Don't Think for Yourself

Peter Adamson

Description

How do we judge whether we should be willing to follow the views of experts or whether we ought to try to come to our own, independent views? This book seeks the answer in medieval philosophical thought.

In this engaging study into the history of philosophy and epistemology, Peter Adamson provides an answer to a question as relevant today as it was in the medieval period: how and when should we turn to the authoritative expertise of other people in forming our own beliefs? He challenges us to reconsider our approach to this question through a constructive recovery of the intellectual and cultural traditions of the Islamic world, the Byzantine Empire, and Latin Christendom.

Adamson begins by foregrounding the distinction in Islamic philosophy between taqlīd, or the uncritical acceptance of authority, and ijtihād, or judgment based on independent effort, the latter of which was particularly prized in Islamic law, theology, and philosophy during the medieval period. He then demonstrates how the Islamic tradition paves the way for the development of what he calls a “justified taqlīd,” according to which one develops the skills necessary to critically and selectively follow an authority based on their reliability. The book proceeds to reconfigure our understanding of the relation between authority and independent thought in the medieval world by illuminating how women found spaces to assert their own intellectual authority, how medieval writers evaluated the authoritative status of Plato and Aristotle, and how independent reasoning was deployed to defend one Abrahamic faith against the other. This clear and eloquently written book will interest scholars in and enthusiasts of medieval philosophy, Islamic studies, Byzantine studies, and the history of thought.

Don’t let anyone tell you that philosophy is useless. True, it has a reputation for being an abstract and chronically inconclusive enterprise. But “applied” forms of philosophy like medical ethics and business ethics have enjoyed a boom in recent times, and in earlier periods philosophy was also applied in eminently practical contexts. Actually medicine is a good example. Galen, the second century AD author whose writings were nearly synonymous with medical science for well over a millenium in Europe and the Islamic world, appropriated ideas from ancient natural philosophy in his humoral theory and pharmacology. Another example is the study of the heavens. The cosmological theories of Aristotle provided a theoretical basis for Ptolemy, who lived at about the same time as Galen, and whose writings about both astronomy and astrology were widely influential in medieval culture. This sounds less practical at first, but actually astrology—known through texts from both Greece and India—was one of the main topics pursued in the Arabic translation movement, again for eminently practical reasons. What, after all, could be more useful than using the stars to predict the future?

Many people nowadays think of philosophy and religion as being antithetical, with philosophy devoted solely to reason and religion founded in faith. But in the medieval period, religious thought was frequently just another kind of applied philosophy. Ideas about knowledge, metaphysics, or the soul would be appropriated and used to interpret, expound, and defend revelation. Indeed we’ve already seen that Averroes, for one, thought that philosophy provided the only reliable basis for scriptural exegesis. Obviously this was not a widely held view, and there were certainly some medieval theologians who were frankly hostile to the use of philosophy in religious contexts, going all the way back to the early Christian church father Tertullian, who famously wanted to know what Athens has to do with Jerusalem. Examples from our three medieval cultures might include Ibn Taymiyya (d.1328), who very unusually went so far as to reject the study of logic, which he deemed more trouble than it was worth (like “camel meat at the top of a mountain”); Bernard of Clairvaux (d.1153), who justified the intellectual persecution of Peter Abelard by complaining that Abelard was “ready to give reasons for everything, even for those those things which are above reason”; and Symeon the New Theologian (d.1022), a monk at the Stoudios monastery in Constanstinople who acidly remarked that the Holy Spirit is “not sent to philosophers… but to the pure in heart and body.”

But in this chapter, I will be looking at figures who had a more nuanced view, one that falls between the bold rationalism of an Averroes and the invective of these outright critics of philosophy (who, by the way, also left plenty of space for rationality within their own approaches to religion). On the one hand these middle-ground figures perceived the philosophical tradition as a kind of rival, or at least alternative, to religious faith. On the other hand they believed that natural reason could be used to support religious faith and even to justify one’s religious affiliation. I’ll be focusing on several works written in dialogue form, which explore the choice between religions by putting them in literal debate with one another. Tellingly, “philosophy” tends to appear in these dialogues as another option on a par with Islam, Judaism, and Christianity. The central claim made by such texts is, therefore, that the neutral and fair-minded person who is simply using natural reason should give credence to one of the Abrahamic faiths. By arguing for this conclusion, they suggest that reason points beyond itself, establishing the need for a religious revelation that supplements our natural understanding of the world and of our own obligations.

