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A Personal Perspective on Individual and Group: Comparative Cultural Observations with a Focus on Ibn Khaldun

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A Personal Perspective on Individual and Group: Comparative Cultural Observations with a Focus on Ibn Khaldun A personal perspective on individual and group: Comparative cultural observations with a focus on Ibn Khaldun GEORGE KATSIAFICAS Wentworth Institute of Technology, 550 Huntington Avenue, Boston, MA 02115, USA (Email, [email protected]) As the Islamic world declined in the 14th century, Ibn Khaldun wrote the Muqaddimah, a massive philosophical work in which he sought scientific grounds for a universal analysis of human beings. By seeking a global history of humanity, one that was not derived from the particular history of any one group, he was able to offer insight into the importance of group solidarity, assabiyeh. In this essay, I discuss the dynamics between autonomous individuality and group identity and offer some cultural comparisons to illustrate more general insights. [Katsiaficas G 2014 A personal perspective on individual and group: Comparative cultural observations with a focus on Ibn Khaldun. J. Biosci. 39 327–332] DOI 10.1007/s12038-013-9393-9 1. Introduction declaring freedom of the individual. In the 18th century, European and American revolutions won new freedoms In the contemporary world, groups have achieved prepon- and rights. Today, past accomplishments are systematically derant power over the lives of all of us, enmeshing us in eroded as governments claim for themselves new powers, webs of nation, race, and gender and stimulating an expand- including even the right to decide without due process mat- 2 ing range of investigations into collective behaviour. In our ters of life and death. Such vast historical changes compel historical epoch, scientists examine afresh individual ontog- us to consider the categories of individual and group viewed eny amid the role of groups. No less than contemporary over time. Their relationships are not fixed but vary with the social research, new natural science investigations pose the rise (and decline) of socially created forces. question: Is genuine individual autonomy possible? Before we assume the parallel character of natural and Beginning in the 17th century and more so in the 18th social phenomena, questions need to be posed about the century, European autonomous individualism began to flow- validity of positivism (the idea that the rules and methods er. Men and women1 made unique contributions as they of natural science can be applied to society). Can we rely penned masterpieces of art, music and philosophy, wrote upon scientific methodology that explicitly extends relation- magnificent novels, and dared to espouse political tracts ships and laws observed in the natural world to human phenomena? Humans have made history. We have over- thrown the rule of kings and queens (or accepted it), but 1 Although generally unknown, female artists in 17th century Europe we are not blindly compelled simply to accept royal rule as made significant contributions. Judith Leyster (1609–1670), apprenticed our only option. Can the same be said of bees? Going ’ to Frans Hals, was a member of the prestigious Painters Guild, and taught further, water boils at 100°C at sea level everywhere in the male students. Most of her work was attributed to men. Anna Maria Sybilla Merian (1647–1717) produced volumes of flower engravings as world. Can any similar constant be uncovered with regard to well as drawings of insects, which became significant resources for the human relationships? Are any two human beings exactly subsequent classification of species. After moving to Surinam, she pro- alike? Are there constant patterns to human interaction that duced Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium, considered one of the ’ – world s best books of biological illustration. Rachel Ruysch (1664 1750) 2 received more for her art than Rembrandt did for his work. See The Cf. speech delivered by Dr Martin Luther King, Jr, on April 4, 1967, Guerrilla Girls’ Bedside Companion to the History of Western Art 1998 at a meeting of Clergy and Laity Concerned at Riverside Church in New (New York: Penguin Books) pp 40–43. York City. See http://www.hartford-wp.com/archives/45a/058.html Keywords. Assabiyeh; Ibn Khaldun; individual and group; Islamic philosophy; Muqaddimah http://www.ias.ac.in/jbiosci J. Biosci. 