A Sufi-Jewish Dialogue

Philosophy and Mysticism in Bahya ibn Paquda's "Duties of the Heart"

Diana Lobel

• Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9780812202656
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Jewish Theology

Written in Judeo-Arabic in eleventh-century Muslim Spain but quickly translated into Hebrew, Bahya Ibn Paquda's Duties of the Heart is a profound guidebook of Jewish spirituality that has enjoyed tremendous popularity and influence to the present day. Readers who know the book primarily in its Hebrew version have likely lost sight of the work's original Arabic context and its immersion in Islamic mystical literature. In A Sufi-Jewish Dialogue, Diana Lobel explores the full extent to which Duties of the Heart marks the flowering of the "Jewish-Arab symbiosis, " the interpenetration of Islamic and Jewish civilizations.Lobel reveals Bahya as a maverick who integrates abstract negative theology, devotion to the inner life, and an intimate relationship with a personal God. Bahya emerges from her analysis as a figure so steeped in Islamic traditions that an Arabic reader could easily think he was a Muslim, yet the traditional Jewish seeker has always looked to him as a fountainhead of Jewish devotion. Indeed, Bahya represents a genuine bridge between religious cultures. He brings together, as well, a rationalist, philosophical approach and a strain of Sufi mysticism, paving the way for the integration of philosophy and spirituality in the thought of Moses Maimonides. A Sufi-Jewish Dialogue is the first scholarly book in English about a tremendously influential work of medieval Jewish thought and will be of interest to readers working in comparative literature, philosophy, and religious studies, particularly as reflected in the interplay of the civilizations of the Middle East. Readers will discover an extraordinary time when Jewish, Christian, and Islamic thinkers participated in a common spiritual quest, across traditions and cultural boundaries.

Chapter 1

Philosophical Mysticism in Eleventh-Century Spain

Baḥya and Ibn Gabirol

Philosophy and Mysticism

Baḥya and Ibn Gabirol represent two models of philosophical mysticism. Both thinkers lived in the city of Saragossa in eleventh-century Muslim Spain and were absorbing the same intellectual and spiritual currents, specifically Neoplatonic philosophy and Sufi spirituality. To compare and contrast their approaches will thus shed light on Baḥya’s distinctive spiritual contribution.

Before we undertake this phenomenological investigation, it will be useful to clarify our terms. The term “mysticism,” in particular, is multivalent and somewhat problematic. Should we use the term “mysticism” to describe the philosophical spirituality of thinkers such as Baḥya and Ibn Gabirol?

Israel Levin, in his work on the poetry of Ibn Gabirol, responds as follows. If mysticism is defined as ecstatic union in which subject and object are erased, Ibn Gabirol lacks mysticism, as we do not find evidence of unio mystica in his poetry. However, we can also define mysticism more broadly as the longing of the soul for direct communion with the divine. And we do find clear evidence of such longings in Ibn Gabirol’s poetry—indeed, his poetry offers some of the finest evidence of such intense longings.¹

The same argument applies to Baḥya, Ibn Gabirol’s younger contemporary, who also offers clear expression of yearning for intimate communion with the divine. Where, then, does Baḥya stand in the nexus between philosophy and mysticism? Let us begin by examining recent attempts to discuss thinkers on the cusp of these two disciplines.

David Blumenthal has adopted the terms “intellectualist mysticism” and “philosophic mysticism” to describe such thinkers; the terms trace back to Ibrahīm Madkour’s work on the ninth-century Arabic philosopher al-Fārābī and Louis Gardet’s work on Avicenna.² Blumenthal points out that while the concept is commonplace in scholarship on Islamic philosophy, it was ignored by several major historians of Jewish philosophy—Harry Wolfson, Julius Guttmann, and the early Shlomo Pines.³ However, the concept has been utilized by other prominent scholars of Jewish philosophy, including Georges Vajda, Alexander Altmann, Blumenthal, and the later Pines.⁴

The concept of intellectual mysticism is based on the notion that the divine is fundamentally intellect, and thus union with the divine can be described as connection, contact, or conjunction of human intellect with the divine intellect. Blumenthal describes this concept so as to make a sharp distinction between intellectualist mysticism and mysticism of the Sufi type. In what he terms intellectualist mysticism, experience of the divine is described as contact or conjunction with the divine mind (Arabic, ittiṣāl). This paradigm describes the path of learning as a process of illumination; the ultimate human telos is union with the divine mind and full understanding of the universe. Blumenthal describes Sufi experience of the divine, in contrast, as involving a nonintellectual praxis that results not in contact or conjunction (ittiṣāl) but in identification (ittiḥād) with God.⁵ The Sufi cultivates ethical or spiritual virtues such as patience, humility, trust, sincerity, devotion, and love, and aims not at philosophical illumination, but rather union with a being whom he or she loves and trusts.

