Ibn Tufayl's Hayy Ibn Yaqzan: A Philosophical Tale

by Ibn Tufail

In confronting the diversity apparently inherent in religion the mind may be led to seek an underlying unity by which, in conception if not in manifestation, the seemingly disparate phenomena are bound together. If generously conducted, such a confrontation will grow into toleration, the realization that men’s approaches to God differ but are motivated by the same drive towards a certain kind of higher truth; this is intellectual toleration, not merely living and letting live, but active seeking to understand the beliefs of others and a principled refusal to attribute these to prejudice, superstition or moral laxity—refusal to treat the religion of others as a heresy of one’s own. For the citizen toleration is sufficient. But for the thinker, the analytical and synthetic activity of the mind refuses to confine itself to differentiating among historically defined sects and discovering a unity in their outlook, but seeks deeper, for unities that transcend cultural categories and divisions that cut across historical continuities.