La Quietude de l'intellect: Neoplatonisme et gnose ismaelienne dans l'oeuvre de Hamid ad-Din al-Kirmani (Xe/XIe s.).(book reviews) Author: Smet, Daniel de
Reviewed: Walker, Paul

Caught up in the research for a book of my own on the great Ismaili 
philosopher-da i, Hamid al-Din al-Kirmani, but bemoaning the lack 
of modern investigation and writing about him, I suddenly find on 
my desk this impressive new study by Daniel de Smet which, with one 
highly accomplished stroke of profound scholarship, changes the situation 
completely. Al-Kirmani was, after Abu Ya qub al-Sijistani, the most 
important of the early Ismaili theoreticians. A contemporary of Ibn 
Sina, he was, like him, a representative of those Islamic thinkers 
who betray the influence of al-Farabi despite some critical differences. 
Philosophically, therefore, al-Kirmani must be compared and contrasted 
with both. Among the Ismailis also, he was a proponent of new doctrines 
that are explainable, in part, by his attachment to concepts that 
he shared with these two philosophers in opposition to, for example,
 al-Sijistani. Seldom easy to read and understand, al-Kirmani's writings,
 many of which survive, were, therefore, a major achievement both 
in Ismailism and in Islamic philosophy but surprisingly, until now,
 they have commanded relatively little attention. De Smet, we learn 
belatedly, however, has for some time been actively pursuing his research 
on al-Kirmani and the Ismailis. He has already published several articles 
and short studies which, though most appeared in well-respected venues,
 fell slightly outside the normal purview of Islamic studies per se.

La Quietude de l'Intellect, a title taken from al-Kirmani's greatest work Rahat al- aql ("The Comfort of Mind"), is, however, despite its substantial size, not primarily a study of Ismaili doctrines. Rather, de Smet is interested in the philosophy of, or more accurately in, al-Kirmani's thought. Although he does not ignore its Ismaili context, he concentrates his analysis for the most part on those aspects of what al-Kirmani said that have philosophical interest and value. Most impressive - perhaps the outstanding contribution of this book as a whole - is the range and depth of comparative material de Smet draws upon to elucidate these problems in al-Kirmani. They include a complete array of ancient Greek sources and of any and all the traces of them in Arabic, such as the Liber de causis and the Theologia, and of any other possible precursor for al-Kirmani in a variety of contexts including Jewish texts, such as the Sefer Yasira. Likewise, he does not fail to investigate the parallels (or lack thereof) in the writings of al-Farabi and Ibn Sina and a variety of other Islamic thinkers.

In the majority of what he has to say about al-Kirmani, de Smet follows a course of meticulous scholarly detail that is accurate and uncontestable, but at a number of points his broader interpretation colors his perception and explanation, not without sound reasons but, nevertheless, in opposition to my own previous understanding of the matters at hand. It may be useful, accordingly, to sketch a couple of those areas and to locate them within the larger issues of interpretation that separate the two of us, at least initially and on first impressions.

Subject, of course, to my own reconsideration of the matter from the new viewpoint advocated by de Smet, I had previously thought that al-Kirmani represented within Ismailism an Aristotelian influence much in line with al-Farabi and in opposition to Neoplatonists like al-Sijistani. The differences in the latter case show up with particular force in al-Kirmani's doctrines about God but, most especially, in regard to his concepts of the ten intellects that correspond to the ten heavenly spheres and his denial of the universal soul. Having arrived on the Ismaili scene relatively late, al-Kirmani could not simply dump the Neoplatonism of his predecessors and substitute his own views. Instead, he proposed a carefully crafted compromise that violated neither his own Ismaili beliefs nor his understanding of a philosophy based on a Farabi-like Aristotelianism.

Anyone who has read al-Kirmani, however, will at once perceive how difficult and uneasy such an accommodation must have been. De Smet fully understands the magnitude of this problem as well and he, in fact, provides extensive documentation for it. He, however, prefers to see al-Kirmani as himself a Neoplatonist and thus to trace the suspect or problematic doctrines to Neoplatonic sources - particularly, for him, the writings of Proclus - rather than admit that al-Kirmani was personally (and solely) responsible for the adjustment necessary between the one system of thought - for the Ismailis a newer and more Aristotelian approach - with an older Neoplatonism.

