The Relevance of the Imaginative Faculty

According to al-Fārābī the imaginative faculty is very active in human cognitive acts. As outlined above, its function is to retain sense impressions when they are no longer perceived as external stimuli, and also to combine, compose, and even reproduce, those impressions. Following the Aristotelian account, al-Fārābī thinks that the imaginative faculty is intermediate between the sensitive and rational faculties. In fact, in the case of human beings, its function is to provide reason with the impressions attained through the senses, but it also serves the rational faculty in other ways, as will be shown.
In the waking state the imaginative faculty is permanently engaged with the rational, appetitive, and sensible faculties. In such a state the sensible faculty is actively working in interaction with sensibles and sense impressions. Likewise, as mentioned, the imaginative faculty provides both the rational and appetitive faculties with these sense impressions. Nevertheless, when in the sleeping state, the sensitive, appetitive, and rational faculties cease their activities, and this is when the imaginative faculty performs a distinctive action of its own. Given that the sensitive faculty is at ease and no longer receiving fresh sense impressions, the imaginative faculty turns now to the impressions preserved in itself, and acts upon them by means of composition and division. Hence, the imaginative faculty has the power to preserve and manipulate sense impressions through composition or division, both in the case of those freshly offered by the senses while in the waking state and those that have been stored in it (al-Fārābī VC: 210–227).
In addition to the powers described above, the imaginative faculty has a distinctive capacity, that is, “reproductive imitation” or mimesis (muhākāt). Reproductive imitation refers to the capacity displayed by the imaginative faculty to imitate a series of elements by means of the sensibles stored in it. Through these sensibles, the imaginative faculty can imitate impressions that pertain to the sensitive faculty, intelligibles that pertain to the rational faculty, desires that pertain to the appetitive faculty, and also aspects proper to the nutritive faculty and even the temperament of the body (al-Fārābī VC: 210–213). This is why the imagination has the capacity to stimulate particular emotions, humors, desires, and temperaments that move the body and put it into action (al-Fārābī VC: 216–219).
Regarding the relation between the imaginative and rational faculties, since the imaginative faculty only deals with sensibles, in order to relate to the intelligibles it must imitate them by means of sensibles. For this reason, when providing his theory of prophecy and divination, al-Fārābī argues that while the active intellect usually enables the actualization of the potential intelligibles in the material intellect, in some special cases the active intellect directly provides intelligibles that are accessible to the imaginative faculty in the form of particular sensibles. These events can take place both in the waking and sleeping states, but are rather rare while waking and restricted to a few people (al-Fārābī VC: 220–223).
When an individual has a very powerful imaginative faculty, to such a degree that it is no longer restricted to the supply of images to the other faculties, it is thus free to experience sensibles of extreme beauty and perfection by means of imitation. The highest rank of perfection that the imaginative faculty can achieve is precisely when an individual attains prophecy or awareness of present or future events, as well as the capacity to see glorious or divine beings. This can be achieved by means of present and future particulars and the transcendent intelligibles of divine beings, both granted by the active intellect. However, al-Fārābī also expounds a series of inferior ranks below this most perfect attainment of vision, each progressively more imperfect than the precedent in terms of whether the vision takes place during waking or sleeping states, and whether the individual has access to particulars or intelligibles. According to al-Fārābī, the most common kind of vision is that of individuals who receive particulars while in the sleeping state.
Although al-Fārābī’s conception of the imaginative faculty departs from Aristotle’s view, it combines some elements coming from the Hellenistic and the Middle Platonist traditions that, as Walzer (1957: 142–148) points out, may have been taken from Porphyry and Proclus. The result is a psychological explanation of prophecy and divination. In recent years, scholars working on the Arabic version of Aristotle’s treatise On Divination in Sleep (Hansberger 2008: 73–74; 2010: 158) have suggested that this work is a relevant source for the understanding of the Islamic philosophical conception of prophecy, including that of al-Fārābī. The Arabic On Divination in Sleep is an adulterated version of Aristotle’s text and provides a different explanation of veridical dreams within a Neoplatonic metaphysical framework, where a universal intellect distributes veridical dreams and some people with outstanding psychological capacities are able to receive them and interpret them.[4] Even though no explicit references are made to On Divination in Sleep in al-Fārābī’s The Virtuous City, there are noticeable similarities between the two treatises.

