PAUSE Flow's "Nihil": Analyzing Ibn Sina's Philosophy of the Soul
Welcome back, everyone, to our continuing analysis of Pause Flow’s “Nihil.” After the great response to Part 1, we’re diving deeper into the philosophical depths of his rap. As always, we’re exploring the profound ideas woven into hip-hop music.
Between Faith and Doubt: Pause Flow Channels Ibn Sina
PAUSE continues in the context of the conflict between faith and atheism and gives us an argument used by a believer, situated within Islamic philosophy. This argument goes back to one of the most important philosophers in Islamic history, who wasn’t just a philosopher but also a doctor, astronomer, and jurist: Ibn Sina, also known in the West as Avicenna. He was titled “Al-Sheikh Al-Ra’ees” (The Chief Master) and “The Third Teacher of Humanity,” placing him in the most esteemed lineage of thinkers after Aristotle (the First Teacher) and Al-Farabi (the Second), underscoring his monumental contributions to philosophy and science.
PAUSE tells us in Nihil, rapping in Darija:
"3ndna Ibnou sina, na9ch rou7 wljassad hadi moudda, Bla maykfer blkhal9 bla maychkel ta chi 3orda."
This translates to: “We have Ibn Sina, who discussed the soul and the body long time ago, without denying the Creator, without even a hint of it.”
WATCH Pause Flow – Nihil (Official Audio) | uploaded on Mar 12, 2019
Ibn Sina: The 'Floating Man' Thought Experiment
Here, he immediately brings up an issue Ibn Sina was concerned with: the issue of the soul’s immortality after death and its spirituality. Ibn Sina saw the soul as a great mystery within a human being, not something just anyone can understand except through intellect and contemplation.
He used to say: Imagine with me a human being born suddenly, finding themselves suspended in space. They see nothing, hear nothing, they don’t feel their body, not their hands nor their feet, they don’t even know if they have a body. Yet, this person would still feel themselves as “I exist.”
Here, Ibn Sina said: See? This “sense of existence” didn’t come from hands or feet or senses; it came from within, from the self, from the soul living inside the human being.
Meaning, even if we completely cut off the body’s connection with the world (via sensory deprivation), the soul would still be aware of itself, sensing its own existence; it doesn’t need the body to know itself. This thought experiment, often called the “Floating Man” or “Flying Man” argument, is central to his proof of the soul’s non-materiality.
Ibn Sina: The Soul as a Luminous Substance
And from this, Ibn Sina drew a very beautiful conclusion: The soul is not from this material world, not from flesh or blood, but rather it is a luminous substance descending from a higher world, coming to live a temporary experience in the body.
And the body, in his view, is like a prison or a cage, and the soul is like a celestial bird that descended to live amidst the earth. And when the body dies, this bird does not die; on the contrary, it flies and returns to the world from which it came.
So, Ibn Sina didn’t just say the soul exists based on faith alone, but he demonstrated it through reason. He said: The body changes, the flesh alters, but my “I” remains the same from when I was small until I grew old. Doesn’t this indicate that there is a constant, unchanging element? And this element is the soul.
Pause – Abstrait (Official Audio) | Another philosophically rich track by Pause Flow, uploaded on Nov 20, 2018
Conclusion: The Argument for Constancy on the Soul vs. Body
Finally, Ibn Sina’s message was very profound:
You are not just a moving body; you are a soul experiencing life through the body. And death, for him, is not an end, but the return of the origin to its origin. And here, as we saw, PAUSE mentions one of the arguments used by a believer in the context of the debate between faith and atheism, which is the main theme of the track “Nihil.
