10th century Ali’s mystical interpretation of the Qur’an becomes the basis for Sufism.
AFTER
1273 Rumi’s followers found the Mawlawi Order of Sufism.
1925 After the founding of a secular Republic of Turkey, the Mawlawi Order is banned in Turkey. It remains illegal until 1954, when it receives the right to perform on certain occasions.
Today Rumi’s works continue to be translated into many languages around the world.
Sufism, the mystical and aesthetic interpretation of the Qur’an, had been part of Islam since its foundation in the 7th century, but had not always been accepted by mainstream Islamic scholars. Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi, better known simply as Rumi, was brought up in orthodox Islam, and first came into contact with Sufism when his family moved from the eastern edges of Persia to Anatolia in the mid-13th century. The Sufi concept of uniting with God through love caught his imagination, and from this he developed a version of Sufism that sought to explain the relationship of man with the divine.
Rumi became a teacher in a Sufi order, and as such he believed he was a medium between God and man. In contrast to general Islamic practice, he placed much emphasis on dhikr—ritual prayer or litany—rather than rational analysis of the Qur’an for divine guidance, and became known for his ecstatic revelations. He believed it was his task to communicate the visions he experienced, and so he wrote them down in the form of poetry. Central to his visionary philosophy is the idea that the universe and everything in it is an endless flow of life, in which God is an eternal presence. Man, as part of the universe, is also a part of this continuum, and Rumi seeks to explain our place within it.
Man, he believes, is a link between the past and future in a continual process of life, death, and rebirth—not as a cycle, but in a progression from one form to another stretching into eternity. Death and decay are inevitable and part of this endless flow of life, but as something ceases to exist in one form, it is reborn in another. Because of this, we should have no fear of death, and nor should we grieve a loss. In order to ensure our growth from one form to another, however, we should strive for spiritual growth and an understanding of the divine–human relationship. Rumi believes that this understanding comes from emotion rather than from reason—emotion enhanced by music, song, and dance.
The Mawlawi Order, or Whirling Dervishes, dance as part of the Sufi Sema ceremony. The dance represents the spiritual journey of man from ignorance to perfection through love.
Rumi’s legacy
The mystical elements of Rumi’s ideas were inspirational within Sufism, and influenced mainstream Islam too. They were also pivotal in converting much of Turkey from Orthodox Christianity to Islam. But this aspect of his thinking did not hold much sway in Europe, where rationalism was the order of the day. In the 20th century, however, his ideas became very popular in the West, mainly because his message of love chimed with the New Age values of the 1960s. Perhaps his greatest admirer in the 20th century was the poet and politician Muhammed Iqbal, advisor to Muhammad Ali Jinnah, who campaigned for an Islamic state of Pakistan in the 1930s.
"I died as a mineral and became a plant, I died as a plant and rose to animal, I died as animal and I was Man."
Jalal ad-Din Rumi
JALAL AD-DIN MUHAMMAD RUMI
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi, also known as Mawlana (Our Guide) or simply Rumi, was born in Balkh, in a province of Persia. When the Mongol invasions threatened the region, his family settled in Anatolia, Turkey, where Rumi met the Persian poets Attar and Shams al-Din Tabrizi. He decided to devote himself to Sufism, and went on to write thousands of verses of Persian and Arabic poetry.
In 1244 Rumi became the shaykh (Master) of a Sufi order, and taught his mystical-emotional interpretation of the Qur’an and the importance of music and dance in religious ceremony. After his death, his followers founded the Mawlawi Order of Sufism, which is famous for its Whirling Dervishes who perform a distinctive dance in the Sema ceremony—a form of dhikr unique to the sect.
Key works
Early–mid-13th century
Rhyming Couplets of Profound Spiritual Meaning
The Works of Shams of Tabriz
What is Within is Within
Seven Sessions
See also: Siddhartha Gautama • Avicenna • Averroes • Hajime Tanabe • Arne Naess
IN CONTEXT
BRANCH
Metaphysics
APPROACH
Epistemology
BEFORE
c.340 BCE Aristotle says that the universe is eternal.
c.540 CE John Philoponus argues that the universe must have a beginning.
1250s–60s French theologians adopt Philoponus’s argument.
AFTER
1290s French philosopher Henry of Ghent criticizes Aquinas, saying the universe cannot have always existed.
1781 Immanuel Kant claims he can show that the universe has always existed, and that it has not always existed.
1931 Belgian priest and scientist Georges Lemaître proposes the “Big Bang” theory of the origins of the universe.
The opinions of people today are still divided into those that hold that the universe had a beginning, and those that hold that it has always existed. Today we tend to look to physics and astronomy for an answer, but in the past this was a question for philosophers and theologians. The answer given by the Catholic priest and philosopher Thomas Aquinas, the most famous of all medieval Christian philosophers, is especially interesting. It is still a plausible way of thinking about the problem, and it also tells us a great deal about how Aquinas combined his faith with his philosophical reasoning, despite their apparent contradictions.
