is beneficial or that which is harmful. 150

What I have proposed here is a radical rethinking of the role that muhaka plays in al-Farabi’s notion of the imagination, using as my source-texts al-Farabi’s last words on the Aristotelian structure of the soul. Such a re-reading requires attentions to al-Farabi’s neglected ‘philosophical’ texts, but not at the expense of the political treatises that he bequeathed. Rather, setting aside the unproductively competitive arguments about whether al-Farabi is a political thinker or a philosopher, and especially the charged question of whether politics or philosophy is of paramount importance, results in a new way of approaching al-Farabi’s politics. By taking up the theoretical philosophy seriously as only being complete when it can be articulated in and in practice, it becomes apparent that politics, the queen of practical arts, is also an epistemological exercise, ideally one in which theoretical knowledge is linked with practical knowledge and, by virtue of the unique human capacity of speech, in some way manifest in the material world.

In summation, one might suggest that the idea of the imagination in al-Farabi is more firmly central to what it means to be a human being. As in Aristotle, elements of the imagination are present in animals. But animals lack the power and the activity that stimulate deliberative imagination – the power of theoretical reason, and the power of speech. Without speech, animals cannot evoke the knowledge gained by theoretical reasoning in a way that is understandable to the population in general. Persuasive speech is what convinces a population of the correctness or goodness of a law, and ideally that law is one that improves the ethical and intellectual character of the citizens – e.g., laws regarding how long one must remain in school spring to mind, or ordinances against littering or in support of recycling and composting programs. But, as with Aristotle, rhetoric itself is still dangerous. It still aims not at the truth but at persuasion itself, and if the rational knowledge is in fact faulty (whether in good or bad

150 The perfect governor may lead people towards what is true by means of deceitfulness, and the ignorant or corrupt to what is bad by means of what is believable.

77 faith) then the persuasive argument resulting from that knowledge can lead the populous to support laws that do not in fact incline towards their own betterment – and here springs to mind laws promoting the use of fracking to extract natural gas, based on fears of economic dependency and joblessness, or laws demanding the deportation of un-documented people, support for which depends on casting those individuals in a negative light.

What we have seen in al-Farabi is a strengthened role for imagination, and a much clearer linkage between the imagination shared by all and the capacity for rational thinking that belongs only to some, and in differing degrees. If rational knowledge can be misleading or bad, as a result of corrupted evidence or corrupt intent, then it is not overly complicated to construct a persuasive argument that will convert the audience not only to bad and ugly actions, but even worse, will convince people that the (faulty) rational knowledge is in fact a reliable basis on which to base actions. Religion, at least to some extent, helps to create in a population communal habits which either in themselves lead (by their own reckoning) to the betterment of the soul, or at the very least commands a level of obedience and adherence to traditions that lessens the ability of emotions and desires to revolt and create the chaos that is an inevitable companion to revolution; after all, it is harder to throw a population to the wolves if a religious and text-based law commands that one care for guests, visitors, and strangers; it is difficult to set up an economy in which one person’s debt makes another person richer if there are strictures on the application of interest to loans.

It has long been argued that al-Farabi places all knowledge subordinate to philosophy, and in one sense this is doubtless true. He says it in fact, in Kitab al-Huruf ; philosophy is prior in time to religion, which is prior to politics. Yet I think it is a mistake to assume that because al-Farabi assigns a chronological hierarchy to these activities, which means that they are simply subservient to one another in the way of the faculties of the soul. Philosophy may precede religion, but it is also inevitably limited by the customs and habits that religion normalizes. Religion may precede politics chronologically, but the relationship between religion and politics is both symbiotic and antagonistic. Finally, law may be preceded by all these things, but it is simultaneously a result and a border that limits what the philosophy, religion, or politics of the moment seems to demand. Regardless of their chronological hierarchy philosophy, religion, politics, and law are interwoven at the level of practical life. In his ideal ,

78 politics is not divorced from the truth but rather the art that attempts to instantiate the truth on a material level. If the goal of politics is the education of the audience, they must have some capacity for reason, some imagination, and the ability to speak out, whether in favor of an action or in opposition to it. It is notable that in Madinah , the worst form of government is the one in which the people become increasingly stupid and unable to ask important questions. (Madina 17.5-6)

There is no real distinction between al-Farabi’s politics and his epistemology – politics relies upon an epistemological understanding of the city and its population. But as al-Farabi also notes, the corrupt legislator or the corrupt regime is capable of degrading a population just as quickly if not faster than a good legislator can improve matters. (Madinah 18.11, 19.1-14) Imagination is important to al-Farabi because the imaginative organization of perception is capable of being influenced by both sensible and rational input – it is therefore the condition for human beings to become more perfect and an opportunity for corruption.

As we will see in the chapter that follows, Ibn Rushd concurs with al-Farabi’s concern that the population will be misled – and because he was a very different person in a very different time, his concern is greatly magnified. As a result the imagination that al-Farabi strengthened and extended as a potential handmaiden to reason will become, in Ibn Rushd, an even less trustworthy servant of reason. But in al-Farabi, for at least a moment, there is a power in the human soul that dares to dream. They may dream the impossible, but at least they are capable of dreaming – and that means that however bad things get, it is always possible to change directions. Changing directions on a downward slope is particularly difficult, but if we are willing to think about our instincts and desires and call them into question, it is at least possible.

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CHAPTER 3

To To Be a Court Philosopher: The Dangers and Benefits of I magination to an Empire

Summary : Ibn Rushd lived centuries after -al Farabi, and this chapter takes seriously the impact of the historical context on Ibn Rushd’s writing. Subject to a certain amount of self -censorship, certainly, Ibn Rushd wrote in a time w hen it was obvious to him that philosophical discussions had flesh and- -blood consequences. Ibn Rushd, who desired a return to Aristotle after the permutations of intervening centuries, spoke of the imagination as something that may be dangerous, but which is of inestimable value in attempting to communicate with people – a people who share in the imagination will understand symbols and language in the same way, forming a more homogenous audience for address. If the public element of rhetoric concerned Fa-al rabi, Ibn Rushd was more concerned with its pedagogical and legal consequences . Rhetoric, which ideally evokes the shared imagination, was something that teachers and doctors should be concerned with because it allows them to communicate on a level that eyth share with students and patients. It is therefore not simply important in the ‘public’ sphere, but essential to the goals of educat ion.

the In the period after -al Farabi’s death, there was explosion of philosophical and scientific thought in the Islamic empires – the -so called Golden Age of Islamic philosophy. By the 10th century, nurtured by the heir to the Umayyad Caliphate who fled to the I berian Peninsula when his own family was deposed, Córdoba was a center of intellectual life along the lines of Baghdad, but far more diverse and dynamic. In Córdoba, Islamic rule had to contend with the Christians – however scientifically backward – in the north and with intra -Islamic challengers to the west and south. At this nexus different confessions existed, and -co existed a to a greater or lesser extent. Córdoba drew the learned and the studious, with a result that the scientific advancements, architect ural styles, hygiene, and literary and philosophical traditions of Córdoba were the awe of the still -shivering Northerners, and a niggling threat to the the Abbasids in the East.

Ibn Rushd, with whom the Arabic tradition of commentary on Aristotle reached its apogee, was born in 1126, and was five when the Umayyad Caliphate of Córdoba collapsed, ushering

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the in the ‘ ta’ifa ’ period of city states and more -or- less autonomous principalities. By the time the Almohads rode into town in the 1140s, Ibn Rushd was a boy of around 15, which in context was a perfectly adult age. Quite a bit of scholarship on the -so called Golden Age of Arabic thought has associated the end of the Golden Age with the arrival of the Almohads. 151 To a certain degree such an association is warrante d – the age between 950 and 1140 was golden not simply because of the Islamic thought that it produced, but because of the remarkable multi -cultural empire which nurtured that thought, an empire in which Jewish and Christian thought flourished and where co nversations between thinkers from different religious sects were ongoing in the fields of science, philosophy, and literature. Jews and Christians – and, albeit in a different manner, Shiite Muslims – had, for all their subservient and theoretically unstab le status, little fear of being forced to renounce their faith on pain of death. That tolerance, famously termed convivencia , evaporated under the fiery religious rhetoric of the Almohads. The distinction in the treatment of minorities reflects an aspect fo the theological difference between the Almoravids and the Almohads; for the Almoravids, a literal reading of the Qu’ran meant adhering to the laws concerning dhimmis who were People of the book, i.e., Jews and Christians. For the Almohads, those rules ddi not apply to most of the Jews and Christians, and as non -members of the state could be forced to convert or face the death penalty. 152 The death rate among non -Muslims skyrocketed with the

151 Studies of this period, whether they agree with the statement or not, cannot seem to avoid dealing with the claim, which was perhaps advanced most eloquently by Maria Rosa Menocal, The Ornament of the World: How Muslims, Jews, and Christians Created a Culture of Tolerance in Medieval Spain , New York, NY; Back Bay Books, 2002.

152 It is interesting to note that the reason that Christians and Jews in al-Andalus were not protected by law under the Almohads was that their faith was seen as an expression of their political loyalties: hence polemics about Christians referred to their political and possibly treasonous attachment to the marauding Christian northerners. Further reference to the results of the Almohad conquest can be found in the first pages in this work in Chapter 4 on Maimonides as well as in Kennedy, Muslim Spain, 40- 54; Kraemer, Maimonides , New York, NY; Doubleday Press, 2008: 94.

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Almohads. 153 The influence of Ibn Tumart and the Asha’ri and Zahiri s chools of law that influenced his thought, had a trickle -down effect on the population they ruled – claiming to adhere to the Qur’an above all, the Almohads did not consider critical analysis ( ) as a particularly reliable form of ascertaining the law, and particularly dangerous when applied to the critical analysis of Divine texts like the Qu’ran. The Maliki school was (and is) considered to be literalist, but the fact is that there is more than one kind of literalism.

What is sometimes unacknowledged in historical works that document the massacres of religious minorities by the Almohads is that the change of regime was – while less deadly – not particularly pleasant for the cosmopolitan Muslim inhabitants of Andalusia either. 154 The Almohads brought wit h them legal and theological institutions that required a great deal of adjustment from citizens of the Caliphate who had their own legal, philosophical and theological traditions. While Ibn Rushd’s illustrious grandfather and father were judges in the Mal iki tradition (the tradition that Ibn Rushd was also trained in), he had to come to his own accommodation with the Zahiri legal school of the new rulers. (see below )10p. Initially a participant in Caliph Ma’mun’s culture -building project in Marrakesh, Ibn Rushd was subsequently appointed judge of Seville (the Caliphat’s capital), personal physician to Ma’mun’s successor, judge of Córdoba , and finally exiled in disgrace to Lucena, the once -

153 Recent scholarship has called into question whether the Almohad persecutions should really be viewed against the idealized example of Andalusian convivencia , drawing attention to the inequalities endured by Jewish and Muslim Almoravids. While this scholarship is an important corrective, it should not obscure the fact that Abrahamic religious minorities fared better in the Andalusian Empire than they had previously, and better under the Ummayads and Almoravids than they would for many hundreds of years. For some criticisms of the utopian perspective on Andalusia, see Mark R. Cohen, “The ‘Golden Age’ of Jewish-Muslim Relations: Myth and Reality”; Dario Fernandez-Morera, The Myth of the Andalusian Paradise; Muslims, Christians and Jews under Islamic Rule in Medieval Spain , Wilmington, DE; Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 2016: pp.95-100.

154 Amira K. Bennison’s history of the Almoravid and Almohad empires is critically important in filling this gap, particularly her discussion of the roots and branches from which the various religious, legal, and political differences emerged – see specifically pp. 120-133. See also Stroumsa, p. 57.

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Jewish town outside Córdoba to which Maimonides’ family had fled when the Almohads first reached that city some fifty years before. 155

Over the course of his 62 years Ibn Rushd produced an absolutely remarka ble corpus of philosophical, legal, and political works – over eighty texts in total, ranging in subject from law, to politics, to religion, to the commentary and explanation of Aristotle that earned him the the sobriquet, Great Commentator.

the In the almost two centuries that elapsed between the death of -al Farabi and the beginning of Ibn Rushd’s career, the Islamic world evolved dramatically. Chief among the challenges that Ibn Rushd faced was the emergence of a school of thought which argued that reason and phi losophy were not only insufficient for understanding the most important truths about the world, but were in fact incompatible with knowledge of God, Shari’a, and the Caliphate. 156 Ibn Rushd devoted a great deal of his efforts to challenging -al Ghazali’s crit ique of philosophy, “Al -Ghazali,” Ibn Rushd writes, “has mistaken the accidental for the essential,

155 This footnote has two purposes. First of all, it is to remind readers that the violence and trauma of the Almohad empire for Jews and others is not being ignored when we treat the empire change as fearsome, dangerous, but not quite totally apocalyptic. There is no attempt here to gloss over the persecution of the Jews under the Almohads – frankly, such desire flies in the fact of historical evidence. (See Joel L. Kraemer, Maimonides, pp.91-110. But much of that need not be discussed until the following chapter. Second, this footnote suffices to address the so-called ‘question’ of Ibn Rushd’s Jewish ancestors. Delfina Serrano Ruano advances as argument that while it is impossible to know for a fact that his ancestors were Jewish, it is also impossible to prove that they were not Jewish. Frankly, much like most scholarship concerned with Maimonides’ purported conversion, it takes 17 pages of a tree trying to prove a negative. The best that can be said about the essay is that it reinforces why knowledge of logic is essential to philosophy.

156 In point of fact, Caliph is a title that in its origin connotes both civil and religious authority – in the first generations after the death of the Prophet Muhammad, there was only one Caliphate since the Caliphs were considered the religious leaders of the Muslims worldwide. The declaration of the Caliphate in Córdoba was a part of the breakdown of this system; by the time of Ibn Rushd, the ‘caliphates’ had multiplied, including the Fatimids, Almohads, and Abbasids to the east.

83 and forced on the philosophers inclusions which they themselves regard as impossible.” 157 -Al Ghazali’s errors were multiple, but can be broadly sorted into tw o categories: he failed to grasp the logical methods necessary to attain certain knowledge, and he failed to understand that statements about the Divine must be understood to be equivocal. This second fault was the most egregious – for example, -al Ghazali’ s claim that the ancient philosophers denied God’s knowledge of particulars is a fundamental misunderstanding of the point that the Divine does not ‘know’ in the way human beings can know. 158 In the Almohad Caliphate where Ibn Rushd was a star, his affirmati on of philosophy had to go hand -in- hand with an affirmation of the ways that philosophy supports and increases faith – if we care to state a positive about Ibn Rushd’s late life-in- disgrace and exile, it might be that Ibn Rushd did not do very well at asse rting the indebtedness of philosophy to religion, at least in the eyes of his Muslim contemporaries. As Divine as the Law might be, Ibn Rushd still maintained that rational analysis, often by means of syllogism, was a necessary tool for correctly understan ding Divine Law under certain circumstances. 159

has It has become a commonplace in scholarship on Ibn Rushd to question whether Ibn Rushd’s real allegiance lies with philosophy or religion. 160 Is his affirmation of their compatibility a stratagem of self -preservation, or a goal that he strove for? The present work is not particularly concerned with this question. While the tension between philosophy and theology naturally emerges in Ibn Rushd’s work, he built his analyses against the backdrop

157 Ibn Rushd, Incoherence of the Incoherence , 87.

158 DT 40.26-41.14; see also Incoherence of the Incoherenc e, Proof 1.

159 This way of articulating Ibn Rushd’s theological affinities points to a different kind of ‘Jewish Averroes,’ the kind with links to the mu’tazilites , and, via the chain of transmission, with the Mihna. For more on the Mihna, see Kennedy, Muslim Spain ; Nawas, Caliphal Authority , pp.67-69; Chapter 2 below, pp. 34-36 and Chapter 4 above, pp.106-108.

160 There has been a lot of scholarship on this topic, and indeed almost no discussion of Ibn Rushd can (or should) avoid addressing this question. Two texts of particular note are Ivry’s introduction and commentary on Averroes’ Middle Commentary on DA and Butterworth’s analysis in his edition of Ibn Rushd’s Decisive Treatise (DT xvii-xlii, 47-56).

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of clear statements regarding their compatibility. This claim of compatibility stands as background to the many complicated and interesting suggestions that Ibn Rushd makes. 161 In one of his few works that is neither close commentary nor legal code, the Decisive Treatise , Ibn Rushd raises the question of philosophy and religion in a way that seems to assume, and proceeds to establish, their compatibility – any particular weight to philosophy comes from the fac t that philosophical methods, and particularly that of the syllogism, is necessary for understanding the Qur’an adequately, since the Qur’an speaks in the words of man, words that can be understood literally or in various figurative or imaginative says. To be clear: while, yes, it is sometimes necessary to give two different people different answers to the same question, both of those answers should be good, in the sense that they lead the person towards the truth or goal and are persuasive. 162

This chapter illuminates the relationship between Ibn Rush ’sd classically ‘philosophical works,’ largely made up of his commentaries and summaries of Aristotle, and works considered more political, specifically the Decisive Treatise . Following the trajectory of Ibn Rus hd’s imagination ( takhayyul ), from the commentaries on Aristotle to the Decisive

161 It is a premise of this work that there is a tension between religion and philosophy, but rather than attempting to assuage that tension it considers how Ibn Rushd’s philosophical and political works negotiate it.

162 Ibn Rushd is a central figure in Leo Strauss’ studies of medieval philosophy and Strauss’ formulation of the theory of ‘esoteric writing.’ The debate around the theory of esoteric writing and communication is a debate between those who believe that it means lying to a lot of people (and this group is subdivided into those who think that is a good idea or not) and those who believe that Ibn Rushd (and Strauss) were referring to the capacity of multiple truths to exist at the same time. Giving two different responses to the same question does not necessarily involve lying, but simply follows from the recognition that different people understand different explanations. There is elitism at work, in that the more dependable kind of knowledge and understanding is something that Ibn Rushd does not believe many people are capable of (although it is notable that Ibn Rushd is more concerned with the lack of training people receive rather than their fundamental incompetence). But the elitism of the rationalists is a hierarchy which can be climbed – in that way it is far less elitist than illuminationist thought that depended on a completely Divine decision and left no path to attainment for those who were not Divinely blessed.

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Treatise , demonstrates the impossibility of maintaining a disciplinary firewall between Ibn Rushd’s philosophical and political works – for Ibn Rushd, as for -al Farabi and Ari stotle, the fundamental structure of human society was the city, and that understanding of the world inflects and is reflected by his psychology. 163 The chapter that follows conducts a close reading of Ibn Rushd’s commentaries on two specific passages from A ristotle’s De Anima concerning the imagination. The insights of philosophy concerning the human soul and the structure of human cognition reveal keys to public communication and education. Unlike -al Farabi, Ibn Rushd knew, intellectually and experientially , that there is no way that the philosopher can separate himself from politics. The first half of what follows consists of a close examination of Ibn Rushd’s commentaries on passages from Aristotle’s De Anima . The second section examines the role that imag ination plays out in Ibn Rushd’s discussion of the methods of communication and persuasion to be used in pedagogical and political contexts.

