حق النظر في المبادئ الأولى بين الفلسفة والعلم عند ابن رشد / The Right to First Principles Between Philosophy and Science According to Ibn Rushd

Program

ALIF

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http://www.jstor.org/stable/521843

All Authors

المصباحي, محمد; Mesbahi, Muhammed

Document Type

Research Article

Publication Title

Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics

Publication Date

1996

doi

https://www.doi.org/10.2307/521843

Abstract

[This study examines the contradictory attitudes of Ibn Rushd in relation to the question of whether philosophy or science has the right to claim authoritative demonstration of first principles and causes. The author provides an answer to the shifting positions of Ibn Rushd on the question. One presumes that philosophy has the right to handle all causes and first principles since (1) philosophy's domain is "universal being" to which the subject matter of particular sciences are species, and (2) if sciences were to examine their own first principles they would cease being demonstrative sciences and turn into dialectical sciences. Ibn Rushd, in contrast to Ibn Sīnā, permits some sciences to demonstrate their own first principles. Natural sciences, for example, may demonstrate their first principles such as the first matter and the prime mover. Ibn Rushd managed to prove the right of science to examine its principles with an ingenious methodological device: (1) by bringing general principles to specific subject matter (2) by appealing to the principle of conflicting types of causes and nature where sciences can uncover certain specific (material and moving) causes, and (3) by pointing out the difference of demonstration in universal and particular sciences. Thus this division of principles by Ibn Rushd allowed him to endow particular sciences with the right to demonstrate certain (material and moving) causes and left to philosophy the right to demonstrate the quiddity of principles and to demonstrate both formal cause and final cause. Ibn Rushd managed to alternate his approach on this question of rights to first principles by adopting a multiple point of view. From his perspective, philosophy examines principles, not in order to know and acknowledge, but in order to found and be; while science examines its principles with an epistemological eye, rather than an ontological one, that is, science looks into its principles in order to pursue its quest since these principles explain its particular subject matter. Particular sciences cannot uncover all their causes, but only some of them. In a meticulous analysis of Ibn Rushd's work, the author shows that the relationship of philosophy to science is not that of form to matter, but that of two fields overlapping on their borders. The difference between philosophy and science is that of orientation and fields of vision.]

First Page

52

Last Page

76

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