4. Doctrine on the Intellect

It has been mentioned that it is through the intellect that human beings know intelligibles, attain the sciences and the arts, and discern and reflect on practical matters. In The Treatise on the Intellect, known in Latin as De intellectu, al-Fārābī provides a complete account of the different senses of the term ‘aql (νοῦς, intellect or reason) starting with (1) the use that most people have given to the term, then (2) the way in which Islamic theologians have used it and, (3) finally, the different senses it has in Aristotle’s works, concretely, in Posterior Analytics, Nicomachean Ethics, On the Soul, and Metaphysics (al-Fārābī LI: 3–4; OI: 68).
Most people use the term ‘aql to describe the capacity that enables a person to discern which deeds are virtuous and which are not by means of deliberation. This first sense is very close to Aristotle’s conception of prudence. Similarly, Islamic theologians use this term to refer to those actions that are accepted or repudiated in general or by the majority. More important for our purposes in this article are the different senses of the term in the Aristotelian corpus. According to al-Fārābī, in Posterior Analytics 2.19, ‘aql is understood as a faculty of the soul by means of which certainty about necessary, true, and universal premises is attained. Premises of this kind are not arrived at by means of syllogisms, but are present in the subject in a prior way, either by nature or without one being aware of how these premises were acquired. Hence, this faculty is some part of the soul by which humans have access to the first principles of the theoretical sciences. I shall refer to this use of the term in detail in the final section of this article (al-Fārābī LI: 5–9; OI: 69–70).
In Nicomachean Ethics 6.6, Aristotle uses the term νοῦς to refer to a part of the soul, namely prudence (φρονησις / ta‘aqqul), the ability to apprehend through experience the principles of practical matters. Certainly, just as Aristotle refers to the first principles of the theoretical sciences, he holds—and al-Fārābī after him—that there are also first principles of the practical sciences.[5] Another sense is found in On the Soul 3.4 where, according to al-Fārābī, Aristotle divides the intellect into (1) potential (also known as material or passive) (‘aql bi-l-quwah), (2) actual or intellect in actuality (‘aql bi’l-fi‘l), (3) acquired intellect (‘aql al-mustafāḍ), and (4) active or agent intellect (‘aql al-fa ‘‘āl) (al-Fārābī LI: 9–11; LC: 215; OI: 70–71). Notice that these stages are not present in Aristotle’s On the Soul, but in Alexander’s On the Intellect. This is one of the aspects that show evidence that al-Fārābī draws extensively upon Alexander, as several scholars have noticed (Davidson 1992: 48–63 & 65–70; Geoffroy 2002: 191–231; Vallat 2004: 33–42). Finally, in Metaphysics Lambda, according to al-Fārābī’s account, Aristotle refers to the First Principle of existing things as the First Intellect (al-Fārābī LI: 35–36; OI: 78).
Given the purpose of this article, the account of the intellect as used in the psychological context of the On the Soul deserves deeper consideration (al-Fārābī LI: 12–35; LC: 215–221; OI: 71–78). This approach is exhaustively examined both in The Treatise on the Intellect and in The Virtuous City. In the latter there is a complete account of the way in which the rational or intellectual faculty acts (al-Fārābī VC: 196–211). Once al-Fārābī has explained the role of the imaginative faculty as that which provides the intellect with impressions attained through the senses, he next explains the process whereby they become intelligibles in act. Following Aristotle and the Aristotelian tradition, al-Fārābī describes the intellect as being itself potential or, using Alexander’s terminology, an innate “natural disposition” (ἐπιτηδειότης / isti‘dād) (al-Fārābī VC: 198–199; Geoffroy 2002: 204). This kind of intellect is frequently called “potential”, “material”, or “passive”, and is simply the rational faculty with which all human beings are endowed.
In The Treatise on the Intellect al-Fārābī refers to the material intellect (νοῦς ὑλικὸς, a Greek term coined by Alexander) as a soul or part of the soul, or one of the faculties of the soul, or something that is in potency to abstract the forms from their matter and turning these into forms for itself (al-Fārābī LI: 12–16; LC: 215; OI: 71–72).[6] When these forms are abstracted, they become intelligibles or forms for the material intellect. It can be rightly said that for al-Fārābī the material intellect is like the matter where the abstracted forms come to be, where the material intellect itself becomes the abstracted forms, just as the imprinted object leaves its mark on a piece of wax.
Before a form of the objects outside the soul has been abstracted, the material intellect is just in potency to receive those forms or potential intelligibles; but when these latter come to be in the material intellect, the material intellect becomes an actual intellect, and the potential intelligibles are actualized. Now, the existence of actual intelligibles is different from their existence as potential intelligibles or forms in matter. When external to the soul and linked to matter, forms are affected by place, time, position, quantity, and the like. But when forms are actualized in the soul, many of these qualities are removed and their existence thus becomes different from their former existence as forms of bodies outside the soul (al-Fārābī LI: 16–17; LC: 216; OI: 72).
