The Texture of the Divine: Imagination in Medieval Islamic and Jewish Thought

Notes

Notes INTRODUCTION Citations of sources are abbreviated, giving only the author’s surname and the main title of the work. For full facts of publication of primary and secondary sources, please refer to the bibliography. 1. When dealing with all three narratives together I refer to them by the Arabic H . ayy ibn Yaqz .ān even though ibn Ezra translated his version literally into Hebrew as H . ay ben Meqitz. When I refer to ibn Ezra’s treatise alone I use his Hebrew designation. 2. A fourth is by the Persian philosopher Suhrawardı̄ (d. ca. 1191). Although Suhrawardı̄ is clearly an important Islamic philosopher, I have chosen not to discuss him at any length. He did, nevertheless, compose a very short treatise (three pages) by the name of H . ayy ibn Yaqz .ān. Even though this text is certainly worth scholarly attention, I have decided to remain in the western Islamicate world (viz., al-Andalus or Muslim Spain), thereby confining my analysis to ibn Ezra’s and ibn T .ufayl’s narratives and their various points of contact with the work of Avicenna. I have, however, discussed Suhrawardı̄’s use of this genre elsewhere. See my “Reading Islamic Philosophy.” Also see the review article of Landolt, “Suhrawardı̄’s ‘Tales of Initiation.’” 3. For the Arabic texts, I have used Amı̄n, ed., H . ayy ibn Yaqz .ān li ibn Sı̄nā wa ibn T .ufayl wa al-Suhrawardı̄. In addition, I have consulted the English translation of Avicenna’s H . ayy ibn Yaqz .ān found in Corbin, Avicenna and the Visionary Recital, pp. 137–150. For an excellent English translation of ibn T .ufayl’s text, see Goodman, Ibn Tufayl’s Hayy ibn Yaqzan: A Philosophical Tale. For the most part, I use Goodman’s translation, but modify it accordingly and supply the requisite Arabic terms. 4. Abraham ibn Ezra, H . ay ben Meqitz. I have provided a full English translation of this work in the appendix. 5. Synopses of these three texts, along with biographies of their authors, may be found in chapter 1 below. 6. In using the term “Islamicate,” I follow the lead of the great historian of Islam, Marshall Hodgson. He writes that this term refers “not directly to the religion, Islam, itself, but to the social and cultural complex historically associated with Islam and the Muslims, both among Muslims themselves and even when found among non-Muslims.” See Hodgson, The Venture of Islam, vol. 1, 26001-Notes.qxd 10/8/03 16:22 Page 209 p. 59. In this manner, although ibn Ezra was certainly not an “Islamic” philosopher , we could refer to him as an “Islamicate” philosopher. Even though he was deeply committed to Judaism, Jewish values, and Jewish sources, he nevertheless expressed himself in terms of the vocabulary and categories of AraboIslamic civilization. In what follows I tend to use “Islamic and Jewish” philosophy and “Islamicate” philosophy interchangeably. 7. Ibn T .ufayl, H . ayy ibn Yaqz .ān, p. 89 (Goodman, p. 131). 8. Faur, Homo Mysticus, p. 62. He subsequently claims matter-of-factly: “Imagination is the source of pagan civilization” (p. 66). 9. E.g., Republic 476, 479; Symposium 210b–211e; Phaedo 65, 75d, 78de; Phaedrus 249c–250b. 10. See the discussion in Corbin, Le Paradoxe du monotheisme. 11. Hughes, “Imagining the Divine,” pp. 33–36. 12. E.g., Seeskin, Searching for a Distant God, esp. pp. 23–39. 13. E.g., Auerbach, “Odysseus’s Scar,” in Mimesis, pp. 3–23; Ong, The Presence of the Word, pp. 2ff. 14. This has been well documented in the history of Judaism in Bland, The Artless Jew, pp. 13–36. 15. Wolfson, Through a Speculum that Shines, pp. 60–61. 16. In many ways this is related to the “perennial philosophy” school of mysticism that states all experiences, regardless of the religious tradition, are the same. The only difference, then, is in how the individual translates the experience. See, e.g., Huxley, The Perennial Philosophy; Schuon, Islam and Perennial Philosophy. For a harsh indictment of this approach, see Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, pp. 198ff. My own take on this resembles the work of Stephen Katz, who argues that there cannot be a pure, unmediated experience because the individual always brings a “pre-mystical consciousness” to it. See Katz, “Language, Epistemology, and Mysticism.” For an excellent overview of the various debates with the academic study of mysticism, see McGinn, The Foundations of Mysticism, pp. 265–343. 17. For the...