Ibn Rushd

Posted by fschmidt on
URL: http://mikraite.155.s1.nabble.com/Ibn-Rushd-tp2343.html

Ibn Rushd was like Islam's Thomas Aquinas, but unfortunately Islam never had anyone like William of Ockham.

I recently read Ibn Rushd's On the Harmony of Religion and Philosophy.  Here he defends philosophy against its various Muslim critics, mostly fundamentalists and mystics (Sufis).  He loves Aristotle (like Aquinas).  At least he recognizes the risks of philosophy, saying that it should be banned for the moronic masses.  What he fails to understand is that the kind of reasoning supported by Plato and Aristotle always leads to depravity no matter who engages in it.

What all these people seek is certainty.  Al-Ghazali chose mysticism because he realized that no other path results in certainty.  Of course what he failed to understand is that the certainty of mysticism is a delusion.  Highly intelligent people who seek certainty through philosophy just go insane, while less intelligent people can feel certainty with philosophy only because they are too stupid to recognize the flaws in their own reasoning.

The problem for Christianity and Islam is that they accept Plato's absolute truth, and so they seek it.  As a follower of the Old Testament, I don't have this problem because I reject absolute truth.  But the only way out for Christians and Muslims is Ockham's nominalism.  Ockham basically said that absolute truth is unknowable and so we have to settle for our own imperfect ideas.  This eliminates certainty and demands doubt.  This is what made the Reformation and the Enlightenment possible.

Of course conservative modern scum (mostly Catholic) hate Ockham.  No modern scum defend Ockham, as expected.

I read Ibn Rushd hoping for more than a Plato patsy, but I was let down.  Given a choice between Ibn Rushd and a fundamentalist like Ibn Taymiyyah, I prefer Ibn Taymiyyah.  But Islam needs its own Ockham if it is ever going to develop into a productive religion again.