Since the actual intellect becomes itself the actual intelligibles, then they are one and the same thing: what is understood is not different from the intellect itself, since the actual intelligible has become the form of the actual intellect. If other intelligibles come to be in the actual intellect, they will also be actualized. As a consequence, the actual intellect will be able to understand on its own and not by means of forms in matter outside from itself. When this stage of intellection is attained, the actual intellect becomes the so-called “acquired” intellect (al-Fārābī LI: 19–21; LC: 216–217; OI: 72–73).
Whereas forms linked to matter have to be abstracted in order to become actual intelligibles in the actual intellect, the process of abstraction is not required in the case of forms separate from matter, that is, the separate entities that belong to the supralunar realm. These separate forms are grasped by the intellect not as actual intellect but as the acquired intellect, and thus become forms for it. Moreover, the acquired intellect is a perfection of the human intellect because it has no need to perform the activity of abstraction in order to grasp forms existing separately from matter. In other words, it is the acquired intellect that enables the grasping of separate forms through the assistance of the active intellect. Evidently, this view differs from Aristotle’s original stance, since al-Fārābī, once again following Alexander, links psychology and cosmology, that is, the acquired intellect and the active intellect.
Regarding the active intellect, as mentioned in the first section, this intellect is a separate form, which is not linked to matter, and has never been and never will be. According to al-Fārābī, in its species the active intellect is an actual intellect quite similar to the acquired intellect. The active intellect is what turns the material intellect into an actual intellect and what turns the potential intelligibles into actual intelligibles. To describe the assistance of the active intellect in this process, al-Fārābī resorts to the well-known analogy of light, used by Aristotle in On the Soul 3, which raised a great deal of discussion among late ancient and medieval commentators of Aristotle.
The way al-Fārābī builds the referred analogy echoes Alexander and Themistius (Davidson 1992: 50). Al-Fārābī describes the relationship of the active intellect and the material intellect as that held between the sun and sight (al-Fārābī LI: 24–27; LC: 218–219; OI: 74–75). As H. A. Davidson (1992: 50–51) states, the analogy is built upon Aristotle’s theory of vision, but al-Fārābī stresses the sun as the source of the light.[7] Therefore, al-Fārābī equates the sun as the source of light with the active intellect, and not with the light itself. In this sense, following Davidson’s description, the light from the sun does four things: (1) it enters the eye and turns its potential vision into actual vision; (2) it enables potentially visible colors to become visible in actuality; (3) it itself becomes visible to the eye; and (4) it renders the sun, its source, visible to the eye. The analogy works as follows: (1) the active intellect turns the material or passive intellect into intellect in actuality; (2) it transforms potential intelligibles (sense impressions stored in the imaginative faculty) into actual intelligibles; (3) it itself becomes an intelligible object for the human intellect; and (4) it renders the active intellect as an intelligible object for the human intellect. With this analogy al-Fārābī suggests that the active intellect provides some sort of illumination or flow of light by which the human intellect is actualized enabling it to grasp the forms by abstraction.
Through the intellective process described, the active intellect makes the forms that are in matter progressively more immaterial and brings about the acquired intellect. Since the acquired intellect is of the same sort as the active intellect, the human intellect thus becomes progressively closer to the active intellect. In the view of al-Fārābī, this is precisely the ultimate goal and happiness (sa‘ādah) of human beings, and constitutes the way in which they attain definitive perfection: through the intellectual process the acquired intellect gradually becomes a substance that performs the action by virtue of which it realizes itself fully as substance and, in this way, remains in existence in the afterlife (hayāh al-ākhīrah) (al-Fārābī LI: 27; 31–32; LC: 219–220; OI: 75–76). Through this gradual process of perfection, the acquired intellect ends up acting only within itself, equating its own action with its own existence. When this stage is reached, the body is no longer needed as its matter in order to subsist, whereas it was initially needed for actions such as sensation and imagination to take place. Hence, the most perfect state the intellect can achieve is when it can subsist independently from the body. Nevertheless, the way in which al-Fārābī understood the relation between the acquired and agent intellects, was harshly criticized by Averroes who judged it impossible to conceive the transformation of the material intellect within the perishable human being into an immaterial and eternal substance at the level of the agent intellect (Averroes LCD: 387–388).

