Utopia’s Moorish Inspiration: Thomas More’s Reading of Ibn Ṭufayl

2018 ◽  
Vol 41 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Regnier
Keyword(s):  
Twelfth Century ◽  
The Self ◽  
Latin Translation ◽  
Thomas More ◽  
Philosophical Novel ◽  
Ibn Tufayl

A promising but neglected precedent for Thomas More’s Utopia is to be found in Ibn Ṭufayl’s Ibn Ḥayy Yaqẓān. This twelfth-century Andalusian philosophical novel describing the self-education and enlightenment of a feral child on an island, while certainly a precedent for the European Bildungsroman, also arguably qualifies as a utopian text. It is possible that More had access to Pico de la Mirandola’s Latin translation of Ibn Ḥayy Yaqẓān. This study consists of a review of historical and philological evidence that More may have read Ibn Ḥayy Yaqẓān and a comparative reading of More’s and Ṭufayl’s two famous works. I argue that there are good reasons to see in Ibn Ḥayy Yaqẓān a source for More’s Utopia and that in certain respects we can read More’s Utopia as a response to Ṭufayl’s novel. L’Ibn Ḥayy Yaqẓān d’Ibn Ṭufayl consiste en un précédent incontournable mais négligé à l’Utopie de More. Ce récit philosophique andalou du douzième siècle décrivant l’auto-formation et l’éveil d’un enfant sauvage sur une île peut être considéré comme un texte utopique, bien qu’il soit certainement un précédent pour le Bildungsroman européen. Thomas More pourrait avoir lu l’Ibn Ḥayy Yaqẓān, puisqu’il a pu avoir accès à la traduction latine qu’en a fait Pic de la Miradolle. Cette étude examine les données historiques et philologiques permettant de poser que More a probablement lu cet ouvrage, et propose une lecture comparée de l’Ibn Ḥayy Yaqẓān et de l’Utopie de More. On y avance qu’il y a non seulement de bonnes raisons de considérer l’Ibn Ḥayy Yaqẓān d’Ibn Ṭufayl comme une source de l’Utopie de More, mais qu’il est aussi possible à certains égards de lire l’Utopie comme une réponse à l’Ibn Ḥayy Yaqẓān.

Ibn Ṭufayl’s (d. 1185)

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Taneli Kukkonen
Keyword(s):  
Twelfth Century ◽  
The Self ◽  
Arabic Literature ◽  
Arabic Philosophy ◽  
Great Chain Of Being ◽  
Ibn Tufayl ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Classical Arabic ◽  
The Brain

Ḥayy Ibn Yaqẓān is one of the most abidingly popular works in all of Arabic literature. At once inviting and expansive, accessible and surprisingly deep, the book offers an excellent introduction to the themes of classical Arabic philosophy. What often goes unnoticed is how deliberately Ibn Ṭufayl spins his story of Ḥayy, the self-taught philosopher who grows up alone on an equatorial island. Ḥayy in fact takes the reader on a tour of the Arabic Aristotelian curriculum, with ethical and political themes following upon a comprehensive exploration of the great chain of being. Ḥayy furthermore contributes to numerous sixth-/twelfth-century debates, ranging from the role that the heart and the brain play in the organism’s life, through the weighting of immanent and transcendent factors in the process of coming-to-be, to the relationship of philosophy to revealed religion.

The Art itself is Nature

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Morton
Keyword(s):  
Human Activity ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
The Self ◽  
Complex Relationship ◽  
Literary Production ◽  
Broad Category

The chapter outlines different models of nature in medieval Aristotelian and Platonic philosophy in order to show how the Rose plays them against each other to articulate its own model of the complex relationship between art and nature. For the Rose there is no getting at nature except by means of art, as suggested by the self-conscious artificiality of the figure of Nature, taken from the allegories of twelfth-century Neoplatonism. Art, a broad category that encompasses all human activity, is insufficient in describing nature’s truths and is potentially sophistic in its lies. However, questions of nature are always questions of art on whose help humans depend to understand and to represent to themselves a nature that can never be fully known. Finally, the model of reproductive nature is used to legitimate the reproduction of texts and the continuation of arts that is literary production.

Ibn Gabirol, Solomon (1021/2–57/8)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel H. Frank
Keyword(s):  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Thomas Aquinas ◽  
Latin Translation ◽  
Divine Will ◽  
Duns Scotus ◽  
Muslim Spain ◽  
Critical Reflections

Ibn Gabirol was an outstanding exemplar of the Judaeo–Arabic symbiosis of medieval Muslim Spain, a poet as well as the author of prose works in both Hebrew and Arabic. His philosophical masterwork, the Mekor Hayyim (Fountain of Life), was well known to the Latin scholastics in its twelfth century Latin translation, the Fons Vitae. The work presents a Neoplatonic conception of reality, with a creator God at the apex. The universal hylomorphism that pervades the created order, both spiritual and corporeal, has divine will as the intermediary between God and creation, allowing Ibn Gabirol to avoid the rigidly determinist emanationism of his Greek predecessors. The Fons Vitae challenged such philosophers as Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus to critical reflections regarding individuation and personal immortality.

