On Love in the Thought of Avicenna & Sadra
Love عشق according to the Philosophers is a yearning and a seeking in the essence of the lover عاشق for some real خیر حقیقی or imagined good خیر مظنون; but there can be no searching in relation to that which is already possessed by the lover; therefore seeking or searching occur only in relation to something absent; something that presently lies beyond the reach of the lover; this understanding of the concept of love مفهوم عشق is true only in the case of things associated with the physical realm عالم طبیعه, which is a realm of constant change تغیر and transformation تبدل and is not applicable to entities that belong to the intelligible world عالم عقل; a world of immutable ثابت and actual بالفعل beings that are free from matter ماده and material attributes عوارض ماده.
Avicenna in his 'Treatise on Love' رساله فی العشق states that all existents موجودات have been divinely inspired with an innate love or yearning زوق for good and perfection کمال; but the nature and the intensity شده of this yearning varies in different existents depending upon the Ontic perfection or imperfection نقص of beings or their existential grade درجه وجود; for instance it depends upon whether they are simple بسیط or composite مرکب, sensible حسی or intelligible عقلانی, subject to motion حرکت and change or immutable, bearers of potentiality قوه or completely actual; in inanimate matter love is nothing but a natural inclination or tendency to move towards its specific good; whereas in animate beings such as man it is a psychic emotion کیف نفسانیه towards a beloved معشوق; now love in the separate intellects عقول مجرده is not a tendency for motion, because these noble realities are already in possession of all the perfections that are consistent with their ontological stations, and therefore lacking no good suitable in relation to themselves, they are not receptive to motion; hence love in them is the name given to an enduring دائمی and perpetual state of intense intellectual delight and pleasure لذت in the good possessed by them, which is none other than Divine proximity قرب الاهی.
But love can only be found where there is beauty جمال or some good, as it is impossible to love ugliness, in as much as it is ugliness; to elaborate further it can be said that no one desires ugliness knowing it to be ugliness; such that even if someone moved towards something ugly or unpleasant in reality so he does so because he imagines it to be beautiful and pleasing; it is this kind of beauty or good that is deemed an imagined good as opposed to a real one; the greater the beauty of the beloved and the greater the lover's perception ادراک and awareness علم of that beauty, the stronger the intensity of yearning or love; there can be no love if the potential lover is unaware or incapable of apprehending beauty, no matter how beautiful the object; similarly, regardless of how strong the faculties of perception قوہ ادراک and awareness of the potential lover, there can be no love if the object lacks beauty; now a lover who is endowed with the strongest faculties of perception and awareness, in relation to an object of great beauty not possessed by him, will yearn for it with an intensity of yearning proportionate to the object's beauty, and the lover's apprehension and awareness of such beauty in as much as it is beauty; and would endeavor to bring about a union between his essence ذات, and the essence of the beloved by means of motion towards the desired object; but if the essence of the lover is already united متحد with the essence of his beloved, being in possession of the desired object, there will be no movement or yearning for seeking that which is already possessed; but the absence of yearning or seeking does not imply the absence of love; this due to the fact that if love is the unifying force between the lover and the beloved, then the absence thereof would result in the dissolution of the union; but since we know the consequent تالی namely the dissolution of the union to be false, therefore the antecedent مقدم which is the absence of love, must also necessarily be false; because if love is the cause of the bringing together(as Empedocles believed), then it's non-existence عدم must lead to the drifting apart of that which was brought together; moreover yearning for that which is absent cannot exist in a state of union between the lover and his object, and to assert the opposite would be contradictory; this is because yearning implies absence and union is indicative of presence; therefore love in a state of union is not a yearning or a longing for something absent, but a state of intense delight and pleasure in the presence of the beloved, where the intensity of this love or pleasure is directly proportionate to the extent of the object's beauty and the strength of the lover's awareness and perception thereof.