The doctrine of tawhid is a good place to illustrate this trend. Earlier Ismalii doctrine about God's absolutely unqualified transcendence denies, for example, that He is a thing, a substance, or a cause. The Philosophers, in contrast, maintained that the First (God) is a substance and a cause (the cause of all causes, for example). God is the first cause, the prime mover, the wajib al-wujad. The former position finds support in Neoplatonic writings and in the notion of a God beyond being, although there was, nevertheless, some ambiguity about the transcendency of the One both in ancient and in Arabic Neoplatonism. The Ismaili al-Sijistani wanted his God to be utterly removed from intelligibility and yet also to be the creator of the universe by an explicit will and command. In opposition, al-Kirmani, had he adopted outright the doctrine of either al-Farabi or Ibn Sina, should have admitted that God is the first of all causes and all being, the necessarily existent first substance or first being. Instead, he preferred to clean up the messiness in older Ismaili pronouncements by simply exempting the true God entirely from any and all human discourse. For him, when humans speak of God (even in worship and prayer), they talk about an intellectual image, an intelligible that is not really God at all but intellect. What al-Sijistani had begun, al-Kirmani completed with astonishing rigor. God is thus, in his thought, merely a revealed idea - a Deus determinatus, in the words of de Smet - in so far as humans perceive Him or know anything about Him. So radical is this notion wherein God is in reality the intellect that, as al-Kirmani readily admitted, in the wrong hands, it is blasphemously heretical. I suspect here that de Smet is among those with the "wrong hands," although, in truth, it is al-Kirmani who may be at fault. De Smet has followed his source in uncovering the paradox behind this doctrine which, of course, he thereafter exploits fully in a way that I doubt was quite intended by al-Kirmani himself. Moreover, de Smet believes that al-Kirmani's doctrine, which matches neither that of al-Sijistani nor that of the philosophers in Islam, derives ultimately from Proclus' s commentary on the Parmenides, although the relevant portion of this text is now known to us only from a medieval Latin translation. My view, however, is that al-Kirmani had in mind no such profound and radical adjustment but that instead he attempted merely to remove the Divine - and all questions about Him - from the system that includes all else. By so doing he could then construct an explanation of the cosmos more in tune with the account given by Aristotle and his commentators and in which there is, in fact, a first mover and a first cause that commences a series of secondary causes that necessarily depend on it. Once the transcendent God is removed, the rest of his system more or less fits; its ultimate member is properly intelligible as the necessary first being.

If, however, the problem of God and the tawhid is at least moderately clear for al-Kirmani, his discussion of intellect and the resulting causal series is not. Already it has become fairly well known that, unlike his Ismaili predecessors, al-Kirmani favored a doctrine of multiple intellects roughly in accord with the cosmic system proposed by al-Farabi and, before him, Alexander of Aphrodisias. Gone is the single universal intellect of al-Sijistani. Likewise, for al-Kirmani, there is no universal soul. He most certainly had rejected that form of Neoplatonism (as did Ibn Sina, for example: see his comment in his autobiography about the Ismaili doctrines advocated by his own father). In the writings of al-Kirmani, instead of a unique intellect (and a universal soul), there is a descending series of heavenly intellects which number ten in all. His account of them, however, becomes fuzzy, if not muddled, at several crucial points. De Smet not only offers the most comprehensive description and analysis of the whole structure but equally of the many difficulties and ambiguities in its parts. One area of particular difficulty is al-Kirmani's treatment of first intellect, which appears to have a character of its own and has features in common with the universal intellect of the older Ismaili doctrine. De Smet highlights its special status relative to the lesser intellects by labeling it the Intellect (l'Intellect) as opposed to the several Intelligences (les Intelligences) although the Arabic term is the same throughout, aql, uqul. The Intellect is the product of instauration (ib-da) and the Intelligences of emanation (inbi ath). In the order with which the scheme unfolds, there are numerous additional problems of detail. One is the status of the second intellect/intelligence and what relationship, if any, it bears to soul in the older doctrine. But, if second intellect is analogous to soul, where then is nature and what is the position of form and matter? Does al-Kirmani accept a doctrine of a kind of spiritual matter (and form) within his notion of a procession of ten intelligences, perhaps like that found in a portion of the Longer Theologia (as de Smet proposes)? Al-Kirmani' s explanation of the third intelligence is indeed strange, even though incomplete, and may suggest the beginning of a material hypostasis midway in the stream of intelligences. De Smet provisionally interprets the unclear doctrine of al-Kirmani in this instance by a later Tayyibi Ismaili resort to a myth of the rebellion and fall of third intellect to the position of tenth. To be sure, a further problem in al-Kirmani' s account is his unfinished discussion of the Active Intellect (al- aql al-fa al) - normally the tenth intellect - which he seems to accept but to which he assigns no understandable role.

All of these problems and more receive knowledgeable and exhaustive attention in de Smet's chapters on the intellect and the intelligences, respectively, and they thus occupy well more than half of the book. They, along with tawhid, are obviously its main concern; without an accurate understanding of al-Kirmani's doctrine of intellect(s) - a matter resolved, unfortunately, only by resorting to speculating about what he intended in several places where what he actually says is unclear - subjects such as the governance of the sensible world and human society through prophecy lack philosophical cogency. The latter obviously depend on the former. While that is true, however, there is more that needs to be said about al-Kirmani's doctrines and I find also that certain elements of de Smet's elucidation appear strained and perhaps forced. Nevertheless, he has carefully laid out the ground and described the problems admirably. His study of al-Kirmani has set a truly enviable standard. It cannot and should not be ignored by anyone interested in Ismaili thought, on the one hand, or the influences of al-Farabi and his school, on the other. If a few of de Smet's solutions can be questioned, a better answer will require a great deal more thought and work. As for al-Kirmani's future in modern scholarship, this book is a splendid beginning and a major achievement.

PAUL E. WALKER CHICAGO