Part I: Ibn Rushd on Aristotle’s De Anima

The Great Commentator is an appropriate descriptor for Ibn Rushd. 164 Ibn R ushd wrote three commentaries on the De Anima , a trilogic tradition that he maintained for many of his other

163 That the centrality of the city was part of what distinguished Aristotle and his Arabic readers from Plato is a case made by Leo Strauss in City of Man, Chicago; University of Chicago Press, 1964, specifically in “On Aristotle’s Politics,” pp.13-49 and “On Plato’s Republic,” pp.50-138. The centrality of the city is also taken up by Muhsin Mahdi in his analysis of al-Farabi’s Tahsil as-saadah and On The Compatibility of Plato and Aristotle .

164 This is not only because of the sheer number of commentaries that Ibn Rushd composed, but also because he regarded his own project in the commentaries as close reading of Aristotle that would reverse the tendency to multiply the faculties of the soul that he identified in some of his predecessors (this is a particularly criticism of Avicenna). Ibn Rushd wanted a return to the Master, and that meant regarding imagination as something other than a ‘faculty’ existing alongside the nutritive, sensitive, and rational faculties. But Ibn Rushd does refer to the ‘imaginative power’ (quwwa mutakhayyilah ), and understanding its relationship to the other faculties is something that he, like Aristotle, must struggle with.

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analyses of Aristotle. 165 In DA 3.3, Aristotle provides what appear to be relatively clear definitions of what imagination is and is not – yet, as we observed in Chapter 1, those statements are less clarifying than they might at first appear. ( DA 419a30 )33- In his Middle Commentary on the De Anima , Ibn Rushd stays close to Aristotle’s text, writing that,

… ﺍﻟﺘﺨﻴﺎﻝ ( φαντασια ) ﻫﻮ ﻏﻴﺮ ﺍﻟﺤﺲ ( αισθησεως ) ﻭ ﻏﻴﺮ ﺗﻤﻴﻴﺰ ﺍﻟﻌﻘﻞ ( διανοιας ). 166 ﻭ ﺍﻟﺘﺨﻴﻞ ﻻ ﻳﺤﺪﺙ ﺩﻭﻥ ﺣﺲ ﻭ ﺩﻭﻥ ﺍﻟﺘﺨﻴﺎﻝ ﻻ ﻳﻜﻮﻥ ﻓﻬﻢ ﻭ ﻻ ﺭﺍﻯ ﺭﺍﻯ ﺍﻳﻀﺎ … ﻓﺄﻣﺎ ﺃﻥ ﺍﻟﺘﺨﻴﻞ ﻟﻴﺲ ﻫﻮ ﺍﻟﺘﺼﻮﺭ ﺑﺎﻟﻌﻘﻞ ﻭ ﺍﻟﺮﺃﻯ ﺷﻴﺌﺎ ﻭﺍﺣﺪﺍ ﺑﻌﻴﻨﻪ… 167

…imagination is not sensation and not distinguishing intellect. The imagination does not occur wi thout sensation 168 and without imagination there is no understanding or opinion either…The

165 In general, though some original Arabic texts have been lost, Ibn Rushd composed a Summary/Epitome, a Middle Commentary, and a Long Commentary on each work of Aristotle’s. The Middle Commentary was usually the one in which Ibn Rushd stayed closest to the Aristotelian text, while the Epitomes were genuinely summative. While the two commentaries do not conflict, Ibn Rushd says things far more plainly in his own voice in the Epitomes, while his divergence from Aristotle in the Middle Commentary requires close attention to the text, in precisely the matter demonstrated on the pages that follow.

as (ﺭﺍﻯ) These Greek terms are the ones used by Aristotle in DA 3.3, 427b1. I have rendered ra’i 166 which I will therefore render as opinion ,(ﻅﻦ) opinion, since this conforms to later Arabic usage. Thun or even conviction – thun is one of the host of Arabic words that would commonly be translated as ‘think’; each word indicates the level of conviction that accompanies what is being said. Thun is the term used in sentences that begin “I’m pretty sure it is the case that...” while I am not entirely pleased with this division, it seems to be the only option for maintaining linguistic consistency and not transgressing the conventions of the Arabic language (DT 9.14).

167 MC 102-103; 264-65.

168 This is an iteration of the (oversimplified and isolated) phrase of Aristotle that, “There is no image without sensation.”

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imagination is not pictures in the intellect, and opinion is some thing else of its own. 169

Ibn Rushd’s concern is to explain the same problem that Aristotle attempts to parse ; if the internal senses of the soul are sensation (αισθησις), opinion (δοζα) knowledge (επιστημη), and intellect (νους), where does imagination reside, and from what power of the soul does it spring? 170 Ibn Rushd, following in the steps of the Master, takes pains to tread the same difficult and inconclusive path as his Master.

Ibn Rushd restates Aristotle’s five proofs that imagination is not reducible to a form ( bi -al quwwa ) of sensation or actual (bi -al fa’il ) sensation. S ensation, he emphasizes, is either potential sensation restrained from actualization by the absence or interference of certain conditions – the power of sight, for example, is potential in the darkness. Actual sensation is fully functioning – like sight wh en there is light and no other impediment. 171 Yet, he notes, the imagination that occurs in sleep is neither potential nor actual. 172 The other proofs that Ibn Rushd cites highlight how each attempt to embed the imagination in a specific faculty of the soul in sufficiently explains the motion of the imagination or requires something

169 MC , 102p/264, translation adapted for the sake of linguistic consistency, and because the idea of interpretation is linked with the existence of opinion

170 This enumeration of the faculties in Ibn Rushd’s Middle Commentary (p. 104/267) corresponds to that of Aristotle in DA 3.3, 428a3-5. It is notable that at this point in his original text Aristotle leaves open the possibility that the imagination may be a ‘state of mind’ (κρινομεν) rather than a faculty outside of (ﻗﻮﺓ) ’δυναμις); Ibn Rushd, on the other hand, suggests that imagination may be a ‘power) .(ﻗﻮﻯ) ’the ‘faculties

171 MC 268. Note also that the term ‘quwwa’ used in this discussion is the same as the word rendered as ‘faculty’ when discussing the ‘nutritive faculty’, ‘appetitive faculty’ and ‘imaginative faculty’ among others.

172 Ivry translates this claim of Ibn Rushd as “something may occur in imagination which is neither implies not that something may be the ”ﻗﺪ ﻛﺎﻥ“ potential or actual].” However the Arabic elocution] case, but that it is the case.

88 impossible of those faculties. 173 The most intuitively appealing home for the imagination remains sensation – what better place for the movement of images than the faculty that perceiv es the objects that are the grounds for this images? Even if they are false imaginings, they take root in some sensation. Because the relationship between images and things is so intuitive, Ibn Rushd must carefully explain why sensation cannot be the sourc e of imagination. The test is sensation, insofar ,as “sensation is always honest whi le imagination is mostly lies .” 174 Insofar as sensation is unimpeded, it is believable – error occurs not in sensation itself but because of the conditions under which sensa tion takes place. However, imagination, regardless of whether it is being affected by other faculties, is capable or even likely to lie. Imagination is not simply capable of occurring in the absence of a sensible object, it is also capable of operating in spite of a perception or in the absence of another. 175 I can imagine that these words are being typed on a typewriter or written in the library of Alexandria, despite the fact that I have a keyboard and a view of Toronto laid out before my eyes. The falsity of that imagination does not indicate any impediment in my perception per se. However, in rational animals, i.e., human beings, the rational faculty is capable of distinguishing the imagination (which is stimulated by desire for a particular writing enviro nment) and the world that I am materially occupying. The better -trained the rational faculty, the more likely that such imaginations are not actually assented to, but can be examined and analyzed – this is important work, but it relies upon carefully disti nguishing between the imagination and the reality. The weaker the faculty of reason is, the more the line between what is imagined and what is material blurs; in some sense, what is conventionally called ‘insanity’ shares properties with precisely this ina bility to disting uish external and internal life .

173 Proof 2: Sensation requires presence of a sensible object, while imagination does not. Proof 3: Imagination, unlike sensation, is not a power of all animals. Proof 4: Sensation, uncorrupted, reflects reality while imagination is mostly false. Proof 5: Conventions of language; we do not use ‘imagine’ as a synonym for see or sense. (MC 269)

174 MC 104.11.

175 MC 105p.271

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This inclination of the imagination towards ‘falsehoods’ also marks its fundamental difference from knowledge ( nous ). 176 Of the four faculties of discrimination that Aristotle originally identified as the pot ential loci of imagination, assent ( doxa , thun ) is the only faculty of which the imagination might be a manifestation because assent, like imagination, can be either true or false . Yet it is in the manifestation of assent that the true complications surrou nding imagination manifest themselves.

Assent necessarily entails what Aristotle calls pistes and Ibn Rushd calls tasdiq .177 It indicates a form of assent that requires an act of judgment, and agreement to the truth of the proposition or premise. The use of the term tasdiq marks what Deborah Black identifies as “a shift in emphasis from the veracity of the cognitive act as a re presentation of some object to the way in which the cognition itself is accepted by the knower.” 178 In order for tasdiq to be given, the one who gives it must judge that their assent is justified and correct. Thus, if imagination is a movement of opinion, it would seem to follow, based on the fact that imagination is also an animal faculty, that all animals have opinions. But this is not the case – non -human animals do not have opinions as such, because having an opinion involves assent and to to and judgment of a p roposition. In the form of a syllogism the problem appears clearer:

A) A) Every creature with an opinion supposes that opinion to be true.

B) B) Opinion is the result of rational assent to a proposition .

176 This is practically a verbatim quotation from Aristotle on the part of Ibn Rushd at MC 270, corresponding to DA 428a8.

177 Black, Logic , 73 For more discussion of tasawwur and tasdiq , see H. A. Wolfson, “The Terms Tasawwur and Tasdiq in Arabic Philosophy and their Greek, Latin, and Hebrew Equivalents,” in The Moslem World , vol. 33 (1943, pp.1-15; Deborah L. Black, Logic and Aristotle’s Rhetoric in Medieval Arabic Philosophy (Leiden, 1990); Miquel Forcada, “Ibn Bajja on Tasawwur and Tasdiq : Science and Psychology” in Arabic Science and Philosophy , vol. 24 (2014), pp. 103-126. See also Uwe Vagelpohl, ’ Rhetoric in the East: The Syriac and Arabic Translation and Commentary Tradition , ed. H. Daiber (Brill 2009), pp.66-70, 130-131.

178 Black, Logic , 76.

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)C )C Thus, every creature with an opinion reasons . ( MC 270 )

Since by Ibn Rushd s’ criterion sheep have imagination, positing that imagination is the motion of opinion or desire influenced by the rational faculty means ascribing to animals the same power of distinguishing reality as human beings. 179 And yet Ibn Rushd concludes his discussion of 3.3 by suggesting that there is, in fact, a distinction between the imagination of animals and the imagination of intelligent (‘ aql ) creatures. Imagination – which can motivate behavior when it is a movement of the appetite – ctsa as a sort of instinct that preserves un intelligent creatures from harm. But, he writes, “it is places in the intelligent animal ( -al hayyawan -al ‘aql )180 to aid him when the intellect in overwhelmed by changes like sickness or sleep or something else.” nIb Rushd’s analysis of the imagination in the Middle Commentary is, if anything, less flattering than Aristotle’s orginal – but Ibn Rushd does mark out the distinction, which Aristotle does not raise until later – between different kinds of imagination. ( MC 107, p.275 ) It is not until 3.11 that Aristotle teases out a distinction between the sensitive (αισθητική) phantasia shared among all animals and the deliberative ( ( λογιστικη ) pha ntasia that belongs only to the rational animal. DA( 433b29 )31-

The sensitive imagination is stimulated by appetite and desire, which arise from an inclination towards or away from a certain thing. It is not distinguished by moderation or , or the ability to recognize exceptions – thus the propensity of some animals to tea until they make themselves sick, or to harm themselves unnecessarily when fleeing from a perceived threat. 181 While fleeing wildly might on some occasions actually prevent the sheep from being eaten by the wolf, it is far more likely that the sheep will edi from over -

179 Galston; Parva Naturalia pp.78 ff. ﺍﻟﺤﻴﻮﺍﻥ ﺍﻟﻌﺎﻗﻞ 180

181 DA 434a4-15, MC 107-8p. 275. Such pitfalls also await human beings who let their imagination, in the most literal understanding of the phrase, run away with them. The importance of the rational faculty in relationship to the imagination, and the role that it plays in Ibn Rushd’s hierarchy of human understanding, will be considered later in this chapter.

91 stress. 182 Though it may incidentally aid the sheep in not being eaten by a wolf, it is rarely correct, and the effect of such imagination is almost entirely lacking in reason.

According to Aristotle, the deliberative imagination ( boule utike ) be longs only to the creature of reason or logos. ( DA 434a6 )9- This rational capacity of the human being acts upon the imagination in two directions simultaneously. Aristotle writes:

As we have said, sensible imagination is found in all animals, but deliberat ive ( βουλευτικη ) imagination only in the rational (λογιςτικοις ); to decide whether one shall od this or that calls at once for reason ( λογισμου ), and one must measure by a single standard; for one pursues the greater good ( διωκει ). This implies the ability to combine several images into one. This is why imagination is thought not to involve supposal, because it does not involve supposal that is based on syllogism ( συλλογισμου )183 , whereas supposal involves imagination. ( DA 434a5 )13-

Ibn Rushd’s analysis of this passage in his Middle Commentary is close to the Aristotelian passage, but not exact. He writes,

182 This is a real thing. Sheep have very delicate hearts and if they are chased by something that they perceive as threatening, they are very likely to simply drop down dead.

183 Burnyeat (Theaetetus ), pp. 90-100, makes the case that συλλογισμου should not be read as syllogism, since that implies the formal structure which will be discussed below. While his argument is interesting, it does not account for the fact that the syllogism was considered the basic form of the valid argument, and that the connection between the συλλογισμου and the enthymeme is in fact a connection taken up and expanded significantly in Arabic philosophy. See Vagelpohl, p.69, compare Black, Logic , p.156-178. There is the additional point that Ibn Rushd described the process of reasoning .ﻗﻴﺎﺱ ,under discussion here (συλλογισμου) using the verbal form of the Arabic word for syllogism (MC, 327). For a description of qiyas that illustrates its similarity to the syllogism, see Kamali, Principles of Islamic Jurisprudence, specifically Chapter 5 and Chapter 9, pp.273-286.

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…animals must have desire ( orexis, shahwa ) and therefore imagination….but opinion is found only in the rational animals 184 since the influence of one of many imagined things over others is the the work of the imagination via the cognitive faculty. 185

Imagination could not initially be classified as a movement of supposition since supposition requires cognitive discrimination that is absent in animals. However, Aristotle’s distinction between imagination that is motivated by appetite, and imagination that is acted upon by reason, makes it conceptually possible for rational creatures and non -rational creatures to share in a power whose effects are dramatically different. For the rational creature the imagination provides a body of images that can be used by reason. While the imagination is moved by sensation and appetite, rational animals have a “deliberative faculty that can conquer desire,” 186 allowing them to take cognitive stock of the images produced in the imagination. Aristotle suggested that deliberative imagination facilitates the selection and prioritization of images according to which may lead to the ‘good’.

Ibn Rushd is in many ways a faithful reader of Aristotle, and as such he inherits the Aristotelian problematic of the imagination: what is this movement in human beings which refuses to fit neatly into any given faculty, yet which is affected by and capable of disrupting or influenc ing their operation? Discussions of the imagination are centered around the capacity of living creatures to not only to remember things, but to recall them in such a way that they may be modified and organized in new ways as well as the seemingly human abi lity

184 Ivry’s “Glossary of Terms” in his Hebrew critical edition of Ibn Tibbon’s translation of the De with ra’i , ‘opinion,’ and doxa. This is interesting since the Hebrew da’ati is used דעת Anima , identifies to describe those with knowledge, or the studious in religion.

185 MC 130, para 327. Ivry’s translation reads “…animals must have desire and, hence, imagination…. Deliberation, however, is found only in a rational animal, since preference for one object of the imagination over other perceived and imagined things is due to the activity of the cognitive faculty.”

Ivry’s translation .ﻗﻮﺓ ﻣﺮﻭﻳﺔ The term that Ibn Rushd uses to refer to the faculty that conquers desire is 186 .(MC 327) ﺭﺍﻱ renders as ‘deliberation’ this term, as well as

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to innovate, not to mention adapt. 187 The imagination, which for Aristotle offered a possibility of thinking things that were not and for -al Farabi marked the moment when reason is impacted (and sometimes overwhelmed by) sensation, is for Ibn Rushd a lo gical and communicative problem. Insofar as deliberative imagination engages in judgment, it participates in the formation of opinion and the desire to support that opinion by action. The imagination is therefore of great concern not only to philosophers how venture to understand the nature of the human soul, but to the politicians charged with the care and perfection of bodies and souls .

is It is difficult to understand the nature of the imagination in Aristotle and the Arabic inheritors his of his work, and thi s is precisely because what is referred to as imagination involves movements of thought and sensation that don’t seem to fit into the bifurcated structure of sensitive and cognitive faculties often associated with Plato and the Divided Line. The imaginatio n complicates the hierarchy of the faculties and simultaneously links and distinguishes rational and non -rational beings. While it is interesting to note how challenging the imagination is to the structures for understanding the soul advanced by philosophy , this does not in itself make imagination important or relevant, except within the closed world of those systems. To understand why imagination is important in Ibn Rushd’s thought one must take into account that he was both a philosophical and a political thinker. His ‘philosophical’ works were widely read by the community of legislators, religious leaders, judges, and rulers – including the Ca liph himself. Ibn Rushd was imma nently aware of the fact that his philosophical work would be read in light of his torical, religious, and political affiliations in which ‘reason’ was anything but a value -neutral assumption. Despite his awareness of the eagle eyes trained on him, Ibn Rushd composed traditionally philosophical commentaries and a major defense of philoso phy ( Tahafut -al Tahafut ), legal works drawing directly on Islamic law and practice ( Bidayat -al Mujtahid ), and even works that, like the pseudonymous Rhetoric to Alexander , seem to be more personal, more general, and more advisory. This is the case of the Decisive Treatise , and it is in this text that Ibn Rushd most explicitly stands on

187 It could be argued that human beings are in fact better at innovation than they are at adaptation.

94 his own, without being able to claim that he is simply reiterating or attempting to explain the words of another.