This state of intense delight and pleasure which a lover enjoys and experiences in his essence as a consequence of his union with the essence of the beloved, is what the Philosophers call happiness or tranquility سعادت, known in Greek Philosophy as 'Eudemonia'; since in the opinion of Mullah Sadra as mentioned by him in his magnum opus 'The Four Journeys' اسفار الاربعه, Existence is a gradational reality حقیقت المشککه, such that beauty, goodness, knowledge and perfection all grow in intensity with the intensification in existence to the effect that the station where Existence is the most intense, beauty, goodness, knowledge and perfection are also by virtue of this existential-intensification, at their optimum; this Divine station belongs to The One, the Necessary Being واجب الوجود, who is at once the most Beautiful الجمیل as well as the most Knowledgeable العالم of all beings; The First Truth الحق الاول is cognisant of its Essence as well as the perfections of its Essence; therefore it apprehends its Essence as the most beautiful of all beauties and knows Itself to be the principle مبداء of all beauty, with an apprehension and a knowing that is the most intense of all perceptions; the consequence of this apprehension of the Self by the Self is a most intense and ardent love that far surpasses every other love; since it is the love for the most Beautiful of all beings by the most Knowing of all Knowers.
Therefore the Divine Essence ذات حق loves itself with an infinite intensity because it knows itself, with a most perfect knowing, to be the best of all beings; but this love in the Divine is not a longing or a yearning for some good or perfection which though possible for its Essence, is yet non-existent معدوم for it; because there can be no lacking in that which is necessary from all aspects واجب من جمیع الجھات, and there can be no privation in Pure Goodness خیر محض; lacking nothing in its Essence that is good and perfect, it has no inclination or desire for anything extraneous to its Essence; because there is no good beyond the Essence which is not already existent in the Divine; this love which the Divine Self has for Itself is an intense delight and pleasure resulting in an unbounded and Absolute Happiness بھجت; a happiness that is enduring, eternal and immutable by reason of Divine Immutability ثبات and Eternity اذلیه; a happiness that knows no diminishing and that is not dependent محتاج upon anything external to the Essence; since it possesses the means of its happiness within Itself.
Now since happiness lies in the actual possession or presence حضور of the desired good or perfection coupled with the awareness or knowledge thereof, therefore the greatest possible happiness must be associated with the possession and the apprehension ادراک of the Greatest Good by the most Knowing of all knowers; now it is not a condition شرط for the existence of love or happiness that the essence of the lover and the beloved or the knower and the known معلوم to be ontologically distinct or separate entities in the external reality حقیقت خارجیه; in fact the union between the knower and the known اتحاد بین العاقل و معقول , or the lover and the beloved, is necessary in relation to all self-conscious beings; in fact as Mullah Sadra asserts, this self-consciousness or self-awareness increases as existence becomes more intense and simple; therefore this self-consciousness or self-knowledge is the greatest in the Simplest Reality بسیط الحقیقه, The One; now since the Simplest Reality is all things بسیط الحقیقه کل شئ, as Mullah Sadra famously remarks, it therefore possesses, in a primary manner, all the perfections and goodness possessed derivatively by every other being; since it is the principle مبداء, the origin of all good, from whence all goodness emanates صادر; therefore The One is self-conscious and knows Itself as Absolute Perfection کمال مطلق, and knowing this, loves Itself most intensely; deriving from this love; from this union of the lover and the beloved or the knower and the known; an infinite and boundless happiness.
The conceptual multiplicity or plurality کثرت between the notions of the lover and the beloved or the knower and the known as it exists in the mind, does not necessitate a plurality in the entified or concrete reality حقیقت عینیه as well, since it is possible to intellectually abstract more than one meanings معانی from a single concrete existent; therefore while the notions of the lover and the beloved or the knower and the known are conceptually distinct in the mind but it is not impossible for these concepts to be united in a single essence in reality; therefore God is both the Lover of His Essence and is also beloved by His Essence; He is both the Knower of his Being as well as the known by His Being; without this conceptual multiplicity leading to any real plurality in the Essence.