Texts and the Self in the Twelfth Century (review)

Tenso ◽  
1998 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 72-75
Author(s):  
Peter T. Ricketts
Keyword(s):  
Twelfth Century ◽  
The Self

Honoring the Form: Zen Moves in Charles Johnson’s Oxherding Tale

2010 ◽  
Vol 14 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 59-76 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Collins
Keyword(s):  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Racial Politics ◽  
The Self ◽  
Slave Narrative ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Eastern Philosophy ◽  
Charles Johnson ◽  
Graphic Narrative ◽  
Picaresque Novel ◽  
The World

AbstractIn Being and Race Charles Johnson compares a writer working with traditional forms to a martial artist who “honors the form” of his predecessors. In his 1982 novel Oxherding Tale Johnson honors the form of a number of traditional fictional genres, including the slave narrative, the picaresque novel, the philosophical novel of ideas, and Zen texts such as koans, sutras, and the twelfth-century graphic narrative, the “Oxherding Pictures.” Calling his novel a “slave narrative that serves as the vehicle for exploring Eastern philosophy,” Johnson alludes to Hindu, Taoist and Buddhist texts, as well as to Western literary and philosophical works, to dissolve the dualistic thinking at the heart of what he calls “the samsara of racial politics.” To be free of the illusory nature of “ontological dualism,” however, one must journey through stages of increasing awareness, admirably depicted in the ten illustrations of the “Oxherding Pictures.” From seeking a self (ox) that one thinks one has lost, to glimpsing the self that is first elusive and finally illusory, the seeker comes to realize that all identities are constructed and therefore temporary, including such notions as “race” and “self.” Like some biracial Everyman, Johnson’s narrator may not complete the journey by the end of the novel but he discovers much about the insubstantiality and inter-connectedness of himself in the world along the way.

William of Auvergne (c.1180–1249)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven P. Marrone
Keyword(s):  
Early Development ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Decisive Role ◽  
Latin Translation ◽  
Intellectual Life ◽  
Medieval Philosophy ◽  
The Third ◽  
Western European

Active in Paris during the third and fourth decades of the thirteenth century, when universities were emerging as centres of Western European intellectual life, William played a decisive role in the early development of high medieval philosophy. His writing reveals a familiarity with Aristotle, all of whose major works except the Metaphysics were readily available in Latin translation, and with the Islamic philosophers, most especially Avicenna but also Averroes, whose commentaries on Aristotle were just beginning to circulate. William looked back to the Neoplatonic traditions of the twelfth century, but he also looked ahead to the late-thirteenth-century Aristotelianizing that he and his contemporary, Robert Grosseteste, did so much to promote.

‘Ηννσται καί τετέλεσται: An Echo from Traditio I

Traditio ◽  
1955 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
pp. 395-400
Author(s):  
Anselm Strittmatter
Keyword(s):  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Latin Translation ◽  
Text Line ◽  
Medieval Latin ◽  
John Chrysostom ◽  
Latin Version

In the medieval Latin translation of the two Liturgies of Constantinople — ‘St. Basil’ and ‘St. John Chrysostom’ —published from the twelfth-century Paris MS, Nouv. acq. lat. 1791, in 1943, the concluding prayer of the first of these two formularies, “‘Ηννσται καί τετέλεσται, contains a clause which, as was noted at the time, had not been found in any Greek MS. Now, after more than twelve years, two Greek MSS have been discovered — Sinait. 961, of the late eleventh or early twelfth century, and the liturgical roll No. 2 of the Laura, of the early years of the fourteenth century — neither of which indeed contains the interpolation of the Latin version in its entirety, but sufficient to warrant publication and study, for we have here the first trace — and more than a mere trace — of the clause, Si quid dimisimus, which has for so long been a baffling problem. Not unnaturally, this discovery has been the occasion of a re-examination of both the Latin version and the attempted reconstruction of the Greek original, with the result that more than one textual problem overlooked in the preparation of the first edition now stands out more clearly defined. This is especially true of the interesting rendering, ‘nutrimentum’ concerning which more is said below (Text, line 11 and Note 5).

An excavation below Bishop Tunstal's Chapel, Durham Castle

1953 ◽  
Vol 33 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 56-64
Author(s):  
Grace Simpson ◽  
Victor Hatley
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Civil Servant ◽  
Thomas More ◽  
The West ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Building Activity ◽  
Sir Thomas More ◽  
South Wall ◽  
The University

Bishop Cuthbert Tunstal of Durham (1530-59), civil servant, scholar, and friend of Erasmus and Sir Thomas More, may also claim distinction for his building activity at Durham Castle. During his episcopacy he constructed the gallery fronting the twelfth-century work of Bishop Puiset, the lower stages of the clock-tower, and the chapel since generally known by his name. This last work superseded the original Norman chapel which must, by the second quarter of the sixteenth century, have become increasingly unsuitable for the everyday use of the bishop's household. The Tunstal chapel (plan, fig. 1) was enlarged by Bishop Lord Crewe (1674–1721), who added two more bays to the east, the termination of Bishop Tunstal's work being at a point corresponding to the west jamb of the second window from the east. The chapel is situated on an upper story, the room below now being the University College Junior Common Room. The builders made use of the foundations of a shorter earlier building, the east wall of which (plan, fig. 1, section BB) was retained as a limit to the lower room and as a support for the chapel floor. Nevertheless, beyond this wall the east bay of the chapel overhung the sloping side of the motte, leaving a triangular space beneath the floor (section AA, fig. 2). They therefore packed this space with large stones and rubbish, which included broken pottery, the whole being sealed by a layer of rubble and mortar on which the chapel floor could be laid. Just below the rubble a drain formed by a U-shaped piece of lead with a stone cover ran to a weep-hole in the south wall.

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