What is happiness and how can I attain it? In order to explore how authors of the medieval Islamicate1 world answered such questions we have to find our way through a maze of fundamental hermeneutical problems, beginning with lexicographical and extending into conceptual areas: Which terms are we looking for? Which texts should we take into consideration? How do we establish which testimonies qualify as pertinent? Are we dealing with a singular discourse or multiple discourses? To what extent does our own understanding of happiness prefigure our selection, and how can we historicize past discourses on happiness, in particular if we have not yet determined the conceptual parameters?
From all that we know, Muslim authors of the medieval period did not spill a lot of ink on what happiness is and how it can be achieved. To be sure, happiness in the sense of human fulfilment in the shape of salvation was an important notion in medieval Arabic or Islamic literature as were other issues often associated with happiness such as laughter or humour. Psychological and emotional well-being and their opposites figured in medical writing, but it does not seem as if many texts had the definition and attainability of happiness as their main concern. An intellectual and literary tradition which paid some attention to happiness was philosophy, here understood to render falsafa, the Islamicate adaptation of classical and late antique learning. Modern surveys of philosophical literature produced in the medieval Islamicate world tend to operate with Aristotelian or Platonic ideas of happiness and focus on the reception of those concepts, which was indeed significant (Goodman 2014; Rosenthal 1958, 13–20). As will be argued in what follows, however, this focus deserves reconsideration, especially if philosophical texts are read as contributions to a larger debate outside the narrow circle of falāsifa (Arabic: philosophers). For pragmatic reasons, happiness is here understood more broadly as human fulfilment, usually connected with a joyful experience.
Authors commonly classified as philosophers had mostly one answer to offer to the first question, what is happiness: For the vast majority, true happiness (Arabic: saʿāda) was inextricably connected to our human purpose, which is salvation, although debates surrounded the nature of happiness in this world compared to that in the next as well as the nature of otherworldly felicity (Lange 2016, 165–91). Authors disagreed more widely regarding the second question. Their common tendency was to see the pursuit of happiness as a theoretical and moral exercise, but they championed different modalities. While some promoted an ascetic or hermetic approach, others followed along the lines of Aristotle’s description of humans as political animals and saw happiness essentially playing out in the polis and among friends. Likewise, some authors had a fundamentally pessimistic view of society and politics grounded in their intellectual elitism, whereas others focused on society’s potential and regarded it in an optimistic, perhaps utopian light.
In what follows, two Baghdadi authors of the ninth and tenth centuries, who are usually classified as philosophers, al-Kindī and al-Fārābī, will be used to illustrate some elements of the two opposed views. We will then proceed with the twelfth-century Andalusi Ibn Ṭufayl who combined mystical and philosophical elements in his didactic novel Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān and conclude with an eleventh-century text usually not considered part of the body of Islamicate philosophy: the Kutagdu Bilig, one of the earliest preserved examples of Turkish writing and commonly categorized as a mirror for princes. As will be argued below, however, the text has formal parallels with Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān and shares philosophical concerns with the other texts discussed here. One of the aims of this chapter is to interrogate the literary categories that inform historical accounts of the concept of happiness (Akasoy 2017). The issues raised in the following discussion are primarily rooted in systematic and philosophical concerns rather than in historical analysis. The distances between the individual authors in both space and time, indeed, the chronological order in which the texts were produced, do not support the assumption that the authors were leading a debate about the problems of particular interest here: What is happiness, how can I achieve it, and can I be happy living among people whose intellectual disposition does not allow them to recognize the truth as fully as this is possible for me?
Al-Kindī: Stoic Ethics as a Mirror for Princes
Al-Kindī (around 800 to early 870s), widely known as the ‘philosopher of the Arabs’, was the first author who produced original philosophical texts in Arabic.2 He also was a key participant in the Graeco-Arabic translation movement patronized by the Abbasid caliphs who also supported al-Kindī’s own literary and intellectual activities. His interests in the Neoplatonic tradition in particular had an important influence on the choice of texts which were translated into Arabic and then circulated. His own philosophy, however, was more eclectic. In a treatise on the soul he presents himself as a follower of Plato’s idea of anamnesis, for example. The text by al-Kindī which concerns us here is titled On the Means of Dispelling Sorrows. The author begins by commenting that all humans are familiar with sorrows since we all have the experience of losing something that is dear to us. As much as this may be a human principle, it is also not the smartest way of responding to the realities of life. Indeed, as al-Kindī points out, it is in the nature of things that they pass and it is fairly pointless to mourn their absence or loss. In an observation that sounds anarchist in its underlying egalitarianism and is reminiscent of Hobbes’s insight into universal vulnerability, al-Kindī states, ‘We should keep in mind that all the things that hands can reach are common to all people. They are merely near us, [but] we have no more right to possess them than do others’ (Al-Kindī 2007, 29). The greater tragedy, however, is that our obsession with material things distracts us from what is much more valuable on account of its permanence: our intellect and the immaterial things it can grasp: ‘the desirable things of the intellect – I mean in the measure that the soul needs to bring about permanence in its form during the allotted days of its duration and to produce their like, as well as to drive pain from [the soul] and to provide it rest’ (Al-Kindī 2007, 24).
