1
Dialogue Regarding Platonic Forms, etc.
> PETER:
> There may be all sorts of consonances between Shaykhi ideas
> and Babi and Baha'i ideas, so I for one would be very
> interested to know what Shaykh Ahmad wrote about Platonic
> forms.
KEVEN
Here is a provisional translation of mine of an important passage from
Shaykh Ahmad's Sharh al-Masha'ir that mentions the Platonic Forms. As this
is only part of three pages from a 300 page book devoted to this subject, we
can imagine how much we have yet to learn from Shaykh Ahmad! It should be
noted that 'Abdu'l-Baha refers to Shaykh Ahmad and Siyyid Kazim as "the two
most great names who were calling aloud in the wilderness of the Spirit, the
vale of rapture, announcing the glad-tidings of the Manifestation of God"
and he refers to them as the "seals of commentary and exposition"
(Ma'idiy-i-Asmani 9:52).
Passage from Shaykh Ahmad:
“The truth is that when the creative action is related to
existence, it is the Will; when it is related to the archetype ('ayn), in
other words, the species form, it is Purpose; and when it is related to the
limitations of the created, that is to say, their topography (handasa)-which
includes length and breadth, continuance and mortality, term of duration,
and the like-it is predestination. Through the accomplishment of the act of
creation and the thing itself, it is fate; and through its manifestation,
the revealing of causes, and the disclosure of means, it is execution.
“In regard to the Pen, it is that which draws from the Inkwell
and produces the Tablet. The Pen is the Universal Mind, and the Tablet is
the Universal Soul. The transcendent Platonic Models exist through the
joining of the Mím and the Thá, and they are the forms of things. Some have
charged that Plato established the forms of things, which are their causes
and their realities, in the Essence of the Emanating Source, by which is
meant their establishment in the Essence of God, exalted and glorified be
He. The statements of the people correspond with this meaning. They
established all things in His Essence in a mode nobler than they are in
themselves. Mullá Muhsin Fayd said in his epistle that all things have an
existence in the Essence essentially posterior to the stage of His knowledge
of Himself. So the stage without the concomitance of multiplicity in His
Essence, by reason of their multiplicity, is applicable to the order which
joins multiplicity to oneness. This is what he has stated in the Kalimát
al-Maknúnah (Hidden Words) describing the existence of the world:
’Existence was a latent state in Him free of any archetype, but the archetype
is disposed for that existence by the Command. When God commanded, the
Purpose of the Creator became attached to it, and His Command was united
with the notion of the archetype. Through it the existence latent in Him
passed from potentiality into actuality. Therefore, the locus of
manifestation for its being is the Real, and the existent itself is the
receiver of that existence. Were it not for its receptivity and disposition
to receive existence, it could not exist. Moreover, God would not have
generated it unless it had a fixed archetype in the divine Knowledge
corresponding to its essential, uncreated disposition, its receptivity for
existence, its worthiness to hearken to the word "Be!" and its fitness to
receive the same. He would not have called it into being unless it was in
Him. Or we say, the essence of the inner name is the same as the essence of
the outer name. The recipient is the same as the agent, and the uncreated
archetype is the same as God, so His action and receptivity are His two
hands. He is the agent by one of the hands and the recipient by the other.
The Essence is one, and the multiple are impressions [in Him]. Thus it is
true that He has created nothing except Himself, and what He has created are
His manifestations.’…
“But those who know the intent of Plato recognize that he means
by that which contains the Platonic Forms (al-muthul) the original
foundation (al-'unsur al-aslí) from which all things were created, for he
follows the meaning of his predecessors, who derived most of philosophy from
the Prophets. Sometimes they speak of "the Essence of God," but they intend
the essence of the universal Vicegerent of God, in the sense that it is an
essence from God that He has related to Himself as a position of honor. As
He says: ‘I breathed into him a measure of My spirit’ (Qur'án 15:29). 'Alí has also
described the honored position of their souls: ‘Its root is the Intellect.
From it, it began; through it, it is heedful; to it, it points and
signifies; and unto it, it returns when it is perfect and resembles it. From
it, all existents began, and unto it they return in perfection. It is the
Essence of God, the Most High, the Blessed Tree, the Sadratu'l-Muntahá, and
the Paradise of the Water. Whosoever recognizes it shall never be wretched,
and whosoever fails to recognize it shall fall into error and go astray.’
