From Bodily Need to Care: Natural Resource use in Ibn Tufayl’s Hayy ibn Yaqzan

Abstract

Ibn Tufayl’s Hayy ibn Yaqzan places the natural world at the centre of bodily survival, learning, self-discipline, and philosophical ascent. This study examines how bodily need is regulated through the selection, consumption, and care of natural resources. A purposive textual corpus was constructed from six episodes in the Arabic text connecting bodily or vital need with food, plants, animals, water, or resource use. The passages were analysed qualitatively through a functional discourse-semiotic procedure tracking five elements: sign, need, interpretation, decision, and consequence/care. The analysis identifies three linked movements. First, nourishment is framed as necessary for preserving the living body. Second, Hayy regulates consumption through the kind, quantity, and timing of food while considering seed viability, resource abundance, regenerative capacity, and avoidance of depletion. Third, the capacity used to recognize hunger and bodily weakness expands into recognition of thirst, injury, and deprivation in plants and animals, prompting watering, feeding, and removal of harm. The narrative thus moves from bodily need to regulated consumption and then to care for living beings. These practices should not be treated as a modern theory of sustainability or as clinical dietary guidance. Rather, they provide a historical-conceptual model linking dietary sufficiency, resource regeneration, and care within a premodern account of human well-being.