Ibn Tufayl's Hayy Ibn Yaqzan: A Philosophical Tale

by Ibn Tufail

Essences cannot be distilled in any ordinary device, but the thought-experiment is one means of capturing them. In science, a thought-experiment postulates a hypothetical situation and then tries to “predict” the natural outcome. The same technique has been used for centuries by philosophers grasping for the intangible. If you want to reveal the essence of man, postulate a situation in which that essence is thought to be most able to develop purely, unimpeded by foreign influences. Make the environment natural, make it primitive and simple, fill it with all the concrete conditions we associate with essentiality. Then let the imagination go to work to discover what will follow, what seems most reasonable, what seems most likely. The poetry is no longer a collection of images but has become drama: symbolic figures have taken roles as active, even causal factors; and they can work out for themselves the dialectic of the action. The philosopher’s hope is that if any intellectual process can capture any fraction of the essence of man, the resolution of this dialectic can.