“The traditions differ outwardly on the meaning of this root. The learned
also differ in regard to it. Thus, it is said to be the water ‘from which He
made every living thing’ (Qur'án 21:30), or it is said to be existence, or the
Intellect, or the Throne, or the Tablet. It is possible, however, to
harmonize these various statements. If it is said to be existence, what is
meant is matter, as we have established. If it is said to be water, the
exponents of the outer meaning and the exponents of the inner meaning agree
that it is existence, which the latter interpret as matter on account of its
receptivity to a never ending succession of forms. Those who say it is the
Intellect intend by what it contains the ideas of things free of temporal
extension, elemental matter, and melancholic, psychic, and imaginal form.
Those who say it is the Throne mean that upon it is a likeness of each
thing, as they recount from Sádiq about the wonders of creation: ‘Each
believer has a likeness upon the Throne, such that when he performs an
obligatory prayer his likeness does the same, whereupon the angels bless him
and ask for his forgiveness. And when a servant is disobedient, God causes a
curtain of night to descend around his likeness, of which the angels are
aware.’ This is the explanation of his words: ‘O Thou Who displayest what is
beautiful and concealest what is ugly.’ In the Khu?batu'l-Bayán, he says:
’The possessor of the Throne has exalted stations, and upon that Throne are
likenesses of whatever God has created on land and sea.’ This is the meaning
of His utterance: ‘Nothing exists whose treasury is not with Us’(Qur'án 15:21).
Those who say it is the Tablet intend the Universal Soul, which is the locus of
the second creation and the first congelation….
“He [Sadrá] intends by his words ‘what is beyond the Intellect’
the supreme Object of worship, exalted and glorified be He…But it is
evident from the teachings of the people of the House, as their traditions
make clear without any contradiction and the Book of God affirms (and the
mind is illumined by their lights), that beyond the Intellect is the dead
earth, or the barren earth, which is the earth of potentialities, or the oil
’which is nearly luminous though no fire toucheth it’ (Qur'án 24:35). Beyond
this is the water from which God ‘made every living thing’ (Qur'án 21:30),
and it is the existence that flows forth through the action of God without an
intermediary. From one perspective, this is the foundation which Plato intended
contains the models of all things. But from another perspective, the foundation
which contains the models is the barren earth. The origin, therefore, of these models
is either (1) the shares of primary matter, or active matter, which is the water and existence, or (2) the shares of forms and differentia, which is the oil and the barren earth.
“In short, what is meant by the foundation ('unsur) is the
Inkwell, which is both the receiver and what is received. The Pen, which
more properly speaking is the Intellect, draws from the Inkwell and produces
the Tablet by means of spiritual elements which then act as seeds for the
composition of the body of man. So prior to it [the Pen] is the Will of God,
which is His action; eternity (sarmad), which is His time; and the possible,
which is His place and the most great chasm. These three things are what tip
the scales in favor of existence. It is allowable to say that the water and
the barren earth derive from these three, and that they belong to delimited
existence.[1] So the things beyond the Intellect are five, and God is the
encompasser beyond them. All of them are created by God through His action.
“The meaning of the author [Sadrá] is that the Intellect is
uncompounded, and that which is beyond it is uncompounded, namely, God, and
since all is an uncompounded reality (basít al-haqíqa), then He is all the
existents. But this view is false, for the Intellect is not uncompounded,
except in relation to what is below it in the temporal world. They have only
conceived it to be uncompounded based upon the words of the ancient
philosophers, who obtained wisdom from the Prophets. It may be that a
philosopher deduced it from their sayings, so the error is in the deduction.
They wrote their books in Syriac, and when they were translated into Arabic
some errors in interpreting and understanding the words of the masters may
have occurred. For instance, when they said this Intellect is pure
(mujarrad), they meant that it is free of elemental matter, temporal
extension, and melancholic, psychic, and imaginal form. He [Sadrá] has
asserted that the Intellect is utterly uncompounded, as is applicable to the
Creator, exalted be He. But whatever is created, without a doubt, is
composed of two aspects, and aspect from its Lord, which is existence, or
matter; and an aspect from itself, which is the quiddity, or form. This is
because every contingent thing is a composite pair, and nothing other than
God has an uncompounded nature. How then can it be said to be uncompounded?”
