Arabic philosophy

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(Asfa¯ r VI, 277.1–3),

Existence has degrees of existentiality, and Being possesses different modes,

some of which are more perfect and more noble, and others which are more

imperfect and more base, such as the divine realm, the intelligible realm,

the psychic realm, and the natural realm of existence.

Mull¯a S. adr¯a is thus not caught between monism and pluralism, but

rather seeks to escape the paradigms offered by Ibn ‘Arab¯ı by attempting

to produce a synthesis based on the notion of grades of intensity

within a singular reality. Different intensities mean different degrees

of content in our experience of things, corresponding to greater and

lesser degrees of the manifestation of Being.

epistemology: via negativa and

realist skepticism

One epistemological result of monism and the recognition of the

utter existential poverty of the self is the elevation of the idea that

“one does not know,” of “ignorance” that is typical of apophasis in

the Platonic tradition. In the Neoplatonic tradition, there are two

types of knowledge: philosophical insight and self-knowledge (intuition).

But they are not necessarily opposed to each other. Similarly

in the thought of Ibn ‘Arab¯ı, direct experience (dhawq) and disclosure

(kashf) is contrasted with reflection and reason (‘aql), while

necessary and certain knowledge is contrasted with probabilistic

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240 sajjad h. rizvi

understanding (Fut. I, 319.28–35). But in Mull¯a S. adr¯ a, they are complementary,

as we have seen above in his definition of the quest for

truth.

The Socratic maxim“I know that I do not know” is quoted approvingly

by Ibn ‘Arab¯ı and is linked to unwitting self-awareness (Fut.

II, 84.11, III, 22.12). Similarly, true knowledge is ignorance (Fut. I,

728.18–20). Ibn ‘Arab¯ı says (Fut. II, 552.25–27):

He who has not knowledge imagines that he knows Reality/God but that is

invalid, since a thing cannot be known except through the positive attributes

of itself, and our knowledge of this is impossible, so our knowledge of Reality

is impossible. So glory be to He who is known by the fact that He cannot be

known. The knower of God does not try to get beyond his rank. He knows

that he is one of those who do not know.

A further reason why knowledge of Reality is so elusive is that

knowledge of Reality would be infinite, since Reality itself is infinite

and is manifest through infinite relationships. Knowledge of these

relationships would require that our finite minds grasp infinity, but

this is impossible (Fut. II, 671.5).

Being and existence are elusive for Mull¯a S. adr¯a too. This is a paradoxical

result of the doctrine common in medieval philosophy that

existence is an immediate notion that arises naturally in the mind –

it is both the most common and immediate of notions and yet a true

understanding of its very reality is hidden and undisclosed (Asfa¯ r I,

260). Thus Mull¯a S. adr¯a says in the Four Journeys:

The Pure One is the cause of all things and not all things. Rather it is the

principle of everything and not everything. All things are in it and not in it.

All things flow from it and subsist and are sustained by it and return to it.

(Asfa¯ r VII, 272–3)

This paradoxical nature of the relationship between Being and its

existents results in a problem. If Being is elusive and yet immediate,

how can one know whether one has grasped it? For Mull¯a S. adr¯ a, the

desire to “grasp” an existent in the mind is to reify and essentialize

it. As such it no longer remains concrete “existence” but becomes

an essence in themind (Asfa¯ r I, 37). Thus one cannot knowexistence

through intellection.

A further result of the experiential path and the doctrine of

monism is that the perception of the heart dominates over the

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Mysticism and philosophy 241

perception of the mind, or intellection, in Ibn ‘Arab¯ı; for it is only

the heart (following a famous saying of the Prophet) that can embrace

Reality (Fut. III, 129, 250). This contrastmirrors the contrast between

learned knowledge and its limitations and gnosis of reality (ma‘rifa),

which is a result of grace and disclosure in the heart: it is practical,

pious, and leads to truth along a mystical path (Fut. II, 316.9–10).

soteriology: a salvational psychology

The philosophical focus of our two thinkers is the notion and reality

of Being. Everything follows from its inquiry. It forces us to investigate

its nature, its origins, and its culmination. The soul as a psychic

being needs to understand its ontological beginning and end. It

is a key tenet of Neoplatonism that the physical world is not the

proper abode of the soul. The soul must revert to its origin and principle

the One, the ultimate source of its being, and thus be saved

from the vicissitudes and confines of the material and the base. It is

the practice of philosophy, the combination of discursive and nondiscursive

thought with intuition and experience of the One, that

transforms and moves the soul toward this goal. It is in this sense

that later Islamic philosophy combines the practice of philosophizing

and mystical experience to effect a soteriological change in the

soul. As such, later Islamic philosophy in its approach to philosophy

and mysticism represents a strong continuity with late antique

Neoplatonic traditions.

