The Radical Nature of The Philosophical Discourse In the Harmony Of The Two Opinions Of The Two Sages, Plato The Divine and Aristotle

In two passages on creation and the conceptualisation of God presented in The Harmony of the Two Opinions of the Two Sages: Plato the Divine and Aristotle (Kitāb al-Jam‘ bayna ra’yay al-ḥakīmayn Aflāṭūn al-ilāhī wa-Arisṭūṭālīs), al-Fārābī asserts the primacy of philosophical discourse over pagan accounts of origins or prophetic revelation contained in the Qur’an and other Scriptures. According to al-Fārābī, only philosophy can formulate the notion of creation ex nihilo without mentioning any pre-existing matter, in contrast to all other traditions that only describe processes of change and qualitative alteration, and only philosophers – especially Plato and Aristotle – can conceive of God as a First Principle that is not a body, not in a space, timeless and immobile, and endowed with absolute ontological priority. Ibn Rushd himself, Averroes, will refer to both passages in his Decisive Treatise, Determining the Nature of the Connection between Religion and Philosophy (Faṣl al-Maqāl fī mā bayna al-ḥikma wa-l-sharī‘ a min al-ittiṣāl), to argue for the legitimacy of philosophy. Ibn Rushd claims that the philosophical discourse of creation out of nothing in a timeless instant is more rigorous than the literal dictates of the Qur’an and that the philosophical conception of God is the most subtle. However, as al-Fārābī has already stated, since images and symbols provide access to the most difficult truths, up to the First Principle, those who do not belong to the demonstrative class can only give their assent with the help of the imaginative faculty. This paper examines these two passages from The Harmony and how Ibn Rushd reinterprets them.