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Ibn Rushd, a 12th-century philosopher and judge in Muslim Spain, argued in The Decisive Treatise that Islamic law did not merely allow philosophy: for those able to reason rigorously, it could make it a duty. Truth cannot contradict truth, he held, so where proof and the literal words of scripture clash, the passage must be interpreted.

Ibn Rushd (Averroes)

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The story behind the card

Ibn Rushd (1126–1198), known in medieval Europe as Averroes, served as a judge in Seville and Córdoba and later as court physician to the Almohad rulers of Muslim Spain and North Africa. His detailed commentaries on Aristotle were translated into Latin and Hebrew, and Christian and Jewish scholars called him simply 'the Commentator'; Thomas Aquinas argued with his views directly. In The Incoherence of the Incoherence he replied point by point to al-Ghazali, who had attacked the philosophers nearly a century earlier. The Decisive Treatise makes the case in a shorter form, as a legal opinion: it asks, as a judge would, whether the law forbids, allows or requires the study of philosophy.

Türkçe oku
12. yüzyılda Endülüs'te yaşamış filozof ve kadı İbn Rüşd, Faslu'l-Makâl'da İslam hukukunun felsefeye yalnızca izin vermediğini, sağlam akıl yürütebilenler için onu bir görev bile saydığını savundu. Ona göre hakikat hakikatle çelişmez; kanıtlanmış bir sonuç kutsal metnin lafzıyla çatışıyorsa, metin yorumlanmalıdır.

Ortaçağ Avrupası'nda Averroes diye tanınan İbn Rüşd (1126–1198), İşbiliye'de (Sevilla) ve Kurtuba'da (Córdoba) kadılık yaptı; daha sonra Endülüs ile Kuzey Afrika'ya hükmeden Muvahhidlerin saray hekimi oldu. Aristoteles'e yazdığı ayrıntılı şerhler Latinceye ve İbraniceye çevrildi; Hristiyan ve Yahudi âlimler ona kısaca “Şârih” dedi. Thomas Aquinas onun görüşleriyle doğrudan tartıştı. Tehâfütü't-Tehâfüt'te, filozoflara neredeyse bir asır önce saldırmış olan Gazali'ye madde madde cevap verdi. Faslu'l-Makâl aynı savunmayı daha kısa biçimde, bir fetva gibi yapar: Bir kadı gözüyle, dinin felsefeyle uğraşmayı yasaklayıp yasaklamadığını, ona izin mi verdiğini yoksa onu gerekli mi kıldığını sorar.

Sources and further reading

Background reading: Averroes
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WonderHistory

Ise Grand Shrine, the holiest site of Shinto, Japan's native religion, takes down its main sanctuaries every 20 years and rebuilds them exactly on the plot next door. The custom began in 690 and, despite some long interruptions, continues today; the next rebuilding is due in 2033.

The rebuilding is called Shikinen Sengū. Along with the buildings, the shrine's furnishings and sacred objects are made anew, and the wooden Uji Bridge at the entrance is rebuilt too. The timber is hinoki, a Japanese cypress. Power tools are not allowed within the shrine grounds, so the work falls to miyadaiku, carpenters trained in traditional shrine building; less experienced carpenters usually learn on the bridge before they work on the sanctuaries. Shinto calls the idea tokowaka, 'ever young': renewing a sacred building keeps it fresh and passes the skills from one generation to the next. The present buildings, from 2013, are the 62nd set. Wars have delayed the cycle more than once, most notably for over a century during Japan's civil wars of the 15th and 16th centuries.

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The Muslim scholar al-Ghazali (c. 1058–1111) described in Deliverance from Error how he lost trust in both his senses and his reasoning. A shadow looks still, yet it moves; might reason, too, have limits it cannot see? Certainty returned, he wrote, only through a light that God cast into his heart.

Al-Ghazali was a theologian, jurist and Sufi mystic from Tus, in Persia. In 1095, while a celebrated professor at the Nizamiyya college in Baghdad, he went through the crisis he later described: he could barely speak, could not teach, and left his post to spend years travelling as a Sufi, a follower of Islam's mystical path. Deliverance from Error, written in his last years, tells that story. He is also known for The Incoherence of the Philosophers, which argued that thinkers such as Ibn Sina could not prove some of their key claims, including that the world has always existed. About seventy years after his death, Ibn Rushd answered it in The Incoherence of the Incoherence.

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