الوصف
Absract: The importance of classifying sciences and knowledge for Muslim philosophers and scientists is apparent in several ways. The first is that the question of classification was not for them an arbitrary matter, but rather was subject to scientific criteria through which they establish these sciences and determine their ranks, such as the criterion of need and benefit, the criterion of reliability, or the criterion of nobility. The second way through which the importance of classifying the sciences appears is that this classification mirrored the extent to which these philosophers in Islamic contexts practiced the sciences that they inherited from the Greeks and others. As for the third and most interesting way, it is that the classification of sciences was a self-training to which the philosopher is subjected through a specific educational and cognitive path, which can increase or decrease, as he passes from one science to another. Although the Andalusian philosopher Ibn Bājja (d. 1138) did not provide us with any work dedicated to dealing with the question of the classification of knowledge, he nevertheless traced an epistemological path that can be considered a model of self-training, through his classification and arrangement of sciences on the one hand, and through the impact of this classification on his philosophical writings on the other. The importance of examining the question of the classification of sciences according to Ibn Bājja appears insofar as it reveals to us his conceptions of the body of knowledge and sciences known in his time and of the nature of the relations that link these sciences and knowledge. This is what this article shows, guided by these three questions: To what extent is Ibn Bājja’s model separated from the models of the classifying sciences known in his time? What is the value that Ibn Bājja gave to the question of classification of sciences in his logical and theoritical works? And what are the implications of this classification on Ibn Bājja’s philosophy itself?
Keywords: Principles, quaesitum, concept and assent, theoretical sciences, mathematical sciences, nobility of the subject matter, standard of reliability, Ibn Bājja’s Commentary on Aristotele’s de Animalibus.