A healthy soul, one that moves toward its salvation and goal, is

a soul unfettered and unobstructed by divisions within itself. It is

a unity that has a plurality of functions and faculties, a psychological

expression of the metaphysics of monism and the gradation of

phenomenal realities in the thought of Mull¯a S. adr¯a. While the soul

may be pulled in different directions by its desires, beliefs, and faculties,

the training of philosophy is designed to reintegrate it and

discipline it. Philosophy is a transformative discipline designed to

create a particular kind of self/soul.

Two crucial practices and ideas provide the means of the integration

of the soul. The first is love (the eros of the Platonic tradition).54

The second is focus upon immutable moral principles and objective

norms,55 provided by the desire to seek the return to the One and

the beatitude of experiencing the presence of the One. As we have

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242 sajjad h. rizvi

seen, the practice of mysticism and quest for the experience of Reality

is a process whereby one can escape this world and be “saved.”

Philosophical discourse and practice for Mull¯a S. adr¯a is precisely the

means for this salvation. Thus a key feature of the later traditions of

philosophy in Islam after their encounter with mysticism is a reappropriation

of the soteriological elements in the Neoplatonic tradition.

These were among the elements of Neoplatonism most conducive

to a reconciliation with a religious worldview, a worldview

that seeks to understand the nature of reality by discerning both a

meaning for humanity, and an account of salvation and sustenance

in an everlasting life.

notes

1 Making sense of revelation and its product, revealed texts, is a central

hermeneutic concern of Muslim mystics and philosophers. There are

established genres ofS.

u¯ fı¯ and philosophical exegeses of the Qur’a¯n and

the prophetic dicta, and both Ibn ‘Arab¯ı and Mull¯a S. adr¯a wrote such

exegeses as primary expressions of their mystical intuition and philosophy.

For a more general attempt by philosophers to make sense

of the “given” of revelation, see J. E. Gracia, How can we Know

what God Means? (London: 2002); W. Alston, Divine Nature and

Human Language: Essays in Philosophical Theology (Ithaca, NY: 1989);

and R. Swinburne, Revelation: From Metaphor to Analogy (Oxford:

1992).

2 The same word in Arabic renders these two terms, al-h. aq¯ıqa, and

thinkers have played upon the ambiguity of the Arabic term.

3 Al-Ghaza¯ lı¯, al-Munqidh min al-d. ala¯ l, ed. F. Jabre (Beirut: 1959), 16–40;

cf. E. Ormsby, “The Taste of Truth: The Structure of Experience in al-

Ghaza¯ lı¯’s al-Munqidh min al-d. ala¯ l,” in W. Hallaq and D. Little (eds.),

Islamic Studies Presented to Charles J. Adams (Leiden: 1991), 133–4.

4 Al-Ghaz¯ al¯ı, al-Munqidh, 25–7.

5 Al-Ghaz¯ al¯ı, al-Munqidh, 40.10–11.

6 See, for example,O. Leaman, “Philosophy versus Mysticism: An Islamic

Controversy,” in M. McGhee (ed.), Philosophy, Religion and the Spiritual

Life (Cambridge: 1992), 177–87; W. Chittick, “Mysticism versus

Philosophy in Earlier Islamic Philosophy,” Religious Studies 17 (1981),

87–104.

7 Myintellectual debt to the seminal work of Pierre Hadot and Andr’e-Jean

Voelke (and to a certain extent, Martha Nussbaum) for this conception

of philosophy as therapy of the soul, and as praxis oriented toward

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Mysticism and philosophy 243

salvation, should be clear enough not to need indication. But for references,

see P. Hadot, Philosophy as a Way of Life, trans. M. Chase

(Oxford: 1995), esp. 49–70, 81–125, 264–75, and What is Ancient Philosophy?

trans. M. Chase (Cambridge, MA: 2002), esp. 15–21, 55–233.