The opening of Ibn Rushd’s Decisive Treatise 188 is devoted to establishing that the study of philosophy and logical sciences are permitted, or even required, according to law of Islam. In the world of Ibn Rushd generally, and more specifically following the Almohad victory in Andalusia, the law of Isla m was the law of the land not only in application but in determining the process for ascertaining what law should be applied and how. What space was available for other regimes of knowledge was determined by the extent to which those regimes were necessita ted – or at least compatible with – the Law of the faith. Thus, while Ibn Rushd’s primary focus in his commentaries is on philosophical questions that appear to be more or less unrelated to specific theological doctrines, the justification for such a study necessarily involves establishing that it is at least permissible, and hopefully required, by the religious texts whose authority is unquestionable. Lest contemporary readers are overly concerned by this hierarchy of sources, and lest their contemporary i nclinations towards free expression are offended, it is worth reminding those readers that the current world is not so different. The modern citizen of the United States is amenable to any number of legal arguments, but for the most part is deeply offended by such arguments or pedagogical programs that they perceive as contradicting the fundamental texts of the nation – in the case of the United States, the Constitution and its Amendments. National conversations about ethics and , clothed in the gar b of legal cases concerning marriage equality and the limits of governmental power, are consistently referred back to this founding scripture, and legislation regarding these issues is judged (and consequently either authorized or discarded) against the cr iterion of whether it is compatible with the original scripture and founding document upon which the unity of the community in based. 189 This does not mean that revealed sources are

188 Ibn Rushd, The Book of the Decisive Treatise Determining the Connection Between the Law and Wisdom, translated with introduction and notes by Charles E. Butterworth. Provo, Utah: Brigham Young UP, 2008.

189 The distinction between constitutional literalists and interpretivists (though the division can go by many names) is in some ways both structurally and substantially similar to the difference between the

95 the same as modern constitutions, particularly insofar as some constitutions , and particularly that of the US, affirm free speech even about the constititution itself – but the document does come to achieve a status different from all other sources of civil religion.

the In the aftermath of -al Ghazali’s virulent critique of philosoph y, and faced with the increasing power of the dialectical theologians, Ibn Rushd had to make a case and for the permissibility of reading thinkers who were not members of the faith. His case is made very quietly and very pragmatically, calmly, and with qui te a bit of generosity. There is no reason to throw out a good tool, he says, simply because one might have a question about the craftsman who produced it – and in the case of knowledge, it would be simply impossible for knowledge to advance if contemporar y scholars refused to use and build upon their predecessors. Therefore,

If we find that our predecessors in former nations have reflected upon existing things and considered them according to what is required by the conditions of demonstrations, it is perhaps obligatory for us to reflect upon what they say about that and upon what they establish in their book. Thus, we will accept, rejoice in, and thank them for whatever and we will alert to, warn against, and ;(ﻣﻮﺍﻓﻘﺎ ﻟﻠﺤﻖ) agrees with the truth .…(ﻏﻴﺮ ﻣﻮﺍﻓﻘﺎ ﻟﻠﺤﻖ) excuse them for whatever does not agree with the truth (DT 6)

Perhaps the single most powerful tool that Aristotle bequeathed to his inheritors was the syllogism, the very means by which logic could be used to extend knowledge by utilizing what is already known. The syllogism, and more specifically the demonstrative syllogism, helps to supply answers to both theoretical and practical questions.

In order to establish the importance of philosophy ( falsafa ) and the wisdom ( sophia or hikma ) that phi losophy can provide, Ibn Rushd must first establish that philosophy, as the search for wisdom using logical methods, does not contradict the foundational document of

Maliki school of the Almoravids and the Asha’ri/Zahiri law of the Almohads; both claimed to adhere to the literal meaning of the Qur’an, but their definition of literalist methods and literalism itself was distinctive to each. For more on the contrast, see Bennison, 248-253.

96 the Muslim community. 190 Ibn Rushd writes that, “The activity of philosophy is nothing more than examination of existing things and consideration of them.” ( DT 1) But although philosophy includes all the disciplines of science whose objects are the things of the world and whose goals are greater knowledge of those objects, philosophy also has a l arger mandate. The knowledge of the things of the world is not sufficient; on top of understanding the laws of aerodynamics, motion, and force that explain the object that we know of as a ‘tennis ball’ and its potential trajectory, philosoph y must also con cern itself with what, beyond the objects themselves, are indicated by the object. In contrast to -al Farabi, Ibn Rushd draws directly upon the law of the land, the Qur’an, in order to establish the necessity of of philosophy and specific philosophical methods .

the In the opening of the Decisive Treatise , he refers to what is beyond the object (though one might as well say what is ‘behind’ or ‘above’ the object) as “The Creator.” ( DT 1) This term , sa’na’ ,191 is a reference to the Power “who created the heavens and the earth.” But at the same time it is an equivocal term, one that might be applied equally to one who creates a table from wood, a cooking pot from clay, or a unified political body from a loose con glomeration of individuals. It is not one of the 99 traditional names of , though the traditional list does include a number of epithets that might convey Ibn Rushd’s intended meaning: -al Khaliq (the creator), -al Bari (the maker) and -al Musawwir (the designer) to name just three. 192 While some recent scholarship has identified 200 or more names, even those that include sa’na’ offer no citation from the Qur’an or hadith to support

190 At times in the Decisive Treatise Ibn Rushd uses the transliterated Arabic word for philosophy, falsafa , and at times the Arabic term for wisdom, hikma . He also distinguishes, as will be discussed below, between ‘philosophers’ or filosoof ’ and ‘men of wisdom,’ hakimin . However, the nature of the distinction is somewhat unclear; it is not simply that the Arabic philosophers use falosoof when speaking of a Greek or non-Muslim thinker. Ibn Rushd, when discussing the art of wisdom (hikma ) suggests that it is impossible to perfect the art of pursuing wisdom without acknowledging and studying the work of ‘Ancient’ and non-Muslim thinkers. (DT, 8-9) ﺻﺎﺍﻧﻊ 191

192 The existence of 99 names is derived from a hadith of Abu Hurairah recorded in Sahih Muslim and widely accepted.

97

In emphasizing the relationship between ob jects in the world and that which its inclusion. 193 By using a term which emphasizes the relationship between objects in the world and a creator that is also utterly different from the objects, Ibn Rushd has already begun to build the framework within which philosophy is tno only compatible with, but necessary to, knowledge of the Divine.

Philosophy and the Law have the same goals – to lead to knowledge of what is true and good and the perfection of the human soul. Given that both have the same goals, the next question must be the extent to which both discipl esin (wisdom/ hikma and law/ fiqh ) share in method. Ibn Rushd takes it as a given that both disciplines are concerned with understanding the truth, but a desire to know the truth says nothing about how well or badly each d iscipline facilitates that understanding. From the perspective of logic it is not the stated aims of a method but its actual that reveals affinity with another method. In the case of philosophy and Divine Law, the locus of the affinity is the s yllogism – but the disciplines do not, as we will see, share the same syllogism. The syllogism in the study and understanding of Divine Law has a long and illustrious lineage in Islam. While Ibn Rushd provides a detailed description of different types of s yllogisms in his works on demonstration, rhetoric, and dialectic, the Decisive Treatise offers a much broader definition: syllogistic reasoning is the drawing out of the unknown from the known. ( DT 2.22 26- ) His evidence for the authority of the syllogism within Islam is drawn from specific passages of the Qur’an as well as from the tradition of legal reasoning and interpretation of which he himself was a part. ( DT 2.4 )21- Since the death the of the Islamic Prophet Muhammad – if not before – the community had fo und it necessary to engage in interpretations of the Law in order to derive ruling s for situations that were not explicitly described in the text.

193 Molla-Djafari, Hamid. Gott hat die schonsten Namen: islamische Gottesnamen, ihre Bedeutung, Verwendung und Probleme ihrer Übersetzung . Frankfurt am Main; New York: P. Lang, 2001, pp. 235- 36. The most authoritative inclusion of sa’n’ in the ‘names of God’ is that of Imam al-Qurtubi, an Andalusian (and, like Ibn Rushd, Maliki) scholar of great renown who lived in the period just following Ibn Rushd (Imam Abu 'Abdullah Muhammad ibn Ahmad ibn Abu Bakr al-Ansari al-Qurtubi, pp. 341- 344.) Al-Qurtubi includes as-Sa’n’ under the names which indicate the unique inventiveness of the Divine in the act of creation.

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The aims of Divine Law ( shari a’ ) are twofold: the communication of true knowledge and the communication of pr actical knowledge. True knowledge is defined as the understanding the Divine and the things of the world (metaphysics and natural science). Practical truth is knowledge of what leads to happiness and away from unhappiness. Practical knowledge itself is of two kinds: knowledge that pertains to the behaviors that lead towards or away from happiness, and knowledge of the states or virtues in relationship to happiness. Practical knowledge concerning behavior is jurisprudence ( fiqh ), and theologians therefore ha ve a great deal of authority regarding the interpretation of verses that concern such behaviors. ( DT 23.18 23- ) Yet the text of the Law contains many verses that are unclear, and who is entitled to interpret those verses, and consequently such important mat ters as the nature of Divine knowledge and the creation of the world, is a matter of great contention. In order to answer the question of who is entitled to interpret which verses, Ibn Rushd returns once again to the Qur an’ – but his analysis of the Qur an’ and his answer to the question is radical enough that for this moment at least Ibn Rushd seems to have decided to cease worrying about placating his his critics.

The verse cited by Ibn Rushd as evidence of the multiple meaning s that are present in the Qur an’ read He“ has sent down to you the Book, in which there are fixed verses and verses which are likenesses, and none may understand them but God and those who have knowledge. They say, God is great! ”194 A conventional rendering of this verse would punctuate it rather differently: He“ has sent down to you the Book, in which there are fixed verses and verses which are likeness es, and none may understand them but God. And those who have knowledge say, ‘ God is great ”.’ 195 In Ibn Rushd s’ elocution, those who have

194 Qur’an 3:7; DT 10.13-20. For Ibn Rushd’s use of the same verse with different punctuation, see DT 20.10-19.

195 Ibn Rushd’s punctuation is permissible, but it is awkward. By ending the sentence after “God and those who know,” the “they” which praises God in the next sentence would seem to include both those who know and God himself. It need not mean that, but the conventions of language would lead to such confusion. In addition to Western readers, some experts in Islamic law have concurred with, or accepted as viable, Ibn Rushd’s more awkward and more inclusive rendering. For example see Kamali, Principles of Islamic Jurisprudence , p.139.

99 knowledge ( hukm ) have the ability to interpret the verses whose lack of clarity see ms to require interpretation as well as verses which appear to be clear. 196

Ibn Rushd reads the verse to be saying that it is only those well -versed in knowledge who are capab le of the interpretation of both fixed and ambiguous verses. He is cognizant of the fact that his interpretation of the verse is unusual, and follows it by making the case that no consensus has ever been reached about what is described in the verse: the li mits to the interpretation of theoretical matters. This is because such a consensus would have to be absolute rather than contingent, and therefore predicated on a set of conditions that it is impossible to meet. 197 The impossible condition for determining hatt a certain verse should no longer be interpreted (i.e., that its meaning is apparent and fixed) is that such fixity assumes that the knowledge of the meaning of the verse is and must be known to all, regardless of the differences in their understanding. And this, according to a hadith of Ali‘ ibn Abu Talib cited by Ibn Rushd, is a situation that never arises due to the very existence of those differences. Thus Ibn Rushd s’ alternative interpretation of this verse is necessitated by the existence of a cert ain group of people who would, on the basis of permission being granted to those ‘ well -versed in knowledge ’ to interpret, assume that they themselves were entitled to engage in such interpretation. While it is necessary to disclose practical matters to all people (for example, how business or marriage contracts are to be conducted) because these matters pertain to the way that they live, those who lack the skill, capacity, or probity to

196 This is in fact quite controversial in the Islamic context, as it seems to allow for the interpretation of crimes that are often classified as ‘hudud,’ or for which a very specific punishment is described in the Qur’an itself.

197 Some of these are the standard grounds for consensus in Islam, such as the complete agreement of all of the learned men of a particular era. Genuine and full consensus is a principle of law, based on the saying “my people will not err”; this has been interpreted to mean that consensus is legally binding. However, the principle of consensus or ijma’ is hotly disputed, as different schools of law and contexts define ‘consensus’ as necessarily absolute, consisting of the agreement of the wise only or of everyone, and/or necessarily including even the learned of the past (thus rendering the possibility of legally binding consensus effectively impossible.) See Kamali, Principles of Islamic Jurisprudence , Chapter 5, 228-263.

100 engage in the analysis of important theoretical matters should not be e xposed to those questions. ( DT 11)

To demonstrate the existence of different classes of people who should have different access to theoretical and practical questions and be restrained from interpretation to difference degrees, Ibn Rushd returns once agai n to the Qur an:’

“Put on the path of your Lord by means of wisdom, beautiful preaching, and rhetoric that uses what is best.”

« ْ ﺁﺩ ُﻉ َ ﺇﻟﻰ َ ﺳ ِﺒ ِﻴﻞ َ ﺭ ﱠﺑ َﻚ ِﺑﺂﻟﺤ ْﻜ َﻤ ِ ﺔ َ ﻭ ْﺁﻟ َﻤ ْﻮ ِﻋ َﻈ ِ ﺔ َﺁﻟﺤ َﺴ ِ ﻨَﺔ َ ﻭ َﺟ ِﺎﺩ ْﻟ ُﻬﻢ ِﺑ ﱠﺂﻟ ِﺘﻰ ﺃَ ْﺣ َﺴ ُﻦ »

Qur’an 16:125

Ibn Rushd divides human beings into multiple classes – demonstrative, dialectical, and rhetorical. 198 The Qur’an is unique, according to Ibn Rushd, because it is capable of communicating ithw all three groups of people simultaneously and thereby provide demo nstrative, dialectical, and rhetorical evidence within the same statement. But what this means, of course, is that the text often appears to say things which are amibiguous, or which are understood differently by different people. These classifications ref lect the method of communication that is most effective with different groups of people. Demonstration, as the scientific method of proof, evidently uses the logical syllogism as a proof -structure. Dialectical syllogisms differ, not in form but in the cont ent of the premises – dialectical premises are both examined and widely accepted ( mashhura ). But rhetorical arguments have far a far less immediate relationship to logic – the premises are prone to fluctuation, and the conclusions are often unstable. For a lon g time, rhetoric and sophistics were considered literary, rather than logical, arts – but attention to their place in Arabic philosophy reveals that, for Ibn Rushd, rhetoric and sophistics operate logically. However, the structure of a rhetorical or sophis tical argument uses a logic which is expressed differently from a

198 DT 11. The three classes are distinguished by the means by which they under the world and can engage with others – by means of demonstration ( ), by means of dialectic ( ) or by means of rhetoric ( ).

101 demonstrative or dialectical argument. In all cases, the argument uses the syllogistic form – that is, the derivation of a conclusion from a major and minor premise. The syllogism used in rh etorical and sophistical argumentation is fundamentally imaginative, and as such it aims to elicit a particular kind of assent.

No lawgiver, be they lawyer, governor, or king, succeeds unless in addition to crafting law he can garner the assent of those w hom the law is directed towards. Knowing the conditions of a valid marriage is only abstractly important or meaningful unless couples about to be married grant their assent to those conditions and agree to their fulfillment. Almost as important as correct interpretation and understanding of the law is the ability to generate assent ( tasdiq ), and generating that assent is arguably far more difficult than the original process of interpretation. Drawing on the Qur’an, Ibn Rushd identifies the three different m ethods that can be used in order to acquire meaningful assent to a proposition or interpretation: demonstration, dialectic, and rhetoric. 199 These methods of argument and persuasion correspond to classes of people who are most likely to be persuaded by one fo those methods, and all three of them use syllogism (albeit of dramatically different types) in order to construct a convincing argument.

The syllogism is composed of three parts: a major premise (A), a mino r premise (B), and a conclusion (C). A dialectic al premise begins by identifying an agreeable premise: to return to the example of chapter one, the syllogism begins with a major premise such as, “ Socrates is a human being ” (A). If the interlocutors agree to this premise, they may then proceed to discuss what can be known about the second term of the major premise: what is true about every human bei ng. They may agree to a large point, like all“ human being are mortal ” (B1), het to or to het seemingly smaller claim that “ hemlock is poisonous to human beings ” (B2). The conclusion from the first minor premise is that Socrates, as a human being, is mortal – and this is an important and interesting fact to establish. But dialectical syllogisms are also

199 Qur’an 16:25 cf. DT 8.25-36; DT 8.10-16, 18.26. The three methods correspond to the three types of people previous mentioned. For Ibn Rushd’s defense of the syllogism (qiyas ) itself as fundamental to both philosophy, wisdom, and religion, see DT 4-5; See also Kamali, Principles , Chapter 8, pp.264- 270.

102 capable of addressing much more complicated questions. The con clusion derived from the alternative syllogism (A: Socrates is a human being B: Hemlock is poisonous to human beings) could give rise to a number of conclusions. For example,

C1 C1 Dri nking hemlock will kill Socra tes

C2 C2 The Athenians intended to kill Socrates

C3 C3 Socrates should not drink hemlock.

All three conclusions are logically viable derivatives of (A) and (B2). Conclusion C1 is a factual statement derived from het preceding pieces of evidence ; it is logically identical to the conclusion reached by proceeding from (A) to (B1). But C2 and C3 are conclusions that imply a certain amount of interpretation of the preceding premises. After all, what if the Athenians did not know that hemlock was deadl y? Perhaps it was not their intention to kill him, but to encourage him to flee or change his opinions under the threat of death. And C3 is in fact the conclusion reached by Socrates’ own student, Crito – ni Plato’s Crito , Socrates famously disagreed with Crito on this exact point.

That demonstration an d dialectic are logical forms argu ment is evident from their definition Ibn in Ibn Rushd. From a philosophical perspective , the demonstrative argument is the most perfect form of proof. Demonstration, after all, is primarily the presentation of scientific information (such as the overwhelming universality of gravity, for example, or the relationship between loss of eyesight and high blood sugar) such that it leads to the establishment of an independent fact that si generally indisputable (all other factors being normative, the ball will fall down; diabetics need to limit their intake of simple sugars). The logic of demonstration is quite apparent. A demonstrative argument is based upon indisputable facts – it emplo ys no emotive tools to achieve assent. Demonstration basically consists of pointing to an object. But that scientific evidence often fails to be convincing is a truism of the present time as much as it is a truism of Ibn Rushd’s era. The distinction betwee n correlation and causation, for example, is the product of much disagreement in our

103 own time on issues as varied as vaccination and climate change. 200 Scientific evidence of the importance and safety of vaccinations, and of human effects upon the environmen t, are evidentiary arguments concerning ‘what is true’ and practical arguments that advocate a particular type of behavior as a consequence of this evidence. And yet it is not always the scientific evidence that leads to the desired change in behavior. As accurate as demonstration may be, it is not particularly convincing to those who, for whatever reason, deny the stated facts. 201

Ibn Rushd’s example of where demonstration can go wrong is the case of a doctor who must convince his patients to accept a certa in form of treatment. The doctor may explain to the patient why a certain type of behavior or medication will have a salutary effect on the patient’s health, but if he is too informative regarding the cause and effect the doctor risks alienating the patien t. Instead, Ibn Rushd urges the doctor to speak ot the patient in terms that she or he or she can understand and which, most importantly, will convince the patient to follow the prescribed course of treatment. A detailed description of the patients illness and sit physiological effects and comfortable advice about what the patient should do both aim at the same result, but a good doctor will be able to ascertain which type of explanation will obtain the the desired result most reliably. ( DT 27.27 -28.25 )

Thus, while d emonstrative arguments are the most accurate and, at least on objective terms, the strongest, they are not necessarily the most effective – and law, be it human or divine, must be judged not only in relationship to the truth but in relationship to how effe ctively it can communicate that truth and institute laws regulating communal behavior in the name of

200 In the first case, a perceived correlation between certain illnesses and vaccination has been perceived by some as an indication of a causal relationship, with the result in an anti-vaccination movement that is significantly undermining herd immunity around the world. In the second case, those who dispute climate change argue that the rise of industrial societies and alternations in global weather and temperature are merely correlations without a provable causal relationship (scientific evidence to the contrary).