Al-Kindī’s dichotomizing thought in this treatise has often been identified as Stoic, and that is indeed a suitable label (Adamson 2007; Duart 1993). Although the ‘philosopher of the Arabs’ had a general idea of the contents of the Nicomachean Ethics, he does not seem to have been familiar with Aristotle’s text itself and he displays none of its key ideas – such as moderation or a virtue ethics – in On the Means of Dispelling Sorrows. On the contrary, al-Kindī promotes a fairly radical ascetic ideal in this text. His model is Socrates whom he portrays in a much more ascetic light than the Greek tradition has it. Al-Kindī also wrote a separate treatise on Socrates (Adamson 2007, 144–49; for the Arabic Socrates reception in general Alon 2009). Also in line with Stoic views is the focus on removing sorrows and the idea of philosophy as medicine for the soul. Happiness in this treatise thus mostly appears defined in a doubly negative way, as the absence of something negative.
Several modern scholars have contrasted the treatise’s literary format and its philosophical quality and generally concluded that the latter is fairly modest. Much of the text’s substance consists of repetitive commonsensical wisdom, often in anecdotal form, instead of any analytical or systematic elaboration of happiness. Nevertheless, or perhaps even precisely because of this, On the Means of Dispelling Sorrows offers a number of interesting starting points for our further analysis.
1 – First of all, the close conceptual connection between human nature and happiness, obvious in al-Kindī’s text, is visible throughout Islamicate philosophical literature concerned with happiness. In principle, there are a number of reasons why it is not absurd to speak about the happiness of non-human animals. In contemporary everyday language, we make statements such as, ‘The dog wags his tail. He must be happy’ or ‘The cat purrs. She must be happy’. The idea of happiness as freedom from pain makes these plausible conclusions. Philosophers in the medieval Islamicate world were by no means oblivious to the predicament of non-human animals. The ninth-century freethinker Abū Bakr al-Rāzī was a vegetarian and believed in rebirth. In the tenth century, the Brethren of Purity (Ikhwān al-ṣafāʾ) devoted one of their epistles to the plight of non-human animals (Ikhwān al-ṣafāʾ 2009). Furthermore, one could easily frame such non-human experiences in terms of fulfilment as well. Why not consider a dog happy who is most dog-like? A dog whose circumstances allow him to exercise those activities which dogs characteristically engage in?
It appears, however, that these were not options for the authors under consideration here. Only humans can be happy because whatever else philosophical authors disagreed about, they all considered theoretical endeavours critical to the pursuit of happiness. Happiness requires reason and while it does not take much to imagine non-human animals suffering for similar reasons as humans, as described by al-Kindī, it is only humans who can avail themselves of the cure since it is only humans who have an immortal soul concerned with immaterial things. The association of laughter and reason as two human propria might be another reflection of this connection between human nature and happiness. Ibn Taymiyya (1263–1328), for instance, modified the Aristotelian statement in De partibus animalium where the ancient philosopher identifies laughter as a human proprium: ‘Man is an animal that talks and laughs. What differentiates man from the animal is a quality of perfection. Talking is a quality of perfection, and so is laughter. Whoever laughs is more perfect than whoever does not laugh’ (Ammann 1993, 26–28; Holtzman 2010, 199; Ibn Taymiyya 1998, 6:71–2). Medieval writers commonly explained laughter as an expression of amazement which in itself required reason, and the association of laughter and reason appears before Ibn Taymiyya, but it does not seem entirely clear how it emerged and whether this could be considered an emendation to the Aristotelian text. In his treatise on definitions, al-Kindī does not define happiness, but he does include an entry on laughter, which he explains in humoral terms (Klein-Franke 1982, n. 79).
