نادیا مفتونی

Maintaining strong flavor of Aristotelian theory of perception, Farabi as well as Avicenna have appended new phases to the theory. Depicting imaginary perception with its crucial jobs, Farabi explains these three activities: storing sensory forms, composing and decomposing sensory forms, as well as imagery. What Farabi names the imaginary faculties, is conceptualized as three inner perceptions, i.e., imagination, estimative and memory faculties in Avicenna’s works. Evolving existing theories of perception, Avicenna delivers an account of five inner perceptions. Beforehand Farabi did not consider any difference between imaginary perception and motekhayelah. However, he mentioned one faculty doing both activities and was usually calling it motekhayelah and sometimes imaginary perception. Conceptualizing imaginary perception with its functions, Farabi deals with three primary activities: storing sensory forms, composing and decomposing sensory forms, and imagery. In other words, Avicenna defines what Farabi calls the imaginary faculties as three inner perceptions, i.e., imagination, estimative and memory faculties.

Rationality or relativity? In which one does Farabi believe? How does it relate to imagination and the permanent, if at all? For Farabi, people come to grasp rational truths mostly through the use of their imagination. Furthermore, the arousal of people’s feelings and emotions often originates in their imagination via imagery forms. The ultimate utopian goal is to drive the public to achieve rational happiness. Since the public, based on their nature and general habits, in effect cannot perceive the rational truths, the path to rational happiness must be represented via their imagination. Moreover, their imaginary concepts and forms should be made the permanent. So bringing rational happiness to people's minds through their imagination, the media of each society should represent rational truths through the sensory and imagery forms familiar to that society. The Farabian theory of cognition shares aspects of relativity as well as rationality. To Farabi, rational truth and rational happiness is fixed and one, having only one denotation, while its connotations, say, images and imagery forms are various and sundry. That being the case, different communities can have different ways to perceive the same truth, working toward the same goal.

Ibn Ṭufayl and Kierkegaard share existentialist elements around nature. Ibn Ṭufayl believes in nature as the best teacher of philosophy and philosophical reasoning. For Kierkegaard, being human means being dependent on and embedded in nature. This makes Kierkegaard a highly relevant interlocutor for contemporary Eco philosophy and ecocriticism. Ibn Ṭufayl’s opinion on the subject is discernible in his novel called Ḥayy Ibn Yaqẓān. Pursuing the truth of life, Ḥayy, the main personage of Ibn Ṭufayl’s novel, finds his way through four travels of mind. Nature is the context of his travels, so determined to protect nature, Ḥayy takes considerable care of fauna and flora as he steps into the highest levels in his ascent. In the first travel, Ḥayy begins from nature from which is created and in which is raised by a roe mother. In the second travel, he figures out all of natural affairs insofar as becoming a leading scientist. In the third travel resulted in the former travel, Ḥayy becomes successful in philosophical analysis. In the fourth travel, Ḥayy goes forward with philosophical analysis and reaches mystical level. The mystical experiences go on so that through all natural beings and events Ḥayy conveys to God. In this last pace, Ḥayy returns to nature and becomes a nature protectionist. At the end of story, Ḥayy faces a religious stranger showed up from another island. Ḥayy finds his beliefs thoroughly in accordance with his own opinions.