Huwa-lā-Huwa: the circle of being and the correlative ontology of Ibn ʿArabī by Dr Gregory Vandamme

The metaphysical perspective of Ibn ʿArabī oscillates constantly between the distinction of the different relations that determine being, and the constant return to the indistinction of being itself. According to Ibn ʿArabī, only perplexity (ḥayra) is suited to the apperception of being, while the distinction and articulation of the relations that weave themselves into being seem, for their part, to require a mode of knowledge that allows for differentiation.

This presentation will show how the articulation of the various elements of Ibn ʿArabī’s metaphysical system is based on a “correlative ontology”, according to which existing realities are distinguished within a web of relations woven within the single being, while having no existence of their own, since they ultimately refer to the relation that being maintains with itself. It will then explain how this correlative ontology allows Ibn ʿArabī to found different levels of relationships, within which the notions of Creation and Divinity and their different modalities of correlation emerge.

This circular conception of being, in which the fundamental status of existing things is qualifiable only by perplexity, corresponds also to the circular movement that Ibn ʿArabī associates with “the perplexity of the muḥammadan” (ḥayrat al-muḥammadī). This movement of rotation around the pole of being, by which the latter is envisaged in an infinitely renewed way, is opposed by Ibn ʿArabī to the “linear” path (mustaṭīl), which for its part always necessarily relates to a particular determination of being, and thereby prevents it from being envisaged in itself.