Aristotle’s influence
The central figure in Aquinas’s thinking is Aristotle, the ancient Greek philosopher whose work was intensively studied by medieval thinkers. Aristotle was certain that the universe has always existed, and that it has always been home to different things, from inanimate objects like rocks, to living species, such as humans, dogs, and horses. He argued that the universe is changing and moving, and this can only be caused by change and motion. So there could never have been a first change or motion: the universe must have been moving and changing for ever.
The great Arabic philosophers, Avicenna and Averroes, were willing to accept Aristotle’s view, even though it put them at odds with Islamic orthodoxy. Medieval Jewish and Christian thinkers, however, struggled to do so. They held that, according to the Bible, the universe has a beginning, so Aristotle must be wrong: the universe has not always existed. But was this view something that had to be accepted on faith, or could it be refuted by reasoning?
John Philoponus, a Greek Christian writer of the 6th century, believed that he had found an argument to show that Aristotle must be wrong, and that the universe had not always existed. His reasoning was copied and developed by a number of thinkers in the 13th century, who needed to find a flaw in Aristotle’s reasoning in order to protect the teachings of the Church. Their line of argument was especially clever, because it took Aristotle’s own ideas about infinity as a point of departure, but turned them against his view of the universe as eternal.
Aquinas is flanked by Aristotle and Plato in The Triumph of Thomas Aquinas. His understanding of ancient philosophy was considered greater than that of Averroes, who lies at his feet.
An infinity of humans
According to Aristotle, the infinite is what has no limit. For instance, the sequence of numbers is infinite, because for each number, there is another higher number that follows. Similarly, the universe has existed for an infinite time, because for each day, there is a precedin
g day. In Aristotle’s opinion, however, this is a “potential” infinity, as these days do not coexist at the same time; an “actual” infinity—in which an infinite number of things all exist at the same time—is impossible.
Philoponus and his 13th-century followers, however, think that this argument presents problems that Aristotle had not noticed. They point to the fact that he believes that all the types of living beings in the universe have always existed. If this were true, they say, it would mean that there were already an infinite number of human beings by the time Socrates was born—because if they have always existed, they existed then. But since Socrates’ time, many more humans have been born, and so the number of humans born up until now must be greater than infinity. But no number can be greater than infinity.
In addition, these writers add, Christian thinkers believe that human souls are immortal. If this is so, and an infinite number of humans has already existed, there must be an infinite number of human souls in existence now. So there is an actual infinity of souls, not a potential infinity; and Aristotle has said actual infinity is impossible.
With these two arguments, using Aristotle’s own principles as a starting point, Philoponus and his followers were confident they had demonstrated that the universe cannot always have existed. Aristotle was therefore wrong; the universe is not eternal, and this fits perfectly with the Christian doctrine that God created the world.
Aquinas has little time for this line of reasoning. He points out that the universe could have existed for ever but that species such as humans and other animals might have had a beginning, and so the difficulties raised by Philoponus and his followers can be avoided. Despite his defence of Aristotle’s reasoning, Aquinas does not accept Aristotle’s assertion that the universe is eternal, because the Christian faith says otherwise; but he doesn’t think that Aristotle’s position is illogical. Like Philoponus and his followers, Aquinas wants to show that the universe had a beginning—but he also wants to show that there is no flaw in Aristotle’s reasoning. He claims that his Christian contemporaries have confused two different points: the first is that God created the universe, and the second is that the universe had a beginning. Aquinas set out to prove that in fact Aristotle’s position—that the universe has always existed—could be true, even if it is also true that God created the universe.
"There never was a time when there was not motion."
Aristotle
Creating the eternal
Aquinas steps away from Philoponus and his followers by insisting that although it is true, as the Bible says, that the universe had a beginning, this is not a necessary (undeniable) truth on logical grounds. As they all agree, God created the universe with a beginning, but he could just as easily have created an eternal one. If something is created by God, then it owes its whole existence to God, but that does not mean that there must have been a time when it did not exist at all. It is therefore quite possible to believe in an eternal universe that had been created by God.
Aquinas gives an example of how this might work. Suppose there was a foot making a footprint in the sand and it had been there for ever. Although there would never have been a moment before the footprint was made, we would still recognize the foot as the cause of the footprint: if it were not for the foot, there would not be a footprint.
Aquinas believed the creation story on faith, but claimed that some elements of Christian belief could be rationally demonstrated. For Aquinas, the Bible and reason need never conflict.
