The world is divided into men who have wit and no religion, and men who have religion but no wit.
– Averroes
During my three years’ stay in Algeria as a UNESCO emissary setting up the Physics Department at the École Polytechnique, I attended some lectures on the intellectual history of Islam while learning some Arabic. It was in this context that I came to know about Islamic scientists and philosophers of Medieval times.
When religions began – no matter which – it was all about God and worship, ethics and the hereafter, fasts and feasts, faith and the seers/prophets. Nobody thought of why one should believe in this or that scripture, other than from complete trust in the personages who transmitted revealed knowledge about the Divine.
In the 8th century, the ancient writings of Greek philosophers came to the attention of some Muslim scholars who rendered them into Arabic. When the keen minds in the Islamic world studied these, it was another revelation to them. Not unlike European investigators of the 1th and 17th centuries whose science was revolutionized by telescopes and microscopes, the writings of Greek philosophers had a major impact on the approach of Islamic scholars to their religion. Aristotelian logic was a new-found toy, as it were, for many keen minds of that time and place.
Among the thinkers in the Islamic world of those times was Abu al-Walid Muhammad ibn Rushd, often known simply as Averroes. This jurist, physician, philosopher and brilliant thinker was born in Córdoba in Moorish Spain. [I remember standing in front of the imposing statue of Averroes in Córdoba in the picture above and meditating on his writings.] He wrote eloquently on the importance of faith and reason. He argued that religion and philosophy are independent domains. This may be a simple enough idea for some, but it is beyond the grasp of millions of ardent believers even in the twenty-first century.
Before Averroes, the brilliant Persian mystic Al Ghazali (105–1111) insightfully warned, with due respect to Aristotle and syllogisms, that it would be disastrous to religious life if logic intruded too much into religion.
Averroes was one of the first in the second millennium to fully understand, appreciate and value logic and rationalism. He seems to have a sudden awakening from his immersion in Aristotle, to the effect that reason has its light which is opaque to traditional indoctrination. Once a book attains sacredness in a culture, honi soit qui mal y pense (Shame on him who thinks ill of it). Averroes wrote impressive and insightful commentaries on the Master’s work, and was often referred to as the Commentator. He argued that whatever truth can be achieved by the human mind, could be done only through logical thinking (Aristotelianism), and suggested that metaphysics was not the way to go. He was the August Comte of his age.
He also realized the importance of religion (which meant Islam). He did not mind interpreting sacred writings, Quranic and Biblical, in rational terms. However, unlike other thinkers – Christian and Muslim – he could not accept revealed writings (the scripture of his religion) literally. He affirmed that any interpretation of the Holy Qur’an must conform to the rules of logic. At the same time, he warned that philosophers should not propagate their rationalistic views on religion to the common people. In other words, rationalistic thinking in the context of religion should be an ivory-tower enterprise, not unlike Pythagorean esotericism.
But Averroes granted that whenever the human mind encounters a Grand Mystery, it must yield to faith and accept the sayings in the revealed sacred book. Herein lay his originality. He recognized that faith has its place, but only in certain contexts. The alternatives were that if we accept revealed truths without respect for reason, we will be led to absurdities; and if we rely on faith for temporal problems, we are not likely to get fruitful results. He did not state these explicitly.
Averroes’ works were translated from Arabic into Hebrew, then to Latin. They inspired Thomas of Aquinas in laying his foundations for Christian theology. Whereas Averroes recognized that the marriage between logic and religious doctrines would be like a mixture of oil and water, the goal of Christian theology was/is to formulate and justify all the doctrines of Christianity on a logical basis. The enterprise has given rise to an impressive body of interesting reading material. But in the end, the Enlightenment writers of the 17th-18th centuries won in Western culture. Rationality began to tone down untenable doctrines and extremist religious behavior.
The Islamic world persecuted Averroes and ignored his counsels, thus thwarting the possibility of modern science emerging in that great civilization.
There is no greater example of how the adoption or rejection of the visions and values of philosophers dramatically impact on the growth or stunting of civilizations than in the thoughts and rejection of Averroes and like-minded thinkers.
To Averroes is largely due the emergence of Islamic and Christian theology. Rich as these fields are they have not exactly served the cause of religion. They have unwittingly taken away the luster from pure religious experience. Injecting logic and rationality in religion is like putting a spoonful of salt in a milkshake. It takes away the refreshing sweetness and leaves a bad taste in the mouth. Analyzing the notes in Beethoven’s Ninth tends to rob it of its musical majesty. The serenity in a hymn is diluted when one parses its text and considers alternative formulations.
Furthermore, matters of deep faith can seldom stand dissection with the razor of reason. The feet on which faith stands are not supported by logical legs, but through a spiritual vison that transcends Euclidean QED.
Spurts of Thought 