5. Theory of Scientific Knowledge

As mentioned in the previous section, the term ‘aql (intellect) is used in different ways. We have dealt with the way in which al-Fārābī uses it in the psychological context of Aristotle’s treatiseOn the Soul. However, in his account of the different senses of the term, al-Fārābī also refers to its use in Posterior Analytics 2.19, where Aristotle uses the term νοῦς in an epistemological context when he talks about a faculty of the soul by means of which certainty about necessary, true, and universal premises is attained. In his Aphorisms al-Fārābī describes the theoretical intellect in the same terms when he says that this intellect

اقتباس :: is the faculty by which we attain by nature, and not by examination or syllogistic reasoning, certain knowledge concerning the necessary, universal premises that are principles of the sciences. (al-Fārābī SA: §34, 28–29)

By “principles of the sciences”, al-Fārābī refers to principles such as ‘the whole is greater than the part,’ ‘amounts equal to a single amount are mutually equal,’ and premises of this kind, following Aristotle explicitly once again. These premises are the first point from which a thing is known or comes to be known (Aristotle Metaphysics 5, 1013a18). As explained earlier, the human intellect passes from potency to act through the assistance of the active intellect, and when the intellect in act becomes acquired intellect and reaches the capacity to understand on its own, this means that it already has the actual disposition to infer and reason by itself. In other words, the intellect has attained the habit of knowledge, and therefore is able to attain scientific knowledge (‘ilm). Al-Fārābī’s understanding of “scientific knowledge”, has nothing to do with the modern notion of “science”; rather he is using Aristotle’s notion of apodeixis, that is, a type of knowledge that guarantees certainty, and is confined to mathematics and metaphysics. In this respect, Aristotle and the Aristotelian tradition after him are far from modern experimental science, since the main concern of the former is the attainment of absolute certainty. According to al-Fārābī, scientific knowledge is a virtue of the theoretical intellect that enables the rational soul to attain certainty about those beings whose existence and constitution do not depend on human artifice, as well as what those beings are and how they are,

اقتباس :: from demonstrations composed of accurate, necessary, and primary premises of which the intellect becomes certain and attains knowledge by nature. (al-Fārābī SA: §35, 29)

