Ibn Tufayl – författare

The Arabic philosophical fable "Hayy Ibn Yaqzan" is a classic of medieval Islamic philosophy. Ibn Tufayl (d. 1185), an Andalusian philosopher, tells of a happy child raised by a doe on an equatorial island who grows up to discover the truth about the world and his own place in it, unaided - but also unimpeded - by society, language, or tradition. Hayy's discoveries about God, nature, and man challenge the values of the culture in which the tale was written as well as those of every contemporary society. Translator Lenn E. Goodman's commentary places "Hayy Ibn Yaqzan" in its historical and philosophical context. The volume features a new preface and index, as well as an updated bibliography.

"And he continued to seek annihilation from himself, and sincerity in witnessing the truth, until that came to him, and absent from his remembrance and thought were the heavens and the earth and what is between them, and all spiritual forms and corporeal forces, and all forces that separate from materials, which are the essences that know the true existence, and his self was absent from the sum of those essences. And everything vanished and vanished, and became scattered in vain, and all that remained was the One, the True, the Existent, the Immutable Existent." A symbolic story based on the fact that man can elevate himself from the tangible to the intelligible, to God, and that knowledge requires striving and determination to discover it. The senses and material things lead to the self and morals, and annihilation in God is based only on knowledge and devotion to it. Let the truth be revealed from behind the clouds, and let us ascend from the existing to the creator, and from creatures to the Creator.