2 – Secondly, On the Means of Dispelling Sorrows illustrates in just how many and how fundamental manners a religious framework can have an impact on concepts of happiness. This framework not only manifests itself in divinely sanctioned prescriptions and prohibitions which are critical to an ethical understanding of happiness or in beliefs which are crucial to the theoretical exercise that leads to happiness. Almost more significantly, because human nature is the product of divine design and a gift from God, happiness is not simply a path of virtue which we pursue in order to be better people for reasons of empathy or piety or even for recompense in the afterlife. It has a distinct metaphysical or ontological twist: our virtuous and happy perfection means that we recognize and appreciate God’s gift, which is done in theory as well as practice. Al-Kindī has another way of framing this endeavour. Like others, he presents philosophy as an imitation of God (for the tradition see Berman 1961 and Roberts 2012), and this too has theoretical as well as practical components since we are meant to be wise and just. In his treatise on the soul, the divine attributes al-Kindī lists for emulation include wisdom, power, justice, goodness, beauty and truth (Druart 1993, 339). In al-Kindī’s view, those who endure sorrows because of material goods are not only stupid; he also presents them as impious. Not even the prospect of our death should make us sad since we have only been enjoying what the Lender (i.e., God) has given us. ‘Anyone who is sad at returning what has been loaned to him is ungrateful. We should be ashamed at ourselves for this character trait that departs from justice’ (Al-Kindī 2007, 29). It is important to note here that the Arabic word for unbelief is related to that for ungratefulness. The divine model, however, has its limitations for human emulation. The notion of a happy God might be absurd to Muslim philosophers and theologians since happiness in the present context seems to imply the action of perfection, a development which necessarily begins with imperfection, a label we cannot apply to God. While divine perfection is clearly beyond our reach it still helps define some of the parameters for our aspirations.
3 – Finally, I would like to turn to the Sitz im Leben of the text and its author. How do the ideas and the way in which they are presented relate to the environment in which al-Kindī was active? While most of his texts are not preserved, a good number of those which are feature more ambitious philosophical exercises. They are more technical, more complex and operate with principles of demonstration, often geometrical, where On the Means of Dispelling Sorrows relies on general wisdom and common sense. Since hardly any of al-Kindī’s texts enjoyed significant success it is difficult to tell whether On the Means was written for fellow aficionados of falsafa, who may have been more interested in his systematic writings, and simply failed to impress them or whether it was meant for a different readership altogether. Al-Kindī addressed at the beginning an unnamed friend, a style he often used, and one may speculate whether he had a person at the caliphal court in mind where he served as a tutor. (Other philosophical treatises, such as the First Philosophy, a book of metaphysics, were dedicated to young members of the Abbasid family.) Apart from the somewhat ‘pedestrian’ (Druart 1993, 350) style of On the Means of Dispelling Sorrows, there are two more reasons for associating this text with the rulers. Several of the anecdotes champion kings as masters of detachment from the material world. Those whom we should emulate have access to great riches, but in foro interno these are insignificant. Other philosophers in medieval Baghdad too developed separate ethical principles for rulers. In his Reformation of Morals (Tahdhīb al-akhlāq) which outlines principles of human perfection that also focus on the rational soul and its control over other components of human beings, the Christian Yaḥyā ibn ʿAdī (893–974) takes social and political positions into account when recommending or censoring certain ways of behaviour. For example, because their positions are more exposed, kings should refrain from lying even more than others. On the other hand, the philosopher commends renunciation for monks, but rejects it for rulers (Ibn ʿAdī 2002, 55 and 63). The issue of rulers as the happiest people will come up later again.
The second feature of On the Means (rather than what we know about al-Kindī’s biography) which suggests a proximity to the Abbasids is rooted in literary traditions connected with the courts. Charles Butterworth considered al-Kindī’s treatise within the context of political philosophy in the Greek tradition and concluded that it was a fairly humble example of that endeavour (Butterworth 1992). This might deserve some reconsideration since one might also conclude that it is not by virtue of its argument, but by virtue of its social context and, indeed, of its literary tradition that this text is political. (I am following the argument of Nussbaum 1990, 2–4.) The Abbasids had come to power around 749 with the critical support of Persian converts to Islam. The Eastern orientation of the Abbasid Empire is obvious in the shift of the capital from Damascus to the newly founded Baghdad where Sasanian traditions were revived. One of these traditions was Persian mirrors for princes which presented basic moral principles of wisdom and justice in the form of compilations of anecdotes, aphorisms, advice etc. As Marcotte observed, ‘This literature, as testified by its popular flavour, could also serve a didactic purpose, especially with its use of vivid imagery, its repetitive style and the briefness of its moral teachings’ (Marcotte 1997, 78). Mirrors for princes follow in many respects a different literary format than On the Means. They present themselves more unambiguously as advice for princes, and yet the proximity between al-Kindī’s treatise and this literature produced for princes allows us to see On the Means not simply within the context of philosophical literature inspired by the Greek tradition, but within that of another culture (Sasanian Persia), another social milieu (the court) and another literary and intellectual discourse (mirrors for princes).
