St. Anselm, Proslogion; Gaunilo, On Behalf of the Fool

Before we begin, a note about the next few entries in this series. I’ve been trying to read the next book on my list, the Icelandic Poetic Edda, but I’ve been having serious difficulty because (a) the text is incomplete in many parts, (b) the translations are either tone-deaf or written in what amounts to Middle English, and (c) my lack of knowledge of Norse mythology is holding me back. So I’ve decided to skip it for now. However, my copy of Rumi, who comes after the Edda, won’t arrive for another week or two, so in the interim, I’ll be jumping to the next item: St. Thomas Aquinas. He will be the topic of the next entry; there is no escape from theology.

Speaking of which, today we are talking about St. Anselm: scholastic, archbishop of Canterbury, and author of the most famous proof of the existence of God in the history of philosophy, the ontological proof. Throughout the years, there have been many proofs of God’s existence, ranging in rigor from Dostoevsky’s yearning for a better world to Godel’s logical gibberish. None however has matched the elegance and simplicity of Anselm’s, nor elicited the same range of vehement criticism, criticism that continues to this day.

Anselm’s first work was the Monologion, in which he set down for himself (monologion translates to “a speech to oneself”) his beliefs about the nature of God. The document became a success among other clergymen, and he was bid to write a more concise version. Anselm wrote the Proslogion (“a speech to others”) to fulfill this goal, and also because he felt that the Monologion fell short of capturing his message, that the existence of God was not something to be debated, but a fact which, if expressed in the right way, could be self-evident even to the fool of the Psalms (the fool who “says in his heart, There is no God”). He believed he had hit upon such an explanation in the ontological proof presented in the Proslogion, but since its inception, it has had detractors, most notably from a fellow monk named Gaunilo. He wrote to Anselm after reading the Proslogion and gave a counterargument to the proof. Anselm later replied with a counter to the counterargument, though it is generally recognized that his reply was not nearly as strong as Gaunilo’s.

We’re only going to discuss the Proslogion and its reactions; the Monologion, though not long by Aristotelian or Thomist standards, is the most verbose thing I’ve ever tried to read. Take this characteristic passage:

“Therefore, if that than which a greater cannot be thought can be thought not to exist, then that than which a greater cannot be thought is not that than which a greater cannot be thought; and this is a contradiction. So that than which a greater cannot be thought exists so truly that it cannot be thought not to exist.”

Therefore, I took advantage of the Proslogion’s relative brevity and the fact that it covers similar ground.

Understanding Faith

Before talking about the proof itself, let’s discuss Anselm’s own view of theology. Clearly we’ve talked quite a bit about theology lately, so it would be nice to get an idea of what a theologian thinks the aims of theology should be. Thomas Williams in his introduction to my volume writes that Anselm believes the aim of natural theology is not “knowledge in the sense of information but knowledge in the sense of acquaintance. Anselm intended his arguments to provide us with a way of becoming acquainted with God.”

Anselm saw his faith as a stepping-stone to understanding God. In fact, a working title for the Proslogion was “Faith Seeking Understanding.” Apart from sounding like a weird personals ad, Anselm’s motto reflects a method of approach to religion: “[He] begins by believing in God, but merely believing does not satisfy him. He wants to understand what he believes.”

This should make us think of two things. First of all, it is uncannily similar, yet diametrically opposed to al-Gazali’s cryptic statement, “faith presupposes understanding.” Anselm believes one can’t have understanding – that is, acquaintanceship with God – without faith; faith is a means to God. Al-Gazali on the other hand believes that one must understand and have acquaintanceship before one can have faith. Though I had some reservations about al-Gazali’s formulation, I can’t say I like Anselm’s much better, because the second thing we should notice is that Anselm’s motto seems to trivialize the matter of faith. Anselm himself complicates matters further by saying, “For I do not seek to understand in order to believe; I believe in order to understand.” (Emphasis mine.) Can faith be true faith if it is only a brick on the road to something else? He may be trying to say that his belief is not shallow and static, that it has an aim and a purpose, and that this is a model that we should strive to follow. Even so, something about the line strikes me as odd. Shouldn’t belief satisfy?

The Ontological Proof

With some background of his motives, let us now consider the proof. I’ll summarize the argument, since it’s spread out over the course of a couple pages:

(1) God is, by definition, the greatest being that could possibly exist.

(2) Existence in one’s understanding and existence in reality are different.

(3) Existing in reality is greater than existing in understanding.

(4) God exists in understanding.

(5) By (1) and (3), God must exist in reality.

That was easy.

We keep in mind that Anselm believed that the ontological proof succeeds not only in convincing those who doubt the existence of God, but also in utterly eliminating the possibility of such doubt. In the same way that mathematical proofs admit no possible logical counterarguments, so too should the ontological proof leave no gaps into which one may inject doubt.

Yet before we even think of how Gaunilo approaches the proof, we can see that the proof is not as watertight as Anselm might think it is. It is elegant and even charming, but in the way that falsehoods often appear charming. Each statement by itself presents no serious qualms, but by the end, we feel as if Anselm has pulled a fast one on us. Unlike a mathematical proof, its truth does not become more apparent the longer one considers it. Rather, it seems true only at first glance; and our faith in it quickly deteriorates.

On Behalf of the Fool

Overall, the Proslogion was well received, and its influence is still felt upon the details of Christian theology; it is not, on the whole, controversial. Gaunilo, a French monk from Marmoutiers, wrote Anselm praising him for his faith and his rhetoric throughout the Proslogion, yet he withholds praise from the most crucial section, the ontological proof.

He raises several weaknesses in Anselm’s argument, most of which revolve around the nature of human belief. Unlike belief in a mathematical concept, which is cold, concrete, and utterly logical, Gaunilo sees belief in God as more complex; mere argument is not sufficient. For example, when Anselm refers to God as the being “which is greater than everything else that can be thought,” Gaunilo laments that he can “no more think of it or have it in my understanding in terms of anything whose genus or species I already know, than I can think of God himself.” That is, the very first premise is too abstract to even begin considering. (One may argue that Anselm does not intend for us to conceive of such a being, rather to agree that this is the accepted definition of “God.”) Moreover, since “there is no way to derive from this conclusion [that God exists in understanding; (4), above] that this thing also exists in reality, there is simply no reason for me to concede to him that this thing exists in reality until it is proved to me by some unassailable argument.” The jump from the mind to matter is not one that Gaunilo feels comfortable making.

