1. Ibn Tufayl Hayy Bin Yaqzan Lecture II
December 10, 2018
Dr. Ekin Tuşalp Atiyas

2. PART I pp
PART II pp
PART III pp
PART IV pp (NOT REQUIRED)

3. Lecture Plan I-Hayy’s encounter with the civilized world
II- Philosophy from below
Reason + Mystical Experience
Doctrine/Theory vs. Experience
Philosophical/socio-political debates («the eternal universe»; «the essence of God»)
III-The genealogy and afterlife of Hayy bin Yaqzan, the novel

4. I
End of Part III
“His senses came back. He regained consciousness from what seemed to have been a faint and lost his foothold on that plane of experience. As the world of the senses loomed back into view, the divine world vanished, for the two cannot be joined in one state of being – like two wives: if you make one happy, you make the other miserable” (Hayy Ibn Yaqzan 132)

5. Part IV
“the followers of a true religion, based on the teachings of a certain ancient prophet-God’s blessing on all such prophets”

6. Absal Vs. Salaman

7. Logos
“The voice he heard was pleasant and the sounds somehow clearly patterned, quite unlike the call of any animal he had ever heard before.” P158

8. “Hayy understood all this and found none of it in contradiction with what he had seen for himself from his supernal vantage point. He recognized that whoever had offered this description had given a faithful picture and spoken truly. This man must have been a ‘messenger sent by this Lord’”. 161

9. “The moment he tasted how good it was, Hayy knew he had done wrong to violate his pledged dietary restrictions. He regretted what he had done and wanted to get away from Absal and devote himself to his true purpose, a return to sublimity. But this time ecstasy would not come so readily.” p 159

10. «First, why did this prophet rely for the most part on symbols to portray the divine world, allowing mankind to fall into the grave error of conceiving the Truth corporeally and ascribing to Him things which He transcends and is totally free of (and similarly with reward and punishment) instead of simply revealing the truth? Second, why did he confine himself to these particular rituals and duties and allow the amassing of wealth and overindulgence in eating, leaving men idle to busy themselves with inane pastime and neglect the Truth.” 161

11. “Hayy now understood the human condition
“Hayy now understood the human condition. He saw that most men are no better than unreasoning animals, and realized that all wisdom and guidance, all that could possibly help them was contained already in the words of the prophets and the religious traditions. None of this could be different. There was nothing to be added. There is a man for every task and everyone belongs to the life of which he was created. ‘This was God’s way with those who came before, and never will you find a change in the ways of God.”164

12. II Philosophy from below -Doctrine vs. Experience
-Reason + Mystical Experience
-Philosophy vs. Mathematics and Logic

13. Çok okuyan mı, çok gezen mi?
“It takes up a line of discourse not found in the books or heard in the usual sort of speeches. It belongs to a hidden branch of study received only by those who are aware of God and unknown to those who know Him not”. From the Epilogue “I finally was able to see the truth for myself, first by thought and theory, and now in my first brief taste of the actual experience. I feel able now to set down a view to be prepared in my name; and because of our close friendship, I want you to be the first to whom I express myself.” From the Introduction

14. Some of the philosophical questions Ibn Tufayl deals with in the Hayy bin Yaqzan
Human intelligence and its capacity (Aristotle, Avicenna…etc.)
Neoplatonism (Al-Farabi, Avicenna…etc.)
The essence of God / The Question of the Anthropomorphic God (The Asharites vs. The Mu’tazilites 10th century)
Sufi experience vs. doxa (Islamic Law/Rituals)

15. On the question of the eternity of the universe:
“When, on the other hand, he assumed that the universe arose in time, other objections assailed him. Thus he realized that the notion of the universe coming to be from nothing could be made sense of only in terms of a time before there was a universe-but time itself is an inseparable part of the universe. Therefore it is inconceivable that the origin of the universe came before the origin of time. ‘Furthermore,’ he said to himself, ‘if the universe came to be in time, there must have been some cause to bring it into being. Why did this Cause bring about a world now rather than before? Had some outside force disturbed Him? Nothing existed but He. Had some change, then occupied within Him? But what brought about that change’” (Hayy Ibn Yaqzan, 131)

16. Absal Vs. Salaman

17. III: The Genealogy of the Text
Avicenna (d.1037)
Salaman and Absal

18. A poem entitled Hayy ben Meqitz, was composed by Abraham Ibn Ezra (1089–1164)

19. Translated into Hebrew in 1349 with a commentary by Moses ben Joshua of Narbonne (late 13th century-1370).
Latin translation was completed in 1671.
Dutch translation was completed in 1672.
first translated into English in 1671.
Two German translations were published in 1726 and 1783

20. Title Page of Robinson Crusoe, 1719

21. Robinson Crusoe (1719), Daniel Defoe (ca. 1660–1731)
Tarzan (1912),Edgar Rice Burroughs ( )
The Jungle Book (1894), Rudyard Kipling ( )
Life of Pi (2001), Yann Martel (b.1963)