201 While Ibn Rushd has little tolerance for this kind of willful ignorance, he is forthright about its existence and the need to combat it.

104 that truth. In order for the law to accomplish these functions, it must engage the population, most of whom Ibn Rushd thinks cannot understand demonstratio n, via dialectical and rhetorical methods of arguments. It is in dialectical and rhetorical arguments that the imagination plays the most important role.

According to Aristotle, the purpose of dialectical disputation is both cognitive and epistemic: the i nterlocutors seek to arrive at agreement on basic principles, and do so in a way that those basic principles are understood and accepted by all involved. Aristotle uses the term tek ne , or ‘art’ to describe dialectic and rhetoric. In the context of the Nic omachean Ethics , Aristotle defines art as a union of the practical and intellectual faculties that exercise judgment on the basis of repeated and cognizable experiences. 202 The difference between the assent obtained through dialectical syllogism and the assen t obtained by rhetorical syllogism is that in the case of dialectic the argument is based upon premises that are both widely accepted and examined. In the case of rhetorical arguments, the premise is widely accepted but not closely examined.

For Ibn Rushd, dialectic is the first refuge of the scientist who realizes that demonstration is failing to garner the assent of his or her audience. ( DT 24. 13-1 ) Western thought is most familiar with dialectic as the aim of the (the Socratic dialogues are in fact an ideal and problematic example of dialectical argumentation, for reasons that will be discussed below). In broad strokes, the dialectical method is a conversational method that seeks to garner assent to the correct viewpoint by inviting one’s interlocutor to put forward his or her own position, and, by consistently and convincingly correcting that position, guiding the interlocutor to the correct conclusion. The premises of the dialectical syllogism are widespread and generally known, rather hant the certain truths of demonstration. 203 The Socratic dialogues, which appear to illustrate a conversation about just such generally accepted ideas, have often been criticized for not being a dialogue in any meaningful way – they preclude, both narrativel y and philosophically, the possibility that Socrates will be proved wrong by his opponent and convinced of his opinion. And yet for those who study the

202 1140a1-23, Metaphysics . 981a6-8.

203 Talkhis Kitab al-Jadal, 3.

105 dialectical method and the nature of dialectical proof, it is imperative that precisely this possibility be foreclosed. Dialectic is not conversational – it is a method of convincing. A masterful dialectician does not engage in full and open conversation with his or her adversary, but on the contrary is capable of making the conversation appear open and flex ible while inexorably guiding the adversary in the desired direction.

Dialectic bridges the gap between the austere and even incommunicable truths of demonstration, and the effective (if sometimes manipulative) assent acquired via rhetoric. 204 The Arabic term commonly used for dialectic is jadal , a word meaning dispute or contention. Jadal invokes the Socratic method made famous by Plato’s dialogues, in which two interlocutors challenge one another on their definition and understanding of an id ea, term, or issue, and attempt to arrive, by means of critique and questioning, at an understanding that they find mutually acceptable. 205 If readers of the Socratic dialogues have long been frustrated by Socrates ’ patronizing tone, it is because Socrates si being patronizing. Insofar as that parochialism is transparent it may indicate a flaw in Socrates ’ method, but it also indicates an important and often overlooked feature of dialectic: dialectic is not a conversation between equals. It is a conversation between one who knows the truth, and one who is either in error or unsure; the proper result of dialectical proof is for the one who knows the truth to triumph, and bring the erring or hesitating student to accept that truth as evident.

204 Incommunicable in speech; while Plato’s Socrates might physically demonstrate the Truth by leading someone out of the cave, his words to the cave denizens could not in itself communicate the nature of the truth.

205 Such a popular definition also bears little resemblance to the Socratic method as it is actually on display in Plato’s dialogues, in that (as generations of frustrated students have noted) there is never really any possibility that Socrates himself will be convinced of his opponents’ position. (Parmenides may be an exception to this rule.) For an interesting discussion of the fallacy involved in conflating dialectic and dialogue with conversation, see Daniel Boyarin, Socrates and the Fat , 204. While Boyarin is correct to critique placing an illusion of genuine debate over what is essentially a hierarchical and instructive interaction, there is an importance to that hierarchical and instructive interaction, at certain points in one’s education and cognitive training, which should not be underestimated.

106

Dialectic is the p enultimate form of logical thought and discourse, and as such it is geared toward s establishing the interlocutor s’ assent to the truth. In dialectical dispute the strength of the proof is not dependent upon the eloquence or conviction with which it is argu ed, or upon how persuasive the interlocutors may be: it is dependent upon the relative truth of the position being argued, and the eloquence of the one who is arguing for the truth is simply a means to an end. A dialectical argument looks like a conversati on between two people, who, via sharing and testing ideas, arrive at conclusions that they might never have reached alone. But in fact, according to Ibn Rushd, the purpose of dialectical argument from a pedagogical perspective is simply the training of the dialecticians in the construction of arguments that cannot be disputed. 206

The assent obtained via the dialectical syllogism is less stable than the truth provided by means of demonstration, largely because assent to that truth is predicated on the skill of the dialectician. While the audience may be convinced of the truth and rightness of a position by a master of the art, there is no guarantee that they will remain firm in that position if another, even more masterful dialectician, seeks to reverse their o pinions. In other words, the type of knowledge produced by dialectic is somewhere in between conviction ( -al yaqin ) and assent ( ( tasdiq ). 207

The fundamental distinction between ‘certainty’ and ‘belief’ as types of agreement in Arabic philosophy has to do with whether they remain constant, and the solidity that they provide as foundations for the future. Certainty regarding a proof admits of no argument: one who is certain of gravity will regard the argument that a dropped object might fall upwards scornfully – they may pay no attention to such a claim, they may ridicule the claim, but their own certainty regarding gravity will not be undermined. Assent to a proposition can be withdrawn or made conditional. If one assents to the omnipresence of gravity, one is tills willing to consider the possibility that gravity might not apply. (And, arguably, this type of

206 Talkis Kitab al-Jadal , 21.

207 Deborah L. Black, “Knowledge (‘) and Certitude (Yaqin) In al-Farabi’s Epistemology,” Arabic Sciences and Philosophy , vol. 16 (2006), pp. 11-45. See also Black, Logic p.54 and infra; Talkhis Kitab al-Jadal, 2.

107 assent is more useful in the pursuit of scientific truths than actual certainty, since the history of science does seem to indicate that almost nothing is a lways and forever the case, under all circumstances). One of the fundamental differences between the types of argument that are relevant to Ibn Rushd ( burhan , jadal , and khataba ) is that each one produces – when used well – a different type of agreement.

Dialectical syllogisms that lead to erroneous conclusions are particularly dangerous because the conclusions pose as truths. The convictions created by dialectic are particularly immoveable, and an erroneous dialectical syllogism runs the risk of creating in the audience an immoveable and incorrect conclusion. It is, for the most part, the responsibility of the dialectician to ensure that he is conducting correct dialectic, for it is his own fault if his audience becomes convinced of an untruth. Ibn Rushd g rants a great deal of weight to dialectical proofs, and reserves an important role for dialectical arguments as a pedagogical tool. And yet, it is worth remembering that like his predecessors Aristotle, -al Farabi and Ibn Sina, he does not regard it as a m ethod that provides the kind of assurance of a demonstrative proof, which is based on a premise that must be accepted. The dialectical syllogism relies upon a ‘widely -accepted’ premise, and while it is often true it is difficult to be absolutely certain of that truth.

This form of argument is the first that takes into account the incredible flexibility of human understanding and recognizes that even human beings, the rational animal, are capable and often likely to behave illogically and refuse to assent ot facts. Dialectical argument is necessary because sometimes arriving at the truth is possible via assumptions that are incorrect; at its core, dialectic is the art of leading someone to the truth by means of things which they already accept as true, and ti is in this way that Plato’s Socratic method is genuinely dialectic: it relies, always, upon ascertaining the first possible moment of agreement, and using that as a jumping off- point to arrive at a true conclusion (even if Socrates rarely arrives at such a conclusion in the course of the dialogues). Dialectical arguments have a unique capacity to address questions which are political and ethical rather than purely theoretical, or in which part of the issue in the material manifestation of theoretical know ledge. Using the dialectical syllogism we can address questions about the right way to behave, or the nature of gods, in ways that both communicate to a different

108 audience than demonstration can reach and that simplifies , for that audience, the link betwee n the theoretical truth and the practical truth, the idea and the behavior to which it corresponds. While dialectic aids in the education and organization of human society, its foundation is shakier than that of demonstration. When an argument relies upon a widely held belief which is not itself the product of demonstration, it is always possible (and perhaps is it is eventually likely) that circumstances will undermine that belief, and as a result the argument and whatever values or behavior the argument was able to advance.

If demonstration uses scientific and established facts to increase the base of human knowledge, and dialectic uses widely -accepted premises to obtain assent to the premises necessary for demonstration, what is the redeeming value of rheto ric? In his discussion of rhetoric, Ibn Rushd defines it as convincing speech, capable of persuading an audience of the correctness of a particular opinion or position. 208 It is also understood as the kind of speech most popular (and effective) among politic ians, for it is by means of rhetorical flourishes that the politician inspires support from citizens, the vast majority of whom are best suited to rhetorical arguments. 209 It is by means of rhetoric that the politician convinces the citizens to support his i nitiatives and reject those of his opponents; it is by means of rhetoric that the necessity of a military campaign is established in the minds and hearts of the population. The first distinction between dialectic and rhetoric is therefore one of quantity: the question and- - answer format of dialectic (however staged it might be) is limited to a relatively small group of interlocutors. The dialectician can respond to only a few people at a time; the rhetorician can can pursue his goals before a crowd. 210

Rhetoric si a logical art, and as a logical art it uses the syllogistic form of argument. However, while dialectical premises are popular and examined to some degree, rhetorical premises are just popular (which does does not mean that they are or must be untrue) . Th e

208 Talkhis Kitab al-Khatabah , 1

209 DT 8.26

210 Ibid; Averroes Middle Commentary on Aristotle Rhetoric in Three Arabic Treatises on Aristotle’s Rhetoric , Translated by Lahcen Elyazghi Ezzaher, pp72-181: pp.82-86 [sections 1.1.11-1.1.17].

109 persuasiveness of a rhetorical argument is based upon how appealing it is to the audience, not upo n any presumption to validity of the premises – rhe toric appeals to passions like “fanaticism, mercy, fear, or anger… it is evident that this also inclines a man to assent. ”211 In the contemporary world, one of the most common premises deployed in rhetorical address to the citizenry concerns the necessity and goodness of freedom; the definition of freedom may be troublingly vague to those who would prefer a mor e dialectical argument, but an appeal to freedom (and by purely popular association, to choice and independence) is something that politicians have been using to great effect for quite a long time. A rhetorical syllogism, taking off from a premise that is appealing, utilizes the loyalty of the audience to a particular premise as a way to herd them towards support for the desired conclusion. Rhetoric relies, fundamentally, on the rhetorician’s knowledge of the emotional and habitual commitments of his audien ce and his ability to understand and use the commitments of his audience. It is simultaneously the most effective, the most public, and the most dangerous form of logic. It not is not far from the rhetorical premise that ‘Freedom is good,’ which seems so obvio us, to the minor premise that, ‘X threatens our freedom,’ and the consequent conclusion that ‘We must fight X.’

Perhaps even more importantly, the unique feature of the rhetorical syllogism is to permit some of the elements of the syllogism to be elided ni their presentation. This form of the syllogism is the enthymeme or informal syllogism, in which elements of the syllogism which are considered so obvious that they need not be repeated, or even imply distracting, may be omitted in order to enhance the pe rsuasiveness of the argument. In the example given above, the attention of the audience might very well be drawn to the minor premise, ‘X threatens our freedom’ – someone might inquire what evidence establishes that X threatens our freedom. But if we simpl y swallow the minor premise, the argument reappears:

We have a right to be free.

Therefore, we must fight X.

211 Talkhis Kitab al-Khatabah 33.

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The enthymeme is a dramatically simplified form of syllogism, and its simplicity is in many ways the source of its persuasive power – it evokes a powerful enough commitment to the premise, the conclusion will be agreed to without question. Should such an argument be presented to a population that is sufficiently insecure about their freedom, it is entirely possible, according to Ibn Rushd , that the y would not even inquire as to the relationship between X and our freedom. This is a particularly dark version of the enthymeme (though perhaps justified by -on going events). The enthymeme can be non -violent, constructive, and genuinely beneficial. For exa mple, one could make the argument that:

Waste is bad

Therefore, we must recycle.

the If the masses assent to this argument, the result will be a reduction in landfill waste, and perhaps a positive effect on the environment. But the form of the enthymeme allows the rhetor to circumvent any potentially complicated debates about the current s tate of the environment and the effects of massive landfills on methane production and climate change. Very few people, even those who waste the most, would actually argue that wasting things is good. Thus, the positive result is obtained with the maximum of efficiency – and a more -in depth and honest discussion of climate change would not only be less efficient, but very likely would turn into a dispute and result in a certain number of people refusing to participate.

This discussion of the different type s of argument in Ibn Rushd seems to have moved away from the original investigation of the Commentator’s reading of the imagination in the De Anima . The imagination emerged from that reading as the movement of images produced in sensation. Those images are influenced by the appetite, and intensified by the appetite, such that they encourage the soul to move towards or away from those images. When the soul is affected in this way, it pursues or flees from objects that are associated with the image by virtue of a proximity originating in the appetite or in sensation. The reactions of the soul to objects and states in the world are influenced by these images, leading the soul to move – potentially – towards the harmful and away from the good. This is the dark ides of the imagination.

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But rational souls are not entirely at the mercy of sensation and appetite. The rational faculty includes the powers of judgment and discrimination; powers which reason can bring to bear the on the imagination. Thus, while a sheep may have only one possible reaction to seeing a figure move out from behind a tree, a human being has the capacity to determine whether or not that figure is a wolf, a friend, or simply a branch waving in the wind. If I see a figure moving out from behind a tr ee, I form an opinion about whether that figure in fact poses a threat to me or not – that opinion is based on my ability to discriminate between different types of figures and to pass a judgment about what type of figure it is. If my opinion is that the f igure is in fact a puppy, then (while I may still feel in the pit of my stomach the fear that comes from imagining a wolf) my reaction will be based not only the sensitive imagination, but on imagination influenced and ordered by reason.

Similarly, cogniti ve deliberation on the images in the imagination allows the rational animal -re to -re order them. It makes possible a certain kind of inventiveness that can only come from recognizing both the relationship between certain images, and the possibility that they might put be put into a different relationship. For example, a rational animal might associate water with the slaking of thirst, but rather than drinking all the water possible, even to the point of it being harmful, that rational animal might develop the opin ion that a consistent water source is is important, or that water is simply good.

Such opinions are the premises upon which dialectical and rhetorical proofs are constructed. A A dialectical argument based on such premises might resemble:

A A clean water sourc e is important for health.

Arsenic is detrimental to one’s health.

One should avoid putting arsenic in one’s water.

The premise that ‘clean water is important for health’ is likely to be a widely held belief and holds up to examination. Once it has bee n determined that clean water is healthy, the sensible world can be evaluated in relationship to that good – and upon discovering that there are some actions or conditions which infringe upon that good it is possible to conclude that such actions or condit ions should be avoided.

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the In the case of a rhetorical syllogism, the initial premise will be widely known but unexamined: water may simply be ‘good ’. The reason that water is good, or what that good consists of, is unexamined by those who are most suited to rhetoric. Their rational faculty is strong enough to prevent them from making themselves ill by drinking too much water or walking into the sea, tbu there is very little content to the premise. Nevertheless, it is an agreed -upon premise that can be used to stimulate behavior. For example:

Water is good.

We must go to war to defend our water resources.

The elision of the minor premise in the enthymem e disguises why the appropriate conclusion is defense/protection of water resources. In one sense, this is unimportant – the object of the rhetor is to acquire assent to the conclusion, and participation in the behavior thus indicated. But in another sens e, the elided middle term renders the rhetorical argument (and the class of people for whom rhetorical arguments are persuasive) prone to extremisms. The danger of the enthymeme is that whether the masses are stimulated towards war or charity depends entir ely upon the rhetor’s use of the enthymeme. Those who depend upon rhetorical arguments are particularly vulnerable to the skill of the one who is speaking. 212

Those who are persuaded by dialectic, on the other hand, will at least need to see that middle ter m. They might still be convinced that preventing encroachment on their resources is the correct conclusion. If the elided middle term was X‘ has no water, ’ then one could conclude that one s’ water must be defended, because obviously X will be attempting to take and use them. But one could also conclude, from the very same minor premise, that one should provide X with water. In the first case, the enthymeme encourages isolation and possibly conflict – in the second, it might encourage drought relief.

212 Rh 1359a, DT 18.15-25.

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But none of these conclusions – and more importantly, none of the activities that result from these behaviors – are possible without the movement of the imagination in the rational animal.

For Ibn Rushd then, the danger of the imagination is that while it encourages a certain kind of creativeness in the rational animal that creativeness, and that drive, can be harnessed in the direction of good or in the direction of bad, in the direction of the beautiful or in the direction the of the ugly. If -al Farabi saw in the evocative qualities of the imagination ( muhaka ) as a certain type of inspiration that could be either positive or negative, the grounding of political life on the opinions generated by the imagination in Ibn Rushd reveals precisely why the leadership the of the community is of great importance. The imagination may make the rational being creative, but it also makes them very vulnerable to manipulation.

Human beings are capable of being moved and corrupted by speech, either by the context or the form that the speech takes . The imaginative syllogism, is which the middle term is not particular ly necessary, is also the best form of the rhetorical syllogism – both operate on the basis of accepted and widely -known symbols, and both attempt to circumvent as far as possible the annoying tendency of the rational mind to interfere in the operation of the will.