"God could have made the universe without humans and then made them."
Thomas Aquinas
Aquinas and synthesis
Historians sometimes say that Aquinas “synthesized” Christianity and Aristotelian philosophy, as if he took the parts he wanted from each and made them into a smooth mixture. In fact, for Aquinas—as for most Christians—the teachings of the Church must all be accepted, without exception or compromise. Aquinas was unusual, however, because he thought that, properly understood, Aristotle did not contradict Christian teaching. The question of whether the universe always existed is the exception that proves the rule. In this particular case Aquinas thinks that Aristotle was wrong, but he was not wrong in principle, or in his reasoning. The universe really might have existed for ever, as far as the ancient philosophers knew. It was just that Aristotle, not having access to Christian revelation, had no way of knowing that it had not.
Aquinas believes that there are a number of other doctrines central to Christianity that the ancient philosophers did not know and could not have known—such as the belief that God is a Trinity made up of three persons, and that one person of the Trinity, the Son, became a human. But in Aquinas’s opinion, whenever humans reason correctly, they cannot come to any conclusion which contradicts Christian doctrine. This is because both human reason and Christian teaching come from the same source—God—and so they can never contradict each other.
Aquinas taught in convents and universities in France and Italy, and the idea that human reason could never conflict with Christian doctrine often placed him in fierce conflict with some of his academic contemporaries, especially those who specialized in the sciences, which at the time were derived from the work of Aristotle. Aquinas accused his fellow scholars of accepting certain positions on faith—for example, the position that we each have an immortal soul– but of saying at the same time that according to reason, these positions could be shown to be wrong.
Aristotle believed that the universe was infinite, as each hour and day is succeed by another. Aquinas disagreed, believing that the universe had a beginning, but his respect for Aristotle’s philosophy led him to argue that Aristotle could have been correct.
How we gain knowledge
Aquinas keeps to these principles throughout his work, but they are particularly clear in two central areas of his thought: his account of how we gain knowledge and his treatment of the relation between mind and body. According to Aquinas, human beings acquire knowledge through using their senses: sight, hearing, smell, touch, and taste. These sense-impressions, however, only tell us what things are like superficially. For example, from where John sits, he has a visual impression of a tree-shaped object, which is green and brown. I, on the other hand, am standing next to the tree, and can feel the roughness of its bark and smell the scent of the forest. If John and I were dogs, our knowledge of the tree would be limited to these sense-impressions. But as human beings we are able to go beyond them and grasp what a tree is in a rational way, defining it and distinguishing it from other types of plants and of living things. Aquinas calls this “intellectual knowledge”, because we gain it by using the innate power of our intellect to seize, on the basis of sense-impressions, the reality that lies behind them. Animals other than humans lack this inborn capacity, which is why their knowledge cannot stretch beyond the senses. All of our scientific understanding of the world is based on this intellectual knowledge. Aquinas’s theory of knowledge owes much to Aristotle, although he clarifies and elaborates upon the latter’s thinking. For Aquinas, as a Christian thinker, human beings are only one type of the various sorts of beings that are capable of knowing things intellectually: souls separated from their bodies in the afterlife, angels, and God himself can also do this. These other knowing beings do not have to acquire knowledge through the senses. They can directly grasp the definitions of things. This aspect of Aquinas’s theory has no parallel in Aristotle, but it is a coherent development of Aristotle’s principles. Once again Aquinas is able to hold Christian beliefs without contradicting Ari
stotle, but going beyond him.
"We should see whether there is a contradiction between something being created by God, and its existing forever."
Thomas Aquinas
The human soul
According to Aristotle, the intellect is the life-principle or “soul” of a human being. All living things have a soul, he believes, which explains their capacity for different levels of what he calls “life-activity”, such as growing and reproducing, for plants; moving, sensing, seeking, and avoiding, for animals; and thinking for humans.
Aristotle believes that “form” is what makes matter into the thing that it is. Within the human body, this form is the soul, which makes the body into the living thing that it is by giving it a particular set of life-activities. As such, the soul is tied to the body, and so Aristotle thinks that, even in the case of humans, the life-soul survives only so long as it animates a body, and at death it perishes.
Aquinas follows Aristotle’s teaching about living things and their souls, and he insists that a human being has just one form: his or her intellect. Although other 13th- and 14th-century thinkers also adopted the main lines of Aristotle’s view, they cut the connection Aristotle had made between the intellect and the body, so they could accommodate the Christian teaching that the human soul survives death. Aquinas, however, refuses to distort Aristotle’s position. This made it far more difficult for him to argue—as he did—for the immortality of the human soul, in yet another example of his resolve to be a good Aristotelian, and philosopher, while remaining a faithful Christian.
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