The silence of the intellectuals

Introduced by a tribute by the Rector, Professor Alf Zimmer, Benedict XVI addressed a lectio magistralis to the world of science in the Aula Magna of the University of Regensburg on Tuesday, 12 September 2006. The theme of his lecture was: “ Faith, reason and university. Memories and reflections“. Since its style and structure, as well as the criterion adopted for its philological quotations, were rigorously academic, it is hard to understand the silence of the intellectuals to which it was addressed – Christian but also Islamic intellectuals – or the furore of those who turned it into the pretext not for a free cultural debate, but for street demonstrations or political and media exploitation. The most eminent contemporary islamologist, Muslim in faith and the author of Humanisme et Islam (PUF) and the massive, recently published Histoire de l’Islam (Albin Michel), Professor Mohammad Arkoun, has for years maintained that Islam has been understood neither by Westerners nor even by contemporary Islamic countries, because for various reasons, both on the one side and on the other, there has been a reluctance to take seriously the intellectual and authentically religious contribution that Islam may still make to both sides. Arkoun explicitly said in a recent broadcast on France 2 that “in the modern period, due to a series of factors, Islam has been ‘hijacked’ to serve objectives of political legitimisation that are alien to its culture and religion”. Now, it is precisely this that was the point of the lecture in Regensburg: that of restoring to Islam its genuine face, shaped by the noblest intellectual aspirations and true religious values, and wresting it from the state of “being hijacked” of which Arkoun spoke: only thus could Islam offer its precious and indispensable contribution for the cultural and religious growth not only of Arab countries, but of Western countries themselves, which are becoming increasingly closed to the dimension of the “sacred”. This is the message of the Lectio that people failed to understand or did not wish to understand.But alongside the multiple contents touched on by Benedict XVI in his Lectio, which can only be properly analysed in an academic context, there is an aspect which ought to be introduced into this debate which has now become planetary: I mean that the theme of the Lectio , focused on the indispensable relation of faith with the logos , with reason, as also a reminder of the indispensable opening that true reason must have to religious faith, was a discourse ad intra , aimed, that is at present-day Christian and also Catholic culture. It is precisely in the universities that this culture, due to the predominance of “weak thought”, seems to have lost the alliance between reason and faith in many philosophical and theological sectors. The Pope’s admonition was that the separation of faith from reason should be avoided in philosophic and theological teaching, as John Paul II’s encyclical Fides et ratio had already taught, because a reason that fails to recognise within itself the intellectual dimension of the faith is an impoverished reason, incapable of responding to the most important needs of man, while a faith that rejects reason may be transformed into fundamentalism: and both outcomes are contrary to man. Now what is paradoxical, and what was not grasped by any of the interventions in the present debate, is that this lecture on the alliance of faith with the logos and reason, is one that Christianity learned, and made its own once and for all, precisely from Islam: from the great Arab philosophy, which even before the rise of medieval scholasticism, in the period of the highest cultural, philosophic and religious splendour of Islam, succeeded in elaborating a reflection on the relations between reason and faith so refined as to fascinate Christian thought, which assimilated it, which sometimes forgot it, but which has now authoritatively re-stated it. It is from the translations into Arabic of the works of Plato, Aristotle and the Neo-Platonists, which began in Syria, that Christianity came to a knowledge of Greek philosophy and in particular of the works of Aristotle, interpreted according to and assimilated with the principles of the Koran by all the schools of Arab philosophy, in the Orient (Baghdad), in Africa (Kairuan) and in Arab Spain. The first Arab philosopher, Al-Kindi (11th century), left us over 260 works, all of them imbued with a conviction of the harmony between rational research and Koranic revelation. Again in the 11th century Al-Farabi, who taught in Baghdad, left us important commentaries on the works of Plato and Aristotle, and in particular the De intellectu et intellecto , which was meditated on and re-elaborated by Thomas Aquinas. Also in the 11th century appeared the most eminent of the Arab philosophers, Ibn Sina (Avicenna), one of the most important commentators on Aristotle’s Metaphysics , and the author himself of a massive treatise of Metaphysics (now translated into Italian, with Arab and Latin texts). He was the first to assert the primacy of “being” as the object of metaphysics, implanting on it the metaphysical proofs of the existence of God. Similarly the philosopher Avenpace wrote the Conjunction of the intellect with man , in which he maintained the validity of the Greek logos , also for the believer. The encyclopaedic physician, astronomer and philosopher Ibn Tofayl did the same, going so far as to assign to the intellect the highroad to heaven. Naturally, even at that time, there was an anti-philosophical reaction, though this was expressed as cultural polemic, especially in the hands of Al-Gazali, who was born in Iran in the 11th century and who especially expressed his views in the little book, The incoherence of the philosophers , in which he condemned philosophy in toto , in the name of a purely mystical and fundamentalist vision of the Koranic faith. But this work and its thesis were vigorously rebutted by the Arab philosophers resident in Spain, where the caliphate had not only achieved incomparable masterpieces of art at Cordoba, but also established a climate of tolerance, brotherhood and dialogue with Jews and Christians that still today ought to be taken as a paradigm of inter-religious and intercultural relations. The greatest philosopher of the 12th century, Ibn Rushd (Averroes), replied with sarcasm to Al-Gazali with a work entitled The incoherence of the incoherence of the philosophers , in which he unmasked the contradictions of those who combat reason using reason itself “badly” and “incoherently”. Averroes not only left imperishable commentaries on the books of Aristotle, but maintained the need for philosophy to develop in an autonomous way from theology and religion in order to be really useful to them. He wanted to hold fast to the primacy of reason, in other words the primacy of that universalism of the humanum that would find its maximum expression in the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas, and through it, in the most progressive tradition of the Catholic Church, in the teachings of John Paul II ( Fides et ratio ) and now that of Benedict XVI. The Pope’s lectio to Christians reminds them of a truth that, even before Thomas Aquinas, they had learned from a great Islamic philosopher: “Not acting with the logos is contrary to the nature of God” (Benedict XVI). These examples show that only when culture, philosophy and rational discussions are developed are weapons laid down and space made for the common “passion for the truth”, albeit in a variety of perspectives. Among other things we need to recall that in the past – in the 12th century, but also in Spain in the 14th and 15th century – Christian, Islamic and Jewish philosophers and theologians were accustomed to debating publicly philosophic and theological questions of the greatest importance in the universities, though always remaining on the “academic” level and never confusing the quaestio disputata in the universities with a quarrel, still less with a religious provocation with political implications. I think that the better part of the West is still waiting for this precious contribution from Islam. For a reason that precludes faith – like that of much of the contemporary West – and fails to recognise the truths, even intellectual truths, that religion brings with it, is destined, it too, to harden into a fundamentalist reason which in the end will have recourse not to dialogue but to weapons to enforce itself. So a disturbing question arises. If, as John Paul II and Benedict XVI have repeatedly affirmed, the West does not wish to recognise its Christian and religious identity, is not a mirror image of the same process happening to Islam? Is it not losing its own religious and cultural tradition? And yet – as the intellectuals know, even if they remain silent – civilizations that lose their own identity and their own historical memory have no future. And this is the greatest risk of humanity today: outside the logos , the word, culture and dialogic respect, only the barbarities of armed conflict remain. And then the Pope will remain alone, like the true prophets, not just master but witness, i.e. “martyr”, of the truth.