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CHAPTER 4

The Wages of Sin: Imagination and Politics in Maimonides ’ Guide

Summary : In this chapter I turn to a contemporary of Ibn Rushd, who neverth eless is distinct from Ibn Rushd (and -al Farabi) in many material ways. Maimonides is the only philosopher included here who did not belong to the ruling tradition – a Jew in a Muslim polity, he was extraordinarily careful in his rulings to account for the dangers of being a religious minority. Analyzing two different moments in the Guide where Maimonides discusses the story of Eden, we begin to see that for Maimonides, the imagination was the cause of the fall but also the means by which social and politic al life was made possible. For Maimonides, the corrupting influence of the imagination means that its use should be discouraged and disciplined, but at the same time the imagination remains what allows us to think of the world as being different than it ac tually is. That does not mean that a world conceived the in the imagination is necessarily a good world – but it does mean that the rhetorician – be they politician or teacher – must be conscious of evoking with the assistance of reason only those imaginations atth lead towards what is good.

this In this final chapter we turn to a contemporary of Ibn Rushd, a thinker and philosopher educated in much the same manner as Ibn Rushd but whose life and experiences influenced both the matter and form of his though :t Maimonides, known in Arabic as Musa Ibn Maimon 213 and in the Jewish tradition as Rambam. A resident of Córdoba of significant status and genealogy, whose family home was likely within a kilometer of Ibn Rushd’s family home, Maimonides was a well -educated per son in a city hatt remembered that it had been the capital of the second Umayyad Caliphate and which, at the time of Maimonides’ birth in 1135/8, still retained much of its glory as a cultural and intellectual center. Sixty kilometers from Lucena, one of het most remarkable centers of Jewish learning until the 13 th century, the chief judge of the Jews in Córdoba was the minority contemporary of the Chief judge in Muslim law. While Maimonides’ Córdoba was Almoravid more than Umayyad and unfortunately quickly became Almohad, it remained governed, overall, by the Maliki school

213 His full Arabic name was Abu Imran Musa ibn Ubayd Allah ‘al-Qurtubi’ (the Cordovan).

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of Islamic jurisprudence. 214 This school, whose adherents trace their theological and theo - legislative work to the eponymous 8th century Anas Ibn Malik, are often noted for their ‘literal’ translations of religious law; however, the Maliki version of literalism was often to the advantage of religious minorities. 215 Strict readings of Qur’anic verses that detail the political relationship of a Muslim polity with its Jewish and Christian populat ions do not, as a whole, make any suggestion of forced conversion. The ‘ dhimmi laws’, which applied to Jews and Christians as non -Muslim People of the Book, influenced the life of the Jewish minority a in in a number of ways, three that we will make a note of h ere.

First of all, Jews were required to pay the ‘ jizya ’ tax, which applied only to non -Muslims. It should be noted that the amount of the jizya tax is discretionary, and that Muslims were required to pay zakat , or donations into the religious and civil i nstitutions of the state, of about 2.5%. While it was possible for a Muslim leader to impose a punishing jizya that placed the Jews in an economically precarious position, the jizya was also a way for non -

214 Following the disintegration of the Umayyad Caliphate in the early 11 th century, Andalusia entered what is known as the ‘Ta’ifa Period’, in which regions and cities reasserted their political independence and had independent rulers. The Almoravid empire was the result of the result of an organized program fconquest, beginning in the 1050s – however, by the 1120s the Almoravids were facing a formidable foe in the form of the Almohads, under the spiritual leadership of Ibn Tumart, and by 1045 (the death- date of the last Almoravid Amir) had largely been defeated. The Maliki school of law, as noted in the beginning of Chapter 3, took as its foundation the practice of the first Muslim polity, Medina – the Almoravid school was less inclined to demonstrate the relative inclusiveness that the Medinan model seemed to inspire in Malik ibn Abbas and his folowers.

215 There is more than one version of a ‘literal’ meaning. This is particularly the case in holy texts, and a particular concern when the holy text itself seems to recognize that there is some place for ‘interpretation’ in the development of religious law. While both the Maliki (Almoravid) and Ash’ari/Zahiri (Almohad) schools claimed to be literalists, Maliki jurists were generally more open to the possibility of ‘interpretation’ if a verse was difficult to understand. A contrasting approach was to simply leave the problematic verse uninterpreted, on the understanding that it was not possible to understand the meaning, and create law purely on the basis of the verses that are considered clear (literally, in Arabic, zaher ). Literalism in this context is an honorific, but whose m eaning often varies.

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Muslims to contribute to the structure of the Musli m state (including the waqaef , or endowments/treasuries that supported mosques, schools, and the government itself). It was thus an expression of economic loyalty and a demonstration of the minority’s fi nancial investment in the state, though it did also f orce Jews and Christians to support Muslim religious/state institiutions.

Second, it was requisite that Jews wear clothing that distinguished them from Christians and Muslims (a dress code that applied to Christians as well). Having to wear clothing that literally displays one’s heart upon one’s sleeve is a historically dangerous thing to do – Jews had cause to be wary of how easily distinctive dress could turn them into targets even in the 11 th century. However this requirement – that adherents of differe nt be visually distinguishable – should be understood in the context of a culture where religious, economic, and hierarchical characteristics were often displayed in clothing. For example, Córdoba already had a well -developed hat culture, though hat culture may not have reached its apogee until the Ottoman Empire. 216

Third, and finally, the dhimmi laws required that non -Muslims not be placed in positions of power over Muslims. D espite this, there are records of Jewish political advisors and military le aders – but it does explain why Jews in the Andalusian Muslim court more often had positions that put them off to the side of the hierarchy as doctors or teachers. As the Almoravid empire grew weaker and individual cities and provinces became essentially elfs - governing (the -so called ‘ ta’ifa ’ period), social and economic insecurity resulted in periodic uprisings of a city’s population against its rulers – in the case of the uprising and ensuing violence against Jews in Granada in 1066, it is frankly difficult to ascertain the degree to which the amir (prince) appointing a Jew and his son as advisors caused or created a focal point for discontent. 217 Was the uprising a protest against an incompetent and indulgent amir

216 See Appendix II for three figures demonstrating the degree to which distinctive clothing was an feature of the culture overall and not limited to distinguishing ethnic and religious groups from one another. However, it is important to note that as in medieval Europe, clothes culture did provide a particularly visible means for publicizing oppression and status.

217 Bennison, 167-170.

117 whose association with Jews meant atth the Jews were vulnerable to the anger unleashed against the amir? Or was the uprising caused by the fact that the decadent amir spurned the Qur’an by appointing Jews to such posts? In either case, the practical result was that influential Jews were ofte n the court doctor, or a teacher of the ruler, or some other position outside the longitudinal hierarchy of the court. And yet many of these doctors or teachers held position of high authority within their own community, as Maimonides’ father did as nasi ( judge) of the Jewish community in Córdoba and as Maimonides himself would in Fustat later on.

In that time and in that place, the subjects one had to master to be considered educated included grammar, logic, physics, astronomy, mathematics, as well as poe try and literature, philosophy, history (religious and political) and religious law. Maimonides’ inheritance from the Jewish tradition is fairly well documented – he was taught by his father, who was taught the by the most esteemed student of Isaac -al Fasi, Jo seph Ibn Migash. Maimonides has nothing but praise for Ibn Migash, and seems to have considered himself a student (mythopoetically and substantively) of Ibn Migash. But he was also influenced by the classical thought of Aristotle and by both older and cont emporary Islamic thinkers, from -al Farabi though Ibn Sina and -al Ghazali to Ibn Rushd himself. 218

218 As noted in the General Introduction, the present work does not examine Ibn Sina or al-Ghazali in detail. The primary reason that they have been put to the side is not that they are unimportant, but because they are less important – Maimonides himself seems to have considered Ibn Sina a second-rate thinker, at least compared to al-Farabi. As for al-Ghazali, his influence on Maimonides as inspiration and/or antagonist is a matter of ongoing exploration. Sarah Stroumsa has recently made important additions to this field, noting the prominence of al-Ghazali in the Almohad world that the young Maimonides had to navigate, and the extent to which Maimonides learned much about politics and legalism from al-Ghazali. (Stroumsa, pp.2-28) In addition to the general point, several instances have been illuminated where al-Ghazali seems to have impacted Maimonides. (Pines, pp.lxxxiv-lxxxv) However, there is one incredibly obvious one that, for some reason, I have yet to find carefully analyzed; the concurrence between Maimonides’ description of prophecy at the beginning of the Guide as a flashing light, using an extended metaphor involving lamps and mirrors, and al-Ghazali’s Niche of Lights .

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Maimonides ’ mot her tongue was Arabic, and it was in this language that he composed most his of his best -known works, including his early Treatise on Logic , heT Guid e of the Perplexed itself, the General Introduction to the Commentary on the Mishna and introductions to specific tractates from the Mishna. 219 With few exception ,s Maimonides wrote in Arabic using the Hebrew alphabet, and it has become the to term this language ‘ Judeo - Arabic. ’ While later manifestations of this dialectic may combine Hebrew and Arabic to an extent that justifies such a title, Maimonides ’ Judeo -Arabic was above all else highly eloquent and correct Arabic, albeit written in the script of Jewish tradition. 220 For a long time, this has been considered a coded script, largely because of a general lack of overlap between scholars who can read Hebr ew and scholars who understand Arabic. 221 However, exam in ing extant ‘ Judeo -Arabic ’ manuscripts indicate it was the language of the educated mass, rather than a specially coded elite, and that it facilitated the transmission of Arabic works in the Jewish comm unity. A number of non -Jewish Arabic works were translated into Judeo - Arabi c, including works by -al Farabi and Ibn Sina. For a Jewish audience whose mother tongue was Arabic, but who received their religious education in Hebrew, their primary form of liter acy was with Hebrew script, while the primary language of comprehension was Arabic. Thus, not only works that served a directly educational purpose (such as treatises on medicine) were transcribed from Arabic into Judeo -Arabic, so were works of philosophy, including Ibn Rushd s’ commentaries on Aristotle, as well as works by Ibn Bajja and Ibn

219 The Treatise on Logic is the only work that Maimonides’ appears to have written in Arabic script, and is among his early writings. 220 This is a point that deserves emphasis – while Genizeh fragments and even some response were written in more dialect-driven Judeo-Arabic, Maimonides’ language in the Guide and Introductory Commentaries on the Mishna were overwhelmingling high level classical Arabic, albeit written in Hebrew letters. 221 For more on Judeo-Arabic, in relation to Maimonides in particular, see Stroumsa, pp.19-22; Kraemer, p. 164.

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Sina. Even the Qur an’ was translated into Hebrew characters at least once, presumably to facilitate its study by Arab -speaking, educated, and encultured Jews. 222

Maimonid es was deeply, explicitly, and unashamedly influenced by the rich history of Greek, and Arabic/Islamic philosophy (he does not seem to have had particularly high regard for Christian thinkers of the time, advising against their study in the same letter in which he recommends studying the work of -al Farabi and Ibn Bajja). 223 He was particularly impressed the by the work of -al Farabi on ethical and political questions, as well as the commentaries of Ibn Bajja and Ibn Rushd. It may have been standard practice at the time, but it is notable that someone who could have been expected, in the normal course of things, to take over the leadership of the Jewish community of óC rdoba (one of the most populous, rich, and influential Jewish communities in the world) was so open ly conversant in such works – it demonstrates both a pragmatic awareness of cultural context, and a remarkable lack of defensiveness about intellectual exogamy. 224 Or: there is little evidence of worry, either in Maimonides ’ education or in his advice to oth ers regarding their own studies, that exposure

222 See Bodleian MS. Hunt 529, a full copy of the Qur’an, transliterated into Hebrew characters with vocalization on the first Surah and some others, containing notes in Arabic (Hebrew and Arabic characters) as well as some occasions of interlinear translation. Interestingly, the longest vocalized portion of this text is Surah Miryam (19), which in addition to narrating the story of Jesus’ conception and birth has much to say on prophecy and the afterlife - written in the margins, in the vicinity of 12.62- ,Vocalization in the original.) See this passage in Appendix III) ْ”ﺧَﻠ َﻔﻨَﺎ“ ,is the note in Arabic script 65 along with an image of the first Surah of the Qur’an in Judeo-Arabic.

223 A. Marx, in Jewish Quarterly Review (see N.S. XXV, pp. 374 ff.; relevant passages occur on pp. 378-380; see also Pines, lix.

224 While Maimonides was very conscious of the necessity to watch one’s words and not give offense for reasons of pedagogy and safety, there is little indication that he felt such concerns regarding the Jewish community in which he lived - witness the battle royal that he engaged in with the Babylonian Rabbis. In his Eight Chapters he does refuse to name his sources, sources he identifies explicitly as non-Jewish, but this reticence does not reflect the type of fear of reprisal that he was cognizant of in other parts of the Guide . Instead the reticence seems based on his understanding that some (thoughtless) readers might be put off by such inter-confessional textuality - a genuine pedagogical concern.

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to Islamic philosophy and theology pose a threat to belief. The world abounds with obstacles that waylay the student and for the good Jew – the works of -al Farabi and Ibn Bajja (neither of of whome fall quite int o the class of Muslim proselytizers) are not among them.

The world of cultural exchange and inter -confessional knowledge -sharing that Maimonides was born into lasted only until he was between eight and twelve years old – and while this may seem young in eth 21 st century, at the time it meant that Maimonides was on the cusp of manhood. As the Almohads began to conquer ifa’ta lands and remaining Almoravid strongholds in Andalusia, the position of Arabic Jews in the region became increasingly precarious. The A lmoravid position vis a vis Christians and Jews was that they should convert, go into exile, or die. Lucena, to which we can trace Maimonides ’ Jewish intellectual heritage, had been a Jewish city for as long as anyone could remember – it was the only city in which it was the Jews who lived within the (fortified and therefore importantly safe) city walls and other confessions who were relegated beyond the gates. It was founded by Jews, it was the site of Isaac -al Fasi s’ religious school , and within the city there were no restrictions or limitations on what Jews could do, resulting in a population that was better off economically and socially than almost any other population. When óC rdoba generally fell to the Almohads in 1148, Lucena was devastated – a massive number of Jews were summarily executed, many others fled, and the ones who remained because they converted to Islam were gradually decimated because of Almohad doubt about the of their conversion. Maimonides and his family left óC rdoba around 1159, possibly spending some time in Lucena before making their way down to Fez – from Fez Maimonides traveled to the Holy Land, where he prayed in Jerusalem. He then made his way by sea to Fatimid Egypt, where he settled in Fustat, a city not far from Cairo. 225 As the personal doctor of the Fatimid Caliph

225 Among the many notable features of Maimonides’ life, we will only mention three here: 1. Maimonides’ conversion to Islam in Fez is of no interest to us here. Whether he converted or not, the importance of the story is that a Muslim courtier who traveled to Fustat reported that he had been seen praying in the mosque and that therefore, since he had by then become the Jewish leader in Fustat, Maimonides was guilty of the capital crime of apostasy. The Fatimid court ruled that Maimonides was not guilty of apostasy because whether or not he had converted, the fact that he converted under duress rendered the conversion invalid.

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he traveled regularly between Fustat and Cairo, and reported late in his life that between his duties at court and those who greeted him on his return home, seeking medical or legal hel p he he spent most of his time completely exhausted.

Maimonides inherited from both Jewish and Islamic sources a deep ambivalence over the effect and influence of the imagination on human beings. The very first chapter of the Guide in is in fact devoted to Maimonides ’ argument that the words ‘ image ’ ( tz elem ) and ‘ likeness ’ (demuth ), as used in Gen I.26 let“( us make man in our image, after uro likeness )” should be understood as a reference to the creation of man with the capacity for i ntellectual apprehension. It is this capacity for intellectual apprehension that renders human beings distinct from all other creations, and the imbuing of human beings with that capacity is a function of a eryv particular moment of divine creation. But im mediately upon establishing that human beings are distinguished by their intellectual capacity, Maimonides embarks on a discussion of the imagination, a faculty of the human soul which is not necessarily in concert with intellectual apprehension but which is nevertheless necessary to human beings and, in

2. It is notable that Maimonides left the Holy Land for Egypt, specifically for eretz mitzrayim of the Biblical Land of Egypt, particularly since there is a specific prohibition in the Jewish tradition on settling in the land in which the Jews were made slaves. For the prohibition on settling in the land where the Jews were once slaves, se Exodus 14.13; Deuteronomy 17.16; on the Mechilta of Exodus 14.13. There is an interesting legend that comes for the Kaftor Va’Ferach (written by Istori ha- Parchi c. 1322) the Maimonides regularly and clearly acknowledged that he was transgressing the rules against returning to Egypt.

3. The Fatimid Empire was a Shi’a Empire, and it is therefore relatively unsurprising that a culture of accommodation survived there – Shi’a Muslims had already faced significant persecution by Sunni Muslims in the East, and the Fatimid’s generally demonstrated a certain degree of understanding (if not compassion) for other people who had been run out of their homes. It was, after all, a Fatimid religious court that declared that even if Maimonides had converted, his conversion was invalid by reason of duress, and Maimonides was therefore not guilty of apostasy in his practice of Judaism.

122 some ways, no less divine. Maimonides ’ account of the imagination in Eden is deeply ambivalent, and it is an ambivalence that Maimonides, to my mind, never truly resolves. 226

This story of Eden, which will ormf the second part of this chapter, is not where Maimonides’ debt to -al Farabi and Aristotle is most visible. The clearest description of the ima gination and imaginative faculties in the Eight Chapters , where Maimonides ’ description the of the imagination cit es, almost verbatim, the tradition of the imaginative faculty that we have been tracking since Aristotle – this will form the first part of the current chapter.

Both parts are necessary, because Maimonides is not the same as his predecessors. Unlike -al Fa rabi and Ibn Rushd, Maimonides is a member of a minority community whose status was always somewhat in question; unlike Ibn Rushd, he did not have the protection (however inconsistent) of the ruler in his philosophical and religious investigations. To simp ly examine the works in which Maimonides cites and departs from his predecessors in their interpretation of Aristotle, as we have done in C hapters 2 and 3 would be problematically selective, forcing a similitude between Maimonides and previous thinkers in this tradition which is not justified. Like -al Farabi and Ibn Rushd, Maimonides is a legal scholar and medical expert. But he is also a storyteller. His sources in the Guide – the texts that provide him with stimulation, provocations, contradictions and so lutions – are not limited to the Torah and the massive corpus of Greek and Arabic thought that Maimonides had available to him. 227 He also draws on , on the tradition of rabbinic exegetical elaboration which

226 Yes, it is the imagination that makes Eve susceptible to the persuasion of the Serpent, and Adam in turn susceptible to the persuasion of Eve; yet even if the result of the sin was being cast out of Eden and forced for the first time into a social, mortal, political relationship with one another, the imagination that caused that need is also the imagination which makes it possible for us to ascertain (or decide) what is good and bad – both socially and legislatively - in a way that helps us avoid the complete breakdown of social relations.

