Ebook: Islamic Naturalism and Mysticism: A Philosophic Study of Ibn Ṭufayl’s Ḥayy Bin Yaqẓān

The book itself deals with the philosophy of the brilliant but virtually unknown Islamic thinker, Ibn Tufayl (1100-1184) who lived in Spain. The substance of the book involves Professor Hawi's able exposition of this philosopher's point of view as found in his employment of the romantic tale: Hayy Bin Yaqzan. For, in a way reminiscent of Plato, Tufayl used this strange tale to present the various stages of his own personal philosophical development. This development, in fact, involves three stages: (1) his early naive realism; (2) his later scientific naturalism - which actually, in certain respects, anticipates certain significant scientific concepts such as the theory of evolution; and (3), finally, due largely to the impact of the great Moslem philosophic mystic, al-Ghazzali, his conversion to an extreme form of mysticism and pantheism.