His most devastating argument, however, is the Lost Island analogy. This one I will quote in full:

“For example, there are those who say that somewhere in the ocean is an island, which, because of the difficulty – or rather, impossibility – of finding what does not exist, some call ‘the Lost Island.’ This island (so the story goes) is more plentifully endowed than even the Isles of the Blessed with an indescribable abundance of all sorts of riches and delights. And because it has neither owner nor inhabitant, it is everywhere superior in its abundant riches to all the other lands that human beings inhabit.

“Suppose someone tells me all this. The story is easily told and involves no difficulty, and so I understand it. But if this person went on to draw a conclusion, and say, ‘You cannot any longer doubt that this island, more excellent than all others on earth, truly exists somewhere in reality. For you do not doubt that this island exists in your understanding, and since it is more excellent to exist not merely in the understanding, but also in reality, this island must also exist in reality. For if it did not, any land that exists in reality would be greater than it. And so this more excellent thing that you have understood would not in fact be more excellent.’ – If, I say, he should try to convince me by this argument that I should no longer doubt whether the island truly exists, either I would think he was joking, or I would not know whom I ought to think more foolish: myself, if I grant him his conclusion, or him, if he thinks he has established the existence of that island with any degree of certainty, without first showing that its excellence exists in my understanding as a thing that truly and undoubtedly exists and not in any way like something false or uncertain.”

We can summarize his argument by juxtaposing it with Anselm’s:

(1) God/the Lost Island is, by definition, the greatest being/island that could possibly exist.

(2) Existence in one’s understanding and existence in reality are different.

(3) Existing in reality is greater than existing in understanding.

(4) God/the Lost Island exists in understanding.

(5) By (1) and (3), God/the Lost Island must exist in reality.

Gaunilo goes on to praise other parts of Anselm’s arguments throughout the Proslogion, but the damage has been done. His kind words about the rest of the treatise cannot make up for the way he savaged the crux of Anselm’s work.

Aftermath

Anselm, for his part, drafts a response, which, to me, doesn’t sound half bad. His refutation of the Lost Island analogy reads:

“But, you say, this is just the same as if someone were to claim that it cannot be doubted that a certain island in the ocean, surpassing all other lands in its fertility (which, from the difficulty – or rather, impossibility – of finding what does not exist, is called “the Lost Island”), truly exists in reality, because someone can easily understand it when it is described to him in words. I say quite confidently that if anyone can find for me something existing either in reality or only in thought to which he can apply this inference in my argument, besides that than which a greater cannot be thought [i.e., God (emphasis mine)], I will find and give to him that Lost Island, never to be lost again. In fact, however, it has already become quite clear that that than which a greater cannot be thought cannot be thought not to exist, since its existence is a matter of such certain truth. For otherwise it would not exist at all.”

The Wikipedia article notes how weak this argument is and how Anselm probably realized that he could not recover from Gaunilo’s refutation. I disagree. I think Anselm is responding to Gaunilo by saying that the only object that could satisfy the criteria of his Lost Island is God. Though Gaunilo is talking about a particular Island among other islands, he is arguing semantics, dancing around the notion of God. This doesn’t mean I’m entirely convinced by Anselm’s proof – Gaunilo’s other arguments, to me, are much more devastating – but I think Anselm responded quite sufficiently to the Lost Island refutation.

What strikes me as interesting about the shortcomings of the ontological proof is that in a way it undermines Anselm’s entire project. The entire dialogue is rather empty and sad: Anselm first writes the Monologion, a speech to himself wherein he sets down his beliefs and a method of proving them; then he writes the Proslogion so that others can understand his beliefs as well; his fellow monk Gaunilo comes and offers his criticism, but his criticism is far too great; and Anselm’s reply, though powerful in certain respects, does not do enough to answer it.

And then… nothing. The conversation ends. We do not know what Gaunilo makes of Anselm’s response, or if we do, then the editor at least didn’t think it was significant enough to include in the volume. Though we still read Anselm to this day, volumes of his work are rarely divorced from Gaunilo’s reply; how many other philosophers or theologians bear the weight of their critics in such a way? It serves as a reminder of Anselm’s earnestness and maybe too his hubris, thinking that he could craft a logical proof of the existence of God.

Stray Observations

• Anselm was a scholastic, sometimes called the founder of Scholasticism. Though the movement was important, we won’t talk too much about the scholastics, but we’ll return to them (briefly) when we read William of Ockham, of “Ockham’s Razor” fame.
• Anselm: “How wretched human beings are!... They have lost the happiness for which they were created and found an unhappiness for which they were not created.”
• Thomas Williams in his introduction notes that Anselm is not considered to be a great rhetorician, but he does play some good word games: “we feel the effect [effectum] of mercy, but you do not feel the emotion [affectum] of mercy.” And again: “For if you are impassible, you do not feel compassion, and if you do not feel compassion your heart is not sorrowful [miserum cor] out of compassion for sorrow; and that is what being merciful [misericors] is.”
• Speaking of God’s mercy: “[I]t is better to be good both to the good and to the wicked than to be good only to the good… For it is out of the fullness of goodness that you are kind to sinners, while the reason why you are lies hidden in the heights of goodness.”
• Does that random orange spot on the picture of the book I found bother the hell out of anyone else?

Goodreads

In the interest of brevity, I've gotten an account on Goodreads where I'll be cavalierly assigning ratings to complex works of art that took decades to create. Books will include those on and off my reading list. Those of you with accounts should drop in and say hi.

Moses Maimonides, The Guide of the Perplexed

I’m fond of a quote by Karl Popper that I first encountered in Umberto Eco’s Foucault’s Pendulum: “The conspiracy theory of society... comes from abandoning God and then asking: ‘Who is in his place?’” Secrecy inheres within conspiracy, and Popper’s quote suggests that there exists a universal, human longing for there to be knowledge hidden and guarded by an omnipotent, preferably benevolent, oligarchy. If this is so, a complementary longing would be to uncover that secret knowledge for the betterment of the world, or at least the satisfaction of one’s own intellectual curiosity.

We’ve read quite a bit of theology so far in our reading list – Augustine, the Bhagavad-Gita, those irascible Islamic philosophers – but we haven’t really encountered any true talk of “hidden” knowledge. Augustine talked about discovery and epiphany, Krishna revealed a method of being to Arjuna, and the Muslims went so far as to say that some truths are reserved for an elite group. None of this, however, feels worthy of hiding. Though it is often enlightening, for individuals or for groups, it does not possess the same cloak-and-dagger secrecy that we would expect from earth-shattering secrets.