Beyond literary and philosophical models, is there anything we can say about why al-Kindī approached the subject of happiness through the Stoic lens? What does his championing of a solipsistic quest for transcendental truth tell us about the author and society at the time? As much as al-Kindī’s inner life remains inaccessible to us, we can observe a certain discrepancy between the ascetic ideals he promotes, advocating for a life in a barrel, and his biographical realities. Al-Kindī must have been a reasonably wealthy man. While details about the material nature of Abbasid patronage for the philosopher elude us, at a later point in his life he was involved in a conflict with the Banū Mūsā brothers, rival scientists who tried to gain possession of his library, which suggests that he was a man of some means. Any answer has to rely on speculation. Al-Kindī may have simply followed existing ancient traditions which he considered authoritative; perhaps he was also under the influence of an emerging ascetic movement; one of his tutees may have been a spendthrift; finally, discrepancies between ethical and spiritual ideals and real life are probably the rule.
Al-Fārābī: Happiness and Politics
Establishing the Sitz im Leben of al-Fārābī and his work is more difficult since we know very little about the author’s biography. Born around the same time that al-Kindī died, al-Fārābī moved from Central Asia (perhaps modern-day Afghanistan) to Baghdad where he became one of the key figures of the Baghdad Peripatetics, a small group of influential Aristotelian philosophers. He died around 950/951 in Damascus. Al-Fārābī addressed the subject of happiness in a more prominent and systematic way than hardly any other philosopher of the medieval Islamicate world,3 but perhaps rather paradoxically, the precise nature of his views is complicated and controversial. As Miriam Galston put it, ‘It is exceedingly difficult to determine with certainty al-Fārābī’s philosophic understanding of the nature of happiness’ (Galston 1992, 96). Galston explored the tensions between theoretical and practical aspects of al-Fārābī’s notion of happiness which vary according to different works and often carry uncertain implications. Mostly, this problem concerns the significance of the practical component while it seems much clearer that for al-Fārābī as well as for others, happiness is the result of a theoretical pursuit. Al-Fārābī is reported to have said in one instance that true happiness was a matter of this world only and that the other world was the subject of old women’s tales, which might imply that it was a practical affair only or in any case that he did not believe in the kind of happiness al-Kindī champions, but according to those who cite al-Fārābī in such a way, this statement was included in his commentary on the Nicomachean Ethics, which has not come down to us.
The relationship between theory and practice of happiness remains intriguing in the present day: Can we truly know what happiness is and not act in ways which increase our happiness? Can a person who does not contribute to their own happiness speak with any authority on the subject of happiness? Al-Fārābī’s answer mostly seems to have been, no. What, then, is happiness according to the philosopher, and how can we achieve it by way of theoretical as well as practical activity? One of his programmatic treatises on the subject of philosophy in general bears the title On the Attainment of Happiness and the answer is one familiar from antiquity: Philosophy is a good path to happiness even though the situation is a little bit more complicated than that, as we will see. First of all, the philosopher’s indebtedness to Aristotle is obvious in the statement that happiness is an ultimate end, although like Aristotle and, in fact, al-Kindī, al-Fārābī observes that individuals have their own ideas of what constitutes happiness. These comments appear so frequently that one wonders whether one of the intentions of the philosophers in writing about happiness was to establish their superiority over those who foolishly believed that it could be attained in other ways. Al-Fārābī comments as follows:
Some think that wealth is happiness; others think that the enjoyment of sensible pleasures is happiness; some think that the power to rule is happiness; others think that knowledge is happiness; still others think that happiness resides in other things. Each one is convinced that what he considers to be absolute happiness is the most preferable, the greatest, and the most perfect good – such is the rank happiness holds among the goods! Now, since happiness is of such a rank, and since it is the highest degree of human perfection, anyone who chooses to obtain it for himself surely must have a path and the means that allow him to arrive at it. (McGinnis and Reisman 2007, 105)
