چکیده:
This article discusses the apparent contradiction between the corporeal nature of human beings, which points to a bodily nature for their happiness, and the belief of many monotheists that happiness consists in the incorporeal state of union with God. The article focuses on the works of two important Muslim and Christian thinkers, Ibn Tufayl and Thomas Aquinas, and explores the solutions they provide in this regard.
خلاصه ماشینی:
Adam Wood 1 Received: 2014-10-01; Accepted: 2014-12-01 This article discusses the apparent contradiction between the corporeal nature of human beings, which points to a bodily nature for their happiness, and the belief of many monotheists that happiness consists in the incorporeal state of union with God. The article focuses on the works of two important Muslim and Christian thinkers, Ibn Tufayl and Thomas Aquinas, and explores the solutions they provide in this regard.
Keywords: union with God, happiness, corporeal, Ibn Tufayl, Aquinas, resurrection Introduction I have a vivid childhood memory of asking my father what heaven would be like, while riding in the front seat of the car on a cross-country road-trip.
In the second section of the paper, I’ll examine what solution Ibn Tufayl appears to favor in response to the paradox, together with the way a different medieval monotheist, Thomas Aquinas, adopts a very similar solution.
1 Just as McGinn believes there is a good reason why we’ll never be able to solve the hard problem of consciousness, Ibn Tufayl may believe there’s a good reason why we cannot understand how Beatitude could involve both bodily duties and disembodied union with God. Ibn Tufayl appears to insist that many distinct individual humans, such as Hayy and Absal, are able simultaneously to become one with God. He acknowledges that this might appear to violate the "axiom of reason that a thing must be either one or many" (151/125).