Moses Maimonides, whether or not it is his intention, surrounds his monumental Guide of the Perplexed with exactly that sort of aura. Despite the title, his work is less a handbook or manual than a compendium of esotericism set down in a labyrinthine structure: topics are scattered, themes appear and disappear at random. The text itself, dedicated to his student, Joseph ben Judah, for whom he is writing, deals primarily with a topic that had a hoary past even by his time: the figurative language of scripture. Maimonides’ goal is to set straight the confusions that arise when one reads scripture absolutely literally. Secondarily, Maimonides writes to explain the truth about two of the most secret aspects of Judaism: the story of the creation in Genesis, and the vision of the chariot from Ezekiel. The explanation of these stories is normally reserved for only the most capable students of the Torah: Maimonides writes that the former should not be told to more than one person, and the latter to anyone at all; that is, it should be deduced for oneself, never explained. Maimonides, then, cannot simply set them down in a book for anyone to read. So he hides them. The Guide contains dead-ends, contradictions, and red herrings meant to throw all but the most careful exegete off the scent.

We can probably call him successful since I didn’t even read Books II and III of the Guide, where the secrets are revealed and probably wouldn’t have understood them anyway. Boom. Everyone stopped reading right there. It's not that much of a letdown, because from my readings about them, Maimonides doesn’t seem to have explicitly revealed anything that turns black to white. At any rate, after this disappointing lead-up (for which I apologize, but I was disappointed, too), the part of the Guide that I’ll discuss -- Book I -- is still pretty incredible, incredible enough that my copy contains two introductory essays that run longer than the actual text, one by Leo Strauss and one by Shlomo Pines. (Leave it to the University of Chicago Press.)

The Method of the Guide

The primary goal of the Guide is to explain how any confusion that arises when reading the Torah can be ameliorated by understanding the equivocal nature of words. To make this clear, Maimonides sets down the basic method of Book I of the Guide: most chapters deal with a single Hebrew word, such as “face,” “body,” “wing,” etc., and show how that word is used in both literal and figurative senses. If a word can be used figuratively, so the logic goes, then we are allowed to take it as such when its literal meaning creates contradictions. For example, words related to sight, “to see” and “to look at,” are often applied to God, and may lead us to think that we or any other human can “see” God, or that He is a being that can be perceived. Maimonides tells us this is untrue. Instead, those words have common figurative uses: “Yea, my heart hath seen much of wisdom and knowledge;” or, “and they looked after Moses.” Neither of those uses of “seen” or “looked” indicates literal sight; hence Maimonides has demonstrated that the figurative usage abounds in the text. And if it can be used figuratively, we should take it as such when it is applied to God.

Why, then, is figurative language even employed if it only obscures the Truth being conveyed? The answer is twofold. The first explanation is that were it not for figurative language, we would have no way of even describing the transcendental nature of God. This leads Maimonides into discussing the concept of negative theology. The second is didactic: even though someone like Maimonides is able to write a work describing the Truth stripped of metaphoric language, it is by no means immediately understandable to most of the world. The Torah, as a Jewish dictum goes, “speaketh in the language of the sons of man”: “Hence attributes indicating corporeality have been predicated of Him [God] in order to indicate that He, may He be exalted, exists, inasmuch as the multitude cannot at first conceive of any existence save that of a body alone.” Because most people can only understand that something exists if we say that it has a body, we must describe God as corporeal or else His being will be incomprehensible to most people.

Negative Theology

Were it not for figurative language, it would be impossible for us to even begin to comprehend God. Why is this true? Let us first try to give God an attribute: God is good. Someone may say, Is that all? To which we would respond, By no means! He’s also just. Okay, our interlocutor may reply, He is good and He is just; is that all? We would say, No: he is also merciful, and powerful, and vengeful, and– Hold on, our friend interjects, How can He be merciful and vengeful? I cannot think of any being that is both!

By using positive predication, we are, Maimonides says, narrowing the scope of God’s nature. This can be interpreted logically: The set of all possible things is infinite. The subset of all things that are good is smaller. If we then say we wish to take the subset of things that are good and just, this would be even smaller. The more we add attributes, the smaller we make our set.

Moreover, positive predication is too common to be used for God. To say, “God is good,” when one has recently said, “Mary is good,” would lead one to believe that God and Mary are good in the same way. This leads to a privation of the true nature of God’s “goodness.” Describing God in positive qualities creates an “implied deficiency” in God.

Maimonides argues instead that God can only be discussed in negative terms: God is ineffable, God is boundless, etc. While positive predication narrows the view of the subject, negative predication infinitely widens it. In Maimonides’ own words:

“For the thing of which attributes are predicated becomes more particularized with every increase in attributes that are predicated of it, and he who predicates these attributes accordingly comes nearer to the apprehension of the true reality of the thing in question. In a similar way, you come nearer to the apprehension of Him, may He be exalted, with every increase in the negations regarding Him; and you come nearer to that apprehension than he who does not negate with regard to Him that which, according to what has been demonstrated to you, must be negated.”

The Need to Understand

Like al-Farabi before him, Maimonides believed that not all knowledge was meant for all people. But does this mean that Truth is relative? Can I believe that God has a corporeal form since this is what the text of scripture would lead me to believe prima facie?

Maimonides first seems to say, Yes. “You should not consider as blameworthy the fact that this profound subject, which is remote from our apprehension, should be subject to many different interpretations. For this does no harm with respect to that toward which we direct ourselves. And you are free to choose whatever belief you wish.”

Yet there are some interpretations, such as the corporeality of God, which he refuses to tolerate. Of this matter, he says, “the law has, so to speak, no other purpose than to destroy idolatry,” and “[o]nly if God is incorporeal is it absurd to make images of God and to worship such images.” Moreover, “the only image of God is man, living and thinking man, and that man acts as the image of God only through worshipping the invisible or hidden God lone.”

Transitional Forms

To understand Maimonides’ beef with idolatry, we must first understand his view of Moses (the prophet, not his own name). To Maimonides, as would be expected of a rabbi, Moses is the greatest prophet, on an entirely separate plane from every other prophet. Part of the reason for this is that Moses represented the key step between wild, godless men and righteous men in communion with God.

Before Moses, Maimonides says, all people were Sabians. I won’t try to explain what the Sabian religion constitutes, but suffice it to say, it was full of the things that Maimonides didn’t like: handcrafted idols, human sacrifices, the works. Not until Moses was an attempt made by God to turn a large group of people from Sabianism. (The Biblical Patriarchs, Maimonides says, were Sabians until called by God; consider how Abraham is willing to sacrifice Isaac.)

God recognized, however, the power that habit holds over human nature. It would have been impossible – even for God, Maimonides claims – to turn a group of people from idolatrous Sabians into devout Jews in a moment’s notice. So God provided Moses with the Law.

