Ibn Tufail
Ibn Tufail ( * 1110 in Wadi - Asch ( Guadix ) in Granada, † 1185 in Marrakech ), full name Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn ʿ Abd al -Malik ibn Muhammad ibn Tufail al - Qaisi al - Andalusi (Arabic أبو بكر محمد بن عبدالملك بن محمد بن طفيل القيسي الأندلسي, DMG Abū Bakr Muḥammad ibn ʿ Abd al -Malik ibn Muhammad ibn Tufail al - Qaisi al - Andalusi ), latinized Abubacer, an Arab- Andalusian philosopher, astronomer, physician, mathematician and Sufi ( Islamic mystic ) was. He is the author of a philosophical novel Island ( " Robinson Crusoe ").
Life
From the life of this scholar, little is known. He came from Guadix and is said to have settled after the study of medicine, mathematics and astronomy as a doctor in Granada, before he was later appointed by the Almohadenherrscher Abu Yaqub Yusuf I (1163-1184) to Marrakech and was appointed personal physician and vizier. There he met Ibn Rushd / Averroes, whom he introduced to the Sultan. Ibn Rushd / Averroes was interested in was already promoting the philosophy of Aristotle, as the political situation at that time but were difficult, he ventured into the conversation until the end of his interest in Aristotle to express. Ibn Tufail died in 1185 at the residence in Marrakesh.
This - along with a medical didactic poem - got only work of his is the treatise of Hayy ibn Yaqzan ( The Living Son of growing up ) that the most important works of Arab philosophy and literature belongs. One can describe the work as education or age novel; it should have been Crusoe Daniel Defoe's Robinson also template. In the novel, it's about a child raised by a gazelle and surrounded only by nature and animals growing up on a deserted island and gained the knowledge of the omnipotence of God until the age of 50.
The living, the son of the wax ends
The novel demonstrates the Islamic fitrah concept and is about a man ( named Haiy ibn Yaqzan ), who grows up from childhood alone on a tropical island and is nourished by the animals. Besides, many educational and psychological aspects are described, more than one would expect from a philosophical work. The description of the boy's life is done step by step in stages to seven years. The young man slowly evolved and eventually comes to the highest attainable for a human knowledge.
- In the first phase up to its 7th year Haiy is raised by a gazelle and introduced to basic feelings and sentiments of affection and solidarity and survival techniques such as foraging and self-defense. It is the time of the child's discovery.
- In the second phase up to age of 21 he discovered even some craft techniques, such as the construction of a cave and dealing with fire. With the death of the gazelle he learns also that living things consist not only of a body, but also from a spirit. As the gazelle, his mother dies, he dissects them to find out where life is gone, and finds the heart, where he, a " hint " (also: Pneuma ) the life, thought, which is now but gone.
- In the third phase up to the age of 28 he is tackling the issues of logic and physics. He discovered the causality and believed that everything has to have a " first cause ". It starts individuals of the species to be distinguished form of matter and effects of causes. He divided his environment into categories, kinds and breeds. Because of his insight into a kind of " first cause " or ultimate cause he already has a foundation for the knowledge of God.
- In the fourth phase, up to 35 years he devoted himself to cosmology. He realizes that there must be a metaphysical reasons for the movement of the heavenly bodies, even of the whole world and of life. He looks for laws that govern everything in the world, and finds the laws of nature. He sees but even more clearly than before, that everything has to come from somewhere, and only has the goal of the perfect Being, the Creator of heaven and earth to come closer.
- In the fifth phase until the age of 50 he meditated, for he realizes that the instrument for knowledge of God can not be an instrumental or sensual, but God has to be similar to themselves. God must not remain object to be recognized, so the knowing subject must rise to a level that can be seen on the God. For knowledge is a fusion of subject and object is required, the knower, and knowledge is Recognized at the same time. Haiy also recognizes that life should be conducted in three stages to reach this conclusion:
As Haiy is 50 years old, is running on a neighboring island a Muslim community in touch with him. It turns out that the inhabitants of the neighboring island with Haiy in all material respects to the questions he had always wanted to discuss with someone who agree: the existence of God, the nature of the world and destiny of man. Haiy but has recognized the undisguised truth, while she was announced the people of the neighboring island by a prophet, by instructions and symbols. Ibn Tufail concludes with the remark that the knowledge of several paths are possible, both a more philosophical ( as ultimately Ibn Sina ) and a more religious (as in Al -Ghazali ). His novel is also, as mentioned in the preface, the symbiosis of these two philosophers. Furthermore, Ibn Tufail also considers it possible that other religions can also come to the knowledge, such as Judaism and Christianity, and not only Islam.
Effective history
The German into probably best described as " Survivor, son of a guardian " to be translated novel published in England in 1671 an Arabic edition with beige entered a Latin translation by Edward Pococke as " the Philosopher Autodidactus ". The occurrence of the text in European philosophy and literature but may be dated earlier. Because Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe before ( 1719) has Baltasar Gracian's El Criticón ( 1651-57 ) to relevant parallels. 1726 appears an anxious by Johann Georg Pritius German translation entitled " The learned world from itself = way ". In May 1763, Moses Mendelssohn thanked Gotthold Ephraim Lessing Autodidactus for the " release " of the Philosopher; the first back cross to the Arabic original German translation is published in the same year under the title " The natural man " in the publishing of Lessing's friend Friedrich Nicolai.