39(2), April 2014, 327–332, * Indian Academy of Sciences 327 Published online: 15 March 2014 328 George Katsiaficas can be compared with the rate of acceleration at which an …there is something that exercises an influence and is object falls to earth or to the precise combination of atoms different than bodily substances. This is something that form specific molecules? spiritual. It is connected with the created things, be- Despite the best efforts of sociologists to postulate ‘iron cause the various worlds must be connected in their laws’ and of philosophers to assert that ‘history repeats existence. This spiritual thing is the soul, which has itself,’ in certain respects society is characterized by change perception and causes motion. Above the soul…is the 3 rather than by stasis. When change occurs, its character is world of angels (Ibn Kahldun 1986, 1:195). sporadic and uneven. It is not like the precise repetitive 4 patterns exhibited by some natural phenomena. Govern- For Ibn Khaldun, the soul had form and substance since ments, religions, and even languages change over time, its existence materialized in the exchange of ‘potentiality for leading many thinkers to conclude that a sharp distinction actuality with the help of the body and (bodily) conditions’ must be drawn between Geisteswissenschaft and Naturwis- (Ibn Khaldun 1986, 1:214). A central issue in Ibn Khaldun’s – 5 senschaft between the humanities and natural sciences. philosophy of history was the possibility for human beings In the following pages, I discuss the views of Ibn Khaldun to understand forces beyond their control. He sketched an – (1332 1406 AD), a 14th century Islamic philosopher for historical process, which in the final analysis was not simply ‘ whom group identity or assabiyeh (translated as group a history of external events but rather that of human beings ’ feeling by Franz Rosenthal) was the critical element in his becoming who they in essence are. As such, he offers valu- understanding of society. Because he was convinced of both able insights into the character and conduct of our species. the need for investigation and for faith, Ibn Khaldun differ- Across and even within cultures, changing meanings of entiated between the physical world and the divine world, group and individual will be noted. I will observe variable insisting that philosophy could comprehend history but not valuations and formulations of group and individuals in divinity: Islamic, East Asian, and European cultures. The broad sweep Man is composed of two parts. One is corporeal. The of my cultural comparisons is necessarily philosophical rath- other is spiritual, and mixed with the former. Each one er than based upon a numerical sampling of behaviour. of these parts has its own perceptions, though the (part) that perceives is the same in both cases, namely the spiritual part. At times, it perceives spiritual percep- 2. Ibn Khaldun’s perspective tions. At other times, it perceives corporeal percep- tions. However, it perceives the spiritual perceptions Despite his decidedly disinterested attitude to his own life, through its own essence without any intermediary, Abu Zayd Abdel Rahman Ibn Khaldun was a veritable while it perceives the corporeal perceptions through fountain of original thought. In 1377, in the short period of the intermediary of organs of the body, such as the five months, he wrote the Muqaddimah (or Prolegomena) brain and the senses (Ibn Khaldun 1986, 3: 253). while secluded at a palace of a sultan in what is today western Algeria (Enan 1975,51–52). Five centuries before Each of these different parts of human beings was inte- Darwin uncovered evolution, Ibn Khaldun wrote that grated into a whole. Yet for him, change constituted a humans descended from ‘the world of the monkeys’ through ‘ ’ dividing line between divinity (which lasts and persists ) an ever-wider process in which ‘species become more nu- ‘ and the ephemeral fate of the corporeal dimension: Time merous’ (Ibn Khaldun 1986, 1:195).6 He attributed human …’ wears us out . Ibn Khaldun understood the realm of spirit racial characteristics to climate, thereby implying that all as prior to and influencing the world of the body: humans are related to each other.7 By grounding his analysis in the universal relation of spirit and body, he also provided a 3 Robert Michel’s The Iron of Oligarchy is the classic example here, basis for the history of our species, not simply for any and Karl Marx followed in his teacher GWF Hegel’sfootstepsby particular sub-group – a universal history that is only today ‘ ’ declaring, history repeats itself. Depending on the level one deals again emerging as national and ethnic ones prove insuffi- with, of course, for in other respects, ‘the more things change, the more they stay the same’, and we can look at the issue of individuality vs. cient in our globalized reality. Nearly half a millennium groups across history. To that extent, we deal with the same questions, which is among the reasons for studying history. 4 And not necessarily unlike the long periods of stasis punctuated by 6 To be sure, his theory had no precise notion of natural selection or change claimed for biological evolution. See http://en.wikipedia.org/ branching evolution. Ibn Khaldun’s ‘evolution’ was just the Great wiki/Punctuated_equilibrium. Chain of Being, not a unique notion at the time and derived from 5 Such critics of positivism also oppose the notion that history has Aristotle. precise and repetitive cycles. They understand every event in history 7 In contrast, the polygenist Lucilio Vanini (1585–1619) asserted that as unique, an insight noted long ago by Heraclitus of Ephesus and ‘negroes’ descended from apes because of their skin colour while other reinvigorated more than a millennium later by GWF Hegel.
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