Mosaic Law, according to Maimonides, is not perfect. The Law calls for animal sacrifices. Idols are banned, but men still must go to temple and pay devotion to sacred objects. Leo Strauss writes, “The sacrificial laws constitute a step in the gradual transition, in the progress from Sabianism to pure worship, i.e., pure knowledge of God.”

From Maimonides himself: “Man, according to his nature, is not capable of abandoning suddenly all to which he was accustomed. As therefore God sent Moses our Master to make out of us a kingdom of priests and a holy nation – through the knowledge of Him, may He be exalted…; and as at that time the way of life generally accepted and customary in the whole world and the universal service upon which we were brought up consisted in offering various species of living beings in the temples in which images were set up, in worshipping the latter, and in burning incense before them…His wisdom, may He be exalted, and His gracious ruse [my emphasis], which is manifest in regard to all His creatures, did not require that He give us a Law prescribing the rejection, abandonment, and abolition of all these kinds of worship… Therefore He, may He be exalted, suffered the above-mentioned kinds of worship to remain, but transferred them from created or imaginary and unreal things to His own name… Through this divine ruse it came about that the memory of idolatry was effaced and the grandest and true foundation of our belief – namely, the existence and oneness of the deity – was firmly established.” God works secretly.

Shlomo Pines adds, “Just as Nature, or God working in Nature, makes shift with the available corporeal devices in order to form a viable organism, History, or God working in History, makes shift with available devices of a different kind in order to form a viable nation.” God works in degrees.

Maimonides cares so much about Moses because he sees his own time as yet another transitional period. His time, while not suffering as greatly from the sin of idolatry, is weight down by tradition and superstition that he considers detrimental to both faith and progress. Pines writes, “Maimonides contrasts his own times, which he seems to have held to be dominated by superstition, to use Spinoza’s term and that of the philosophers of the Enlightenment, with Greek antiquity, in which the philosophers who aspire to know the true nature of things did not have to struggle against the dead hand of traditional belief.” (Although Maimonides may or may not have known that the Greeks had their own belief systems to struggle against.)

Again, in Maimonides’ own words: “Alexander of Aphrodisias says that there are three causes of disagreement about things. One of them is love of domination and love of strife, both of which turn man aside from the apprehension of truth as it is. The second cause is the subtlety and the obscurity of the object of apprehension in itself and the difficulty of apprehending it. And the third cause is the ignorance of him who apprehends and his inability to grasp things that it is possible to apprehend. That is what Alexander mentioned. However, in our times there is a fourth cause that he did not mention because it did not exist among them. It is habit and upbringing. [My emphasis] For man has in his nature a love of, and an inclination for, that to which he is habituated. Thus you can see that the people of the desert – notwithstanding the disorderliness of their life, the lack of pleasures, and the scarcity of food – dislike the towns, do not hanker after their pleasures, and prefer the bad circumstances to which they are accustomed to good ones to which they are not accustomed.”

Thy Ways

There is a final reason that Maimonides considered Moses to be so great. Through Moses, Maimonides believes, the true nature of God was revealed.

How? When Moses confronted God (probably not literally), he asked Him two questions: to reveal His face, and – when this is said to be impossible – he asks God to “show me Thy ways, that I may know Thee.” Maimonides writes, “Consider the wondrous notions contained in this dictum. For his saying [this] indicates that God, may He be exalted, is known through His attributive qualifications; for when he would know the ways, he would know Him.”

What are those attributes through which God may be known? Shlomo Pines writes, “[T]his knowledge… can practically be equated with the grasp of the sequence and (natural) causes of the natural phenomena… The study of nature and of the order of nature is the only way open to man to know something of God.” God’s workings in the universe are exactly the procession of nature. Nature, then, is the best and perhaps only way that man can apprehend the nature of God. We should not be surprised by this revelation. After all, is this not the same thing that was revealed to Job at the end of his eponymous book, when God finally appeared to him in a whirlwind?

This conclusion leads us to understand more about Maimonides’ theological beliefs, such as his understanding of attribution. Pines writes:

“The import of these views may be realized more clearly if one considers the reinterpretation of biblical terms that Maimonides has in mind. His attributes of action are such terms as “Merciful” or “Revengeful” applied to God. According to Maimonides expressions of this kind originate in man’s teleological anthropocentric interpretation of the inhuman, self-conserving, and self-perpetuating order of nature. Thus God is sometimes called ‘Merciful’ because in accordance with that order the embryos of animals develop satisfactorily and parents have been endowed with the instinct to protect their children. Or He is called ‘Revengeful’ because, again in accordance with the order of nature, storms, floods, earthquakes, and wars work destruction. One is again reminded of Spinoza’s attacks on the ascription of a finalistic man-centered causality to Nature, or to call it by another name, to God.”

This may be summed up in a parable that Maimonides recounts and then alters. Originally, a parable went:

“The fact that information has been received that justice and fair-dealing are practiced in India should not be considered as proof that the country is ruled by a just king, whereas the arrival of envoys bearing gifts sent by the king of India would prove the existence of that king. In other words, the existence of God should be proved not by a reference to cosmic order, but by the fact of divine intervention in the history of the people of Israel and by the mission of the prophets.”

Maimonides rewrites the parable:

“One may be persuaded in various ways that a certain country has a king: one may see him in person, or see the retinue surrounding him, or one may consider that he exists because things are done (for instance, buildings and bridges are built) upon his order. One may also infer his existence from the fact that a robust beggar does not attack and rob a wealthy moneychanger, even in the latter is physically quite weak.” Maimonides believes, then, that cosmic order is proof of the existence of God.

Stray Observations

• Sorry for the huge block-quotes in this post. Everyone involved is a bit wordy.
• I'm a big fan of book design in general, and an especially big fan of this cover. 
• Maimonides explains angels: the word “wing” in Hebrew(?) has the “signification of concealing.” Angels, he explains, have no corporeality, just like God, and so they are depicted as having wings because their true nature is concealed. Moreover, their wings allow them to fly, an ability not conferred upon humans: “For it is the most perfect and the noblest of the motions of the irrational animals, and man believes it to be a great perfection; so that he even wishes to fly in order that it might be easy for him to flee from all that harms him and that he might betake himself swiftly to whatever agrees with him, even if it be far off.” This is a bit of a stretch, and I am just reminded of the way Arthur Waley in his introduction to the Analects of Confucius casually dismisses the idea of angels by citing that ancient societies used to see birds as the intercessors between men and God (because they flew through the sky, i.e. Heaven).
• Though he wanted to break free of the dead hand of tradition, Maimonides did still borrow from the Greeks, most notably Aristotle. Of Aristotle: “Sometimes explicitly, and perhaps more often tacitly, he [Maimonides] accepted apparently with equanimity the existence in the cosmos of a constituent element that was not amenable to such derivation, of something corresponding to Plato’s “necessity”… Maimonides attributes the existence of this residue of obdurate facts, which are irreducible to scientific explanation, to God’s having willed them.” 
• Maimonides also agrees with an idea espoused by the kalams (of which al-Gazali was a member) of a particularizer: one who, since the world exists in spite of there being no intrinsic reason to exist, willed the universe into being in its current form. “This view… seems to be based either on a belief in the existence of an irreducible element of irrationality in nature… On first supposition, Maimonides’ view of God as the ‘Particularizer’ approximates Whitehead’s description of God.” The description being: “God is the ultimate limitation, and His existence is the ultimate irrationality.”
• Maybe one of these days I’ll read Books II and III, but right now, I’m not really feeling another 300 pages of this.