Hence, The One enjoys the greatest happiness, since its Essence is in Itself the most enjoyable and desirable of all things; it is the most sought after of all objects, without itself seeking any other; as Aristotle states in his 'The Metaphysics' ما بعد الطبیعات, it is the Reality الحق that moves all things without itself being moved; an Unmoved Mover محرک غیر متحرک; Dante echoes this thought in his 'Divine Comedy' in the following words:
"The glory of the One who moves all things
permeates the universe and glows
in one part more and in another less"
Therefore everything that moves is stirred into motion by its love for Divine Beauty جمال الاھی; everything strives through motion to reach its end غایه, which is its good, but the good of all beings emanates from the Absolute Good خیر مطلق, therefore as Avicenna states in the 'Metaphysics of the Healing' الاھیات من الشفا, that all things strive towards the Divine Being, the End of all ends غایت الغایات, the Ultimate Final Cause غایت المنتہیٰ of all that exists.
Mullah Sadra in his 'Divine Proofs' شواھد الربوبیه says that God moves all beings without itself being moved or suffering any change in His Essence, just as a beloved moves the lover and changes his essence, by the attraction and pull exerted by its beauty on the lover, but the beloved itself remains unchanged; similarly the apprehension of the known brings about a change in the essence of the knowing soul نفس مدرکه through the occurrence of knowledge علم or the form صوره of the known within the soul, with the known remaining unchanged despite the change in the Knower; fragments of iron move towards a magnet under the influence of its pull without the magnet undergoing any change or motion itself; such is the irresistible attraction of Divine Beauty, which is the cause of all the change in the natural world, the movement of the heavens and the dance of the stars.
The One loves His Essence and nothing but His Essence, because even His love for creation is also an aspect of His love for His Essence; Ibn Arabi likens the world to a mirror in which the Divine reveals the Attributes صفات of His Self; because the contingent essences ماھیات ممکنه serve as locus's for the disclosure of the Divine Names and Attributes اسماء و صفات الاھیه, each to the extent of its capacity ظرفیه or disposition استعداد; therefore the greater the capacity for receiving divine grace فیض الاهی, the more perfect the existence; the more perfect the existence, the greater a manifestation مظهر it is of the Divine Attributes, and consequently the more loved by The One; proximity to the Divine varies directly in relation to the degree of goodness and perfection possessed by an essence, such that the more perfect an existent happens to be, the nearer it is to God; evil which is a negation of good causes remoteness from the Absolute-Good, such that the more evil or imperfect an existent, the farther it is from God.
Avicenna in his 'Treatise on Love' رساله فی العشق states that all existents موجودات have been divinely inspired with an innate love or yearning زوق for good and perfection کمال; but the nature and the intensity شده of this yearning varies in different existents depending upon the Ontic perfection or imperfection نقص of beings or their existential grade درجه وجود; for instance it depends upon whether they are simple بسیط or composite مرکب, sensible حسی or intelligible عقلانی, subject to motion حرکت and change or immutable, bearers of potentiality قوه or completely actual; in inanimate matter love is nothing but a natural inclination or tendency to move towards its specific good; whereas in animate beings such as man it is a psychic emotion کیف نفسانیه towards a beloved معشوق; now love in the separate intellects عقول مجرده is not a tendency for motion, because these noble realities are already in possession of all the perfections that are consistent with their ontological stations, and therefore lacking no good suitable in relation to themselves, they are not receptive to motion; hence love in them is the name given to an enduring دائمی and perpetual state of intense intellectual delight and pleasure لذت in the good possessed by them, which is none other than Divine proximity قرب الاهی.