8 See S. Rappe, Reading Neoplatonism: Non-discursive Thinking in the

Texts of Plotinus, Proclus, and Damascius (Cambridge: 2000); H. D.

Saffrey, Le n´eoplatonisme apr`es Plotin II (Paris: 2000), 129–41; D.

Taormina, Jamblique: critique de Plotin et Porphyre (Paris: 1999), esp.

133ff.

9 Of particular significance here are two texts of Iamblichus, On the

Pythagorean Life and his commentary on the Pythagorean Golden

Verses, the latter of which was available in Arabic. See H. Daiber (ed.),

Neuplatonische Pythagorica in arabischem Gewande: der Kommentar

des Iamblichus zu den Carmina Aurea: ein verlorener griechischer Text

in arabischer U¨ berlieferung (Amsterdam: 1995).

10 Cf.Walbridge [155]. Of course, onemight say that this is more accurately

a Platonic intention of philosophy, and indeed this is how it was understood

in Islam, as an expression of the thought of the “divine Plato”

(al-Afl ¯ at.

u¯ n al-ila¯hı¯). For an argument that the goal of Platonic philosophy

is, through providing metaphysical foundations, the articulation of

phronˆesis and ethics of eudaimonia, see J.M. Rist, Real Ethics: Rethinking

the Foundations of Morality (Cambridge: 2002), esp. chs. 1 and 2;

for an alternative reading of the Platonic texts, see J. Annas, Platonic

Ethics, Old and New (Ithaca, NY: 2000).

11 Hadot, What is Ancient Philosophy? 81.

12 The best spiritual and intellectual biography of him is C. Addas,

Quest for the Red Sulphur: The Life of Ibn ‘Arab¯ı, trans. P. Kingsley

(Cambridge: 1993).

13 Ibn ‘Arab¯ı [163] and [164]. Hereafter cited as Fus.

¯ us.

and Fut. respectively.

14 Like al-Ghaz¯ al¯ı, he often attacks philosophers for holding heretical

views. See Ibn ‘Arab¯ı, Fut. III, 401.20, 536.16–18.

15 On the accusation, see Alexander Knysh, Ibn ‘Arab¯ı in the Later Islamic

Tradition: TheMaking of a Polemical Image in Medieval Islam(Albany,

NY: 1999), 113–17.

16 Rosenthal [169], 5–7.

17 Given Ibn ‘Arab¯ı’s fondness for the coincidentia oppositorum, this term

is very apt for him. See H. Corbin, Creative Imagination in the Sufism

of Ibn ‘Arab¯ı, trans. R. Manheim (Princeton, NJ: 1969), 205–15.

18 Philip Merlan, Monopsychism, Mysticism, Metaconsciousness: Problems

of the Soul in the Neoaristotelian and Neoplatonic Traditions

(The Hague: 1963), 20–1.

19 Mulla¯ S. adra¯ [166]; hereafter Asfa¯ r.

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244 sajjad h. rizvi

20 R. Sorabji, Emotion and Peace of Mind (Oxford: 2000), 17–19; Hadot,

Philosophy as a Way of Life, 87–90.

21 Hadot, What is Ancient Philosophy? 6.

22 Sorabji, Emotion and Peace of Mind, 159–60.

23 This quite apposite example is suggested by Sorabji, Emotion and Peace

of Mind, 161.

24 Sorabji, Emotion and Peace of Mind, 13; Hadot, Philosophy as aWay of

Life, 84.

25 On which see Annas, Platonic Ethics, ch. 3; D. Sedley, “The Idea of

Godlikeness,” inG. Fine (ed.), Plato, II: Ethics, Politics, Religion and the

Spiritual Life (Oxford: 1999), 309–28, and J. Domanski, La philosophie:

th´eorie ou mani `ere de vivre (Paris: 1996), 5–9.

26 Plato, Theaetetus, 176a6–b3, trans. Sedley, “The Idea of Godlikeness,”

312.

27 See Plato, Laws, 716c.

28 Evinced by Mull ¯a S. adr ¯a, Asf ¯ ar I, 21.6, 22.4; cf. Ibn ‘Arab¯ı, Fus.

¯ us.

55.

