Tag Archive for: metaphysics

‘AYN AL-QUDAT’S QUR’ANIC VISION From black words to white parchment* – Mohammed Rustom

Abstract:

“‘Ayn al-QuঌƗt HamadƗnƯ (d. 1131) was a mystic, philosopher, theologian, and judge who was born in the western Iranian city of Hamadan. He was the student of Aতmad al-GhazƗlƯ (d. 1126),1 the brother of Abnj ণƗmid al-GhazƗlƯ (d. 1111), and is best known as a maverick-like figure who was put to death by the Seljuq government at the tender age of 34, ostensibly on charges of “heresy”.2 Looking beyond the causes surrounding his state-sponsored execution and to his writings, ‘Ayn al-QuঌƗt emerges as a first-rate thinker who was thoroughly con- versant in the Islamic intellectual sciences, along with Arabic and Persian poetry. One of ‘Ayn al-QuঌƗt’s greatest achievements was the original manner in which he tied the seemingly”

‘Ayn Al-Qudat’s Qur’anic Vision (Routledge Handbook On Sufism) (1)Download

The Epistle of Ya qub ibn Ishaq al-Kindi on the Device for Dispelling Sorrows

ABSTRACT

“Although less technical philosophically than many of al-Kind‡¯’s known treatises, this Epistle remains basic for understanding the spirit that underlies his thinking. Socratic, yet very Kindian in spirit, this Epistle displays its author’s tendency to harmonize Greek philosophy and Islam, particularly as this relates to ethics, and his belief in man’s free will and reason. To him, sorrows may be caused either by our own actions or by the actions of others. It is up to us to choose to do or not to do what saddens us. Through reason we can eliminate some of the causes of sorrow when we perceive the intellectual world, and derive from it things desired. Though this Epistle has a significant share of the linguistic and stylistic complexities characteristic of al-Kind”

Al-Kindi, On The Device For Dispelling Sorrows (trans. Jayyusi-Lehn)Download

APPROACHES TO PROXIMITY AND DISTANCE IN EARLY SUFISM – Mohammed Rustom

Abstract:

“There is a famous tradition in Islam in which an unknown man, fully clad in white and evincing no signs of travel, approaches the Prophet Muhammad and begins to ask him several questions. Prior to his last question,  which has to do with eschatology, the man asks the Prophet to define three  terms: Islam, Iman, ihsan, meaning “submission,” “faith,” and “doing what is beautiful” respectively. The Prophet tells his interlocutor that”

APPROACHES TO PROXIMITY AND DISTANCE IN EARLY SUFISMDownload

Aḥmad al-Ghazālī, Remembrance, and the Metaphysics of Love

To understand the content of Aḥmad al-Ghazālī’s writings and sermons, one must also examine their form. In his attempts to transport……………………….

Amad_al-Ghazali_Remembrance_and_the_Met

Roads to paradise : Eschatology and Concepts of the Hereafter in Islam

Roads to Paradise: Eschatology and Concepts of the Hereafter in Islam offers a multi-disciplinary study of Muslim thinking about paradise, death, apocalypse, and the hereafter. It focuses on eschatological concepts in the Quran and its exegesis, Sunni and Shi‘i traditions, Islamic theology, philosophy, mysticism, and other scholarly disciplines reflecting Islamicate pluralism and cosmopolitanism……………..

A Philosopher’s Itinerary For The Afterlife (Roads To Paradise, 2017)

Mulla Rajab, On the Necessary Being and The Fundamental Principle

Abstract:

Translated for this volume by Mohammed Rustom from Mullā Rajab ʿAlī Tabrīzī,
Ithbāt-i wājib in Sayyid Jalāl al-Dīn Āshtiyānī and Henry Corbin, ed., Anthologie des philosophes
iraniens depuis le XVII siècle jusqu’à nos jours (Tehran, 1972–1975),
vol. 1, pp. 220–243.e

Mulla-Rajab-On-the-Necessary-Being-and-The-Fundamental-Principle-APP-5-2015Download

Islam and the Problem of Evil by Timothy Winter

Abstract:

“Islam’s theological, ethical and mystical traditions have adopted a range of approaches to the question of evil. They share, however, a rootedness in the Qur ’ān, a text which repeatedly attends to the fact of human suffering, having emerged in a society which it proclaimed to be miserably deluded by false belief and custom and in which the physical”

Islam-and-the-Problem-of-Evil-WinterDownload

An Interview with Ekrem Demirli, Turkey’s Leading Scholar of Ibn ʿArabi and Qunawi

Abstract:

“Ekrem Demirli (www.ekremdemirli.com/) is Professor of SufiStudies at Istanbul University (Faculty of Theology, Department of Tasawwuf), and Turkey’s foremost scholar of IbnʿArabi and Sadr al-Din al-Qunawi. Below is the edited transcript of an interview which I conducted with him concerning his life and work. Professor Demirli’s responses were given in Turkish and translated into English by Sultan Adanir Salihoglu”

 

The Great Chain of Consciousness :Do All Things Possess Awareness?

Abstract:

In An Essay on Man, the eighteenth-century British poet Alexander Pope offers a succinct formulation of an age-old philosophical doctrine about reality. This doctrine, which Arthur Lovejoy refers to as the “great chain of being,” maintains that existence is hierarchi- cal and organically linked, structured as it is upon the descending degrees of being. Reality begins with and proceeds from God, the Supreme Being, and ends in the most minuscule and discrete kinds of beings. Each thing in the cosmos, including the cosmos itself, forms a vital link with the other parts of this great chain. In Pope’s words..

The Great Chain of Consciousness (Renovatio 1.1, 2017)Download

Rajab Ali Tabrizi Refutation of Sadrian metaphysics

Amongst the most formidable opponents of the metaphysics of Mulla
Sadra (d, 1045 AH/1636 or 1050 AH/1640) during the Safavid period was
his student and son-in-law ‘Abd al-Razzaq Lahiji (d. 1071 AH/1661-2).’
Unlike Muhsin Fayd Kashani (d, 1091 AH/1680),’ Sadras other son-in­
law and student, Lahiji’s writings were primarily within the tradition
of post-Avicennian Islamic philosophical theology. This is best
evidenced in his critique of Sadras principal and innovative doctrine
of substantial motion (al-/iarakah al-jawhariyyah). One of Fayd and
Lahiji’s disciples, the major Safavid philosopher and mystic Qa<;li Sa’id……………..

 

Rajab Ali Tabrizis Refutation Of Sadrian

Aḥmad al-Ghazālī’s Metaphysics of Love (edited by JOSEPH E.B. LUMBARD)

To understand the content of Aḥmad al-Ghazālī’s writings and sermons, one must also examine their form. In his attempts to transport his
audience to the truth of which he is certain and to actualize the realization of it within them, Aḥmad al-Ghazālī is ever aware of the limitations inherent to words……………..

Amad_al-Ghazali_Remembrance_and_the_Met

Seyyed Hossein Nasr: On Tradition, Metaphysics, and Modernity: The Harvard Review of Philosophy Seyyed Hossein Nasr

Seyyed Hossein Nasr (SHN): The meaning of “tradition” as used by traditionalists such as myself does not mean custom or transmitted habit, but principles of a divine order and their applications to various domains. I can quote for you from one of my own writings:……….

Seyyed_Hossein_Nasr_On_Tradition_Metaphy