Introduction

1. Taqlīd: Authority and the Intellectual Elite in the Islamic World

2. Too High a Standard: Knowledge and Skepticism in Medieval Philosophy

3. Testing the Prophets: Reason and the Choice of Faiths

4. Using the Pagans: Reason in Interreligious Debate

5. Some Pagans are Better than Others: the Merits of Plato and Aristotle

6. Finding Their Voices: Women in Byzantine and Latin Christian Philosophy

7. The Rule of Reason: Human and Animal Nature

Sujets

• Philosophie
• Épistémologie
• Philosophie de la religion
• Philosophie médiévale, scolastique
• Medieval
• Religious
• PHILOSOPHY
• Philosophie et théologie
• Edad Media
• Byzantine Empire
• General officer
• Sharia
• Middle Ages
• Epistemology
• Aristotle
• Plato
• General
• Islam
• Marguerite Porete
• Byzantine du Louvre

Informations

• Publié par: University of Notre Dame Press
• Date de parution: 15 octobre 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780268203382
• Langue: English

Extrait

DON’T THINK FOR YOURSELF
The Conway Lectures in Medieval Studies 2019
The Medieval Institute gratefully acknowledges the generosity of Robert M. Conway and his support for the lecture series and the publications resulting from it.
PREVIOUS TITLES PUBLISHED IN THIS SERIES:
Jonathan Riley-Smith
Templars and Hospitallers as Professed Religious in the Holy Land (2010)
A. C. Spearing
Medieval Autographies: The “I” of the Text (2012)
Barbara Newman
Medieval Crossover: Reading the Secular against the Sacred (2013)
John Marenbon
Abelard in Four Dimensions: A Twelfth-Century Philosopher in His Context and Ours (2013)
Sylvia Huot
Outsiders: The Humanity and Inhumanity of Giants in Medieval French Prose Romance (2016)
William J. Courtenay
Rituals for the Dead: Religion and Community in the Medieval University of Paris (2019)
Alice-Mary Talbot
Varieties of Monastic Experince in Byzantium, 800–1453 (2019)
Anne D. Hedeman
Visual Translation: Illuminated Manuscripts and the First French Humanists (2022)
Roberta Frank
The Etiquette of Early Northern Verse (2022)
DON’T THINK FOR YOURSELF
Authority and Belief in Medieval Philosophy
PETER ADAMSON
University of Notre Dame Press
Notre Dame, Indiana
Copyright © 2022 by the University of Notre Dame Press
Notre Dame, Indiana 46556
www.undpress.nd.edu
All Rights Reserved
Published in the United States of America
Library of Congress Control Number: 2022935749
ISBN: 978-0-268-20339-9 (Hardback)
ISBN: 978-0-268-20341-2 (WebPDF)
ISBN: 978-0-268-20338-2 (Epub)
This e-Book was converted from the original source file by a third-party vendor. Readers who notice any formatting, textual, or readability issues are encouraged to contact the publisher at [e-mail]
When wee believe any saying whatsoever it be, to be true, from arguments taken, not from the thing it selfe, or from the principles of naturall Reason, but from the Authority, and good opinion wee have, of him that hath sayd it; then is the speaker, or person we believe in, or trust in, and whose word we take, the object of our Faith; and the Honour done in Believing, is done to him onely.
—Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan
Nine hundred and ninety-nine men in every thousand allow others to do their thinking for them. They take their ideas ready-made from others.
—W. H. Ferris, The African Abroad
CONTENTS Acknowledgments Introduction CHAPTER 1 Taqlīd : Authority and the Intellectual Elite in the Islamic World CHAPTER 2 Too High a Standard: Knowledge and Skepticism in Medieval Philosophy CHAPTER 3 Testing the Prophets: Reason and the Choice of Faiths CHAPTER 4 Using the Pagans: Reason in Interreligious Debate CHAPTER 5 Some Pagans Are Better than Others: The Merits of Plato and Aristotle CHAPTER 6 Finding Their Voices: Women in Byzantine and Latin Christian Philosophy CHAPTER 7 The Rule of Reason: Human and Animal Nature Further Reading Notes Index
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The chapters of this book were written to be delivered as the 2019 Conway Lectures at the University of Notre Dame and the 2020 Carlyle Lectures at Oxford University. I would first therefore like to thank both institutions for the honor of being invited to give these lectures, and in particular Thomas Burman at Notre Dame and George Garnett at Oxford for issuing the invitations and offering splendid hospitality. I would also like to thank Megan Hall and Graham Lockey for their work in organizing these events and Stephen Little at the University of Notre Dame Press for his enthusiasm for the book project.
I had extensive discussions with students and staff at both Notre Dame and Oxford, and it would take pages to name everyone who gave me useful references, ideas, suggestions, and possible objections. But I would like to thank at least James Allen, Maria Rosa Antognazza, Robert Audi, Teresa Bejan, Suzanne Bobzien, Lesley Brown, David Burrell, Ursula Coope, Therese Cory, Stephen Gersh, Danielle Layne, Fiona Leigh, Anna Marmadoro, Christopher Melchert, Ebrahim Moosa, David O’Connor, Jose Andres Porras, Jenny Rallens, Gretchen Reydams-Schils, Denia Robichaud, Lydia Schuhmacher, Richard Sorabji, Wiebke Marie Stock, Cecilia Trifogli, Jan Westerhoff, Abigail Whalen, Jack Woodworth, and Johannes Zachhuber, all of whom helped make these two lecture series highlights of my academic career.