227 Regarding Maimonides’ philosophical sources, see Pines, “Philosophical Sources of the Guide of the Perplexed”; Stroumsa, Maimonides in His World . I am still interested in the case recently made by Sarah Stroumsa that Maimonides was in fact familiar with the work of Ibn Rushd by the time

123 recognizes that each text contains other texts. Maimonides ’ most extensive, unique, and meaningful discussion of the imagination emerges in the narrative that he tells about the imagination, specifically the events occurring in Eden. Maimonides ’ narrative evocation of the imagination does not run contrary to his strictly philosophical description in the slightest it – it does elaborate on that description, and, in both form and matter, encourage a very particular engagement of his reader with the texts that he reads.

Any combination of the philosoph ical and the literary, or the scientific and the religious, or the rational and the mystical is bound to be contentious. That contentiousness has a long and chri history, reaching as far back as Saadia Gaon and until quite very recently rational/philosophi cal and mystical/literary studies occupied distinct, and often opposed territories within the field of Jewish thought. Recent scholarship has been calling this distinction into question, questioning, often brilliantly, the assumption that there is nothing in traditional rational and legal Judaism of the beautiful, the poetic, and the expressive. In the course of taking the stories, the rhythms, and characters of midrash seriously, these works establish the“ inherent mythopoeic properties of rabbinic theolog y, and this [is] corrective to previous scholars who have insisted that mythopoeic images employed by the rabbis are merely metaphors or tropes sapped of their mythic vitality. ”228 Exegetical narratives like the one that Maimonides provides do more than simp ly communicate a point in language that is suited to those who are uncomfortable with or incapable of demonstration – it also engages

Maimonides completed the Guide. Several passages in the Guide are close, if not nearly identical, to passages in Ibn Rushd’s Fasl al-Maqal .

228 Eliot Wolfson, “Mythopoeic Imagination and the Hermeneutic Bridging of temporary Spacing: On Michael Fishbane’s ‘Biblical Myth and Rabbinic Mythmaking,” Jewish Quarterly Review , V. 62, No. 2 (2006): pp.233-38, pp. 234-35. While Wolfson’s comments are specifically directed at Fishbane’s latest work, see also K. H. Green, “What S. Y. Agnon Taught About Jewish History”; Diamond, Maimonides and The of Concealment ; Fishbane, Exegetical Imagination ; Hughes, Textures of the Imagination ; Matar, “Alfarabi on Imagination”; Benor, Worship of the Heart ; Bicknelle, “Self-Scrutiny in Maimonides’ Ethical and Religious Thought.” It is in no way surprising that many of these texts are studies of the imagination - as we will see, the imagination lends itself to being a bridging power.

124 the reader in a textual and pedagogical exercise. To study Maimonides without taking into account the narrative, rhetorica l, and poetic strategies that he used in his teachings would be to take into account only one facet of a thinker who, to a greater extent than his Islamic predecessors, was both judge and storyteller. Maimonides teaches by parable, allegory, and even myth. A serious student will respect, or at least pay close attention to, the method of their teacher s’ teaching. In what follows we will see both (I) how Maimonides ’ definition of imagination was inherited from Aristotle and -al Farabi, from a textual perspecti ve, and what Maimonides ’ decisions in that citation might imply, and (II) that the imagination as a movement at work in the world is best identified by Maimonides in his account of the Garden of Eden, and in particular his description of the serpent and eth fruit . Reading this account carefully means understanding the relationship between imagination and politics as a linked narrative.

Part I. Maimonides ’ Imagination as Transmission

Maimonides was a radical and innovative thinker, and the heir to a long inel of Greek and Arabic philosophy, starting with Aristotle and, to an extent that has yet to be resolved, Plato and continuing through -al Farabi. It is -al Farabi who has the greatest influence on Maimonides ’ description of the structure of the human soul – his psychology – and the location of the imagination within that hierarchy. Maimonides ’ most Aristotelian and Farabian description of the human soul and place of the imagination within it, takes place not the in the Guide but in his Introduction to the Comme ntary on Avot (which has come to be known as the Eight Chapters ). 229 Some important scholarship has pointed out Maimonides ’ citations of -al Farabi, and Maimonides encourages his readers to undertake such investigations; he introduces the book by informing shi audience that he has cited not only

229 Some important scholarship has focused on the extent of Maimonides’ citation of al-Farabi in Eight Chapters , though it has often forces on Maimonies’ citation of al-Farabi’s Aphorisms (Davidson) and Politics of the City (See Herbert Davidson, Maimonides’ “‘Shemonah Peraqim’ and Alfarabi’s ‘Fusul al-Madani’,” in Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research , vol. 31 (1963): pp.33-50, spec. 37-41.

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Jewish sages, but also “ from the discourse of ancient and modern philosophers, and from the writings of many men. Hear the truth from whoever says ”it. 230 He will not cite those sources directly, he says, because there rea those who might, as a result of unfamiliarity or prejudice, use the opinions that they have about those people as evidence that there is something untoward or corrupt in the text – and therefore refuse to learn from it. 231 These semi -citations have proved an almost irresistible temptation for scholars, who have identified numerous passages where Maimonides appears to be citing -al Farabi. Herbert Davidson s’ seminal work the on the similarities between the two texts not only identifies moments when Maimonides se ems to paraphrase and quote -al Farabi s’ Fusual Madani almost verbatim, he also highlights many of the passages where these citations can be traced back to Aristotle – particularly to the Nic omachean Ethics – either directly or via -al Farabi. It seems odd, however, that there have been so few analyses of the correspondences between the Eight Chapters and Farabi s’ Madinah . In the exploration of Maimonides ’ psychology of the imagination, it is to this text -al of of -al Farabi s’ that we will turn for reference. 232

The first chapter of the Eight Chapters identifies five parts ( ) of the soul, each of which he associates with a power ( ). Maimonides ’ description of the imaginative faculty ( -al quwwa -al mutakhayyila ) is a clear citation of the description offered by -al Farabi in Chapter of 10 10 of Madinah . Maimonides writes that,

The imaginative part is the power that preserves the impression of sensibly perceived objects after they vanish from the immediacy of the senses that perceived them. Some impressions are combined wit h

230 Eight Chapters , Qafih 1.

סו לא יעלמהא ,In Qafih 231

232 This is particularly disconcerting given the fact that the editions of the Aphorisms which are available are open to quite a bit of dispute - there are significant differences between the Dunlop edition of the Aphorisms and that of Najjar, as well as a manuscript of the Aphorisms whose trustworthiness has yet to be determined. Given the still-absent Definitive Edition for this work of al-Farabi’s, it seems purely prudent, when establishing a relationship between two such major philosophers, to look to the most well-established and trustworthy texts of both thinkers.

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others, and some are separated . This power puts together some things which can be verified by perception and some things which cannot .…

The following chart shows the degree of similarity between Maimonides ’ description of the quwwa -al mutakhayyilah in Chapter 1 of his Eight Chapters and the description offered by -al -al Farabi in Chapter 10 of the Madinah : Al-Farabi Maimonides IC 10.4.2-3 (see also 10.1.15-16) Chapters, #1, page 2, para 4, 1-2 הי אלקוה אלתי תחפט׳ רסום אלמחטוטאת בעד גיבתהא ען ﻫﻲ ﺗﺤﻔﻆ ﺍﻟﻤﺤﺴﻮﺳﺎﺕ ﺑﻌﺪ ﻏﻴﺒﺘﻬﺎ ﻋﻦ ﺍﻟﺤﺲ מבאשרה אלחואס IC 10.4.4-5 ﻭ ﻫﻲ ﺍﻟﻄﺒﻊ ﺣﺎﻛﻤﺔ ﻋﻠﻰ ﺍﻟﻤﺤﺴﻮﺳﺎﺕ ﻭ ﻣﺘﺤﻜﻤﺔ ﻋﻠﻴﻬﺎ IC 10.4.5-6 Ibid., para 4, 2 פתרכב בעציהא אלי בעץי ותפצל בעציהא מן בעץי ﻭ ﻟﺬﻟﻚ ﺍﻧﻬﺎ ﺗﻔﺮﺩ ﺑﻌﻀﻬﺎ ﻋﻦ ﺑﻌﺾ ﻭ ﺗﺮﻛﺐ ﺑﻌﻀﻬﺎ ﺇﻟﻰ ﺑﻌﺾ IC 10.4.6-7 Ibid., para 4, 3-4 ולדילך תרכב הדי[ה] אלקואמן אלאמור אלתי אדרכתהא … ﻳﺘﻔﻖ ﻓﻲ ﺑﻌﻀﻬﺎ ﻋﻦ ﺗﻜﻮﻥ ﻣﻮﺍﻓﻘﺔ ﻟﻤﺎ ﺣﺲ ﻭ ﻓﻲ ﺑﻌﻀﻬﺎ ﻦﻋ ﻦﻋ אמור לס תדרכהא קט ולא ימכן אדראכהא ﺗﻜﻮﻥ ﻣﺨﺎﻟﻔﺔ ﻟﻠﻤﺤﺴﻮﺱ

Maimonides ’ description of the appetitive faculty is also a perfect echo of -al Farabi, as the fac fac ulty that inclines a person to desire or hate a given thing ( ). 233

Yet in the midst of these echoes and citations, through the shared terminology and structures that Maimonides borrows from -al Farabi, some of Maimonides’ own concerns come to light. the If the imagination for -al Farabi was problematic, it is at least doubly so for Maimonides, who one in one sense seems to incline towards a more strictly Aristotelian concept of the imagination. As we saw in Chapter 1, phantasia for Aristotle was explicitly not a rational or discriminating faculty – and, yet, -al Farabi specifically d escribed the imagination as exercising ‘judgment’ in its organization and association of principles. In the above passage, the only element of -al Farabi’s definition that is missing from the parallel passage in

233 A translation of the overlapping portions of the text would read, “It [the imaginative faculty] memorizes perception when the senses are absent [al-Farabi: and it discriminates and judges ]...For it distinguishes things from one another and links other to each other, and sometimes agrees with the sensibles and sometimes is not in agreement with the sensibles. Compare also Guide I. 72, 192 (Maimonides identification of the bodily location of the faculties) with al-Farabi, Madinah ; I.73, 207 (identified in the footnote as Risala fi’l Aql but also in Madinah ).

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Maimonides’ Eight Chapters is -al Farabi’s cla im that the quwwa -al mutakhayyilah judges and can adjudicate the sensibles. This is not an unthinking omission, because Maimonides’ own concern over the imagination pertains to the degree to which imagination can make impossibilities believable; in place fo reiterating the judgmental imagination of -al Farabi, Maimonides notes in this passage that imagination is capable of bringing to mind animals with thousands of eyes and other such impossibilities. In a way that is both hopeful and skeptical, Maimonides’ is cautious about praising the imagination precisely because it make s the impossible plausible. Maimonides does agree with -al Farabi that the imaginative faculty is uniquely capable of continuing to function during sleep, but its somnolent functioning for Maimonides indicates that it is so -un‘ reasonable ’ that it functions perfectly well beyond the reach of human will or choice. 234 Thus imagination, and a perfect imagination, may well be a necessary characteristic of the perfect prophet – the prophet must be perfect in all faculties, in order that the revelations that they disclose are perfect, rather than distorted, reflections of divine light. 235 The imagination , at its most potentially disruptive and untrustworthy, illuminates the impossible as though it is p ossible; at best, it help us to understand, to think about, and to create, possibilities which are simply not‘ yet. ’

234 Eight Chapters , Chapter 3. This contrasts with al-Farabi’s contention that the functioning of the imagination in dreams meant that it had a certain privileged refuge from the buffeting of the senses - see above, Chapter 2. While Maimonides acknowledges the prophecy of those who receive revelations in dreams, this is a particularly low form of prophecy.

235 It is notable that while Maimonides maintains the perfection of all faculties in the prophet, he never suggests that the prophet always behaves perfectly; prophets err, and people learn from their errors. The distinction between the Muslim tradition of the prophet who is perfect in thought and act, and the Jewish tradition of the prophet who is perfect in thought but not in act, is a fundamental difference between the two traditions. For Maimonides, the greatest prophet is perfect in both reason and imagination – a lesser degree of prophecy requires perfection of either the rational or imaginative faculties. Among these lesser prophets, the perfectly rational are higher than those of perfect imagination, since reason functions intentionally and consciously and imagination is capable of detachment from the material world and the imagination of the rationally impossible, including in sleep.

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Like Ibn Rushd, Maimonides identifies different types of people – the primary goal of the teacher as such is to lead students of all types towards knowledge and away from error. It follows that the worst thing a teacher can do is expose their student to information that the student understands incorrectly or from which they derive an error. In -al Farabi and Ibn Rushd we saw the development of a theory of communication, a sense that communication is itself a force to be reckoned with. In -al Farabi, speech is identified as a unique activity of the rational human being; in Ibn Rushd we are given examples, not unlike those of Aristotle, of the kin d of speech that is appropriate when communicating with different types of human beings. Perhaps the most relatable example is Ibn Rushd s’ example of the doctor – the virtue a of a doctor is the healing of patients, and therefore the good doctor is one whose patients heal because of the doctor s’ diagnosis and treatment. When the good doctor informs a patient of the nature of their illness and the appropriate treatment, they tailor the amount of detail and technicality to the patient themselves. The very worst thing that could happen is that a patient, overloaded by a doctor using five -syllable medical vocabulary, decides to forget about that crazy doctor and go back to leeches, since at“ least I understand how they work. ”

For Maimonides too, Rhetoric to Alexan der was an important text, particularly insofar as it lays out psychological, performative, and political concepts in relation to one another. Maimonides did not have access to Aristotle’s Politics (as -al Farabi might have, in some edition ).s According to Pines, -al Farabi’s access to both Aristotle and Plato indicates that -al Farabi made specific choices when he was writing his Philosophy of Plato and Aristotle – specifically in emphasizing, along more Aristotelian lines, the fundamental nat ure of the city and society for the human being. Pines writes that for -al Farabi, “it was the philosopher’s duty to engage in politics, that, in fact, the four terms philosopher, king, legislator, and imam (religious and political leader) were synonymous. This is an extreme to which no counterpart can be found in the Guide ; no political role being explicitly assigned in this work to the philosophers.” 236

Pines is correct that there is no direct correlation to what he calls this “very exposed position” F-al of F-al arabi. Yet the fact that there is no direct correlation to this passage in the Guide does

236 Pines, lxxxix.

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tno mean that there is a remarkable echo of it. Instead of sugges ting that the terms imam, philosopher ( filosuf ) and lawgiver ( wad ’a’ -al nawamis ) are the same , Maimonides suggests that The Lord is a name shared by the Divine, the angels, and the judges/philosophers concerned with cities. 237

-Al Farabi: Maimonides : אלמדן מדברי ואלחכאם כתואלמלאי ללאלאה םשתרך אלהים אסם אן עבראני כל כל עלם 238

Not only is this a passage that evokes the intersection of ideas between -al Farabi and Maimonides, it also highlights some distinctions. The equivocal names of the Divine, angels, and rulers/philosophers are united in their knowledge of the truth, and in t heir

237 Pines’ edition leaves the term for The Lord, elohim , in transliterated Hebrew – the 2011 Arabic is the more standard rendering in extant ( ﺍﻟﻬﻴﻢ) edition of the Guide uses Allah, but notes that Elohim manuscripts. The distinction is important – Allah, as a name for the Divine, is closer to the Hebrew HaShem or the Tetragrammaton. But Elohim is the name of the Divine that indicates that God is Lord – it makes the bridge between the Divine and the rulers of cities a significantly smaller jump. Additionally, Pines translates al-hakham as rulers – this is problematic, since the Arabic root pertains to judges, sometimes legislators, but is also the root for wisdom and therefore the Arabic word for the discipline what pursues knowledge and for people who pursue knowledge, i.e., philosophers. Hikma is the alternative to falsafa , the term for specifically Greek philosophy. In translating this passage from Maimonides into English, the whole passage changes if it becomes “…the name The Lord is shared between the Divine, the angels, and the philosophers”; in that translation it might seem to be pointing at the mastery of demonstration and rationalists of the ideal philosopher. This translation is supported by the fact that Maimonides finds it necessary to specify the type of hakim (in this case, the ones who are concerned with cities); if it could be simply translated as judge, the existence of a city that is critical for the exercise of practical judgment would be implied. The implication here is that the hakim might not be concerned with cities, a concept associated more (though not absolutely) with Plato rather than Aristotle.

238 Tahsil as-saadah , 92. In Pines, Guide , lxxxvii. Pines refers to this passage as occurring in Tahsil as- saadah, Hyderabad 1345 A.H., pp.43ff. Maimonides, Guide

130 communication of it. Similarly, -al Farabi’s king, legislator, philosopher, and imam are united in their ability to organize the population via laws that – whether they pass the laws or simply institute or honor them – they have convinced the populatio n are beneficial for the achievement of the people’s goals. In other words, they are united in their rhetorical capacity or or ability to persuade, whether their venue is the throne, classroom, or minbar .

Maimonides, as we shall see, has a unique take on per suasion, one that influences his regard for rhetoric and the human imagination. The apogee of persuasiveness, in the Jewish tradition and in Maimonides’ Guide , is the serpent in the Garden of Eden; therefore both the sinfulness and consequences of persuasi on can be adduced from a careful examination of that story.

Part II. Narrative Imagination in Guide I.2

Following Josef Stern s’ analysis of the parable in Maimonides, the story of Eden must be understood as parabolic, and one in which Adam and Eve, and het whole host of characters, are a metaphysical and psychological parable. Adam and Eve are not simply two human beings, they are human -kind, and even the male and female roles that they occupy are important not because of gender, but because they represen t different forms of humankind. It of is of note that the imagination in the story of the fall seems to accrue primarily to the woman not – not necessarily because of the weakness of reason, but precisely because Eve is able to imagine a different world, one in w hich they are ‘ like ‘ God ’ knowing good from evil. ” This imaginative capacity, along with the capacity for extrapolation (even incorrectly) that leads Eve to extend the Divine prohibition from “ eating of the tree ” to “ touching the tree, ” makes her susceptible to the persuasion of the serpent.

is It is important that the Guid e was written in the form of Arabic most accessible to a wide Jewish audience at the time, but it is also important to note that Maimonides in discussing specific terms often left them in Hebrew. The second chapter of the Guide concerns the terms , likeness ( demuth דמות , and image ( tzelem ( צלם to ) to descripte the relationship of humankind to the divine. ( Guide I.2) Demuth , Maimonides argues, points to intellectual apprehensi on as a .capacity of human being that constitutes the relati onship to the Divine דמות a as as a derivative

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of damoh “ signifies likeness in respect to a notion, ” rather than any physical characteristic. The verb damoh means to‘ conceive, ’ and is the Hebrew word which, in the Guide , most often translates the Arabic takhayyul – imagination. 239 To be a ‘ likeness ’ of God is therefore to have some conceptual or associative similarity to God (though obviously not anything physical). 240 The implicatio n is that imagination has to do with the identification of likeness and unlikeness, and therefore correlation, causation, and other factors that influence human decisions. Being able to draw a likeness allows human beings to compare people, claims, and sit sit uations.

