THE MAJOR RELATION BETWEEN WESTERN METAPHYSICS AND SUFI LITERATURE

• Published date: 31 December 2021

Introduction

Modern philosophical and literary thoughts have their sources in the Middle Ages. To understand the landscape of Medieval thought and the sources under discussion one must look into the newly developing interest in Medieval thought and its contribution to later European philosophy and literature. Not so long ago, as Anthony Kenny observes, “courses in the history of philosophy went straight from Aristotle to Descartes” ignoring the fact that something worthwhile might have happened during late antiquity and the Middle Ages. One can find such prejudiced views in recent writings as Julian Young in his recent history of Western thought says, “From about the fourth to the eighteenth-century Western thinking was Christian thinking. This meant that throughout this period the question of the meaning of life was a non-issue; a non-issue because the answer was obvious, self-evident, the topic completely sewn up by Christianity's version of Platonism.”1

The writer may be right in his main contention of a similar worldview throughout Medieval Europe, however, this swift rejection of everything Medieval and the leap from Aristotle to Cartesian philosophy leaves us with many missing links in the history of metaphysics as a whole. Most importantly, without understanding Medieval developments in the history of metaphysics it is difficult to discern the links between Eastern and Western thought. Part of the emphasis of this research on Medieval thought is the important cross-pollination of metaphysical positions taken by Eastern Muslim and Western Christian theologians and mystics and the influence on both of already existing metaphysical orders of late antiquity and the early Middle Ages. This research also hopes to establish the roots of modern Romantic movements in the West and to explore the importance of contemporary metaphysical positions in literature and philosophy in the light of foundational Medieval thinking.

For the last two decades steady progress has been made in producing research work on Medieval thought. Most of these researchers point toward the Neoplatonist cosmology of Greek late antiquity as one of the most important factors and common sources for metaphysical speculation for both Western Christian thinkers and Eastern Muslim scholars of the Middle and later Middle Ages. Researchers such as Anthony Kenny (2005) in his study of Medieval philosophy and Kreisel2 and others in their study of Jewish thought in the Middle Ages emphasise the influence of Neoplatonism on all the important Christian, Muslim and Jewish thinkers. Early Christian thinkers like Augustine and Boethius are also the early source of Greek thoughts in later Christian theology. Augustine's City of God shows his profound knowledge of the pagan metaphysics of his age which he considered a real threat.

City of God was written in defence of Christian faith against pagan thought but as Kenny observes, the work is imbued with a metaphysical version of Neoplatonism. Boethius ended up in prison for his pagan thoughts in On the Consolation of Philosophy. This is considered the last serious work in the philosophical traditions of classical Greece in the Christian West.3

From Boethius in the fifth century to the ninth century A. D the Western world did not see any real contributor to this metaphysical tradition. However, the same period saw a surge of Greek philosophy in the Muslim world. As Kenny notes, between the fifth and ninth centuries A. D. ‘outside the Roman Empire the world was transformed beyond recognition'.4 Referring to this era Thomas Robinson (in his introduction to a new course on the study of Oriental literature in Cambridge University in May 1838) grudgingly informs his students that, “For while the night of ignorance was fast closing over the entire Christian world, the Providence of God provided for human learning a sanctuary and a home, even among the blasphemers of truth and poured the treasures of the Greek philosophy into new and fresher channels…the elements of our present greatness in human science were nourished in the cradle of the East.”5

In the same introductory lecture, Robinson quotes Persian Sufi poet Khakani and call his work the ‘finest art of Sufism'.

According to Kreisel, the Neoplatonic world view was very important to Medieval Islamic and Jewish thinkers such as al-Farabi and Moses Maimonides and these ideas saw a revival during the Renaissance period because of the availability and translation of Greek and Arabic Neoplatonic texts. Moreover, in the religious and philosophical works of this period one can find a battle between all sorts of ideas from Greek philosophy to Zoroastrianism. In between there is a range of metaphysical systems which fight for their supremacy alongside Neoplatonism. These include Gnosticism, Hermetism, Manicheanism, pagan fragments of Chaldean Oracles and Hellenistic deities and other syncretistic world views.