My work on the themes of the book has profited from reading seminars at the LMU in Munich devoted to some of the authors discussed here, like Plethon and al-Dawwānī, and from conversations with colleagues there, including Hanif Amin Beidokhkti, Fedor Benevich, Matteo Di Giovanni, Rotraud Hansberger, Mareike Hauer, Andreas Lammer, Abdurrahman Mihirig, Michael Noble, and Alexander Reutlinger, all of whom discussed with me topics and texts tackled in the pages of this book. Bethany Somma went further still and made very useful, detailed notes on the whole manuscript. I also received generous and helpful feedback on a previous draft from Deborah Black and John Marenbon. Other colleagues with whom I had useful exchanges that influenced discussions in the book include George Boys-Stones, Charles Brittain, Susan Brower-Toland, Börje Bydén, Amin Ehtashami, Frank Griffel, Dimitri Gutas, Dag N. Hasse, Katerina Ierodiakonou, Jill Kraye, Scott MacDonald, Cecilia Muratori, Robert Pasnau, Martin Pickavé, Peter E. Pormann, Sajjad Rizvi, Sarah Stroumsa, Richard C. Taylor, and Michele Trizio. I would also like to thank Oliver Primavesi and Christof Rapp for making the Munich School of Ancient Philosophy, which I run with them, such a congenial and stimulating center for the study of classical thought and its medieval reception. My gratitude also to Hani Mohseni for his work on the index to the volume.
For support of the research that lies behind chapter 7, I gratefully acknowledge the European Research Council (ERC), which has funded a project at the LMU under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (grant agreement No. 786762). My work on thinkers of the Islamic world has also been supported by the DFG under the aegis of the project “Heirs of Avicenna: Philosophy in the Islamic East from the 12th to the 13th Century.”
Finally, as always my greatest debt is to the members of my family: my brother, Glenn, who discussed this book project with me when it was only a gleam in my eye, my parents, and of course my wife, Ursula, and my daughters, Sophia and Johanna.
INTRODUCTION
This is that rare thing, a book on medieval philosophy that is in danger of being overtaken by events. It was written over about a year, from spring 2019 until early 2020. Then in early spring 2020, as I was finalizing the manuscript, came the COVID-19 pandemic, whose wider repercussions will no doubt still be unfolding as the book goes to press. As I explain in chapter 1, I wrote the book in part as a response to a seeming crisis of authority that has come to dominate the political scene over the past years. It’s impossible to say now what implications this most recent, and far more concrete, crisis will have for my theme. Perhaps our reliance on the expertise of health professionals and epidemiologists will lead to a renewed respect for expertise more generally. Or perhaps there will be a backlash provoked by the economic consequences of lockdown and social distancing. However things turn out, it seems even clearer now than it was when I started writing the book that a well-considered relationship to epistemic authority, an ability to make intelligent use of knowledge that lies beyond our own competence, is vitally important. Indeed it is a matter of life and death.
As it happens the pandemic has also given me an additional reason to reflect on one of my favorite texts from medieval culture, a text I was already planning to use to introduce the theme of the book as a whole. For it is a text set in a situation of radical social isolation and is in my view also centrally concerned with questions of authority and belief. Called Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān , it was written in the twelfth century by the Andalusian doctor and philosopher Ibn Ṭufayl. 1 It is an unusual, though as we’ll see in chapter 3 not unique, work of medieval philosophy in that it is written as a narrative tale rather than a discursive treatise. The title character, Ḥayy, finds himself on a lush island, having arrived there in one of two alternative ways: after being set adrift in a chest by his mother or having been spontaneously generated from the earth. He grows to adulthood without ever encountering another human being. Yet through native wit and observation of his island home and the heavens above, he becomes an accomplished scientist and philosopher, and ultimately a mystic. We see him work out the principles of medicine and natural philosophy, prove the existence of God, and discover the means by which divine providence is exercised. Finally another human arrives, named Absāl. He has come from another island in search of solitude. Once the two learn to communicate, Absāl is thrilled by Ḥayy’s wisdom and resolves to bring him home so that Ḥayy can share his learning with the inhabitants of the other island. But the people there fail to appreciate what he tells them, and he and Absāl in the end return to a shared isolation on the island where Ḥayy has spent his life.
While Ḥayy’s philosophical discoveries are clearly based on the tradition of Hellenizing philosophy ( falsafa ) in the Islamic world, it is less clear what the purpose of the narrative frame might be. I read it as, among other things, a rejection of the need for authority in belief formation. On this reading, Ibn Ṭufayl’s point in having Ḥayy start with a “blank slate” is to show that it would indeed be possible, in sufficiently ideal conditions and with sufficient talent, for a single human being to become an accomplished intellectual with no help apart from the resources of the natural environment. Those of us who did not grow up alone on a remote isl