29 Hadot, What is Ancient Philosophy? 69.

30 Sedley, “The Idea of Godlikeness,” 320.

31 See Ibn ‘Arab¯ı, Fut. I, 118.9, II, 187.17–18. However, instead of explicitly

referring to ta’alluh, Ibn ‘Arab¯ı prefers talking about acquiring divine

virtue because becoming godlike may easily be misunderstood in a

strictly monotheistic society.

32 The connection was suggested by Walbridge [155], 90–1.

33 Cf. Asfa¯ r III, 446.

34 Asfa¯ r I, 22. The complementarity of philosophical discourse and spiritual

practices is stressed in the Illuminationist tradition. Suhraward¯ı

himself makes this explicit in Suhraward¯ı [152], 162.11–15.

35 Avicenna used the term in al-Isha¯ ra¯ t wa al-tanbı¯ha¯ t, ed. M. Shiha¯bı¯

(Tehran: 1996), vol. III, 399.21, in his discussion of the separable intellects.

His commentatorNas.ı¯r al-Dı¯n al-T. u¯ sı¯ (d. 1274) explained that this

method of philosophy combined discourse (bah.

th)with intuition (kashf)

and experience (dhawq) – see vol. III, 401.3. Avicenna’s student, Bahmany

¯ar, also stressed the significance of contemplation as a higher cognitive

form than mere discourse – see Kit ¯ ab al-tah.

s.

¯ıl, ed.M. Mut.ahhar¯ı

(Tehran: 1996), 816.16–17.

36 S. J. D. ¯ Ashtiy¯an¯ı, Sharh. -i muqaddima-yi Qays.

ar¯ı bar Fus.

¯ us.

al-h. ikam

(Tehran: 1991), 280.

37 Mulla¯ S. adra¯ ,Mafa¯ tı¯h. al-ghayb, with scholia of ‘Alı¯ Nu¯ rı¯, ed.M. Kha¯ javı¯

(Tehran: 1984), 41.

38 Ibn ‘Arabı¯ says that al-Futu¯ h. a¯ t al-Makkiyya (The Meccan Revelations)

is based on mystical experience and divine revelation (kashf); see Fut.,

II, 389, 432.

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Mysticism and philosophy 245

39 The inadequacy and superfluity of reason is indicated in his gloss upon

the Qur’ ¯anic description of the Prophet Muh.ammad as umm¯ı (understood

to mean “illiterate”). Knowledge is acquired not from the books

of philosophers but from prophetic experience and disclosure. See Ibn

‘Arab¯ı, Fut. II, 595.32, 644.

40 Mulla¯ S. adra¯ , Asra¯ r al-a¯ya¯ t wa anwa¯ r al-bayyina¯ t, with marginalia of

‘Alı¯ Nu¯ rı¯, ed. M. Kha¯ javı¯ (Tehran: 1984), 132.5–7.

41 Mull ¯a S. adr ¯a, ¯Iq¯ az.

al-na¯ ’imı¯n, ed. M. Mu’ayyadı¯ (Tehran: 1982),

69.2–19.

42 Ibn ‘Arab¯ı himself never used the term, but the concept is made explicit

from commentaries on his work, especially the Fus.

¯ us.

, and from the

work of his disciples and followers, beginning with his stepson S.

adr

al-D¯ın al-Qunaw¯ı (d. 1274). See Chittick [160], 3.

43 The solitude of Being that the divine qua unconditioned reality possesses

explains the desire and need for it to create something by which

it may be known, the prime creation myth of the school of unity of

being expressed in the divine words expressed on the tongue of the

Prophet Muh. ammad, “I was a hidden Treasure (kanzan makhfiyyan)

but was not known. So I loved to be known and I created the creation

and made myself known to them. Then they came to know

me.” Love thus becomes the impulse for creation. See Ibn ‘Arab¯ı,

Fut. II, 232.11–12, inter alia, and Kita¯b al-awra¯d al-usbu¯ ‘ (Istanbul:

1299 A.H.), trans. P. Beneito and S. Hirtenstein as The Seven Days

of the Heart (Oxford: 2000), 115, in which he supplicates that God

may bring him to contemplate the “solitude of your Being” (wah.

dat

wuju¯ dika).