Other scholars have objected to this classification on several grounds. The distinction between conjunction as philosophical and identification as Sufi has been rejected by several recent scholars of Sufism, who deny that Sufis use the term “identification” (ittiḥād). It is Sufi-influnced thinkers such as Ibn Sīnā and al-Ghazzālī who, in their observations about Sufis, claim that Sufis use the term.⁶

A second objection lies in Aristotle’s definition of knowledge as the union of subject with object of knowledge. According to this definition, all knowledge for Aristotelians would be defined as mystical, and the term “mysticism” ceases to have any meaning.

Neoplatonism presents a third objection to the distinction between intellectualist mysticism and mysticism of the Sufi type.⁷ Both conjunction and union are Neoplatonic concepts. Plotinus speaks of the conjoining of the intellect with its intelligible object by virtue of a similarity between the two, an Empedoclean “like knowing like.” In contrast, union (ittiḥād) is the ultimate stage of the mystical journey.⁸ The Neoplatonic thinkers Proclus and Isaac Israeli describe three stages on the spiritual journey: purification, illumination, and union. In the first stage, the soul purifies itself from impediments and prepares itself for illumination. In the second stage, the intellect illumines the soul. At the final stage, the soul reaches the level of intellect and becomes full of God, inspired or possessed; the soul achieves union with the divine.

The notion of intellectualist mysticism is grounded in the Neoplatonic model of the universe. The worldview of Plotinus begins with an undifferentiated One that transcends the level of intellect. In this One is contained the potential of the entire universe, but there is no subject or object, no thought, no differentiation. The One, however, stirs itself into creation by thinking. Differentiation arises with the One’s first thought; from this thought emanates Intellect and then Soul. From these divine emanations in turn, there gradually and progressively emanates a universe.

Human beings also consist of soul and intellect that long to return to the One. The philosophical and religious journey is one of purifying the mind so that it may be illumined and return in union to its divine source.

Plotinus described his own experience of union with the divine that is supra-intellectual in nature. However, we should note that although his experience becomes supra-intellectual in that his intellect plunges into the One, intellect itself is the tool of mystical union. The following is Plotinus’s well-known account of his experience:

Once I have woken up out of the body to my self and have entered into myself, going out from all other things; I have seen a beauty wonderfully great and felt assurance that then most of all I belonged to the better part; I have actually lived the best life and come to identify with the divine; and set firm in it I have come to that supreme actuality, setting myself above all else in the realm of Intellect. Then after that rest in the divine, when I have come down from Intellect to discursive reasoning, I am puzzled how I ever came down, and how my soul has come to be in the body when it is what it has shown itself to be by itself, even when it is in the body.⁹

Plotinus’s puzzle is experiential in nature. He is no longer talking about the One in theory; he has had a direct experience. The key point for us is that it is intellect that undertakes this journey, joins with Intellect, transcends Intellect, and then returns to discursive reasoning. Upon return, Plotinus finds it difficult to make sense of himself as a hylomorphic being, a union of body and soul.

Thus we cannot differentiate sharply between intellectualist mysticism and Sufi mysticism on the basis of their telos: both describe a union with God that transcends reason. What differentiates the two is the way they describe God and how this colors their understanding of the path to the divine. Although the Sufi, too, undertakes a journey of return to or union with the divine, God is depicted by the Sufi as a personal, loving being. Moreover, Sufi language is more classically “mystical”; it delights in paradox, describing reality as what is known and not known, what is and is not. Most Sufi thought does not describe philosophy as a prerequisite for union with God; Sufi masters sometimes scorn the intellect and view systematic, discursive learning as an impediment to or diversion from the spiritual path. There does exist much Sufi systematic thought; erudite Sufi learning is every bit as complex as philosophical knowledge. However, Sufi masters deny that such learning is valuable in itself. True learning is the fruit of experience, not a prerequisite or path to mystical union. Learning detached from experience is mere scholasticism.

