THE RESUME OF IBN RUSHD’S METAPHYSICS A Translation With Introduction of Ibn Rushd’s Commentary on Aristotle’s Metaphysics, Book Lam

NAMA           : MUHAMMAD RADYA YUDANTIASA

NIM                : 15530095

MATKUL      : FILSAFAT ISLAM

THE RESUME OF

IBN RUSHD’S METAPHYSICS

A Translation With Introduction of Ibn Rushd’s Commentary on Aristotle’s Metaphysics, Book Lam

BY.

CHARLES GENEQUAND

On the overall achievement of Ibn Rushd, two very different views have been taken. Some have greeted in him philoshoper who restored Aristotelianism in its purity, other have insisted tthat his system, particularly his noetics, some like van den Bergh, have argued that “emanation is the basic idea of Arabian Aristotelianism and cannot be eliminated without destroting the system”. Such a notion found its only support in the talkhis of the metaphysics, which may be said to have constitued the main obstacle, so far, in the way of a proper understanding of Ibn Rushd. In fact, the type of emanation meant by van den Bergh in the passage quoted above in confined to al-Farabi, Ibn Sina and some unoriginal commentators of the latter.. the Ikhwan as-Safa, for instance, have a different scheme, which way may also be termed emanationist, but is in effect quite different and closer to Plotinus and Porphyry. In this sense, van den Bergh’s statement is far too sweeping. It does nevetheless contain an element of truth : the discarding of any form of emanation  creates a serious problem for the thinker who wants to assert  at the same time the action of God on the world and the existence of Nature, without which no philosophical or scientific reflexion is possible. The whole polemic against al-ghazzali centres on this problem : the crude creationism of the kalam theologians was unacceptable to Ibn Rushd. The question was further complicated by the untouchable dogma that god and the celestical intellects cannot condescend to look upon what is below them. We have seen what contradictions and obcurities Ibn Rushd falls into as a result of these contradictory requirements. The contradiction, to put it in its simplest terms, is between the ascending order of intellection and the descending order of creation. By knowing what is above them, the separate intellects create what is below them. This curious scheme can be viewed as anot very satisfactory subtitute for avicennian emanation. This system developed from that of Alexander, adding to it one further contradiction : for Alexander, the idea of an idle God at the apex of creation had nothing objectionable about it, whereas Ibn Rushd was ultimately compelled to say that God  ( the prime mover ) somehow had a knowledge of all existents, however obscure the concept of this divine knowledge may remain.

Aristotle was the only philoshoper for whom Ibn Rushd had an unrestricted admiration, for him, as for most greek and medieval commentators, the truth had to be sought not through an independent investigation of the world, but through the interpretation of aristotle’s writing. But however great his desire to restore the teachings of aristotle on their original purity, he could not help looking at them through the spectacles provided by more than ten centuries  of exegetical endeavours. It was beyond his ability to understand Aristotle without the help of the subtly-distorting school tradition of commentaries and text books which had all but replaced the original texts from the days of late antiquity. He does not even seem to have seen aware that there could be a different between the teachings of Aristotle and those of his successors.

There are, nevertheless, clear distortions in the image of aristotl presented by Ibn Rushd. For example, the cosmological scheme put forward in his commentary on book Lam of the metaphysics shows features which go well beyond that which has a ”scriptual” basis in Aristotle’s text, particularly gthe explanation of all sublunar phenomena as effects of he celestial motions, which themselves are produced by the prime mover. It has been shown above  that this is in many ways un-Aristotelian, nevertheless it is a system which is already largely anticipated in Alexander (not only on his commentary, but also in his short treatise Fi Mabadi’ al-Kull whose influence in the middle Ages was enormous) and themistius. The recourse of these two authors was not only legitimated in Ibn Rushd’s eyes by thje fact that they were greeks and closer in time tp Aristotle, and therefore more likely to have grasped his full meaning, it was also rendered necessary by the poor quality of the arabic translation of the metaphysics, and especially of lambda. It is no exaggeration  to say that the Arabic translations of Lambda  are in many places barely intelligible without the help of commentaries. It is misleading ro speak with Gatje (after many others) of a fusion of aristotelianism with neoplatonism , and to invoke  the Theology of aristotle, of the influence of which there is virtually no trace  in Ibn Rushd. The commentator merely inherited a brand of Aristotelianism  into which some elements, common to all philosophical schools of late  Antiquity, had crept, but which were particularly prominent in Neoplatonism.these beliefs had become se deeply ingrained in the minds of those thinkers, that the latter could not help reading them into contexts where it is clear to us that they are not found. Altough Ibn Rushd was convinced that all truth was the be found in Aristotle’s writings, he had a preconceived notion of what this truth would be. His mind was not a blank sheet before he started reading Aristotle, he expected Aristotle to say certain things rather than others. The work which he accomplished as a commentator, albeit unconsciously, was to reconcile this preconceived idea with the words of the master. No philosopical or cosmological system was conceivable for Ibn Rushd, both as heir to the late form of greek philosophy and as a muslim, in which the material and transitory world was not the “work” of the eternal, in a sense much more precise than the general way in which Aristotle refers to nature’s “dependence” on the primer mover. Aristotle’s universe, like Plato’s, tends to fall apart. These is no fully thoughout relation between the eternal and the sublunary. His system is open to the very charge which he laid against speusippus of being “episodic” . to restore a link between the two main levels of being was one of the perennial duties of greek philosophy, as was already clearly perceived by Theophrastus. Ibn Rushd becomes fully intellegible only insofar as we regard him as primarily a successor of Aristotle. He was not the builder of a new system, nor even the systematizer of a scattered  body of doctrine and interpretation as Ibn Sina was, we have seen that this cosmological system tends to fall apart. Bu just as his philosophy must be understood in the light of the Aristotelian tradition, similarly the sense of this tradition becomes clearer if observed from the pantage-point provided by his work. It is this which justifies the popularity which he enjoyed in the West, to which the fact that the majority of his commentaries are preserved not in arabic, but in Hebrew and latin amply testifies. He thus became one of the main links between both greek and medieval philosophy and between East and West.