Philosophical Themes
Hayy ibn Yaqdhan dealt with many philosophical themes, especially in regards to epistemology. The thoughts expressed in the novel can be found "in different variations and to different degrees in the books of Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Isaac Newton, and Immanuel Kant."
Ibn Tufail's Hayy ibn Yaqdhan was written as both a continuation of Avicenna's version of the story and as a response to al-Ghazali's The Incoherence of the Philosophers, which had criticized many of Avicenna's views. Ibn Tufail cited al-Farabi, Avicenna's Avicennism and al-Ghazali's Ash'ari theology as the main influences behind his work, as well as his teacher Ibn Bajjah (Avempace), Ibn Tumart, and Sufism.
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“I suppose you think that persons who are as old as your father and myself are always thinking about very grave things, but I know that we are meditating the same old themes that we did when we were ten years old, only we go more gravely about it.”
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