Ibn al-'Arabi's Barzakh: The Concept of the Limit and the Relationship between God and the World

CHAPTER 6. The Third Entity: The Supreme Barzakh

Plato’s Form, The Mu>tazilites’ Nonexistent, and Ibn al->Arab•’s Fixed Entity In chapter 2 I discussed the controversy between theAsh>arites and the Mu>tazilites over the question of whether the world was created from absolute nothingness or from a preexistent matter. I mentioned Wolfson’s view that the Mu>tazilites’ belief in the world’s creation from a preexistent matter was due to their acquaintance with Plato’s theory of the creation of the world out of a preexistent matter, as the theory is introduced in Timaeus, and with Aristotle’s theory of the eternity of the world.1 As scholars attest,2 the Mu>tazilites’ notion of the nonexistent (al-ma>d¥m) was a major influence on Ibn al->Arab•’s thought. This should become clear from the several occasions in which Ibn al->Arab• supports the Mu>tazilites’ position regarding the problem of the nonexistent and criticizes that of the Ash>arites. In the following passage, for example, he identifies his barzakh concept with the notion of the nonexistent: “The Barzakh is like the dividing line between existence and nonexistence. It is neither existent nor nonexistent. If you attribute it to existence, you will find a whiff of existence within it, since it is immutable. But if you attribute it to nonexistence, you will speak the truth, since it has no existence. I wonder at the Ash>arites!3 How could they reject him who says that the nonexistent is a thing in the state of its nonexistence and that first it possesses an immutable entity, then existence is added to the entity?”4 In the previous chapter I pointed out the similarity between Ibn al->Arab•’s immutable or fixed entity (>ayn thåbita), his main example for the barzakh, and the Platonic Form. I do think, therefore, that the Mu>tazilites’“nonexistent,” CHAPTER 6 ♦ The Third Entity: The Supreme Barzakh Ibn al->Arab•’s fixed entity, and Plato’s Form are three concepts that have similar meanings. Here, however, Wolfsons’ reservation against identifying the Mu>tazilites’ “nonexistent” with the Platonic Form, and Chittick’s reservation against identifying the Platonic Form with Ibn al->Arab•’s fixed entity must not be overlooked. Wolfson writes, “Now, to say that the ‘nonexistent’ in the Kalåm controversy refers to Platonic ideas, and that these ideas are called nonexistent because they have not yet acquired the accidental or temporal existence characteristic of sensible things, is an assumption which cannot be sustained. Plato himself never describes the ideas as nonexistent. On the contrary, the ideas in their totality are described by him as ‘true substance,’ as ‘existing in reality,’ as ‘existing absolutely,’ and as ‘existing eternally.’ How then could these Platonic ideas come to be described as “nonexistent’?”5 Wolfson’s argument is inconsistent with what he states elsewhere.6 The Mu>tazilites did not conceive of the nonexistent as the simple negation of existence, but only as something whose existence is to be distinguished from the mode of existence of things in the sensible world. Following the example of Plato’s “eternal matter,” the nonexistent can be considered as even more substantial than ordinary existents. Chittick criticizes the view that identifies Ibn al->Arab• ’s fixed entity (>ayn thåbita) with Plato’s Form: If many translators have rendered >ayn as “archetype,” this is because God creates the cosmos in accordance with his eternal knowledge of it. Thereby He gives each thing known by Him—each entity “immutably fixed” (thåbit) within His knowledge—existence in the universe. However, the term “archetype” may suggest that what is being discussed becomes the model for many individuals in the manner of a Platonic idea. In fact what corresponds to the Platonic ideas in Ibn al->Arab•’s teachings is the divine names, while the immutable entities are the things themselves “before” they are given existence in the world.7 It is not decisively clear, however, what Plato means by the notion of the participation of things in their Forms, or by the idea that the Forms are the models of things. Indeed, a great deal of Plato’s reconsideration of his theory of Forms in Parmenides is based on a reexamination of the whole subject of the manner of the participation of things in their Forms. The sort of relation that holds between the Forms and things, which determines the mode of the participation of the former in the latter, seems to be an open question in...