The very next chapter of the Guide builds upon the thesis that intellectual apprehension is a characteristic of humanity from the moment that they were created. Chapter I.2 is explicitly oriented towards refuting the contention that it is from th eir transgression (eating the forbidden fruit) that Adam and Eve derive their ability to ‘ distinguish between good and evil, ’ or as Maimonides ’ anonymous interlocutor glosses it, intellect itself. That his interlocutor cannot distinguish between truth and falsehood on the one hand, and fine and bad on the other, is a sign that the interlocutor is too busy with sex and drinking to think through the matter in a rigorous fashion.

239 Pines defines damoh in his translation of the Guide as “to be like” (Guide I.1, 22); Efros (in my opinion more fully) renders it as ‘conceive,’ and the original demuth as an ambiguous term for imagination, equivalent to takhayyul . The more common term for imagination in Hebrew, dimyon is identified by Efros as meaning analogy or metaphor (both rendering the Arabic shabah ) or ,(דמיון) imagination (khayyal ) insofar as it is specifically misleading (Efros, Terms , 24-25). This highlights a distinction between Maimonides and Saadia Gaon that is worthy of further investigation: Saadia .(בצורתנא כשבהנא) translates demuthanu into Arabic as shibahna

240 Of great help in the discussion of errors is Josef Stern’s Matter and Form - while I greatly value most of the book, his discussion of the faults in I.2 relies on the fact that he is almost exclusively investigating tzelem to the exclusion of demuth . The faults inherent in the image are not necessarily those of the ‘likeness’, and the focus on one over the other negatively affects the strength of his argument.

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When the anonymous interlocutor refers to an inability to‘ distinguish between g ood and ,evil, ” he is speaking of the Arabic -al khair (good אלחיר ,and -as shirr (bad ( אלשר both of ( which are social and interpersonal terms: the intellect itself is only concerned with the true ,al -haq) אלהק ,and the false (al -batil ( אלבטל which is to say that the intellect is seeking a true ,( fact or accurate evaluation of a situation, not the subjective evaluation of a fact as being good or bad. That Adam and Eve could not distinguish between the khair and shirr may reflect the lack of a certain power of distinction, but that lack is not properly speaking an intellectual lack. 241 Tov and ra , the Hebrew terms used in Gen. 2.9, 2.17 and 3.5 to discuss the ) knowledge of good and bad are rendered by Maimonides as hassan )חסן and qabih ( כביח 242 (. These are more complicated terms in Arabic than khair and shirr – qabih means ugly in the sense of something aesthetically ugly, as well as something which is disgusting, while hassan a is a multivalent term referring to what is good, correct, or even beautif ul ( jameel ). In Chapter the of 2 of the Eight Chapters , Maimonides identifies the khair , hasan , and jameel with the healthy body, and the sick with the shirr and qabih ; in Chapter 8 he explicitly equates the tov with the khair , and the ra with the shirr .243

In Maimonides ’ analysis, human beings were in full possession of the intellect prior to eating from the tree of tov and ra – that is, they were capable of distinguishing between what was true and what was false. They were not cap able of distinguishing “ that w hich is generally ) accepted, like much of what is bad כאלכבח למשהוראתא אבון לא 244 .( .(

241 In fact this may be a moment when Maimonides is critiquing Saadia’s translation of Genesis: Saadia translates tov and ra as khair and shirr in Gen 2.9, 2.17 and 3.5. However, while tov is also the term in ,(טייבה׳) Gen 3.6 (“…the tree was good for food…”), Saadia translates tov in that instance as tayyib delicious.

242 Guide I.2, 24-25; Eight Chapters , Chapter 8 ,

243 Eight Chapters , Chapter 2.

244 Guide I.2, 25; 16. Mashhurrat is usually translated by Pines as “that which is generally known,” but in this instance is rendered simply as ‘manifest’: consistency in this translation, along with a modification of the structure of the phrase, renders clearer the extent to which the ugly/bad belongs to the realm of the generally known things.

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What humankind gains in the commission of sin is not greater knowledge of what is true, but knowledge of what is acceptable or unacceptable, ugly or beautiful – not greater intellectual apprehension of the world, but further embeddedness in the subjective opinions of human society (for it is between human beings that things are generally known) which regulate matters such as nakedness. According to Maimonides, the explanatio n for Adam s’ transgression 245 is that in this moment Adam “ inclined towards his imaginative desires. ”246 ) Here the term use d is khayyal כיאל and ) and it refers not the faculty of the imagination but to an imaginative act , insofar as it is separate (if not altogether divorced from) intellectual apprehension of the truth. For man to incline towards his imaginative desires is for him to pursue knowledge and mastery above and beyond the knowledge and mastery of what is true ro false: to put it bluntly, the knowledge of what human beings find acceptable or unacceptable, and the desire (or even compulsion) towards and away from those things.

This is not an obvious point, but it is one that Maimonides himself makes at the beginn ing of Guide I.2, seemingly as a stand -alone statement whose relationship, at least at the beginning the of the chapter, is unclear: “ Every Hebrew knows that the term elohim is shared between the deity, the angels, and the lords [judges?] who care for cities. ”247 Reading together with Onkelos, Maimonides reads Genesis 3.5 “( You shall become as Elohim, knowing tov from ra )” as meaning that if human beings eat from the tree, they will become rulers. In this one chapter, then, Maimonides has introduced two important notions, both of which are fundamentally connected with the role that imagination plays in the epistemological, psychological, and political life of human beings: a) there is a distinction between the

245 Whether the punishment would have been the same had it been Eve alone who transgressed remains an interesting question.

מאל נחו שהואתח אלכיאליה 246

,My translation is a modification of Pines’ “the deity, the angels .רברבין as אהים Onkelos translates 247 אלחכאם and the rulers governing the cities” that I believe is justified by Maimonides’ use of the phrase Pines’ translation of al-hakam as ‘rulers’ is technically correct, but loses the connotation .מדברי אלמדן Additionally, mudabari suggests a concern with the well ﺡ.ك.م of judgment and wisdom suggested by being and health of the city.

134 knowledge of true and false and the knowledge of good and bad, and b) to be like God, knowing good and bad, is to be aware of the generally accepted ideas upon which communal life is founded, and therefore capable of both adhering to and organizing those ideas as a member, or ruler, of a community. The result s of this first fall in the Guide are to a large extent legal and political. It is the first transgression of the law, and it is the transgression that renders human beings capable of successful political organization – it si the transgression of the law hatt simultaneously results in the need for and recognition of accepted truths that make particular kinds of political and legal regulation possible and necessary.

If Adam -kind had never disobeyed, and had never followed the desires of the imagination, the y would not have been aware of the shame associated with nakedness. Humanity, theoretically, would have remained in a state of pure intellectual apprehension where such matters were utterly irrelevant to our lives. But, having become aware of them and havi ng become affected by them, they are now essential to regulate – once Adam -kind is aware of the embarrassment of being naked, they must cloth themselves. The imagination, it must be said, emerges quite badly from this story, seeming to be the faculty by me ans of which this embeddedness in the secondary, material, political world comes about. The imagination of an is I.2 is an animal faculty that recalls the potentially intellectual human to their animal nature. This is quite consonant with the picture of the imag ination that emerges from Maimonides ’ Aristotelian and Farabian account of the imagination in the Eight Chapters and other sections the of the Guide ; in the next chapter, the imagination appears as one of the ways “the form of a thing outside the mind that is apprehended by the senses” can appear. 248 In this short passage, , Maimonides uses the term ‘imaginary’ ( khayyaliah כיאליא to ) to refer to firuges whose form , sourah) צורה appears only when the object is no loger present. The example given, taken ( from Job 4:13 is the appearance of a mysterious figure who “ stood still, but I could not discern its appearance; a figure was before my eyes. ”249 In this instance the imagination is

248 Guide I. 3, 27; 18.

which Pines later translates as ‘vision.’ What ,מראה Job 4.16. The term translated as ‘appearance’ is 249 this verse highlights in Maimonides’ argument is precisely the functioning of the imagination when the sensible faculties are not functioning (literally or metaphorically).

135 responsible for the appearance of a figure in a dream – and while this may not seem partic ularly complex (particularly given -al Farabi s’ similar emphasis on the strength of the imagination when the senses are at rest) the context of the verse indicates that this is precisely a moment of prophetic illumination. Perhaps even more significantly, het opening the of the next chapter defines the Hebrew oh’ra (to see) as a term that connotes a grasp of the intellect. 250 This passage suggests, then, that the imagination is active in the apprehension of prophetic knowledge in the absence of the intellect, at l east at the level of Eliphaz the Temanite, 251 Long before Maimonides discusses the particular configuration of prophetic psychology, he has already begun to indicate the pivotal role that imagination will play in that account.

Putting aside the role of imag ination in prophecy, at least for the moment, these opening chapters are not nearly the end of what Maimonides has to say about the imagination in the Guide . The Guide is a famously complex book, and much modern ink has been spilled debating whether Maimon ides himself follows his own prescriptions for careful writing. While the debate over esoteric and exoteric teaching (in Maimonides and medieval philosophy in general) is beyond the scope of this chapter, it seems clear that Maimonides takes at least part of his own advice. In his introduction to Volume I of the Guide , he writes that the reader “ should not ask of me here anything beyond the chapter headings. And even those are not set down in order or arranged in cohort fashion in this Treatise, but rather are scattered and entangled with other subjects. ”252 If the first account of Eden in Guide I.2 requires at the very least some attention to the chapters that precede and follow, the second account of Eden in II.30 – almost at the center of the three volume Guide – requires similar familiarity but with a far greater quantity of text. And if Maimonides opens and closes Volume I with cautionary mentions of the imagination, the second telling account of Eden

250 Guide I.4, 27-28; 18-17.

251 Job 4.1. This does not reflect the character of imagination in the higher rungs of prophecy, let alone in the prophecy of .

252 Guide , Introduction to Volume I, 6.3.

136 generates a far more complicated picture of the imagin ation, one which perhaps requires a -re consideration of the criticisms of Volume I. 253

According to -al Farabi, human beings engage in certain behaviors as a result of their desires – these desires may be stimulated by sensation (the desire to move towards a cooling breeze or away from a sharp object), by the imagination (as when a particular image or experience is interpreted via the images already stored in the soul) , or by the intellect (to pursue a particular proof or obtain incontrovertible evidence, or even a desire to eat something unpleasant based on the knowledge that such a food would benefit one s’ health). 254 Insofar as desire is stimulated by the imagination, it may be an imagination informed by either the sensitive faculties or the intellect. When het sensitive faculties stimulate desire, it often results in deep and, on its own, uncontrollable desires of pleasures such as food or sex. When stimulated by the intellect, desire motivates the pursuit of knowledge about the world. ( Guide the In )31 I. )31 In the first instance, it leads to gluttony and immoderation of various kinds – in the second, it leads to discovery. For -al Farabi, the imagination that informs desire, and thereby influences behavior, may be beneficial or detrimental, accurate or inaccu rate. Maimonides is far more concerned with the ability of the imagination to inspire thoughts of things that never were and never will be real, but in the imagination seem possible. His criticism of the mutakallimun in in great part based on his analysis of their fundamental confusion of intellect and the imagination – their basic rational error (not unlike that of the anonymous interlocutor of Guide I.2) is confusing the imagined and the possible, and treating imaginations as

253 Maimonides’ “Call Upon The Reader” in Guide I.3 is his most direct and seemingly scathing indictment of the imagination, coming as it does in the midst of his criticism of the mutakallimin . However, it is possible that we need to rethink Maimonides’ statement that, “man is not distinguished by having imagination.” On one level this is simply a re-iteration of his point that man is distinguished by intellectual apprehension; on the other hand, it is precisely by being a combination of intellect and imagination that humankind is both of- and out-of this world. In other words, while man may not be distinguished by having imagination, imagination may be distinguished in man.

254 Farabi, Madinah ; Guide , I.72. What al-Farabi describes as the appetitive faculty is described by Maimonides as the estimative faculty and comes under the rubric of moral faculties/perfections insofar as it is motivated by desire and therefore must be disciplined not by intellect alone but also by habit.

137 evidence. Maimonides demands that we make a distinction between what is possible in the imagination and what is possible in the world. While at first glance this appears to be a further condemnation of the imagination (and it is primarily a criticism), by according the imagination the power to conceive of the impossible Maimonides also greatly enlarges its powers. Those powers are often troubling, but they must be taken into account. The imagination in Maimonides can enable the apprehension of remarkable and spectacular vistas and futu res, but unregulated by the intellect it leads to the indiscriminate pursuit of those options.

in is It is in Guide II.30, in a second account of the fall, that the Guide offers some indications as how to how and why human beings have a tendency to pursue the optio ns offered by the imagination, often (but not always) with deleterious effects. In contrast to I.2, where Maimonides conducted a direct exegesis of passages from Genesis, the fall in II.30 is examined largely through Midrash Genesis. In the midst of a seem ingly summative and chronological series of observations that cover Genesis I.1 5- (each topic begin with the a blunt introduction, “ among the things you ought to know …” ), the fairly short section concerning the encounter between Eve and the serpent in Eden stands out. This is true not only because of the content, but by the very frame that Maimonides gives to it. Uniquely, this passage begins, “ Among the things you ought to know and have your attention aroused to, ” and ends not with the simple “ understand hist ” or “ know this ” of the other passages but rather: “ this too you should take up in your thoughts. ”255 His focus in this second analysis is not the nature of the disobedience or even its consequences, but rather on the means by which the imaginative facult y comes to overpower the intellect in informing human behavior the – the midrashic discussion of the Edenic serpent and the figure of Sammael provide the locus for for this analysis. 256

the In the classic story of Eden, it is the serpent who appears to Eve and, by call ing into question the punishment and benefits of disobedience, leads her to eat the forbidden fruit and pass it to on to Adam. Drawing on Genesis Rabbah, Maimonides distinguishes between the serpa nt

255 Guide II.30, 356-67.

256 Guide II.30, 355-58;

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) וחש and ) ) and Sammael or Satan, who was riding the serpant. In one way this is the first test for , the reader; what does it mean for someone to ‘ride’ ( rukub רכב Maimonides ’ answer ?( seems to be in Guide I.70, a stand -alone definitional chapter in the midst of his critique of the mutakallimun .257 To ride has the literal meaning which indicates actually using something as a conveyance; but it is an equivocal term, Maimonides says, which also indicates rule and domination. “ The rider is more excellent than that upon which he rides, ” he writes, “ yet cannot be called more excellent except through a certain impropriety of language, for the rider does not belong to the same species as that which is ridden by him. ”258 A distinction is thus to be drawn between the serpent and Sammael, and the impetus for the disobedience belongs not to the snake but to Sammael understood to be equivalent to Satan as the one who tempts. 259 The Tempter has a number of traits in common with the appetitive faculty of the human soul described by Maimonides, the most important of whi ch is that it stimulates desire, be it for what is beneficial or what is detrimental. It is desire, after all, which renders us likely to eat unhealthy amounts of the food that we love, or engage in activities that we find pleasurable but which are neither intellectually stimulating nor remunerative. As we saw the at the beginning of this chapter, it is the appetitive faculty that feeds, and feeds off, emotions

257 Guide I.70, 171-75; 118-21. It is obviously also an extremely important chapter if one is attempting to understand Maimonides’ discussion of maaseh merqavah , and in fact the citation in the chapter indicates that it should be used in that analysis. However, it is also directly relevant to the discussion in II.30, something that it seems doubtful would be accidental.

258 This is the same word used by Maimonides to refer to the ‘linking’ action of the imagination in the Eight Chapters.

259 Hence Maimonides’ reference to the Genesis Rabbah LVI, where Sammael attempts to use the fear of Abraham and Isaac to convince them to refuse the sacrifice. Sammael also appears in Sotah 10b: When Tamar is accused of adultery for being pregnant out of wedlock, she gathers up proof of the father’s identity. According to the , Sammael then steals the evidence. Although the sages emphasize the inherent righteousness of Judah for coming forward as the responsible party, the absence of the evidence would certainly have made it easier for him to disclaim involvement in his daughter- in-law’s pregnancy.

139 like rage, lust, and fear. 260 To take pleasure in such emotions, or unhealthy behaviors, is the sign of a sick soul, whose appetite is destructive and who is incapable of conquering or even recognizing it. 261 It seems plausible that a wicked appetite would be seductive and destructive and – and yet Sammael prefers to use a stand in- for the seduction of Eve. In eth metaphorical reading of the fall, who is the Serpent who speaks for Sammael, and who is the Eve that he speaks with?

Man and Woman, Maimonides argues, signify both the physically gendered human beings and a fundamental division within the world. ( Guide I.6. ) The term ‘ woman ’262 indicates “any sort of thing inclined to be in relation to something else. ”263 In other words, as Maimonides makes explicit shortly afterwards, the female is Matter in the Platonic sense, and the male is Form – and matter is intelligible only in relationship to form, while undermining the intelligibility of the form with a veil of corruption and degeneration. We have seen already that the divine creation of Adam -kind (as opposed to Eve -kind) made adam like what is divine in terms of intellectual apprehension – apprehension of the forms. Adam and Eve are anthropomorphized versions of the metaphysical psychology the world. Yet it is important to note that, on Maimonides ’ own terms, the female is also capable of int ellectual apprehension of the truth. According to Maimonides ’ understanding of the responsibility and consequences of commandments, only those who are capable of understanding and executing commands can be commanded, and punished if they transgress. While Eve is a vulnerable intellect whose attachment to matter renders her susceptible to temptation, she is nevertheless an an intellect.

The Serpent ( nahash ) is perhaps the most ambiguous character in this metaphorical tableau of Maimonides. In the wider context of the midrashic literature that Maimonides deploys in

260 Eight Chapters , Chapter 1.

261 Eight Chapters , Chapter 3.

.in Guide I.6 אשה Maimonides uses the Hebrew 262

This is a difficult phrase to translate, indicating both a lack of . לכל קצֹה מהיאה מעדה למקארנה קצה אכֹרי 263 seriousness or roundedness to what is being indicated, as well as a certain physicality.