Islamic Philosophy of the Golden Age: Al-Farabi, Avicenna, Al-Gazali, Averroes

History is not my strong point, largely because I avoided it on principle when I was younger. (My dad is a history professor, so I thought refusing to learn it would be funny.) One of these days, perhaps when I “finish” this reading list, I’ll take some time to learn who Hitler was and how many prime ministers we’ve had, but until then, I’ll remain rather blissfully ignorant. This caveat is necessary because the really fascinating part of today's post involves the history of the Arab world, which is pretty much a dead zone in my learning. So take the historical aspects with a grain of salt, and if there are any glaring errors in my claims, dear reader, kindly point them out.

Personally, I had never heard of any of the philosophers from today's post before compiling my reading list. Whether or not this is due to my hilarious level of historical illiteracy, I would not be surprised if many of the names are unfamiliar even to reasonably well-read people. Therefore, I'd like to take a moment to give a quick overview of the basics of Islamic philosophical history before discussing the ideas of each individual philosopher. 

The details of the golden age of medieval Islamic philosophy (c. 9th - 12th century, AD) are quite incredible, due in no small part to the era in which the philosophers lived and the far-reaching implications of their work. While the works of Aristotle were lost to the West until a later date, his writings found their way to the Middle East. There, Aristotelianism inspired a wave of scientific exploration and discovery; the scientists of the time longed to use Aristotle's worldview to harness the powers of the world, to become true masters and proprietors of nature. Those were the days when alchemists and mystics worked side by side, when Plato’s philosopher-king seemed an ideal within reach, and when learning and erudition were prized above all. 

The first in the line of Aristotelians were al-Farabi and Avicenna, who married Islamic theology and Aristotelianism if not for the first time, at least in the most influential manner. This union precipitated, or perhaps was concurrent with, the development of a great deal of science under the influence of Aristotle – being adjoined to religion, science was in a sense “allowed,” at least until the criticisms began. Aristotelianism was accused of being against Islam, and the harshest blow was dealt by al-Gazali, an Ash’arite Muslim and mystic philosopher. By criticizing philosophy with the indisputable authority of Islam, al-Galazi took Middle Eastern society off the path forged by Aristotelianism and did irreparable damage to the scientific milieu.

Attempts were made to revive the flourishing of the Golden Age, most valiantly by Averroes, who defended Aristotelianism from al-Gazali and even declared that Avicenna’s thought was inimical not to Islam but to philosophy. But the damage had been done. Though Averroes found fame later on, as did they all, with medieval philosophers in the West who slowly rediscovered the philosophy of Aristotle, Aristotelianism never flourished in the Middle East again the way it did during the Golden Age. 

Al-Farabi

In the progression of important Islamic philosophers, al-Farabi is the first, and those who came after, especially Avicenna, are indebted to his interpretations of Aristotle and of the Qur'an. We will only discuss one aspect of his philosophy because, to be quite honest, his metaphysics went way over my head. I read it, and maybe I even understood it, but I can’t say anything interesting about it.

One idea that Avicenna borrowed and Moses Maimonides made his own is al-Farabi’s interpretation of prophecy. In his treatise on metaphysics, al-Farabi discusses the causes that are familiar to us from Aristotle (i.e., formal, efficient, etc.), and then moves on to the Intellect, even giving that topic a little neoplatonic flavor. It all leads to a question: how does the Intellect (that is, God's intellect) descend to us? Al-Farabi's answered that it is through prophecy.

However, prophecy can’t come to just any layman; rather, there is a hierarchy to human intellect and worthiness. Al-Farabi compares it to how an infant first gains basic perception, then understanding of his perception, and finally reason based on that understanding. For most, this is where it stops. As humans, we can use our reasoning skills to logically understand the world; such understanding is alien to, say, a young child who has not yet reached this stage. Similarly, al-Farabi argues that in order to receive prophecy, one must be at an even higher level of intellectual plane.

What is this higher level? Al-Farabi answers, the imaginative faculty. For just as uneducated children may sometimes show glimpses of understanding, so does the layman show glimpses of prophetic ability in dreams, which he claims are not irrational, but superrational, belonging to the realm of God. That is why the earliest forms of prophecy in the Bible, for example that of Joseph, involve interpreting dreams. Prophets then are very similar to philosophers, who have a more highly developed rational faculty than most, but lack imagination. And just as someone of shallow understanding may deny the truth of facts that he cannot comprehend, so too do men with a limited imaginative faculty reject the prophecies of men closer to God in intellect.

Avicenna

By training, Avicenna (pr: 'a-ve-sen-na) was a physician, and one of his most influential treatises is an early medical guide called the Book of Healing. In philosophy, he was the first to give religion "the hallmark of intellectual respectability." Among his most important contributions to Islamic philosophy is the distinction he makes between essence and existence. To Avicenna, essence and existence are ontologically distinct because the answers to the questions "What is it?" and "Does it exist?" may be different. Specifically, essence is prior to existence, a fact which he proves with his "flying man" argument: Consider a man who is suspended in space; he is unable to touch anything, including himself, and all his senses are effectively shut off: he cannot see, hear, taste, smell, or touch. Without any sense input, the man would still be able to affirm, "I am," his essence, on the basis of which he could then postulate, “I exist,” affirming his existence.

The importance of the distinction between existence and essence is that it allows Avicenna to prove the existence of God. The details are murky to me, but the argument is as follows: Essence is prior to existence, and moreover, existence is accident to essence; that is, existence is only possible, not necessary, for a given essence. (We can describe a unicorn’s essence – a horse with a horn – but cannot demonstrate its existence.) Moreover, existence is contingent not only upon essence, but upon any number of things; essence is required for something to exist, but it is not sufficient. Specifically, existence is contingent also upon the existence of other beings.

