Islamic Philosophy from Its Origin to the Present: Philosophy in the ...

Mullå |adrå and the Full Flowering of Prophetic Philosophy 229
al-muta‘åliyah in such a way that the organic link between objective
revelation in the form of prophecy and inner illumination as “partial
prophecy” became central to a hierarchical epistemology that characterizes
his total synthesis between prophetic and philosophic truth or
religion and philosophy.
Angelology
There is ultimately no prophecy without angelology. In the ancient Greek
world where Pythagoras and Parmenides philosophized, these angelic
realities were identified as gods of the Greek pantheon, and in Hinduism
they are identified with various Hindu deities. In the Abrahamic
world, however, these intelligible and luminous substances are identified
as angels, and the traditional philosophies of all the three monotheistic
religions have dealt with them on some level as we see for example in
nearly all the writings in the West influenced by the Dionysian corpus. 15
In Islamic philosophy again it was Ibn S¥nå who was the first to seek to
create a systematic correlation between the intelligences of the philosophers
and the angelic realm as mentioned in religious sources.
Suhraward¥ expanded greatly the philosophical study of angels, making
correlations between the vertical and horizontal orders of light in
the ishråq¥ universe and not only Islamic but also Mazdean orders of
angels. 16 In relating angelology to both cosmology and epistemology,
Ibn S¥nå and especially Suhraward¥ had already paved the way for
Mullå |adrå, but again this important dimension of prophetic philosophy
finds its full expression in the grand synthesis of the latter.
Eschatology and Sacred Psychology
Left to their own devices, the ordinary human mind and imagination
have no means of gaining knowledge of eschatological realities, and
ordinary human knowledge of the psyche remains limited to the most
outward aspects of the soul. The current philosophical scene exemplifies
fully the truth of this assertion. Since the rise of rationalism, mainstream
Western philosophers have shown practically no interest in eschatology,
and the rare few who have, such as the Swedish visionary Emmanuel
Swedenborg, have been philosophically speaking totally marginalized.
As for psychology, the modern discipline using that name, does not
know what to do with transpersonal psychology, not to speak of traditional
psychologies of the Oriental traditions based on intellection and
spiritual methods that enable one to penetrate into the depths of the
psyche, to transform it and ultimately to transcend it.