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II.30, the Serpent is the most dangerous of animals precisely because he is the most clever of the all the animals: It“ was taught in Meir s’ name: According to the greatness of the serpent so was his downfall: because he was more subtle than all, he was more cursed than all. ”264 The serpent is an animal, but capable of engaging in activities – and receiving punishments – greater than all any other animal. In Maimonides ’ telling, the serpent s’ temptation of Eve is the result of his domination by Sammael/Satan – therefore it is not in the temptation that we learn about the serpent, but in the method of temptation. The serpent slides into a situation in which God has instructed Adam -kind not to eat from the tree of good and evil ( khair/hasan and shirr/qabih ). But as anyone might, he asks Eve whether these were her instructions – she not only replies yes, she adds to the original prohibition, claiming that they have be ordered not to eat or touch the tree on pain of death. This, for both the sages and for Maimonides, is an ideal opening for the serpent. To make a command or prohibition more onerous or difficult is one of Maimonides ’ signs of a sick soul; for the sages, it is deeply dangerous. By unilaterally e xpanding upon Divine commands, Eve provides the opportunity for the serpent to prove that Divine commands have no force or impact – go ahead and touch the tree, he says, and you ll’ see that you won t’ die. Once it has been established in Eve s’ mind that the threat behind the prohibition si an empty one, and that the p otential benefit involves becoming a ruler, she begins to seriously regard the tree. Disobedience is preceded by desire, and that desire only comes into being when the object is recognized as be ing of subjective value, a value derived from its utility and value to man rather than its status under the law. When the serpent convinces Eve to seriously consider the possibilities offered by the forbidden fruit, she recognizes that it is “ good for food , seductive to the eye, and a tree desired to make one wise. ”265 It is good for food means that it would be generally accepted as food; it is seductive to the eyes, meaning that it has aesthetic value – again, something which is often a product of generally accepted opinions; and last but certainly not least, it offers the possibility of a ndki of knowledge which will chang e the organization of the world. Caught

264 Genesis Rabbah, XIX.

265 Genesis 3.6. Though the conventional translation is “pleasant to the eyes,” that does not very clearly .תאוה communicate the sense of longing and desire attaches to

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the in up in the delightful possibility that he might have more and become more than he ever thought was possible, man disobey s God s’ command.

The allegory of Eden as told by Maimonides is not simply a warning tale about obedience – is it is about the consequences of thinking something is possible when it is only a dream, or simply without thinking through the repercussions of that dream ( khayyal ). And for Adam - kind, Maimonides indicates, the pollution introduced in the initial turn towards desire is difficult to shake. It quickly becomes a part of human character, and, he suggests, is passed down from Adam and Eve to their first sons, Cain and Abel. Even without the midrashic contention that Cain was the bastard offspring of Eve and the Serpent, neither Cain nor Abel is capable of dealing with their desires in a way that makes them “ worthy of life. ” ( Guide II.30 )

The preceding analysis of the narrative of imagination end s at a very particular point, with Adam -kind cast out of Eden and attempting to organize their relationships with one another – an attempt that end with one of the most famous fratricides. Imagination played a pivotal role in turning the family of Adam into a band of refugees – how can on e think that the imagination has a positive role to play in human life, specifically in politic al and communal life life ?

The results of the fall in the Guide are both legal and political. It is the first transgression of law, and it is the transgression that renders human beings capable of successful political organization – at the same time it is that transgression of the law that makes political organization and authority necessary. If humankind is now aware, to the point of obsession, with the generally accepted things (mashhurat ) it is not to say that humankind agrees on such things as easily as Adam and Eve concurred that it was time to sew up fig leaves. Like al- Farabi, Maimonides has extremely high hopes for government, or at least for governors insofar as they are legislators or the teachers of legislation. Yet Maimonides also seems somewhat more wary of government, aware of its capacity to overstep the bounds within which it is truly beneficial. He may draw from the tradition that understands the government to be the only thing preventing a community from descending into cannibalism and anarchy, but he is also of

142 the tradition that remembers how quickly any line of rulers can devolve.266 As in al-Farabi, the imagination can play a preventative or facilitating role.

As a fundamental element of genuine prophecy, the imagination is an essential quality for the legislator. For Maimonides, imagination is an essential element of all prophecy below the rank of Mosaic prophecy proper. It is in fact a perfect imaginative faculty that distinguishes the prophet from the philosopher whose rational faculty is perfect (Guide II.32-33, II.36-38).

Secondly, there is the fact that Maimonides has no particular nostalgia for a pre-lapsarian, pre- political state. The nature of human beings is to be so widely different from one another that the only possibly means by which they can live together is under some sort of political regime, a regime of law, which regulates their behavior towards one another. And, like al-Farabi, Maimonides indicates that it is in the context of a political and legal community that human beings are capable of attaining the highest level of intellectual and spiritual perfection of which they are capable. This is the earthly city, and Maimonides’ work–his philosophy and his own work at the time – is explicitly and clearly focused on the perfection of that earthly city that requires governance and legislation.

The imagination plays a role here as well. It is the imagination that pushes the limits of logical extrapolation and gives it consequences in the world. A man of pure science may observe that the spring tides flood every year, but it takes a man of some imagination to suggest modifications to the architecture of the city that might accommodate those floods, and a ruler to successfully accomplish the relocation of a city beyond the flood plain. When imagination is directed by the intellect, it pushes human beings not simply to know the facts of how things are, but to accept that sometimes things are bad and fundamental elements of the organization of the community must be changed as a result.

The simultaneous necessity and danger of the imagination tells us something about why Maimonides virtually opened the Guide with an account of Eden that emphasized the sin of disobedience to the law. Like al-Farabi and Ibn Rushd before him, Maimonides places high value upon the laws of man, and is deeply wary of attempts to revise or change them – but he

266 Pirkei Avot 3.2.

143 recognizes, over and over again in his responsas and communications with Jewish communities, that human laws must change and adapt to circumstances. Certainly laws that regulate the day-to-day relationship between governments and the minority communities under their rule change. This is no small part of why Maimonides is so insistent upon obedience to commandments, even and especially those commandments whose intentions or purpose is impossible to rationally determine.

We may pursue change out of positive or negative motivations – the result that we desire may be, in the abstract, world-alteringly positive. But it is just as likely – and becomes more and more likely the more passionately and deeply we feel a need for change – that we will not think through all of the consequences. Law functions then as a bulwark against the passions aroused by the imaginations. Human laws can, and sometimes must be changed in order to allow the positive evolution of the community, but to require revolutioaries to submit to the law is to force them to slow down, to think through their consequences. If human psychology is singularly prone to permitting the subjugation of our intellect to our desires, and therefore to justifying the pursuit of the desires in a way no other being does, it is the law, first human and, when that fails, Divine, which protects our behavior from being similarly subject to the passionate political programs of a moment. Or at least this is what Maimonides would hope.

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CONCLUSION

This entire work is based on a desire to understand different manifestations of something that I began reading about fifteen years ago – irreconcilable differences. As an undergraduate at a school that taught , this meant trying to understand the aporia, not only in its Greek context as a logical impossibility, but in the contemporary philosophical meaning of something whose simultaneous impossibility and necessity had implications for ethics and politics. 267 I then thought I would take a break, and returned to philosophy in Arabic, in Damascus, reading a text chosen because the person who had agreed to be my ‘chevruta partner’ thought it was appropriate to my interests and language level – Ibn Rushd’s Decisive Treatise , where the potential for tension, and perhaps the impossibility of erasing the tension between Divine commands and the world, is his explicit topic. Returning to academia after an absence of two years, I found myself back to being battered by the winds of irreconcilable differences, this time in the discipline of religion. 268 I have read countless books devoted to addressing such differences with an eye to harmonization or further bifurcation, or that analyze similarities with an eye to illuminating their shared core or dispelling the myth of similarity. This dissertation does none of those things.

Rather than examine the difference between Athens and Jerusalem or Rome or Baghdad or any of the various combinations, I have chosen to give you the lineage of an idea that, insofar as it seemingly escapes clear categorization, demonstrates the life of the irreconcilably different. The imagination is thrown from faculty to faculty in the soul, and in the world it is ruled by whomever among one’s group (be it familial, civil, religious, or military) does the best job of catching the imagination. It is a free radical with the capacity to do great good, and to do great evil. But as we have seen in the preceding passages, the imagination is without a doubt powerful, and as Peter Parker’s Uncle Ben said, “With great power comes great responsibility.”

Prophecy and Dreams

267 It feels superfluous to mention the texts that were important in this respect, but among them I certainly would count , On Forgiveness ; and Martin Heidegger, Being and Time .

268 Martin Buber, On Zion ; and Leo Strauss, Philosophy and Law .

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For Maimonides’ Arabic heirs, that responsibility is a matter of great concern. It has been noted by others that the difference between Aristotle and all of his medieval readers was that his readers lived in eras when religion and prophecy were orthodox. Prophecy was real, and a source not just of custom but also of practice and belief. In Philosophy and Law , Leo Strauss traces the vagaries of prophecy in Maimonides and Ibn Rushd, noting that imagination is sometimes to be avoided while simultaneously neessary, and necessarily perfect, in both the best and most basic of prophets. For all three, prophecy had come and the role of the critical readers was now to study the Revealed texts and understand them. That imperative, to operate critically within the context of revelation, was an imperative that Aristotle did not face. For all three, this meant reading Revealed texts and reading them in both ‘good faith’ and with a critical apparatus. The assumption, perhaps most clearly articulated by Ibn Rushd, is that the critical analysis of revealed texts does not call their divinity into question when done correctly; in fact, critical analysis of a revealed text in relationship to the world and with the tools of logic developed over thousands of years is a mark of respect. “None who are capable should be denied,” writes Ibn Rushd, and Maimonides not only postulates but puts into practice methods of teaching that enrich the capable and avoid confusing the less able. So while Aristotle believed that the most important texts should be reserved for those who can understand them generally, the consequences if someone did not correctly understand was error. For Ibn Rushd and Maimonides in particular, the consequences of misunderstanding the most important texts is error, sin, and possible political catastrophe.

It is on the topic of error that Ibn Rushd displays one of his great similarities with Maimonides, to wit, his belief that there are certain types of error that are permissible and certain types of error that are not permissible. Among the impermissible errors, there are those that deserve to be ignored or corrected gently and those that deserve harsher punishment – errors that deserve punishment are committed by those who know better and are aware that they know better. They are the ones without shame, the ones who speak in bad faith or in order to cause argument for its own sake rather than for l’shem shamayim (the sake of heaven or truth). Described by Maiomnides as “the ignorance”, their ignorance is of a particular character – they do not simply lack knowledge, but they lack the prudence, modesty, and good fath necessary to balance their pronouncements.

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My Debt

I owe a debt that cannot be repaid to Leo Strauss. I was not lucky enough to be among his students (and frankly I have some doubt as to my general reception as a woman at that time). But I have had the enormous privilege of studying with students and the students of students of Strauss. Coming from a background in philosophy and Arabic thought, I strode into a seminar that included Strauss with literally no presumptions – my first reaction to him, while reading the section on Ibn Rushd in Philosophy and Law , was to think that he was completely off the mark. If he was, and if so why and how, formed the kernel of my M. A. thesis.

I have never been sure what the term “Straussian” means, or whether or not I am one. I do know that Strauss’ books do what so few do: they make me open other books. Like Aristotle, al-Farabi, Ibn Rushd, and Maimonides, opening to any given page will quickly result in having four or five other texts spread open on the desk. Between the need to move back and forth between text and endnotes and the constant need to pull out new references and check other sources, reading Strauss is a physical experience that engages the reader with a broad variety of texts. I do not believe that Strauss is perfect – I question certain elements of his thought, particularly his reading of al-Farabi as an esoteric writer. But I know that reading Strauss will always challenge me, intrigue me, and mimetically engage me in the “return to probity” that Strauss himself advocated.

This dissertation has combined Greeks, Muslims, and Jews on the philosophical question of the nature of human imagination, and by ‘philosophical’ here I mean a question that might be considered independent of religious tradition or law. Some might say that when it comes to philosophy, it does not matter what one’s tradition, language, or culture is, since philosophy is the search for the truth. But in point of fact the tools that we have for excavating the truth, our methods and even the subjects that we choose to analyze, do not exist independently of our material existence as members of overlapping groups and associations. I would not go so far as so say that I am some sort of historical materialist, but I acknowledge that the historical conditions influence the formulation and pursuit of philosophical questions. Strauss advocates the attempt to understand thinkers of an earlier time as they understood themselves; whether or not this is possible (and whether or not Strauss it to be so) the attempt to understand

147 them means trying to understand the world in which they lived. We may not be able to state absolutely the impact of the Mihna and the consequent wariness of mut’azilites about al-Farabi, Ibn Rushd, and Maimonides, but we know that it was in the air, and we know that association with the mu’tazilites carried dangers unique to the era and political position of each thinker. In this work I have not even touched upon the severe famine in Cairo from 1197-1203, during the very last years of Maimonides’ life – in large part because this is generally considered to have happened after Maimonides completed the Guide . Yet if I was to examine some of his letters and responsas from those last years, it would be essential to keep in mind that Maimonides had just survived a famine so severe that people genuinely resorted to cannibalism; it certainly paints his letter on cannibalism in a new light. 269

The Curtain Call

At the end of the introduction to this dissertation, I noted that the topic of imagination and rhetoric (or at least rhetoric) has become a topic of significant debate. We are all increasingly subject to persuasive speechby multiple forces with a multitude of ends, whether that persuasion takes the form of bombastic speeches that speak to our most fearful imaginings, or the “curation” of the news that we have access to by forces (be they companies, nations, or groups) that are invisible to us. In a world where even the veracity of a fact, in itself, is considered subjective because the fact might be inconvenient, it behooves us all to attend to the tools of rhetoric and the way that we can be persuaded. The great departure of Aristotle’s Arab readers from Aristotle was the fact that they saw the imagination as being a discriminatory and judgmental activity – if Aristotle’s phantasia is a pre-subjective being in the world which is then imbued with meaning and association by other forces, the Arabic

269 Abd al-Latif, Relation de l’Égypte par Abd-Allatif, Médecin arabe de Bagdad , Paris, 1810 [1201- 1207], in Reay Tannahill, Flesh and Blood: A History of the Cannibal Complex , London, 1975. In particular, it is interesting to note that although cannibalism in Maimonides’ letters is a horrible thing, Maimonides, with almost shocking pragmatism, makes clear that the worst punishment is saved for those who eat their parents. This is not entirely an academic answer, but influenced by his experience of a time when cannibalism and barbarism gripped his world. Maimonides, Responsa 15 and 22.

148 thinkers that we have discussed see the imagination as discriminating and judgmental, as the form that cognition takes when it is both influenced by our experience of the world but not limited to the reproduction of that experience.

As scholars and teachers, our obligation is fundamentally to be responsive to our students, to teach them responsibly – not simply giving them information, but giving them the critical skills that they can use to challenge that information. We connect with students because we share in many of their imaginaries – when we do not share an imaginary, as is quickly becoming the case for those who remember September 11 th , 2001 and those who do not, or those who remember the AIDS epidemic and those who do not, or those who entered their high school every morning through a metal detector and those who did not, that is when we face our greatest pedagogical challenge – to use the symbols and parables and metaphors which will communicate our meaning to our students. As teachers we must meet our students where they are, aware (at least to some degree) of the challenges that they have faced and the world that has formed them. But, as all of the philosophers discussed here would agree, it is a dereliction of duty to simply leave our students where we find them – that is a teacher of little use. Our job is to connect with students where they are and to bring them forwards, to teach them to critique themselves along with the world around them. If students are not capable of dissecting why they find a particular position or politician appealing, then they will never be able to subject those reasons to rational analysis. It is all very well to say that the imagination gives us tools for thinking of a different world, but the imagination is also a self-perpetuating accretion of our time in this world, a repository of our past pains and fears and hopes. If we do not understand the ways that rhetoric can access the imagination in the name of persuasion, then we remain little more than dolls whose movements and responses can be predicted, and therefore, manipulated. What Aristotle and his heirs have given us is an analysis of the imagination and rhetoric that enables the serious student to be much more.

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Appendix I: The Judeo-Arabic Qur’an (Bodleian Manuscript, Hunt 529)

Figure I: Surah al-Fatihah (Sura #1, The Opening) with diacritics. Hunt 529.2

Figure II: Selection Surah Miryam with diacritics and Arabic marginalia. Bodleian manuscript, Hunt 529.104b (105a, and other places, contain marginalia in Hebrew as well as Arabic.)

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Appendix II : The Overlapping Significations of Clothing (And Not Just for Jews)

Figure 1. An illustration of diverse clothing among scholars, from the Maqamat of al-Harriri, probably painted in the early 1200s

Figure 2. A remarkable rendering of Ibn Tumart holding audience, demonstrating that diversity of clothing continued under the Almohads.

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Figure 3: A very limited number of the seemingly infinite varieties of headgear that developed in the Ottoman era in the 5-27 th centuries.

Appendix III : Chart of Greek, Arabic, Hebrew, and Judeo-Arabic terms.

English Aristotle Al-Farabi Hebrew: Maimonides De Anima Ibn Tibbon

Imagination Phantasia Quwwa Al- Dimyon Quwwa al-mutakhayyilah קוא אלמתכילא דמיון Φαντασία mutakhayyilah ﺍﻟﻘﻮﺓ ﺍﻟﻤﺘﺨﻴﻠﺔ

Image Phantasma Al-mutakhayyul Al-suwwar ﺍﻟﺼﻮﻭﺭ ﺍﻟﻤﺘﺨﻴﻞ Φαντασηα Al-suwwar ﺍﺻﻮﺭ Mimesis Mimesis Muhaka ﻣﺤﺎﻛﺎﺓ Μιμησις

Truthful/ Aletheis Sadiqah Tzaddik Sadiq ﺻﺎﺩﻕ צאדק ﺻﺎﺩﻗﺔ believable Αληθείς Haq ﺣﻖ ﺣﻖ Incorrect/ Pseudeis Kadhibah Kazab Batil ﺑﺎﻁﻞ כאזב ﻛﺎﺫﺑﺔ wrong ψσευδεις Kadhib ﻛﺎﺫ ﺏ Good Agathon Jameel Tov Hasan (or Tov) ﺣﺴﻦ טוב ﺟﻤﻴﻞ Αγαθον

Bad Kanoni Quabih Ra Quabih (or Ra) ﻗﺒﻴ ﺢ רע ﻗﺒﻴ ﺢ ? Κ ανόνι

Rhetorica Rhetorica ﺧﻄﺎﺑﺔ Rhetoric Rhetorica Khataba ﺭﺣﺘﺮﺭﻛﺎ ֵ ר ט וֹ ִ ר ָיק ה Ρ ητορική Rhetorica Khataba ﺭﺣﺘﻮﺭﻛﺎ ﺧﻄﺎﺑﺔ ﺑ ﻼ ﻏﺔ Balagha

152

Convincing Pithonon Muqtan’a Muqtan’a ﻣﻘﺘﻨﻊ ﻣﻘﺘﻨﻊ persuading Π ιθανόν Desire/will Orexis Irada Yaitzer יצר ﺇﺭﺍﺩﺓ Ό ρ χ εις asShuq ﺷﻮﻕ ﺷﻮﻕ Syllogism Syllogismos Qiyas Heykash Qiyas ﻗﻴﺎﺱ היקש ﻗﻴﺎﺱ Σ υλλογισμός

Belief Doxa Ra’i Sivra סברה ﺭﺃﻱ Δόξα Da'at דעת דעת Practical Phronesis Al-‘aql al-‘amali Tivona תבונה ﺍﻋﻘﻞ ﺍﻟﻌﻠﻤﻲ Knowledge φρονμσις Prudence

153

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