But if this is true, there would be an infinite regression of beings whose existence is contingent upon the existence of other beings, unless we posit a being whose existence is identical to its essence, i.e. God, so that we have a starting point. We can imagine it this way: a person is a twig on a tree. The existence of any small twig is dependent upon being part of a larger branch, but the existence of that larger branch depends on the existence of an even larger branch. There must then be some root to hold all these branches together; that root is God. This argument also conveniently frees us from the possibility that God, as the author of the universe, could have chosen not to create the universe. Since God's existence is identical to his essence, the trunk of our metaphorical tree exists, which then promotes the growth of subsequent, dependent branches.

Al-Gazali

Al-Gazali (also spelled al-Ghazali) is a much more interesting character to me than his predecessors. He was a Muslim of the Ash’arite sect, a group that didn’t believe in cause and effect per se. Ash’arites refused to acknowledge that there were immutable physical laws, i.e., laws outside the power of God to change. Instead, implicit in every action-reaction pair is God’s hand at work, and He reserves the right to change any reaction, for example, to cause a fire doused with water to grow as if fed gasoline. The answer, then, to the question of “Why?” was for Ash’arites like al-Gazali, “God willed it,” in the most literal possible sense.

Requiring God to be the sole causal force leads al-Gazali to an incredible conclusion, one that he in his time period could never have expected. Al-Gazali recognizes that though God is omnipotent, He cannot do what is logically impossible. It would be absurd, he reasons, to say that God could make a proposition equivalent to its negation, because it cannot be by definition. This extends not only to logic: God also cannot make black equivalent to white because black is by definition not white. That which is logically impossible is outside of the realm of God (as would the paradox of the stone be).

But hold on a moment. In moving from the world of logic (propositions) to the physical world (black and white), al-Gazali has opened the floodgates. Since, for example, mathematics is based on logical propositions, and physical science (in our sense of physics and chemistry) is based on mathematics, and natural science (again, in our sense of biology) is based on that, then conclusions in those fields are immutable truth with which God cannot interfere, according to al-Gazali.

Let us take a moment to recognize the problem this creates. At one point, Al-Gazali argues that the changing of Moses’ staff into a serpent is not outside the realm of literal possibility. He reasons that since things change state all the time – ice to water, dirt to mud – it is certainly possible that given the right conditions and sufficient time a piece of wood could change into a snake. So God could accelerate the process and make it happen instantaneously. And yes, before knowledge of modern chemistry and thermodynamics, this is plausible, if a little farfetched. But now? Now we know that the changing of a piece of wood into a snake is as absurd and illogical as equating black and white. By al-Gazali’s own argument, the staff could not have changed into a snake.

Al-Gazali’s argument, then, is still incredible, but leaves us in want. For by his own words, the miraculous would be impossible for God, because we as scientists have mapped the terrain of the natural world to such a degree that there is no room for deviation from physical laws. But then again, al-Gazali puts no stock in physical laws in the first place. As if preempting this argument, al-Gazali writes, “For if your faith is based on a reasoned argument involving the probative force of the miracle, then your faith is destroyed by an ordered argument showing the difficulty and ambiguity of the miracle. Admit, then, that wonders of this sort are one of the proofs and accompanying circumstances out of the totality of your thought on the matter; and that you attain necessary knowledge and yet are unable to say specifically on what it is based.” In effect, he is saying, There are things outside the realm of God, but if you spend all your time thinking about what God can’t do, you’ll miss all the things He can.

It is not difficult, then, to see that a man like al-Gazali would take issue with some claims of philosophers like Avicenna, who sought common ground between Allah and Aristotle. But it is more interesting not to dwell on the differences in their beliefs, but to notice the incredible amount of overlap in their worldviews. Al-Gazali, despite his extreme fundamentalism (as we might call it), was an Aristotelian who was simply trying to show the limits of philosophy. He believed that Avicenna had overstepped the bounds of what was possible with philosophy on only three points – the eternity of the world, the possibility of bodily resurrection, and whether God has knowledge of particulars or only of generals. Though he tried to refute these points on philosophical grounds, he more often than not ended up arguing on the basis of theology.

Al-Gazali was also a huge influence on Moses Maimonides, who is coming up soon. For example, Maimonides stresses that men must never learn what they are incapable of tolerating, and this idea is indebted to al-Gazali, although it seems it also has roots in Jewish theology. Al-Gazali talks about how different people are receptive to different levels of knowledge, facts, and truth, and how exposing someone who is not ready for a higher plane of truth can in fact discourage them. “It is therefore necessary, I maintain, to shut the gate so as to keep the general public from reading the books of the misguided [those who teach everyone the same information] as far as possible.” Not everyone is ready for the same information, and to help them, sometimes we must hide it from them. Again, we will deal with this in more depth when we get to Moses Maimonides.

Averroes

Averroes (a-‘vare-oh-ees) is the final philosopher in our chronology. An important philosopher in his own right, he is partially famous for his response to al-Gazali’s takedown of Avicennan philosophers (which was called “The Incoherence of the Philosophers”), titled “The Incoherence of the Incoherence.” Averroes, then, didn’t agree with al-Gazali, and in fact, was more of a hardened Aristotelian than even Avicenna; he felt that the latter gave in too much is theological considerations when he, that is, Avicenna, wrote his philosophical treatises.

Which is not to say that Averroes was some sort of atheist. In fact, he is often misunderstood in this regard, because the writings that made it to the West in the Middle Ages were his commentaries on Aristotle, which are rather divorced from theology, and not his proofs of the existence of God. He became known, then, as a naturalist, the “father of the theory of the double truth, according to which philosophy and religion can stand in contradiction” though he never held such a belief.

The similarities between Averroes and the other Islamic philosophers abound. For example, he asserts, “demonstrative truth and scriptural truth cannot conflict.” Since scripture calls for us to use our reason to understand God’s words, natural science, what he would consider “demonstrative truth,” can never run counter to God’s word, and vice versa. “For truth does not oppose truth but accords with it and bears witness to it.”

As Moses Maimonides will make painfully clear, there is a double meaning to scripture; allegorical and metaphorical meanings are there to hide a deeper truth, so that everyone, even the simplest people, can grasp the outer meaning (i.e., everyone can interpret scripture literally), but those for whom the outer meaning is not sufficient can search out and understand the inner meaning as well. Averroes, on the same topic, writes, “The reason why we have received a Scripture with both an apparent and an inner meaning lies in the diversity of people’s natural capacities and the difference of their innate dispositions with regard to assent.” He especially takes issue with al-Gazali calling al-Farabi and Avicenna unbelievers for holding different beliefs on the issues of bodily resurrection, et al. Those topics, Averroes argues, are not based in “fact” – that is, they have not been proven impossible with reason – and so al-Farabi and Avicenna are not unbelievers by definition, but only tentatively, until such a time as those beliefs are proven or disproven.