44 The existential poverty is asserted through the recognition that man

does not even possess his own existence and that when he seeks out

his existence or that of any phenomenal object, he only finds God (as in

Qur’ ¯an 24:39). See Ibn ‘Arab¯ı, Fut. ch. 328 on the Muh. ammadan Presence

(al-h. ad.

ra al-Muh. ammadiyya), III, 105.8–25.

45 See ‘Abd al-Razz¯aq K¯ash¯an¯ı, Is.

t.

il ¯ ah.

¯ at al-s.

u¯ fiyya, ed. A. Sprenger, repr.,

A Glossary of Sufi Technical Terms (London: 1991), 28.

46 Asfa¯ r I, 68–9.

47 Ibn ‘Arabı¯, al-Tadbı¯ra¯ t al-Ila¯hiyya, in Kleinere Schriften des Ibn ‘Arabı¯,

ed. J.Nyberg (Leiden: 1919), 208: “God is found [exists,mawju¯ d] and we

are existents (mawju¯ da¯ t). If we did not conceive of our own existence,

we would not have been able to cognize the importance of Being nor

affirmthat the Creator exists. He created in us the faculty of knowledge

so we realized that he possesses the attribute of knowledge and that he

is knowing, and similarly through our life we knew that he possesses

life.”

246 sajjad h. rizvi

48 Ibn ‘Arab¯ı, Fut. II, 60, 426–7, III, 77, 150, 354, 420, 444. For a discussion

of the pseudo-Empedoclean aspects of this doctrine, see D. de Smet,

Empedocles arabus: une lecture n´eoplatonicienne tardive (Brussels:

1998).

49 Ibn ‘Arab¯ı, Fus.

¯ us.

I, 112, 219; Fut. II, 394, 426. The Breath of the Merciful

is a reference to the creative breath when God blew his spirit into Adam;

see Qur’ ¯an 15:29.

50 Ibn ‘Arabı¯, al-Tadbı¯ra¯ t al-Ila¯hiyya, 122–3.

51 This term is first used by Ibn Barraj ¯an (d. 1191) of Seville as attested by

Ibn ‘Arab¯ı, Fut. II, 60.12, 104.6.

52 Ibn ‘Arabı¯, Insha¯ ’ al-dawa¯ ’ir, in La production des cercles, trans. P.

Fenton andM. Gloton, ed. J. Nyberg (Paris: 1996), 5.10–16 in the Arabic.

53 Suhraward¯ı [152], 45–51.

54 See Rist, Real Ethics, 95ff.

55 Rist, Real Ethics, 117.

tony street

12 Logic

A chapter on logic in an introductory book on Islamic philosophy

could legitimately be expected to cover a range of topics, from the

argument techniques used by ninth-century theologians and jurists

to the semantical analyses of the fourteenth-century grammarians.1

But by the late tenth century, the Arabic word commonly translated

as “logic,” mant. iq, had come to refer almost exclusively to

Peripatetic traditions of distinguishing a good from a bad argument,

and those are the traditions to which this chapter is limited. This

means that the Arabic logical writings examined here are, like their

medieval Latin counterparts, concerned with a problematic arising

from the Aristotelian texts; more than medieval Latin logic, however,

the dominant tradition of Arabic logic is mainly at one remove

from those texts, as will be exemplified below.

Even with this limitation, the writings which fall under the

chapter’s remit stretch from 750 to the present day, covering the

whole course of subjects developed in the Organon. For practical

purposes, I impose the further limitation of referring the material

covered back to al-Risa¯ la al-shamsiyya, the Logic for Shams al-Dı¯n

by Najm al-D¯ın al-K¯atib¯ı (d. 1276).2 I do so because down to the

twentieth century it was commonly the first substantial text on

logic which a Sunn¯ı Muslim would study in the course of a madrasa

education.3 Because the problematic considered by the Shamsiyya

acquired its precise form in Avicenna’s writings, and acquired its

commonly accepted resolution by the late thirteenth century, I will

not consider any logical work written after this time. This should

not be taken to imply that original work in logic came to an end in

1300, but rather that other problems had taken center stage.

247

248 tony street

I begin this chapter by making a few comments on the pitfalls

awaiting the historian of Arabic logic. I then sketch in broad terms

historical aspects of the tradition to which the Shamsiyya belongs,

and the way that tradition came to be represented in the madrasa

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