The Princeton Encyclopedia of Islamic Political Thought

human nature

In the history of Islamic thought, there are two main approaches to the question of human nature and the self: moralistic and ontological. The moralistic approach was based on the ethical discourse of the Qur’an, especially in connection with the problems of defining evil, self-purification, and the true experience of monotheism. The framework for the ontological approach was furnished by Aristotelian, Neoplatonic, and Hermetic psychology, but Muslim thinkers used it to address key questions evident in the Qur’an and the tradition of Prophet Muhammad, in discussions that parallel those of St. Augustine and other Christian theologians. The two approaches were often combined, especially in the works of mystics and philosophers, a development that arguably reaches its apex in the existential concept of “the perfect human” (al-insān al-kāmil) proposed by the Andalusian mystic and philosopher Ibn al-‘Arabi (d. 1240).

The Qur’an argues that the human being has a natural inclination toward good; however, while the notion of original sin does not exist in Islam, it asserts that the human self or psyche tempts a person to do evil. In this respect, the Qur’an defines three levels of the human self or three existential modes. The lowest of these levels or modes is al-nafs al-ammāra bi-l-sū’, or “the self that tempts to evil.” This self, as the famous theologian Ghazali (d. 1111) argues in Ma‘arij al-Quds fi Madarij Ma‘rifat al-Nafs (The ladder to God in the plains of knowing one’s soul), describes the state in which a person completely gives in to animalistic, sensual drives. The second level or existential mode is al-nafs al-lawwāma, or the “blaming self.” This mode describes the state of the person who is torn between sensual lusts and attaining peace through mental and spiritual education. The third and highest level or existential mode is al-nafs al-muṭma’inna, or the “tranquil or peaceful self.” According to Ghazali, this self describes the state when a person reaches tranquility and peace by aligning with reason and rejecting the turbulence caused by sensual drives. Ghazali’s interpretation of the three levels of the self in the Qur’an resembles Plato’s tripartite division of the soul in the Republic into appetitive, desiring, and rational parts. Like Plato, Ghazali argues that desires must be aligned with reason in order to reach the level of tranquility and peace; otherwise, if sensual appetites and drives dominate desires, the human being could descend to an animal level.

This struggle to achieve tranquility was addressed differently in Sufism, Islam’s mystical tradition. Many Sufi treatises, like those of Junayd (d. 910), hold that the primordial covenant (mīthāq) between humankind and God mentioned in Qur’an 7:172 represents the essence of human existence: according to this covenant, all humans attested to the unity of God before being created. However, through societal associations and distractions with the material world, humans become oblivious to this perennial truth. The retrieval of this essence and thus the achievement of the ultimate form of monotheistic experience is the telos or purpose of human life. Such retrieval is possible through a process of intellectual abstraction (tajrīd), as Junayd and his teacher Muhasibi (d. 857) argued, guided by existential and spiritual exercises. This process aims at achieving the annihilation (fanā’) of the false ego that is constructed through societal influence, false reasoning, and the blind pursuit of sensual desires.

The physical and metaphysical framework of the classical Islamic view of human nature was inspired by Platonic, Aristotelian, and Neoplatonic philosophy, along with the Hermetic tradition. This is easily discernible in the work of the philosophers Farabi (d. 950), Ibn Sina (d. 1037), Ibn Rushd (d. 1198), and the Brethren of Purity (fl. tenth century). It is also evident in the work of theologians like Ghazali, mystical philosophers like Ibn al-‘Arabi, and Hermetic mystics like Ibn Sab‘in (d. 1269). Following the Aristotelian line of argument in the De Anima, Ibn Sina argues in his psychological work Compendium on the Faculties of the Soul (Mabhath ‘an al-Quwwa al-Nafsaniyya) that the soul is the essence or form of living substances or beings that are capable of moving themselves, including plants, animals, and humans. The powers of the soul are accordingly divided into the vegetative, sensitive or animal, and rational powers. Following books II and III of the De Anima, Ibn Sina argues that the rational soul (al-nafs al-nāṭiqa), which is the highest power of the soul humans possess and therefore defines the human species, is separate from the body. Thinking, or the life of contemplation, is what allows humans to become Godlike and thus realize Him as the essence of everything. This view is Neoplatonic as much as it is Aristotelian. Since everything proceeds from God, the soul can return to Him through the life of contemplation. Because they adopted this Greek model, most Muslim philosophers faced the same challenges that Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, and the long tradition of their commentators did, including the relation between the potential and active intellects and the eternity of the soul. However, Muslim philosophers, particularly Ibn Sina and Ibn Rushd, in contrast with the Greeks, placed more emphasis on the inner senses, especially imagination, and their role in mediating between rational, universal ideas and sense-perceived, substantial forms. This is particularly evident in the later works of Ibn Sina where he criticized Aristotle’s theories and embraced a more mystical and Gnostic view, gravitating toward Platonism and Neoplatonism.

Despite his criticism of Ibn Sina’s metaphysics in general, Ghazali presents an almost identical theory of the self in Ma‘arij al-Quds fi Madarij Ma‘rifat al-Nafs. He continues to analyze the self from an essentialist perspective as a substance that is fully actualized through thinking. However, he maps his analysis against the Qur’an. For instance, Ghazali argues that since several discourses in the Qur’an address the self directly, the self must be a substance that exists. He also adduces a number of traditions attributed to Muhammad to demonstrate that the intellect or the rational soul is the highest and most Godlike power of the soul. In other words, as a theologian, Ghazali uses dialectical arguments based on the Qur’an and the tradition of the Prophet alongside the demonstrative rational proofs Ibn Sina and other philosophers deployed. These proofs were ultimately intended to reconcile the psychological system of the Greeks with the main statements about the self and human nature in Islam’s scriptural sources: the Qur’an and the tradition of Muhammad.

Ibn al-‘Arabi is arguably the first thinker who combined the moralistic approach to human nature and Ibn Sina’s Aristotelian psychology and metaphysics to form a creative vision of human nature focused on the human-divine relationship. In The Bezels of Wisdom (Fusus al-Hikam), Ibn al-‘Arabi argued that the human and the divine are essentially connected because the divinity of God cannot be recognized without a being who willfully recognizes it, and this is the human being. The human being has two epistemological and ontological dimensions. The first is a rational, transcendent dimension that allows it to recognize the fixed essences (al-a‘yān al-thābita), Platonic forms, or the realm of universal ideas. These ideas are the rational manifestation of the divine names that underlie and characterize the essences of all beings and the entire range of possible relations among them. The human being is also embedded in the physical world of spatial–temporal experience (‘ālam al-shahāda), to which he or she has access through sense perception. Between these two dimensions exists the imaginal world (‘ālam al-mithāl). Imagination functions to interpret the world of sense perception teleologically in terms of the forms or names of God. The more a human being is capable of interpreting worldly phenomena in terms of the universal ideas representing the divine names, the more perfectly he or she actualizes his or her humanity. Ibn al-‘Arabi thus calls the perfect human (al-insān al-kāmil) the all-embracing cosmos (al-kawn al-jāmi‘), because only through the capacity of his imagination to recognize the manifestation (tajallī) of God in every worldly phenomenon does God see a mirror image of Himself. The full actualization of the human being is thus achieved through the faculty of imagination and not reason, in contrast with the view found in Aristotelian philosophy. Moreover, the hermeneutical aspect of imagination allows for a more existentially fluid view of human nature than the essentialist perspective underlying Aristotle’s theory in the De Anima.