Similarly, R. Baine Harris talks about Muslim philosophical theologians like al-Kindi, Avicenna and Averroes and their use of Neoplatonism in their interpretation of Islamic metaphysics. According to Harris, such interpretations were not only significant for the development of Islamic theology “but also for the impact they had upon the thought of certain major Jewish and Christian Medieval philosophers”6 The significance of Neoplatonism and the availability of its texts in Arabic and their impact not only on Muslim and Christian but also on Jewish scholars of the Medieval period is acknowledged by many. Scholem thinks that the Medieval Jewish theologian and philosopher Maimonides had read the Neoplatonic text of ‘Theology of Aristotle', which was an Arabic translation of later Greek philosophy widely available during the Middle Ages.

According to Scholem, Maimonides' inclination toward mysticism shows he was aware of Neoplatonic metaphysics.7 Another researcher Idel contends that, “ another source of motifs, concepts, and terms […] to Jewish Medieval mysticism was Neo-Platonism […] the deep religious significance of this form of philosophy has already been recognized in the cases of Islamic and Christian mysticism, and Kabbalah fully shares with these mystical systems a deep interest in Neo-Platonism.”8 There seems to be an intriguing web of cross connections between the three major religions and other existing syncretic metaphysics. In addition to the major philosophical impact of Neoplatonism, there were many other such systems existing side by side with Abrahamic religions such as alchemical hermetic beliefs and Gnosticism that are still with us in some shape or other. The existence and influence of such ideas can be judged by the reaction of the organised religions to the followers of different alchemical traditions.

The history of Inquisitions and witch-hunts in the Christian world is a terrible example of persecution and torture against dissent and rival thinking in the Medieval period but it indicates the powerful influence of Medieval hermetic traditions that terrified the Church. Early Sufis and dervishes met a similar fate in the Islamic world. Here was the beginning of the division between orthodox religion and Sufi metaphysics, between organized religion and esoteric tradition.

Among all these battling ideas, Neoplatonism is highly influential with regard to emerging Christian and Islamic religious and mystical traditions of Medieval times as well as to the modern Romantics, Idealists and Transcendentalists of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. As noted by the-twentieth century philosopher Albert Camus in his study of Christian metaphysics and Neoplatonism, Neoplatonism's aspiration of ‘mystical longing for God' was compatible with Christian theology.9 Camus finds in Neoplatonism and in other later Greek metaphysics a concern for the ‘destiny of soul' and ‘an abiding need for rationality' and an idea of an enduring order. This search for intelligibility and coherence which Camus identifies in the thought of late antiquity usefully informed both Christian and Islamic theology.

In the eighth and ninth centuries A. D., Abbasid Caliphs made their capital Bagdad a centre of learning and cultural activities. Abbasid Caliph Haroon al-Rasheed established a learning centre called the ‘House of Wisdom' headed by a learned Christian Scholar. The work of the scholars in this centre of learning was to translate all the previous knowledge into Arabic with their commentaries. During this time, Muslims learned Greek philosophy, science, and languages; they learned knowledge and art from everywhere, from the Chinese technique of paper making to Indian number system and architecture of Greeks and Indians.10

The Medieval Islamic world seems more vibrant and adoptive of everything Greek than the Western world of the Christian Church. Discussing the popularity of Greek philosophy among Muslims P. Morewedge says very significantly, “For Muslims, Plato, Aristotle, and Plotinus are part of the Islamic tradition in the same manner that Abraham is regarded to be a prophet of Islam.”11 As far as contemporary Muslims are concerned, it seems an overstatement, but for Medieval Muslims it seems to be the case without any doubt. There are many reasons for the profound effect of later Greek philosophies on Islamic traditions and its scholarship.

Many scholars, such as Harris and Kenny, talk about encounters between Neoplatonism and Islam on different occasions and many historians have noted the presence of Greek scholars in Persian court prior to the rise of Islam. Morewedge thinks that the availability of Platonists' writings in Arabic was due to “the Hellenistic scholars having taken refuge in Persian courts after Justinian closed the then Neoplatonic Platonic Academy of Athens in 529.”12 Kenny tells a similar story about how the scholarship of late Antiquity and other Greek philosophy ended up in the hands of Muslim enthusiasts of learning. According to Kenny, enlightened fourth...