by Sofia Gonzalez-Bonnett
Thinkers from all ages argue that we, as beings, are restricted by the physical world. Whether it be a heaven or some greater truth, there exists a metaphysical world which is unreachable through physical means. Ibn Tufayl’s text, Hayy Ibn Yaqzān, follows the life of Hayy, a boy who grows up alone on an island. It details his relationship with the world around him and, later, with God. Tufayl begins by offering two ways in which Hayy might have originally arrived at the island, both of which are determined by nature. As Hayy grows up, he uses the physical world merely as a means for his survival. Later, it serves as a basis on which he begins to form his own identity. Through his subsequent experimentation with the physical world, Hayy discovers the existence of the “vital spirit” (Tufayl 52), or essence, and of forms. The discovery of the soul urges Hayy to renounce the physical world, and the discovery of the forms leads to Hayy’s realization of God. Both these discoveries are steps in developing Hayy’s understanding of the spiritual realm – at which point, Tufayl argues, the physical world ceases to be a productive tool to connect with God and, instead, becomes a hindrance. Taneli Kukkonen’s article “No Man Is An Island: Nature and Neo-Platonic Ethics in Hayy Ibn Yaqzān” analyses the “major reversals in [Hayy’s] attitudes towards nature” (Kukkonen 1.3), particularly his neglect and abuse of nature. While it is true that Hayy Ibn Yaqzān explicitly portrays the physical world in a negative light, the text also –intentionally or not – presents ways in which the physical world is crucial to one’s development. Nature creates us, informs our identity and, most importantly, serves as a necessary stepping-stone on the path to enlightenment and truth. The physical world is one’s first and greatest teacher – an idea which is reflected both in Hayy’s tale and in the author’s preamble, and which is proposed in Aaron Hughes’s article “The Texture of the Divine”. Hayy Ibn Yaqzān demonstrates that in one’s search for God, Truth, or any sort of greater meaning in life, the physical world is their best tool.
Ibn Tufayl begins Hayy’s tale by suggesting two possible ways that Hayy arrived at the island. The first is as follows: a woman on a nearby island secretly had a child against the wishes of her controlling brother. To protect her son, she placed him in an ark, prayed that God would oversee his journey, and released the ark to the sea, where it washed up on the shore of Hayy’s island. The second way deals with “spontaneous generation” (Tufayl 24). Some believe that the conditions of the island’s climate were such that from a “fermented mass of clay” (27) life could form. From this mass, bubbles turned into organs and eventually formed Hayy, though not before an important encounter:
With [a bubble] at that moment joined ‘the spirit which is God’s’ in a bond virtually indissoluble… For it should be clear that his spirit emanates continuously from God. (28)
While God plays a part in Hayy’s formulation, it is only after Hayy has begun to form that His spirit melds with him. Hayy does not merely appear, fully formed, at God’s will; Tufayl details a (relatively) scientific process that is intensely rooted in physical description. In both possible stories of Hayy’s arrival on the island God is involved. Simultaneously, however, in both stories the physical world acts as Hayy’s mode of delivery. In the first, he is born naturally and carried by the sea; in the second, he is born from the earth itself. Thus, from the very beginning of the text the importance of the physical is apparent.
Likewise, the physical world constitutes Hayy’s education as he grows up. He is raised by a deer – his “doe-mother” (49), who teaches him basics of survival such as foraging. After observing the fur coverings of other animals, Hayy learns to use feathers as clothing to protect his body. From nature he also begins to formulate his own identity; by observing the other animals, he realizes that he is different from them and learns to take pride in his uniqueness.
His self-esteem rose a bit as he observed how superior his hands were to those of an animal. They enabled him to cover his nakedness and to make sticks for self-defense, so he no longer needed natural weapons or the tail he had longed for. (37)
Hayy’s belief that he is different from – indeed, superior to – animals originates not from an acknowledgement of his higher mental faculties, but from the fact that his hands are simply more useful than those of an animal.
The physical informs Hayy’s perception of himself; it also instigates his journey toward the spiritual. Tufayl demonstrates this by means of Hayy’s observation of, and experimentation with, the physical world, through which Hayy discovers the existence of the soul and of forms. When Hayy is seven years old, his caretaker since infancy, his “doe-mother” (49), dies. Hayy perceives that her bodily functions have ceased and is “beside himself with grief” (38). He reasons that, because he cannot see the cause of death, the affliction must be inside the doe. In an attempt to locate and heal the hurt part of her, he methodically dissects each organ, eventually reaching the heart. Here he finds an empty chamber. Because every organ exists to “carry out a specific function”, he cannot believe that this chamber “serves no purpose” (44). He determines that the heart must be a container that held the life-giving spirit of the doe. Since Hayy believes this spirit to be the essence of his “doe-mother,” he comes to regard the body only as the “tool” for this essence, and so his “affection” is transferred from the body to its “master and mover”. Because the doe’s body is now empty of its essence, Hayy “[thinks] no more of it” (45). This is the first occasion of Hayy’s forsaking of the physical, and foreshadows his eventual attempt at total rejection of the material world.