But love can only be found where there is beauty جمال or some good, as it is impossible to love ugliness, in as much as it is ugliness; to elaborate further it can be said that no one desires ugliness knowing it to be ugliness; such that even if someone moved towards something ugly or unpleasant in reality so he does so because he imagines it to be beautiful and pleasing; it is this kind of beauty or good that is deemed an imagined good as opposed to a real one; the greater the beauty of the beloved and the greater the lover's perception ادراک and awareness علم of that beauty, the stronger the intensity of yearning or love; there can be no love if the potential lover is unaware or incapable of apprehending beauty, no matter how beautiful the object; similarly, regardless of how strong the faculties of perception قوہ ادراک and awareness of the potential lover, there can be no love if the object lacks beauty; now a lover who is endowed with the strongest faculties of perception and awareness, in relation to an object of great beauty not possessed by him, will yearn for it with an intensity of yearning proportionate to the object's beauty, and the lover's apprehension and awareness of such beauty in as much as it is beauty; and would endeavor to bring about a union between his essence ذات, and the essence of the beloved by means of motion towards the desired object; but if the essence of the lover is already united متحد with the essence of his beloved, being in possession of the desired object, there will be no movement or yearning for seeking that which is already possessed; but the absence of yearning or seeking does not imply the absence of love; this due to the fact that if love is the unifying force between the lover and the beloved, then the absence thereof would result in the dissolution of the union; but since we know the consequent تالی namely the dissolution of the union to be false, therefore the antecedent مقدم which is the absence of love, must also necessarily be false; because if love is the cause of the bringing together(as Empedocles believed), then it's non-existence عدم must lead to the drifting apart of that which was brought together; moreover yearning for that which is absent cannot exist in a state of union between the lover and his object, and to assert the opposite would be contradictory; this is because yearning implies absence and union is indicative of presence; therefore love in a state of union is not a yearning or a longing for something absent, but a state of intense delight and pleasure in the presence of the beloved, where the intensity of this love or pleasure is directly proportionate to the extent of the object's beauty and the strength of the lover's awareness and perception thereof.
This state of intense delight and pleasure which a lover enjoys and experiences in his essence as a consequence of his union with the essence of the beloved, is what the Philosophers call happiness or tranquility سعادت, known in Greek Philosophy as 'Eudemonia'; since in the opinion of Mullah Sadra as mentioned by him in his magnum opus 'The Four Journeys' اسفار الاربعه, Existence is a gradational reality حقیقت المشککه, such that beauty, goodness, knowledge and perfection all grow in intensity with the intensification in existence to the effect that the station where Existence is the most intense, beauty, goodness, knowledge and perfection are also by virtue of this existential-intensification, at their optimum; this Divine station belongs to The One, the Necessary Being واجب الوجود, who is at once the most Beautiful الجمیل as well as the most Knowledgeable العالم of all beings; The First Truth الحق الاول is cognisant of its Essence as well as the perfections of its Essence; therefore it apprehends its Essence as the most beautiful of all beauties and knows Itself to be the principle مبداء of all beauty, with an apprehension and a knowing that is the most intense of all perceptions; the consequence of this apprehension of the Self by the Self is a most intense and ardent love that far surpasses every other love; since it is the love for the most Beautiful of all beings by the most Knowing of all Knowers.
Therefore the Divine Essence ذات حق loves itself with an infinite intensity because it knows itself, with a most perfect knowing, to be the best of all beings; but this love in the Divine is not a longing or a yearning for some good or perfection which though possible for its Essence, is yet non-existent معدوم for it; because there can be no lacking in that which is necessary from all aspects واجب من جمیع الجھات, and there can be no privation in Pure Goodness خیر محض; lacking nothing in its Essence that is good and perfect, it has no inclination or desire for anything extraneous to its Essence; because there is no good beyond the Essence which is not already existent in the Divine; this love which the Divine Self has for Itself is an intense delight and pleasure resulting in an unbounded and Absolute Happiness بھجت; a happiness that is enduring, eternal and immutable by reason of Divine Immutability ثبات and Eternity اذلیه; a happiness that knows no diminishing and that is not dependent محتاج upon anything external to the Essence; since it possesses the means of its happiness within Itself.