Al-Kindī, by the way, is interesting in this respect since he lists among the misguided happy people not only those who are superficial, but also those who are morally outright wrong. Al-Fārābī himself considers four elements critical for the attainment of happiness in this as well as the next life: ‘theoretical virtues, deliberative virtues, moral virtues, and practical arts’ (Al-Fārābī 1962, 13). He discusses the theoretical virtues first and offers a fairly technical introduction to principles of knowledge and ontology – that is, what things are and how we can know what and with which degree of certainty. In a way, this part can also be read as a survey of the sciences (another parallel with al-Kindī’s text which has been read as an invitation to philosophy, and with Ibn Ṭufayl whose protagonist goes systematically through different cognitive and analytical experiences). Finally and after an investigation of metaphysics and the heavenly bodies, the hypothetical explorer turns to the human species itself and its distinctive perfection which is grounded in human reason. Al-Fārābī offers a critical insight here: ‘It will become evident to him in this science that each man achieves only a portion of that perfection, and what he achieves of this portion varies in its extent, for an isolated individual cannot achieve all the perfections by himself and without the aid of many other individuals. It is the innate disposition of every man to join another human being or other men in the labor he ought to perform: this is the condition of every single man’ (Al-Fārābī 1962, 23). Much of the attainment of happiness, however, depends on internal efforts. The deliberative faculty is in charge of matters of application of the voluntary intelligibles: ‘It is the skill and the faculty by which one discovers and discerns the variable accidents of the intelligibles whose particular instances are made to exist by the will, when one attempts to bring them into actual existence by the will at a determined time, in a determined place, and when a determined event takes place, whether the time is long or short, whether the locality is large or small’ (Al-Fārābī 1962, 27–28). The deliberative faculty is marked by the attention to an end which can be good (in which case al-Fārābī speaks of a deliberative virtue) or bad – he does not offer separate terms for what only appears to be good and for what is bad. The deliberative virtue leads al-Fārābī to the moral virtue. For the philosopher, this seems to be a logical sequence and one does not go without the other. ‘He who wishes the true good for himself has to be good and virtuous, not in his deliberation, but in his moral character and in his acts’ (Al-Fārābī 1962, 30). Al-Fārābī points repeatedly to the significance of accidents and to the many differences not only between nations, but also between individuals. ‘Not every chance human being will possess art, moral virtue, and deliberative virtue with great power’ (Al-Fārābī 1962, 34). Such princes have a great obligation: ‘he who possesses such a great power ought to possess the capacity of realizing the particular instances of it in nations and cities’ (Al-Fārābī 1962, 35). Al-Fārābī’s hierarchical approach is obvious throughout the text. ‘Man’s specific perfection is called supreme happiness; and to each man, according to his rank in the order of humanity, belongs the specific supreme happiness pertaining to this kind of man. The warrior who pursues this purpose is the just warrior, and the art of war that pursues this purpose is the just and virtuous art of war’ (Al-Fārābī 1962, 37). The best known expression of al-Fārābī’s elitism, however, is probably his view of religion which he considers an instrument of persuasion for those without the skills to follow intellectual arguments. Religion imitates philosophy. (This, of course, should not distract us from the fact that al-Fārābī too sometimes dangles the promise of the afterlife in front of his readers.)
Al-Fārābī’s vision in On the Attainment of Happiness accords with statements in other texts which supplement these comments. Philosophy as theory and practice is critical to the attainment of happiness, but from a different perspective, happiness also appears to be critical for practical philosophy since it defines its ends. In his Enumeration of the Sciences, al-Fārābī defines ‘the science of the city’ (al-ʿilm al-madanī) as follows:
The science of the city investigates the various kinds of voluntary actions and ways of life; the acquired talents (malakāt), morals (akhlāq), natural inclinations (sajāyā), and inborn character traits (shiyam) that lead to these actions and ways of life; the ends for the sake of which they are performed; how they must exist in human beings; how to order them in human beings in the manner in which they must exist in them; and the way to preserve them for them. It distinguishes among the ends for the sake of which the actions are performed and the ways of life are practiced. It explains that some of them are true happiness, while others are presumed to be happiness although they are not. That which is true happiness cannot possibly be of this life, but of another life after this, which is the life to come; while that which is presumed to be happiness consists of such things as wealth, honor, and the pleasures, when these are made the only ends in this life. Distinguishing the actions and ways of life, it explains that the ones through which true happiness is attained are the goods, the noble things, and the virtues, while the rest are the evils, the base things, and the imperfections; and that they [must] exist in human beings in such a way that the virtuous actions and ways of life are distributed in the cities and nations according to a certain order and are practiced in common. (Modified from al-Fārābī 1963, 24; for the Arabic text al-Fārābī 1996, 79–80)
Compared with al-Kindī, al-Fārābī gives his writings about ethics and happiness a distinctly political twist which has made him the protagonist of the history of medieval Arabic political philosophy. This position, however, is the subject of debates among modern scholars who disagree about the nature of the philosopher’s politics and seek to reconstruct it by resorting to his biography, to classical models and to close readings of the texts.