Having determined the existence of a life-giving essence, Hayy now turns to an exploration of its nature. He does this through his observation of fire, which one day breaks out on the island. He observes that the fire gives warmth and suspects that, because heat resides only in the living and leaves the dead, the life-giving essence that departed from his doe-mother is made of “the same or similar substance” (49). This idea is confirmed by a “hot vapor” (50) which Hayy finds in the hearts of animals, and which exits when the animal dies. Hayy realizes that because the spirit is not bound to the body, it is detached from the physical world and therefore belongs to another world, which Hayy eventually discovers is the realm of God. Thus, Hayy’s experimentation with dissection, and observation of fire, develops his understanding of an element belonging to the divine realm: the “vital spirit” (52).
Hayy comes to understand that the “wonderful tasks” (64) of the “vital spirit,” as well as the functions of all physical things, are enabled by another element of the divine realm: forms. He discovers the existence of forms through his observance of various properties of the physical world – one being the propensity for motion of different physical bodies. Hayy notices that objects such as smoke rise, while others, like water, fall. He realizes that there must be some “differentiating factor” (63) between physical things which provides different capacities for motion to each object. Tufayl labels this factor the “form” – a term which immediately brings Plato to mind, and which does have certain similarities to Platonic theory. Like Plato’s forms, those in Hayy Ibn Yaqzān differentiate objects through attributes such as colour and weight. Tufayl’s forms also enable the vital spirit to carry out its tasks specific to each body: the form of a sea animal enables the creature to swim, while the form of a bird grants it flight. Like the vital spirit, forms belong to the non-physical world because they are not discoverable through the “senses” (70) (a belief held also by Plato). Hayy now understands that it is forms which give each body its “proneness . . . to motion” (74), but seeks the origin of these forms because “every motion requires a mover” (84). The propensity of water to rise when heated, for example, does not originate purely from the form of water, but is brought about through some other force. This force is, to Hayy, an indication of another Being (74). It is therefore the “forms of physical things in all their diversity” that provides Hayy the first “glimpse” of the spiritual world (64).
The physical world also enables Hayy to better understand the precise nature of God. He observes objects of nature – such as animals and plants – and in them finds such “marks of wisdom” and “perfection” that it confirms his belief in a Maker, and demonstrates His “craftmanship” and “ingenuity” (88). Hayy realizes that, because this Maker gives animals knowledge of how to use their parts “for their intended purposes”, He must be “most good and merciful” (89). Hayy reasons that, to “make his awareness of the Necessarily Existent… continuous”, he must attempt to mimic God’s goodness
by never allowing himself to see any plant or animal hurt, sick, encumbered, or in need without helping it if he could… He kept up his practice at this particular variety of imitation until he reached peak proficiency. (115)
It is easy to assume that, because nature enables Hayy to reach toward God, and because Hayy comes to treat the natural world with such care, Tufayl characterizes the physical as a generally positive concept. This is not, however, the case. For the spiritual world to be recognized as the “highest levels” (19), the physical world must be degraded. In his article “No Man Is An Island: Nature and Neo-Platonic Ethics in Hayy Ibn Yaqzān”, Taneli Kukkonen argues that this degradation can be seen throughout the text in Hayy’s disregard of, or even hatred for, nature. In Kukkonen’s words, there is an “unwavering, indeed intensifying, disdain for embodied reality considered as such” (Kukkonen 1.1). To start, he suggests that Hayy’s dissection of his “doe-mother” is not merely an opportunity for Hayy’s education, as previously stated, but a sign of Hayy’s growing neglect of nature:
Ḥayy’s goal is said to be the discovery and removal of whatever caused the doe harm (Ḥayy, 41.2–10). Yet sight of this mission seems to be lost halfway through. Ḥayy, or else the author, becomes so engrossed in recounting the intricacies of the heart that when (a full few pages down in the text) it finally comes to assessing whether any hope remains for the subject, the notion registers as little more than an afterthought. (1.1)
Hayy decides that the body is “hardly likely to return” (Tufayl 45), and thinks instead about the essence of the deer. Toward the actual body he comes to feel “revulsion” (46). At this moment Hayy does not only forsake the physical, but actually feels disgust toward it. Kukkonen’s point certainly resonates at other points in the text; for example, upon realizing that it is his “vital essence” which is truly himself, Hayy “thoroughly [despises]” his own body (92). After his discovery of the “vital essence” comes a disturbing new relationship with nature wherein Hayy uses animals and plants for his personal gain. At one point, to find the “life-giving essence” before it escapes from the body, he dissects a living animal, killing it in the process.
Hayy’s later appreciation of God’s inventions is, according to Kukkonen, similarly problematic. Hayy’s recognition of God as creator of all things
leads to a newfound respect for the cosmos precisely as created, as a manifestation of divine wisdom and design… But this revelation comes at a price. Nature is accorded value primarily as a manifestation of God’s wisdom and power, rather than as an entity in its own right. (Kukkonen, 1.2)
Furthermore, Hayy’s compassion toward living things is not only disingenuous (Kukkonen suggests), but short-lived. It is at the point of reaching toward the divine that the physical world ceases to be useful to Hayy in the development of his spiritual progression and now impedes it. Hayy realizes that because God “transcends physical attributes” (Tufayl, 91), the only way to apprehend Him beyond knowledge of His existence must be through “non-physical means” (92). As such, any regard for the physical world is dropped.
