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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The Compatibility of Science and Theology
Hayy Ibn Yaqzān argues for the compatibility of natural science and theology by depicting how Hayy is able to deduce the existence of God described in the same way as in Islamic doctrine, entirely through the use of observation of the natural world and reasoning. The premise of the text, that Hayy is a boy who grows up entirely without human contact on a remote equatorial island, allows the author to argue for the validity of the Islamic faith by indicating that it is the natural and rational conclusion of any intelligent human who carefully observes the world.
The tale begins by describing how Hayy gained knowledge of the material world, showing him developing a scientific process because of his interest in anatomy and medicine. After the death of the deer who raised him, Hayy begins to study how the body works in order to understand why she died. He first dissects his mother and then “he followed this up by dissecting and vivisecting many animals, constantly learning and improving the quality of his mind until he had reached the level of the finest natural scientists” (117). By suggesting that Hayy first had to become an exemplary natural scientist before he became a spiritual philosopher, Ibn Tufayl suggests that the two viewpoints are harmonious and actively complementary.
However, the text also suggests that theology is more intellectually advanced than the natural sciences and will eventually lead Hayy to become uninterested in his scientific studies. As Hayy begins to deduce the existence of forms, he begins to view the universe as a macrocosm that is analogous to a single unified body, each part with unique functions:
Hayy understood that the heavens and all that is in them are, as it were, one being whose parts are all interconnected. All the bodies he had known before such as earth, water, air, plants and animals were enclosed within this being and never left it. The whole was like an animal (130).
From there, he deduces that this macrocosm must itself have a cause, and that the cause of the universe must be infinitely good and benevolent because of the goodness of creation.
Hayy no longer studies the natural world for its own sake or finds it valuable to understand its particular laws. Instead, the text states that
now his eye fell on nothing without immediately detecting in it signs of His workmanship—then instantly his thoughts would shift from craft to Craftsman, deepening his love of Him, totally detaching his heart from the sensory world, and binding it to the world of mind (135).
Hayy eventually grows to love only the creator of the sensory world, seeing creation itself as only good in how it reflects God’s power.
Hayy’s development from natural scientist to enlightened mystic signifies how rational and, therefore, how true the Islamic faith is. The tale concludes with the ultimate validation of Hayy’s education when his understanding of God is harmonious with the words of the Prophet Muhammed, taught to him by Absāl.
Observation Versus Intuitive Reasoning
One of the most critical moments in Hayy’s evolution comes when he achieves an ecstatic state and perceives the total bliss of connecting with God. As Ibn Tufayl relates in his Introduction to the philosophical tale, this state is difficult to achieve and hard to teach, given its reliance on thoughts beyond the sensory world. Ibn Tufayl’s purpose in writing the allegorical story of Hayy is to teach a reader how to enter this ecstatic state, but the text takes the form of a narrative rather than a set of instructions or a scholarly treatise. This is, in part, because Ibn Tufayl believes that “these states, as Avicenna describes them, are reached not by theorizing, syllogistic deductions, postulating premises and drawing inferences, but solely by intuition” (97). Throughout the text, Hayy learns to move beyond deductive reasoning, using mystical practices related to Sufism to finally access intuitive knowledge of God.
While deductive reasoning allows Hayy to use general premises in order to draw specific conclusions about the world, allowing him to discern the existence of an eternal and benevolent Creator, it does not allow him to experience the divine first-hand. Deductive reasoning allows Hayy to realize that the sensory world is insufficient, but
when his thinking had risen to this level and the sensory world had been left behind to some extent, just as he was mounting to a height from which he could gaze out toward the approaches of the world of the mind, Hayy felt alien and alone (126).
Deductive reasoning is therefore insufficient, causing Hayy to explore other methods to truly connect with God.
The narrative suggests that the sensory world poses too great of a distraction and that Hayy can only seek God when he becomes entirely dissociated from his individual sense of self. To achieve this state, he relies on the Sufi methods of solitary meditation and spinning: “[I]f he spun fast enough, all sensory things would vanish; imagination itself, and every other faculty dependent on bodily organs would fade, and the action of his true self, which transcended the body, would grow more powerful” (147). Eventually, Hayy is able to completely forget his subjectivity for a short period of time, allowing him a glimpse of God’s true nature.
Intuition is linked to Sufi mystical practice through the narrative, suggesting that it is a necessary method of knowledge-seeking that can provide greater revelations than exclusively deductive reasoning. With this framing, mysticism and rationalism are not opposite ends of a spectrum, but rather complementary methods for attaining a perfect spiritual state.
The Inexpressible Nature of Ecstasy
A recurring theme throughout Hayy Ibn Yaqzān is the inexpressible nature of ecstasy. While Ibn Tufayl is attempting to write a guide for a reader hoping to achieve an ecstatic state, he acknowledges in his Introduction that it is impossible to express what the experience is like using words. He discusses how many individuals have described the ecstatic state, mentioning that the wisest men who do so admit that they cannot ever explain what they saw using human language. Unwise men who experience ecstasy often corrupt the experience when they try to use words to describe it, often resulting in self-aggrandizing statements where they claim to be divine themselves.
Ibn Tufayl writes in the Introduction to the text that no one has previously written a guide on the subject because
the experience is so arcane that only one lone individual and then another can master the most trifling part of it. And even those who do win some bit of it, speak of it publicly only in riddles, because our true, orthodox and established faith guards against a hasty plunge into such things (99).
The risks of attempting to describe the process are therefore great, causing Ibn Tufayl to rely on the allegorical tradition to put his philosophical instructions into the form of a narrative. Allegory allows the inexpressible to become accessible, and so Hayy’s story serves to partially overcome this innate problem.
Toward the end of the narrative, when Hayy finally enters his own ecstatic state for the first time, the text returns to the idea that it is not possible to describe what Hayy sees. Ibn Tufayl’s authorial voice returns to the narrative, advising the reader that “the ambition to put this into words is reaching for the impossible—like wanting to taste colors, expecting black as such to taste either sweet or sour” (149). The inexpressible nature of this state is made sensible through metaphorical language, comparing its impossibility with the impossibility of tasting a color. Similarly, Tufayl also uses metaphor to partially describe what Hayy sees during his ecstasy, comparing the experience to seeing the light of the sun reflecting through many layers of a mirror. Through the use of metaphor, Hayy Ibn Yaqzān seeks to describe the indescribable and to mitigate the risk of spiritual error.
At the end of the text, the author describes his allegorical story as a protective veil that will prevent the unworthy from accessing its knowledge, claiming, “I have not left the secrets set down in these few pages entirely without a veil—a sheer one, easily pierced by those fit to do so, but capable of growing so thick to those unworthy of passing beyond that they will never breach it” (166). While ecstasy might be inherently inexpressible, the narrative allegory and the use of metaphor help to provide instruction to a wise reader who is able to rise beyond literal interpretation.
