The mythic substrate of Ibn al-'Arabi's immutable entities (al-a'yan al-thabita).

• Author: Lawson, Todd
• Position: Essay

The Qurans sacred myth of the prim ordial covenant recounted at Q7:172, it is suggested here, is the most immed iate source for the di stinct ive and sometimes otherw ise puzzling technical term al-a'yan al-thiibita ("Immutable Entit ies") in the ontological discourse of Muhyi l-Din Ibn al-cArabi (d. 1240), al-shaykh al-akbar.

The well-known, if obscure and mysterious, technical term al-a'yan al-thabita ("Immutable Entities") from Ibn al-'Araba's incalculably influential lexicon has been the subject of numerous learned discussions over the years, especially by Western students of the Akbarian project. A summary of those discussions and individual critiques and analyses would be a useful project. In the meantime I would like to point to a great and invisible elephant in the room of this particular problem. It is generally known and accepted that the term was appropriated by Ibn al-'Arabi from the Mu'tazila--he told us so. And, it may even be that one of the attractions of the term for our author was its unmistakable "scientific" (not to say scientistic) positivistic "ring." This would help balance its notoriously aporetic quality. Ultimately, to say that the Immutable (or Fixed) Entities "begin" as objects of God's knowledge before their existence does not give one much to hold on to. Admirable and useful discussions in which the difference between the Immutable Entities and, say, Plato's Ideas has been explained have, in fact, deepened the problem. (1) If the Immutable Entities are not Universals--and they are not--then what are theyh What are these miniature pre-eternal Universal-like "things" and where did they come from?

The difference between the Immutable Entities and the Universals is that the latter are general: horseness applies to all horses. All horses participate in a universal "horseness." The Immutable Entities, however, are individually immutable. That is, to extend the example, all horses--in the case of the Immutable Entities--participate in a general horseness but each horse also participates in and develops out of an individual, specific, and "personal" eidetic reality that is called by Ibn al-'Arabi an Immutable Entity and has relevance and "existence" for that individual alone. The source for such an entity or reality must be sought not in Greek thought but in the Quran, namely, the culturally definitive mytheme in the covenant verse at Q 7:172. Granted, the scenario there is populated by only two types of being: God and...