His compassion . . . for animals and plants and his eagerness to remove anything that hampered them were themselves characteristic of the physical, since he would not have seen the objects of his concern in the first place without using a corporeal faculty. (119)
Hayy therefore strives to “expel all this from himself” and becomes “oblivious to all objects of the senses” (120). When he determines that imagination can conceive only of material qualities, Hayy attempts to “[concentrate] on Him alone” through intense practice of rejecting the physical by isolating himself in a cave and eating only what is necessary to survive (120). For a while, Hayy’s attempts at unification with God are interrupted by sensory things, such as when the cry of an animal or a feeling of hunger breaks his “[continuous awareness]” (108) of Him. Similarly, he cannot help but think of God in words that are “applicable only to physical things”, such as “many” or “union” (124). To Hayy, this type of thinking is proof that “shadows of the physical” remain inside him and impede his unification with God. Hayy realizes the extent of the danger that the physical poses when he ventures to another island. Upon meeting its inhabitants, he sees that most people are hindered by their incapability to put aside the physical due to their infatuation with “possessions” (151) – so much so that they are “defective… in character” (148). Their material infatuation impedes their concentration on God to such a degree that Hayy gives up his efforts to enlighten them, realizing that there is “nothing . . . to [add]” (153) to people so entangled in the material world.
Kukkonen’s “No Man Is An Island” is correct: Hayy Ibn Yaqzān undeniably denounces the physical as something base and unworthy. However, along with this denunciation, Tufayl makes a case for the value of the physical, although it is never stated explicitly. Hayy is brought to the island by way of the physical world and is educated through it; it also informs his understanding of the spiritual world. Nature serves as his teacher before God does. This concept is also supported outside of Hayy’s story in the text preceding it. Tufayl insists that no product of the physical world – in this case, the text itself, Hayy Ibn Yaqzān: A Philosophical Tale – can describe what is “actually seen” (10) by those who undergo the spiritual experience. What then, is the purpose of the text, which is itself one such product of the physical? The text serves as the “preliminary steps” along the path to “higher levels” (18), much like the natural world provides Hayy tools for discovering the soul and forms. Aaron Hughes puts it well: “The role of the text is not to confine Truth, but to open it up to the reader’s gaze” (Hughes 60). He elaborates on this point in his article “The Texture of the Divine”:
For the Neoplatonist, Truth is ineffable, residing outside of human comprehension and therefore being immune to linguistic categorization. Despite this ineffability, we ultimately require the text’s horizon not only to develop a series of concerns deemed worthy of philosophical analysis, but also to situate ourselves against such concerns so as to chart our intellectual ascent. (53)
Tufayl echoes this sentiment in his introduction:
I myself would not have garnered what truth I have attained, the culmination of my intellectual efforts, without pursuing the arguments of Ghazali and Avicenna, checking them one against the other, and comparing the result with the views that have sprung up in our era . . . until finally I was able to see the truth for myself, first by thought and theory, and now in my first brief taste of the actual experience. (Tufayl, 18)
In this way, a reader of texts such as Hayy Ibn Yaqzān is like Hayy in that neither can use the physical world to perceive the actual divine realm, but rather as a tool toward glimpsing the “road that lies ahead” (20).
Throughout Hayy Ibn Yaqzān, Hayy’s relationship with the physical world undergoes several developments. He uses it first to survive and learn about himself, and later experiments with it, leading to his eventual relationship with the Divine Being. Constant throughout these developments are two factors. One is Tufayl’s portrayal of the physical world as something worthless, even “repulsive,” and later as a hindrance to Hayy’s enlightenment. To enter the spiritual realm, Hayy must abandon thought of the physical world – since, per its nature, the physical world cannot be “joined in one state of being” (132) with the divine world. The second factor requires a deeper analysis of Tufayl’s text. In Hayy’s story, the physical world and divine world are shown to be intertwined: the former contains observable elements of the latter, from which one can derive knowledge of the spiritual world. This idea is seen also in Tufayl’s preamble to the story, in which he presents the text, to quote Hughes, as an “attempt to unconceal the ineffability of Truth” (Hughes 61). If one follows this reading, Hayy represents each of us: through the exploration of our environment – including the written word – we all share the capability of embarking upon the same journey toward enlightenment.
Works Cited
Hughes, Aaron W. The Texture of the Divine: Imagination in Medieval Islamic and Jewish Thought. Indiana University Press, 2004. Project MUSE, muse.jhu.edu/book/3919.
Kukkonen, Taneli. “No Man Is an Island: Nature and Neo-Platonic Ethics in Ḥayy Ibn Yaqẓān.” Journal of the History of Philosophy, vol. 46, no. 2, Apr. 2008, pp. 187–204. Project MUSE, https://doi.org/10.1353/hph.0.0013.
Tufayl, Ibn. Hayy Ibn Yaqzān: A Philosophical Tale. Translated by Lenn Evan Goodman, University of Chicago Press, 2009.