Stray Observations

I wish I could've found a place for this somewhere else, but I felt it deserved to be set off from the rest. A bold and rather cryptic statement from al-Gazali: “Believing presupposes understanding.” Really? The converse is (probably) true. Is understanding necessary for belief? This would follow from the notion that everyone should be educated at their individual level: teaching everyone the same esoteric knowledge would dissuade many from belief due to lack of understanding.

From the editors of my edition, regarding al-Farabi’s stance on prophets and prophecy: “According to al-Farabi, the various religions are a more or less close and accurate imitation or mimesis of philosophic truth. This means of course that there is no essential difference between monotheistic prophetic religions, though they can be distinguished and evaluated according to the degree of their approximation to philosophic truth.”

Al-Gazali: “The lowest degree of education is to distinguish oneself from the ignorant ordinary man. The educated man does not loathe honey even if he finds it in the surgeon’s cupping-glass; he realizes that the cupping-glass does not essentially alter the honey.” Cf. Augustine’s Egyptian gold.

The Arabian Nights, Part I

After a long chain of philosophy and other nonfiction posts, I'm glad to be writing about fiction again. This particular post took a while to write, but I'm happy with how it turned out and the conclusions I came to. At any rate, it seems like just yesterday we were reading Ovid’s Metamorphoses and commenting on his extraordinary, Matryoshkan narrative style. Alas, those days are behind us, but with today’s post, we are free to reminisce about Ovid as we consider his Middle Eastern counterpart, the beautiful Shahrazad, lying in bed with a husband whom she fears and a sister who fears for her. This post will only cover the older of the stories in the Arabian Nights. Several of the more famous ones, such as Aladdin and Sinbad, were not written until a few hundred years later, though they are usually included with the others.

The framing device, for those unfamiliar with the Arabian Nights, tells the story of two brothers, Shahrayar and Shahzaman, who are both kings. One day, Shahzaman discovers that his wife has been unfaithful to him. Overwhelmed by blinding misery – the world “turned dark before his eyes” – he leaves his kingdom and his home to stay with his brother, Shahrayar. There, he keeps his sadness a secret until one day when he stumbles upon his brother’s wife and her maidservants engaging in a Bacchanalian, Ron Jeremy-esque orgy. At once, he is thrilled to realize that he is not alone in his misery and tells his brother everything that has transpired. Now, his brother is not like him; he is not prone to running from his problems in the same way. Instead, he kills his wife and, having utterly lost his trust in the fidelity of women, proclaims that he will marry a new woman every night and kill her in the morning before she has a chance to betray his trust. While this is completely reasonable, the women of his kingdom do not like the idea. However, Shahrazard, the daughter of the vizier, is the only one with the cleverness to do something about it. She devises a plan to keep him occupied at night with stories, ones that will end with cliffhangers so that he will have no choice but to keep her alive so that he can hear the ending, which is also known as the Lost approach to relevancy.

We will consider two main aspects of the Nights in this post. First, there is the matter of the storytelling. Whenever interesting narrative techniques crop up, there will undoubtedly be differing opinions about them. In this case, we have an interesting proposal by Italian filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini, who suggested:

"every tale in The Thousand and One Nights begins with an 'appearance of destiny' which manifests itself through an anomaly, and one anomaly always generates another. So a chain of anomalies is set up. And the more logical, tightly knit, essential this chain is, the more beautiful the tale. By 'beautiful' I mean vital, absorbing and exhilarating. The chain of anomalies always tends to lead back to normality. The end of every tale in The One Thousand and One Nights consists of a 'disappearance' of destiny, which sinks back to the somnolence of daily life ... The protagonist of the stories is in fact destiny itself."

He argues that each story is precipitated by an anomaly of fortune or circumstance – such as the common trope of sudden confrontations with demons (in my edition; “genie” may be more accurate, although they seem more menacing) – rather than the actions or choices of any character. These anomalies of fortune "appear" or "confront us" because they, unlike the normal progression of fortune, are different and stand out in some obvious way. It is Fortune that acts, and we can do nothing but react and wait until the anomalies resolve themselves.

Second, there is the story of the two viziers. Since there are so many stories, we cannot address all of them directly – I’m not terribly interested in doing so, anyway – so we will just discuss the most intriguing of the ones I read. Aside from being one of the longest complete stories in my volume, it is also an incredible intergenerational saga, and I would not be surprised if it was an influence for later stories like Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude.

Sitting Pretty

Pasolini’s claim that Fortune is the protagonist of the Nights leads to some interesting conclusions. We should first be aware that if the filmmaker is to be believed, then the characters are kept in the dark about this fact. Fortune, to the residents of Shahrazad’s worlds, is not a character, but a menace. For many, fate has long ago determined their lot in life, and social mobility is impossible. Fortune has predestined some to a life of happiness and others to a life of suffering, and the lamentations of the misfortunate are painful:

“Reduce your toil, for gain is not in work. Look at the fisherman who labors at his trade… And sells [his catch] to a man who sleeps the night, safe from the cold and blessed with every wish. Praised be the Lord who blesses and withholds: this casts the net, but that one eats the fish.”

And again:

“Your livelihood is not in your own hands; neither by writing nor by the pen you thrive. Your luck and your wages are by lot… The wheel of fortune lowers the man of worth… Come then, O death, and end this worthless life, where the ducks soar, while the falcons are bound to earth.”

There is a recurring theme of the prosperity of the wicked at the expense of the good. (Also, notice Boethius' wheel of fortune.) This leads to an interesting consideration. If fortune is truly the protagonist, subject to anomalies like men in the world are, then people can come to misfortune even by living good lives. By following the righteous path, the one that is in accordance with nature, they are still not always safe, as if nature were not prescriptive, the way it was conceived by, say, the Stoics; rather, living in accordance with nature is more like being provided a roadmap: the paths are laid bare in front of you, but those paths are still subject the weather, potholes, construction, etc.

In spite of the difficulty of social mobility, fortune is not cast as the villain. Fate is “blameless,” and “not meant to be fair.” Though people may be irked by misfortune, they seem to remember that, in the grand scheme of things, “one day is troubled, one day fair.” Ultimately, it is they who, through their own actions, retain control. Thus, the weight of personal responsibility has never been greater than it is in the Nights. In Sophocles, for example, Oedipus is sickened by his actions and casts himself out of his kingdom for what he’s done; but as the chorus reminds us, the events were caused in no uncertain terms by Fate. Fate follows the family of Orestes in Aeschylus, and gods and men alike are subject to it in Homer and Virgil. Moreover, the story of Job and the Divine Comedy of Dante are both filled with the notion of retributive justice, fortune as reward or punishment.