Philosophical Mysticism and Mystical Devotion: A Proposal

To describe thinkers who embrace the worlds of both philosophy and mysticism, I would like to suggest the following terminological distinction.

1. Intellectualist mysticism is a term appropriate to the Aristotelian school of al-Fārābī, Ibn Bājja, and Maimonides, who hold that the essence of the human being is reason; it is intellect that lives beyond the grave and achieves ultimate fulfillment (sa‘āda). The goal of intellectualist mysticism is conjunction of the human intellect with the divine Active Intellect.

2. Philosophical mysticism is a broader term, appropriate to thinkers for whom intellect is a key component in connecting with the divine, but for whom other elements are also important: feeling, imagination, heart, and spirit.¹⁰ The term philosophical mysticism describes thinkers who bridge the paths of Sufi devotional mysticism and philosophy. Ibn Gabirol and Baḥya are thus philosophical, though not intellectualist mystics.

Another good example of a philosophical mystic is the Andalusian Islamic philosopher Ibn Ṭufayl (d. 1235). In the letter to his student at the beginning of Ḥayy Ibn Yaqẓān—the medieval prototype for the Robinson Crusoe story—Ibn Ṭufayl explains that he himself would not have attained the experience of union if he hadn’t first studied the arguments of various philosophers and then attained the ability to see the truth for himself, first by thought and theory, and then in a brief taste of the actual experience. He offers the parable of a child born blind who learns about the city in which he lives through verbal descriptions. He even learns about the qualities of various colors, which he has never seen. When God by miracle gives him sight, everything is just as he was told, except that he experiences it with greater clarity and tremendous joy.

Just so, says Ibn Ṭufayl, philosophers such as Ibn Bājja—what we are terming intellectualist mystics—are theoreticians who describe the divine world as it is. The Sufi experience depicted by Avicenna in his writing about the adept is like seeing the world in living color. Philosophy is not worthless; it gives us a map of the divine world and prepares us for experience of that world. Sufi experience is the verification of that map.

Baḥya may represent an example of the latter type of mystic described by Ibn Ṭufayl. He only briefly hints at or alludes to an experience of the divine, and it is not necessarily one of unio mystica. Nevertheless, Baḥya does clearly present the possibility of immediate, direct awareness of God—a divine infusion if not complete union. God is ever present in one’s inner being (ḍamīr); one sees God with the eye of the intellect (bi-‘ayn al-‘aql). The devotee comes to a stage where he or she sees with no eyes, hears with no ears, and senses things with no need for logic.¹¹ In a more theoretical vein, Baḥya writes that the soul yearns for union (ittiṣāl) with the divine light.¹²

If such is the highest stage of religious life, why does Baḥya speak of it so sparingly? Perhaps he feels that the most appropriate focus of his book is the middle stages of the path, which are available to everyone, rather than the ultimate telos of the journey, which is only experienced by the few. More importantly, this experience is merely the culmination of all the other virtues. Each of the qualities he describes in his gates puts the person in right relationship with God. The gates each describe inner states that make up the ideal religious personality. The experience of the divine in which these culminate is a realizable ideal, but it should not be the focus of religious life, as this cou...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction: Baḥya’s Work in Its Judeo-Arabic Context
• 1. Philosophical Mysticism in Eleventh-Century Spain: Bahya and Ibn Gabirol
• 2. On the Lookout: The Exegesis of a Sufi Tale
• 3. Creation
• 4. The One
• 5. Speaking about God: Divine Attributes, Biblical Language, and Biblical Exegesis
• 6. The Contemplation of Creation (I‘tibār)
• 7. Wholehearted Devotion (Ikhlāṣ): Purification of Unity (Ikhlāṣ al-Tawḥīd), Purification of Intention in Action (Ikhlāṣ al-‘Amal)
• 8. Reason, Law, and the Way of the Spirit
• 9. The Spirituality of the Law
• 10. Awareness, Love, and Reverence (Murāqaba, Maḥabba, Hayba/Yir’ah)
• List of Abbreviations
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• Acknowledgments