(translated from Sharh al-Mashá'ir, pp. 15-18)
[1] In his writings, Shaykh Ahmad divides existence (wujúd) into three
categories: (1) real existence (al-wujud al-haqq), which belongs only to
God, (2) absolute existence (al-wujúd al-mutlaq), which belongs to the world
of Command-this is the existentiational action [ibdá' ] which includes the
stages of Will and Purpose-and (3) delimited existence (al-wujúd
al-muqayyid), which belongs to the world of created things (khalq). Shaykh
Ahmad explains that this third type of existence is "the things generated,
whose beginning is the Universal Mind" (Rasá'il, p. 44), "all the outcomes
of the acting" (Fawá'id, p. 98), and "existence as delimited by
individuations, which is the existence of beings composed of substances and
accidents in the hidden and manifest worlds" (Mashá'ir, p. 136). He
clarifies that "absolute existence may be applied to the water and the
barren earth, for it is before the state of delimitation" (Ibid., p. 138),
but sometimes he associates these two with delimited existence, as above.
> PETER:
> Socrates and Hippocrates and Aristotle and Hermes and yet
> others have been praised in the Baha'i source literature as
> divine philosophers. We are not asserting that the Baha'i
> Writings embody Socratic dialogue or Hippocratian medicine
> or Aristotelian astronomy or Hermetic gnosticism, so why
> would we assume that Plato's Forms would come along with
> praise of his garden work?
KEVEN:
The Forms are the core concept of Plato's philosophy and everything else in
his philosophy revolves around acceptance of the Forms. Without the Forms
Plato's philosophy is meaningless. In Islam, it was Suhrawardi who
apprehended and restored Plato's Forms to close to their original meaning,
exposed the erroneous conceptions of the Peripatetics concerning the Forms,
and established their importance. All major Islamic philosophers after
Suhrawardi down to Shaykh Ahmad accept a Platonic version of the Platonic
Forms, which is easy to understand, since Plato's theory harmonizes well
with the doctrine of creation. It is not without reason that 'Abdu'l-Baha in
his talk at the Open Forum in San Francisco gives the view of "the
philosophers of the East," who he explains to be "Plato, Aristotle, and the
philosophers of Iran" as concordant with his explanation of evolution. From
statements of Baha'u'llah and 'Abdu'l-Baha, however, I would rank
Plato/Socrates above Aristotle in terms of spiritual perception. Baha'u'llah
calls Aristotle "the well-known man of knowledge" but refers to Plato as
"divine" and to Socrates as one who "drank one draught when the Most Great
Ocean overflowed with gleaming and life-giving waters" (Tablets 146-147).
Further 'Abdu'l-Baha says of Aristotle in a letter to an individual: "He was
a philosopher of the world of bodies, but thou art a physician of the world
of souls. Although that celebrated man was peerless and his fame world
encompassing, he was unaware of the luminous world and did not receive a
full share and portion of God's eternal outpouring" (International Baha'i
Archives AC001/001/01552).
> PETER:
> I would be very much obliged if you could cite some
> examples.
KEVEN:
Here is a passage from 'Abdu'l-Baha which I believe uses explicitly Platonic
language in describing the nature of the temporal world and its relation to
an unchanging world:
"That which thou beholdest in this temporal world are
the fleeting shadows of the world of the Kingdom and the external images of
the celestial realm. This is why thou observest that these shadows and forms
are continuously being renewed. They are not permanent, but the succession
of similar forms and like states is such as to give the appearance of
permanence. In the end, however, it will become clear that it was a mirage,
not real water; illusions, not the realities of the signs" (provisional
translation from Muntakhabat 3:23).
