Abstract

I will assume that the plot of the Hayy ibn Yaqzan is already known: Ibn Tufayl supposes that his hero, a philosophical Robinson Crusoe, grew up alone on a desert island, which protected him from any possible corruption, but deprived him at the same time of the benefits of education. Without external help, and thanks to the force of his unaided raison, Hayy reaches the highest peaks of metaphysical insight. He first acquires a perfect knowledge of the physical world. He then deduces from its structure that it was created, in time or together with time, by a Being whom or which he calls, in the wake of Avicenna, the “necessary Being” and that I will call, for the sake of brevity, by the name of God. Hayy discovers that he is called to imitate God, nay to assimilate himself to Him. Now, the last stage but one in Hayy’s progress implies an imitation of the heavenly bodies.