Everywhere else, fate causes, it punishes, and it rewards; it is in control. But in Shahrazad’s world, it is not. Anomalies as Pasolini calls them force fortune to be almost human, and this seems to take away the ability to call fortune the arbiter of people's lives. Indeed, as one character is reminded, “’tis tit for tat; blame not just destiny.” Destiny is outside of our actions, not fully, but at least partially. We act – or react, as the case may be – to the twists and turns that fortune suffers. What an astounding conception. Indeed, we can hear this in the words that are repeated throughout the Nights: “We would be sitting pretty, if not for our curiosity.” Demons come and demons go, but our actions are always our own.

Behind the Curtain

But why personify fortune in this way? And why now? I would propose that it is because Shahrazad herself feels the weight of responsibility.

We must remember above all else that Shahrazad is telling these stories to a king who has made it clear that she is going to die. She has not found herself in this situation by an anomaly of fate, but by her own hand. As much as we emphasize how clever she is for coming up with such a solution, and as much as we may scoff at the king for being so easily fooled – hell, even Lost fans caught on after a few seasons – the fear of death is still real, and the sword of Damocles still hangs perpetually over her. Shahrazad is scared, and her fear leaks into her stories.

And this, to me, is what makes the Arabian Nights so powerful and a highpoint of storytelling. The stories themselves give no indication of Shahrazad’s fear. They are not punctuated by asides about her crying or anything silly like that. She always appears completely in control of the situation. But in her subconscious, the weight of her undertaking and the fear for her safety comes out.

The Two Viziers

Moving on, I’ll give a very, very abridged version of the Tale of the Two Viziers, because it’s long and complicated, and I don’t feel like recounting the whole damn thing. Essentially, there are two brothers, Nur and Shams, who are the sons of a vizier, and they get in an argument: They have agreed to marry two sisters, consummate the marriages on the same night, have a boy and a girl, and marry them to each other, thus creating some tightly knit but super creepy family. However, Shams feels entitled to a dowry for his imaginary son, and this leads Nur to leave the country in anger. Fate, however, works to their best interest. Nur has a son, Badr, and Shams a daughter, Sit, and when Nur dies, he tells Badr about Shams and the deal that the brothers struck so many years ago. While the son mourns his father, he encounters two demons who tell him that Shams has had a daughter. Badr, with the demons' help, travels to Sit's country, where she is about to be married to a hunchback as punishment for something. He ends up impregnating his cousin on the night of her wedding, but she doesn’t learn who he is. Her father, however, is well aware, and, upon discovering that his brother has passed, decides to go find Badr. During this time, Badr has taken up residence in Aleppo, and it is not until Shams arrives with Badr's son – 'Ajib, now a young man – and the two come looking for him that he recognizes them and agrees to go home, marry the wife he was intended to marry, and live a happy life.

The focus of the story is reconciliation, and although this fact alone makes the story interesting -- several generations are reunited after decades apart -- it is the means by which they are reconciled that make the story incredible.

The two brothers are reunited through their children, but their children are reunited only by them; specifically Nur is able to reunite Badr and Sit, and when they are separated again by the vicissitudes of fate, Shams reunites them a second time. Shams, in turn, would have been unable to reunite Sit and Badr without ‘Ajib, for it is because of ‘Ajib that Badr makes himself known.

The ending -- this is one of the few stories in the Nights with a satisfying resolution -- reunites three generations of the family. Nur and Shams are reunited only spiritually, since Nur has died; Sit and Badr physically; and ‘Ajib and his parents “socially,” we might say, since their family unit is complete for the first time.

Moreover, the reconciliations occur in chiasmus. Nur and Shams are the first to be separated and the last to be reunited, since, with Nur being dead, they cannot be truly reunited until Shams passes as well. Sit and Badr are separated secondarily and reunited secondarily; and 'Ajib, who grew up being teased for not having a father, is the first to find a complete family. I drew a diagram showing these connections, but I'm too lazy to upload it. Needless to say, the structure of the story is truly awe-inspiring, and if the story seems difficult to understand, it is only because of my hasty and shitty narration: the story in the Nights flows elegantly.


Stray Observations

• A vizier is more or less the king's right-hand man, but it literally translates to "one who bears burdens."
• Returning to the idea of endings, it is telling that the king, so desperate to hear the ending to Shahrazad's many stories, quickly loses track of which storylines have not been completed and only seems to remember what happened a couple days ago. Besides being an interesting account of the nature of memory, it probably also means that Shahrazad only needed to tell stories for a couple weeks before he forgot that he was going to kill her. 
• I found this passage particularly striking, and in particular the first few words: “Once in Damascus I spent such a night that time swore ‘t would never the like allow. We slept carefree under the wing of night till morning smiled and beamed with dappled brow, and dewdrops on the branches hung like pearls, then fell and scattered when the zephyr blew, and birds chanted the words traced on the lake, as the wind rose and the clouds the points drew." Once in Damascus... what a lovely phrase. It reminds me of the Nabokov story titled, "That in Aleppo Once..." 
• The world going black is another trope, occurring when people suffer great shock. Compare with Oedipus' self-imposed blindness.
• “The departure of my soul from my body is easier for me than my departure from your company."
• “He who says that life is made of sweetness a day more bitter than aloes will see.”
• A parallel to the Tree of Knowledge: the third dervish is in a mansion with 100 chambers. His lover, whose mansion it is, leaves and tells him that until she returns, he may go into all of the chambers except one. He obeys at first, but eventually finds himself entering the last as well. Recall Kafka: "There are two main human sins from which all the others derive: impatience and indolence. It was because of impatience that they were expelled from Paradise; it is because of indolence that they do not return. Yet perhaps there is only one major sin: impatience. Because of impatience they were expelled, because of impatience they do not return."
• About travel: “And if the sun stood in its orbit still, both Arabs and barbarians would tire of the sun, and if the full moon did not wane and set, no watchful eyes would the moon’s rising mark. If in the lair the lion stayed, in the bow the dart, neither would catch the prey, or hit the mark. Deep in the mine, gold dust is merely dust, and in its native ground, fuel aloewood. Gold, when extracted, grows much in demand. And when exported, aloe fetches gold.”
• “He was so faultless in character and looks that the deer stole from him their necks and eyes and every other grace.”