39 pages • 1 hour read
Ibn TufaylHayy Ibn Yaqzan: A Philosophical Tale
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1177A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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BetaChapters 53-89Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapters 53-74 Summary
By the time Hayy is 21 years old, he has learned to use many forms of tools and technologies to survive. He makes clothes out of animal skins and sews them using hair, hemp, and fibrous plants. He stores food after observing birds do the same and keeps poultry to get eggs and meat. He uses animal horns and stone to make weapons and he domesticates wild horses so that he can hunt even animals that are faster than he is.
Hayy begins to contemplate how to categorize all the knowledge he has gained from sensory observation. While he initially divides everything into categories—seeing that all animals, organs, and types of beings are distinctive and different—he eventually begins to notice connections and patterns. This causes him to conclude that the many different components of the world are actually all one. He first unifies animals into distinctive species, then into the entire animal kingdom, and then does the same for plants. Regarding inanimate bodies, Hayy divides them based on their physical properties into the elements of earth, water, fire, and air. He notices how all material things have certain traits that unite them into categories such as hot, cold, heavy, or light.
Hayy uses reasoning to develop the idea of forms—the philosophical concept of the true nature of things, which he calls the soul. Based on the idea of forms developed by the Ancient Greek philosopher Plato, the concept of a form posits that the physical world is not reality, and there is a superseding ultimate reality wherein the pure nature of things is expressed. The division of forms does not just rely on the senses, but rather categorizing based on reason by deducing the common form from which certain traits emanate.
Hayy experiments with a ball of clay, realizing that while its dimensions can change depending on whether he shapes it into a ball or a cube, it will still have dimensions no matter what. In philosophy, the clay is analogous to the concept of hyle: The idea of materiality itself that must be shaped into different forms. This more abstract form of reasoning causes Hayy to feel alone and strange in the world.
Hayy’s realization about forms leads him to determine that all traits and functions arise from a particular cause. When he considers this, he understands that the forms themselves must have a cause, another Being that is the actual force behind all actions in the material world. This leads to Hayy beginning to form an idea of God.
Chapters 75-89 Summary
When Hayy reaches the age of 28, the fourth 7-year period of his life, he begins to contemplate the decay and destruction of all things. Everything in the material world can be destroyed. He turns his attention to heavenly bodies and studies astronomy. Through observation of the planets and stars, he reasons that the heavens are spherical by observing the cycle of the sun and moon, and the relative size of the spheres at different points in time.
From this observation, he wonders if the heavens are finite or infinite. Using mathematical reasoning, Hayy concludes that an infinite physical body is impossible. Likewise, because the universe exists within time, it is impossible to have a time before or after the universe. He imagines the universe as a single unified organism, with all the plants, animals, and inanimate objects akin to the various parts of a single creature’s body.
After reaching this point of knowledge, Hayy determines that there must be a Creator who made everything in the universe. Since there can be no motion without a mover, he conceives of the creator as an infinitely powerful subject. He determines that the Creator must be infinite and everywhere within creation, which means that the Creator must be incorporeal. Hayy also begins to affiliate the Creator with goodness, beauty, and power and he begins to appreciate all living things as evidence of the Creator’s brilliance and benevolence.
Chapters 53-89 Analysis
After mastering sensory observation during his childhood, the adolescence of Hayy Ibn Yaqzān is structured around his education in logic and deductive reasoning. The knowledge that Hayy gains on his journey toward divine ecstasy takes heavy inspiration from Neo-Platonism, a school of philosophy that taught that all objects are imitations of “forms,” the spiritual essences of things that exist beyond the material world. Neo-Platonic philosophers in particular established the principle of the One, a divine soul of all creation from which all goodness emanates.
As Hayy grows up, he discovers the existence of the forms by examining the concept of unity. While Hayy’s scientific observations have shown him the differences between all things, his deductive reasoning shows him the unity between categories. For example, Hayy determines the individual purposes of his organs through sensory observation but understands them as a part of the unified whole of his body through deductive reasoning. The narration states, “this line of thinking, similar to the reasoning he had done on animals and plants, made evident to him that all physical things, despite the involvement of diversity in some respects, are one in reality” (121).
The concept of unity leads him to group all things into categories such as plants, animals, and elements. Eventually, Hayy begins to consider how all material objects have unifying traits inspired by the form of all material: “[I]n this way Hayy saw all being as one, although it had appeared at first glance boundless and without number. For some time he rested content at this stage” (122). However, once he establishes the principles that unify all material objects, he naturally recognizes that those principles must also have a cause. This leads him to believe in the existence of an all-powerful and infinitely good creator.
The reasoning performed by Hayy in this section helps to develop the theme of The Compatibility of Science and Theology. Hayy is never introduced to the idea of God through religious institutions or missionary efforts. He has no prophetic realization and receives no supernatural message. Instead, Ibn Tufayl shows that Hayy can naturally arrive at the truth through deductive reasoning. His reasons for believing in God are logical rather than enforced by outside influence, therefore supporting the notion that Islamic theology is an inherently rational belief and provable through human reason.
Using the Neo-Platonic concept of forms, a notion that pre-dates Islam, Ibn Tufayl seeks to validate Islamic religious truths: “Clearly the acts emerging from forms did not really arise in them, but all the actions attributed to them were brought about through them by another Being” (127). This sets the stage for Hayy‘s final life stage, wherein deductive reasoning will eventually be replaced by an even more powerful force: intuitive knowledge.