Given how little we know about al-Fārābī’s biography we are not in the position to establish connections between his philosophical views and political authorities as we can for al-Kindī. There is reason to suspect that al-Fārābī would not have enjoyed the same kind of position at the caliphal court: many contemporary scholars are persuaded that the philosopher was a Shiite. Al-Fārābī does not wear his sectarian identity on his sleeve and there is some debate surrounding this issue, but al-Fārābī’s political writings can be read as utopian with a Shiite inflection. The question is not critical for our analysis since either way we cannot establish direct connections to the powers that be.
We can, however, ask questions of practical application which are internal to al-Fārābī’s texts and which may shed some light on the nature of his recommendations. Al-Kindī takes it for granted that nobody wants to be unhappy and that his recommendations are rational and obvious for intelligent people. He relies on his own power of persuasion and illustrates with the already described rhetorical didactics why his principles are correct and how they can be put into practice. Even if kings are most frequently cited as models, a less privileged person can also easily follow the recommendations. Al-Fārābī, on the other hand, stresses the need for the ruler, being in line with the Islamic tradition of the caliphate where a caliph is necessary for salvation. In order to establish what a real-life reference point for al-Fārābī may have been or to what extent he thought about his views in such terms in the first place, it might be useful to consider how, according to al-Fārābī, a ruler should proceed in practice if he wants to make his subjects happy. In the Islamic tradition of the caliphate, a just ruler is necessary since he appoints judges who practice Islamic law and validates services of worship (Crone 2004, 286–314). As we have already seen, al-Fārābī speaks about virtues as a way to happiness and he also stipulates that the ruler facilitates the habituation of virtues (Sweeney 2007). How is this meant to work? First of all, the idea of a habituation of virtues is straightforward: Virtue does not come easily, no matter how much we know in theory that it is the right thing to do, but we can get used to virtuous behaviour if we practice it, overcoming our own inertia, contemplating its benefit and finally internalizing it. How can our ruler help us with this exercise? He can instruct us with intricate skills of persuasion and he can serve as a model. Al-Fārābī, however, seems to envisage a more profound interference and speaks of compulsion to happiness and the right, indeed, duty of the ruler to make us virtuous and therefore happy. With some virtues, the practicality of this compulsion is not hard to imagine. We can be taxed and made generous, for example. But if we consider other virtues al-Fārābī lists it is much more difficult to think of ways in which a ruler can make us virtuous. How can he give us a better sense of humour, and how can he make us eat moderate amounts only? The spectre of the totalitarian nightmare state is a distinctly modern dystopia and would not have occurred to al-Fārābī. The dubious practicability of his vision, however, could lead us to suspect that politics should be understood in a more metaphorical sense and that, as Dimitri Gutas has argued concerning another of al-Fārābī’s treatises, the main point of his civic vision might be more noetic than political (Gutas 2004). Patricia Crone describes well the difficulties for any reader who seeks to understand the practical dimension of al-Fārābī’s view of philosophy in society: ‘It is impossible not to sense a certain wariness when it comes to spelling out the concrete implications. What with his refusal to give examples, his flitting from one level to another, and the peculiar Arabic he constructed for philosophical use, he is a difficult author to get into. The novice feels utterly disoriented by the absence of familiar landmarks, the high level of abstraction, and the cumbersome phraseology. Al-Fārābī would probably have responded that this is entirely as it should be’ (Crone 2004, 175).
Visions of Society in Falsafa and Beyond
Even though much of the academic literature on the subject of happiness in medieval Islamicate literature focuses on the Aristotelian heritage, defines happiness in Aristotelian terms and concentrates on those medieval texts which operate with similar terms, it is worth taking a broader corpus into consideration, as far as the classical Greek tradition is concerned, but even more so regarding other traditions. Al-Kindī’s treatise differs from al-Fārābī’s texts for reasons of literary format and social contexts not only for human fulfilment, but also because one promotes eudaimonia, the other ataraxia. Why did al-Fārābī write about happiness and al-Kindī about the absence of pain? To a certain extent, the answer lies in the tradition which was available to them. Both drank from the fountain of Greek wisdom, but not all of that wisdom was on display. A project of communal eudaimonia under the guidance of a wise ruler also chimed better with al-Fārābī’s political and indeed religious views than the internal detachment pursued by the individual.
