Introduction: The Ontology of the Soul in Medieval Arabic Thought

The nine articles that comprise the present volume explore a range of theories of philosophical and theological anthropology in medieval Arabic sources, concentrating in particular on discussions surrounding the ontology of the human soul. They began as papers that were presented at a colloquium entitled “The Ontology of the Soul in Medieval Arabic Thought”, which was held at the School of Oriental and African Studies in September 2010. By investigating a broad and inclusive spectrum of views on this rather narrowly-defined, though hugely-important, topic, the colloquium aimed to provide a cross-section of philosophical and theological opinions from the classical and early post-classical periods of Arabic thought (4th/10th–7th/13th century). I am delighted, thanks only to the quality and coverage of the contributions that follow, that the intended objectives that drove this project have been far exceeded. The foremost problem encountered in discussions of the ontology of the human soul is the basic question, as the theologians often put it, “What is man?”, to which a broad range of answers were tabled. The philosophers generally advocated dualist theories, while the classical kalām tradition opted for strictly monist, physicalist models. The latter view is examined closely in my study of classical Ash‘ari anthropology, in which I show that the Ash‘aris conceived of man purely as a body composed of atoms with various accidents inhering in them. All the vital and cognitive functions of human beings, including those features that constitute the individual person’s identity, were explained in terms of “attributes” engendered by a special class of accidents that are specific to animate beings, chief among which is the attribute of life. Aside from these corporeal attributes, there was no theoretical need to postulate the existence of an additional component in man. The spirit was affirmed only as a concession to the explicit eschatological teachings of scripture, and even then it was viewed in different ways, each with its own theoretical difficulties, as a perfectly material thing located within the human body. The same physicalist anthropology is defended by Bas·ran Mu‘tazilism, the other major school of classical kalām. In his article on Rukn al-Din al-Malāh· imi (d. 536/1141), the early sixth/twelfth-century member of the school of Abū l-H· usayn al-Bas·ri, Wilferd bs_bs_banner