Now since happiness lies in the actual possession or presence حضور of the desired good or perfection coupled with the awareness or knowledge thereof, therefore the greatest possible happiness must be associated with the possession and the apprehension ادراک of the Greatest Good by the most Knowing of all knowers; now it is not a condition شرط for the existence of love or happiness that the essence of the lover and the beloved or the knower and the known معلوم to be ontologically distinct or separate entities in the external reality حقیقت خارجیه; in fact the union between the knower and the known اتحاد بین العاقل و معقول , or the lover and the beloved, is necessary in relation to all self-conscious beings; in fact as Mullah Sadra asserts, this self-consciousness or self-awareness increases as existence becomes more intense and simple; therefore this self-consciousness or self-knowledge is the greatest in the Simplest Reality بسیط الحقیقه, The One; now since the Simplest Reality is all things بسیط الحقیقه کل شئ, as Mullah Sadra famously remarks, it therefore possesses, in a primary manner, all the perfections and goodness possessed derivatively by every other being; since it is the principle مبداء, the origin of all good, from whence all goodness emanates صادر; therefore The One is self-conscious and knows Itself as Absolute Perfection کمال مطلق, and knowing this, loves Itself most intensely; deriving from this love; from this union of the lover and the beloved or the knower and the known; an infinite and boundless happiness.
The conceptual multiplicity or plurality کثرت between the notions of the lover and the beloved or the knower and the known as it exists in the mind, does not necessitate a plurality in the entified or concrete reality حقیقت عینیه as well, since it is possible to intellectually abstract more than one meanings معانی from a single concrete existent; therefore while the notions of the lover and the beloved or the knower and the known are conceptually distinct in the mind but it is not impossible for these concepts to be united in a single essence in reality; therefore God is both the Lover of His Essence and is also beloved by His Essence; He is both the Knower of his Being as well as the known by His Being; without this conceptual multiplicity leading to any real plurality in the Essence.
Hence, The One enjoys the greatest happiness, since its Essence is in Itself the most enjoyable and desirable of all things; it is the most sought after of all objects, without itself seeking any other; as Aristotle states in his 'The Metaphysics' ما بعد الطبیعات, it is the Reality الحق that moves all things without itself being moved; an Unmoved Mover محرک غیر متحرک; Dante echoes this thought in his 'Divine Comedy' in the following words:
"The glory of the One who moves all things
permeates the universe and glows
in one part more and in another less"
Therefore everything that moves is stirred into motion by its love for Divine Beauty جمال الاھی; everything strives through motion to reach its end غایه, which is its good, but the good of all beings emanates from the Absolute Good خیر مطلق, therefore as Avicenna states in the 'Metaphysics of the Healing' الاھیات من الشفا, that all things strive towards the Divine Being, the End of all ends غایت الغایات, the Ultimate Final Cause غایت المنتہیٰ of all that exists.
Mullah Sadra in his 'Divine Proofs' شواھد الربوبیه says that God moves all beings without itself being moved or suffering any change in His Essence, just as a beloved moves the lover and changes his essence, by the attraction and pull exerted by its beauty on the lover, but the beloved itself remains unchanged; similarly the apprehension of the known brings about a change in the essence of the knowing soul نفس مدرکه through the occurrence of knowledge علم or the form صوره of the known within the soul, with the known remaining unchanged despite the change in the Knower; fragments of iron move towards a magnet under the influence of its pull without the magnet undergoing any change or motion itself; such is the irresistible attraction of Divine Beauty, which is the cause of all the change in the natural world, the movement of the heavens and the dance of the stars.
The One loves His Essence and nothing but His Essence, because even His love for creation is also an aspect of His love for His Essence; Ibn Arabi likens the world to a mirror in which the Divine reveals the Attributes صفات of His Self; because the contingent essences ماھیات ممکنه serve as locus's for the disclosure of the Divine Names and Attributes اسماء و صفات الاھیه, each to the extent of its capacity ظرفیه or disposition استعداد; therefore the greater the capacity for receiving divine grace فیض الاهی, the more perfect the existence; the more perfect the existence, the greater a manifestation مظهر it is of the Divine Attributes, and consequently the more loved by The One; proximity to the Divine varies directly in relation to the degree of goodness and perfection possessed by an essence, such that the more perfect an existent happens to be, the nearer it is to God; evil which is a negation of good causes remoteness from the Absolute-Good, such that the more evil or imperfect an existent, the farther it is from God.
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