Unlike al-Kindī who wrote about ascetic ideals in a context of social realities, some authors of the medieval Islamicate world had an outright negative or pessimistic view of society. A well-known representative of this view is the Andalusi Ibn Bājja (d. 1139) who picked up al-Fārābī’s idea of the ‘weeds’, individuals who don’t conform to their societies, whatever the nature of these societies. For Ibn Bājja, however, the ‘weeds’ are rightly guided individuals who live in a corrupt society (such as himself, we may assume) and need to keep a low profile (Altmann 1969; Dunlop 1945; Kochin 1999).
Ibn Ṭufayl: Desert Island Happiness
About 50 years after Ibn Bājja, Ibn Ṭufayl (d. 1185) penned his Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān, a philosophical novel about a man who grows up all by himself on an island uninhabited by other humans (Ibn Ṭufayl 2009; see also Kukkonen 2008 and Lauri 2013). The protagonist, Ḥayy, represents the full intellectual potential of human beings. In the story, he understands little by little the reality of the created world and its creator based on observation and experimentation. At the end of the story, Ibn Ṭufayl introduces the reader to a neighbouring island inhabited by people who follow a religion not too different from Islam. Most people are simple-minded literalists, but among them is a man with spiritual inclinations who is so frustrated by his compatriots that he decides to leave the island and become a hermit. He selects Ḥayy’s island of all places and when the two men encounter each other, they realize that their intellectual and spiritual efforts have led to the same results. They return to the inhabited island and seek to share these insights, but their endeavour fails due to the limited mental capacities of their audience. Ḥayy and his companion finally seek solitude on the desert island. Ibn Ṭufayl thus presents a negative picture of social realities. Hayy has the potential to enlighten his fellow human beings, but the reality of humankind is such that truth requires translation. The people on the other island may describe themselves as fulfilled and indeed happy, but the reader is left in no doubt that the experience of the two hermits is superior.
The Sitz im Leben of Ibn Ṭufayl and his Ḥayy is easy enough to reconstruct. Although we are missing many of his biographical details, Ibn Ṭufayl was also based at a court, that of the Almohads in al-Andalus. In his text, he clearly promotes ideals of Almohad ideology with its rationalism and reliance on the internal sense for the truth (Fierro 2008), but it is also peculiar that Ḥayy’s endeavours end in political failure. According to a common interpretation, the inhabitants of the other island represent a version of Islam associated with the predecessors of the Almohads, the Almoravids, but it is unclear why they should prevail as rulers. The text has been described as a utopia, but it is not a triumphalist Almohad utopia in the sense that Ḥayy is not a charismatic leader who founds a movement which takes over the other island. As much as Ḥayy is shaped by Almohad doctrine, there is more to the text as well.
The Kutadgu Bilig: A Mirror for Princes as a Philosophical Text
This brings us to the fourth text. Completed in about 1070 (120 years after al-Fārābī died, but before the Andalusi authors), the Kutadgu Bilig (Wisdom of Royal Glory in Dankoff’s translation) is one of the earliest preserved texts in Turkish. More precisely, the text was written in Karakhanid Turkish, and the Karakhanids were the dynasty which patronized the author, Yūsuf of Balasagun. The Kutadgu Bilig is often classified as a mirror for princes and therefore commonly not taken into consideration as part of the philosophical corpus, but there are good reasons for including it in our selection. First of all, the text offers indeed a number of rules for princes, how to interact with one’s subjects, how to deal with courtiers of various kinds, how to choose a good wife etc. What sets this text apart from the Persian tradition, however, is its peculiar literary format, which – like Ibn Ṭufayl’s Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān – tells a story. Here, the arrangement is somewhat reversed. Most of the time, the reader finds herself at the ruler’s court and it is only later that the worlds and worldviews of ruler and ascetic meet.