This passage is harmonious with Plato's exposition in the Timaeus where he
describes a threefold division of reality:(1) an intelligible and unchanging
model (2) a visible and changing copy of it, and (3) the receptacle, the
nurse of becoming and change. He says:
"Whenever we see anything in process of change, for example fire, we
should speak of it not as being a thing but
as having a quality; water, again we should speak of not as a thing but as
having a quality. And in general we should never speak as if any of the
things we suppose we can indicate by pointing and using expressions 'this
thing' or 'that thing' have any permanent reality: for they have no
stability and elude the designation 'this' or 'that' or any other that
expresses permanence. We should not use these expressions of them, but in
each and every case speak of a continually recurrent similar quality. Thus
we should give the name fire to one uniformly occurring quality, and so on
for everything else in process of change....The same argument applies to the
natural receptacle of all bodies [equiv. to 'Abdu'l-Baha's ether]. It can
always be called the same because it never alters its characteristics. For
it continues to receive all things, and never itself takes a permanent
impress from any of the things that enter it; it is a kind of neutral
plastic material on which changing impressions are stamped by the things
which enter it, making it appear different at different times. And the
things which pass in and out of it are copies of the eternal realities,
whose form they take in a wonderful way that is hard to describe" (Timaeus
49-51).
To make further comparison, "realities" in 'Abdu'l-Baha's statement
corresponds, I believe, to "eternal realities" in Plato's statement, and
"fleeting shadows" and "signs" in 'Abdu'l-Baha corresponds to "changing
copies" and "qualities" in Plato. Here we also have the unknowable-in-itself
essence of things and the temporal knowable attributes which correspond to
those realities.
Here is a passage from the Bab, Whose philosophical writings from what I can
grasp appear to correspond with the views of Shaykh Ahmad, which contains
strongly Platonic terminology:
"Those who say the fixed archetypes reside in
the Essence of God in order to establish His knowledge, as all believe save
those whom God hath pleased to preserve, have completely forsaken the
religion of the Family of God, for any reference to otherness in their being
testifieth to their separation and indicateth their complete rupture from
God. God is the eternal Being, Who from time immemorial hath not changed,
and it is not possible for divine unity to belong to anyone save Himself.
Rather all things are the images of substances (jawhariyyát) whose existence hath
no trace in God" (provisional translation from Amr va Khalq 1:101).
> PETER:
> I don?t think any of you have yet
> responded to my suggestion that there may be three kinds of
> essence: 1) the essence in the sense of the individual
> identity, selfhood, personhood; 2) the essence in the sense
> of the class membership, being a mineral or vegetable or
> animal or human; 3) the essence in the sense of what is
> important about something. If there are three distinct
> kinds of essence, then does 1) apply to things other than
> human beings? Does 2) apply to things in a general sense,
> regardless of whether individual things exist or not? Does
> 3) have any function other than as an individual and social
> statement of value?
KEVEN:
I think you have made a good division of the kinds of essence, but I would
add a fourth category. My list would include (1) essence in the sense of
individual identity. This kind of essence corresponds to actual individual
beings. Of this kind, only human souls survive death. Aristotle would call
this the substance. (2) real essence in the sense of class membership:
Platonic sense. I would redefine this to include all the kinds of things
that are possible to exist. These are the realities of things in the Primal
Will. (3) nominal essence (logical universal) in the sense of class
membership: Aristotelian sense. This kind of essence is usually termed
quiddity, and it has only a mental existence in human minds. Aristotle
termed these secondary substances. (4) essence in a literary sense: What is
most important about something. To answer your question about an atom. It,
as well as all other created things, has all these senses of essence. With
respect to an atom, sense (1) does not survive decomposition; sense (2)
always exists at all times for all things; sense (3) exists as long as their
are human minds to abstract universals from particulars; and sense (4)
applies in the same sense as (3).
> PETER:
> There are essences pertaining to existences in this
> physical world and in the spiritual worlds. Are the
> essences physical or spiritual? The class essences are
> called spirits [ruh.], so I very much doubt that they are
> physical. Keven?
KEVEN:
I think that essences are not physical, except in the case of definition
(1), where essence is equivalent to individual identity. But the individual
identity in the case of humans continues after death, so it is both physical
and non-physical. The physical part of the identity is lost upon
decomposition. Spirits (ruh) are not really class essences in sense (2)
above. I would translate ruh here as power, so we have the power of growth,
which is the plant spirit, the power of sense perception, which is the
animal spirit, and so on. These powers, including the human power of
intellect, emerge during the course of evolution as a result of the
combination of the elements in certain configurations.