This language resembles that found in Posterior Analytics 2.19, and also in Nicomachean Ethics6.3.
Following al-Fārābī’s explanation of ‘ilm in his Aphorisms, there are two types of scientific knowledge: (1) becoming certain of the existence and the reason of the existence of a thing, and why it cannot possibly be otherwise; and (2) becoming certain of the existence of a thing and why it cannot be something else, but without considering the reason for its existence.
Al-Fārābī goes on to define scientific knowledge as being accurate, certain, and steadfast in any given moment, which means it does not change through time and does not go in and out of existence. Certainty cannot contain doubt and falsehood, since what can in any way be false cannot be considered certain or be said to be knowledge. For this very reason, al-Fārābī points out that the ancients did not consider sensation of what can change as knowledge; rather, scientific knowledge is confined to the “certainty” about the existence of things that cannot possibly change. In order to explain this al-Fārābī offers the example of the number three being always an odd number, and how it cannot be otherwise.
The notion of “certainty” (yaqīn) has a relevant place in al-Fārābī’s epistemology and is linked also to his conception of the logical arts. In fact, he understands logic (manṭiq) as a tool (ālah) that leads to certainty when used correctly. He conceives five logical arts: demonstration, dialectic, sophistry, rhetoric, and poetics (al-Fārābī ES: 37–45). Dialectic engenders belief (ẓann) through arguments built upon generally-accepted opinions; sophistry is a logical art that makes general opinions appear true; rhetoric persuades by means of appealing elocutions; poetics persuades by means of alluring or repulsive images; finally, demonstration, the highest of the logical arts, leads to certainty by means of universal and necessary premises.[8] The non-demonstrative logical arts—dialectic, sophistry, rhetoric, and poetics—engender opinion in different degrees whereas, in contrast, demonstration engenders certainty. However, in some places al-Fārābī admits that it could be the case that these non-demonstrative arts would lead to assent to beliefs in a way very close to certainty (al-Fārābī KB: 20–21; BD: 64–65). For this reason, as D. Black (2006: 11–45) has pointed out, it is important to distinguish in al-Fārābī between “certainty” (yaqīn) and “absolute certainty” (al-yaqīn ‘alā al-iṭlāq).
There are two works where al-Fārābī treats the notion of absolute certainty in detail. The first is his Book of Demonstration (Kitāb al-burhān) and the second is the Book on the Conditions of Certitude (Kitāb Šara’iṭ al-yaqīn). In both treatises al-Fārābī provides some conditions for absolute certainty. The second treatise contains an exhaustive account of these conditions, six in number: (1) to believe that something is in some way and not another, (2) to agree that this belief corresponds and is not opposed to the external existence of the thing, (3) to know the correspondence between the belief of the existence and the existence of the thing in reality, (4) to know that it is not possible for this correspondence to happen and there to be opposition, (5) to know that opposition between belief and reality cannot happen at any time, and (6) to know that all this is not accidental, but essential (al-Fārābī KY: 98). According to D. Black (2006: 16), these conditions can be understood as follows:

S believes that p (the belief condition);
p is true (the truth condition);
S knows that p is true (the knowledge condition);
it is impossible that p not be true (the necessity condition);
there is no time at which p can be false (the eternity condition); and,
conditions 1–5 hold essentially, not accidentally (the non-accidentality condition).

D. Black realizes that al-Fārābī’s first three conditions for certainty seem to evoke the traditional tripartite definition of knowledge as “justified true belief”, an essential and debated notion in contemporary epistemology. However, as D. Black herself notices, in al-Fārābī the justification condition, that is, ‘having good reasons or sufficient evidence to believe something,’ is replaced by the knowledge condition and, in this sense, knowledge itself becomes a necessary ingredient within certainty, and therefore is insufficient for raising a belief to the status of absolute certainty. For this reason, certainty for al-Fārābī requires two conditions from the knower: (1) to know that a proposition x is true, and (2) to know that she knows. This is very close, as D. Black notices, to what contemporary epistemology calls “second order-knowledge” (Black 2006: 19–21).
In the Book of Demonstration al-Fārābī states that the goal of scientific demonstration is precisely absolute or necessary certainty (al-Fārābī KB: 26; BD: 68). In a very short treatise entitled Introductory Letter on Logic (Risālah sudira bihā al-kitāb) al-Fārābī writes:

اقتباس :: Philosophical discourse is called demonstrative. It seeks to teach and make clear the truth in the things which are such that they afford certain knowledge. (al-Fārābī IR: 231)

It seems, therefore, that al-Fārābī has a strict conception of demonstrative science inspired by Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics. Nevertheless, although al-Fārābī gives demonstration and absolute certainty a relevant place in his conception of philosophy, he also considers that our knowledge is not limited to absolute certainty. He also takes into consideration other forms of knowledge that can lead us to what should be called non-necessary certainty, as is the case with the different kinds of knowledge we attain by means of the non-demonstrative logical arts. In this regard, al-Fārābī considers that from the different kinds of arguments we can conceive different degrees of certainty and therefore, different kinds of beliefs (from absolute certainty to non-necessary certainty or strong belief).

The Relevance of the Imaginative Faculty

4. Doctrine on the Intellect

5. Theory of Scientific Knowledge

The Relevance of the Imaginative Faculty :: تعاليق

The Relevance of the Imaginative Faculty