The protagonists of the story are four allegorical characters: Rising Sun, the king, stands for justice; Full Moon, his first vizier, dies fairly early in the text and embodies fortune; Highly Praised, his son, then becomes the king’s advisor and stands for wisdom or the intellect. Rising Sun and Highly Praised seek out Wide Awake, an ascetic, whom they try to recruit as an addition to the court, but after some exchanges concerning life at court the ascetic decides against an environment which is so full of distractions. Since Wide Awake is mostly concerned with his own afterlife he is seen as representing man’s last end. There are good reasons for classifying this text as a mirror for princes. A large part of it consists of practical advice for rulers (e.g. how to deal with different groups of subjects and courtiers, how to find a wife etc.) and of general moral exhortations with a particular and peculiar tendency towards memento mori. At the same time, however, some points familiar from philosophical literature are also made in this mirror for princes. ‘Wisdom proclaims its own meaning thus: when a man knows wisdom, then illness stays far from him. The foolish man is full of ills, and if illness is not treated, the patient dies. Go then, fool, seek remedy for your ills; and you, glorious sage, prescribe the fool’s remedy!’ (Yūsuf Khāṣṣ Ḥājib 1983, 44). While Yūsuf pays more attention to this-worldly rewards for wise and just behaviour in the form of social ascent than philosophical texts typically do, there is also no doubt about the other-worldly benefits.
The Kutadgu Bilig offers an interesting alternative to problems presented by al-Kindī, al-Fārābī and Ibn Ṭufayl. Curiously, Yūsuf does not resolve the conflict between the ruler’s ascetic preference and his political position; the book ends with a compromise and the ruler accepts the downsides of being a shepherd. Yūsuf thus offers a more realistic view of an enlightened ruler who cares for the happiness of his subjects, but curiously and paradoxically because he really understands how happiness can be attained, he sacrifices his own full happiness for that of his subjects.
Conclusion
In order to extrapolate approaches to happiness in medieval Islamicate texts, two elements strike me as critical: the theory promoted and the Sitz im Leben of author and text. Some common problems and features emerge:
No matter what else happiness is, philosophical authors present it fairly consistently as an intellectual, a theoretical, a spiritual and internal affair. It is best practiced by those who have the mental capacities for understanding the true realities of the world and its creator. It should not come as a surprise that according to the philosophers, philosophy is the best path to happiness. Some such as al-Fārābī present their arguments in a fairly systematic manner and using universal philosophical language, whereas others offer mostly commonsensical wisdom, exploiting the various literary traditions which circulated among cultural elites. The way in which the case for the intellectual pursuit of happiness is made may serve as an invitation to this path, but it does not always serve as a model.
The benefits of this view of happiness are obvious if we consider the Sitz im Leben of some of these texts and their authors. Philosophical discussions of happiness were closely connected with elite circles because the practice of philosophy was located in this milieu and philosophers could exploit their views of the attainment of happiness in order to make a case for their own relevance. The peculiar political inflection of some of the texts is also based on Platonic influences as well as the mirrors for princes’ tradition.
Regardless of the advantageous social position of many philosophers, their writings betray a significant bifurcation in their views of society. Michael Kochin described a similar tension between two strands in Plato’s works: ‘Either the philosopher is to bring the political into rational order, or he is to bring his own life into rational order against the disorders and deliberate confusions of the political. Either the philosopher is to weed the fields of the city of disorderly weeds, or he himself is a weed or, more politely, a wildflower, pushing up towards the sun through the broken asphalt of politics’ (Kochin 1999, 400). In some cases we can align these dispositions with biographical circumstances.
Because happiness is seen as distinctly human fulfilment, concepts of happiness are rooted in concepts of human nature. The pursuit of happiness is a moral and noetic enterprise which requires uniquely human faculties, but it is also situated in the context of the unique relationship between God and His human creation. The idea of happiness as the ultimate aim is expanded to include another ultimate purpose, the worship of God, which traditionally should be conducted for His sake rather than for the sake of the worshipper. Understood in such a way, happiness becomes a duty.
1Following Marshall Hodgson, I use ‘Islamicate’ to refer to cultural features influenced by the Islamic religion, but not pertaining to the core of that religion in a strict sense.
2For an introduction see Adamson (2007, 144–59); translations of On the Means of Dispelling Sorrows can be found in al-Kindī (2007, quoted here), and Jayyusi-Lehn (2002); for the Arabic version see Ritter and Walzer (1938).
3Other writers in al-Fārābī’s milieu dealt with the subject, but their views have not been subject to the same degree of academic analysis. Al-ʿĀmirī’s (d. 992) concept of happiness still needs to be studied in more detail; happiness is also important for Miskawayh (d. 1030) whose work has been examined in some publications. Both authors were familiar with the Arabic translation of the Nicomachean Ethics. See Akasoy (2012).
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