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

Notes to Chapter 5 301
this book—especially as far as the flowering of philosophy in a land dominated
by prophecy is concerned.
11. All these three schools are represented in the second volume of the
anthology of the philosophers of Persia since M¥r Dåmåd. See their Anthologie
des philosophes iraniens, vol. 2. The discussion of the three schools, as described
by Corbin on p. 5, occupies nearly the entire volume. See also Corbin’s
“Présence de quelques philosophes iraniens,” in his Philosophie iranienne et
philosophie comparée (Paris and Tehran: Imperial Iranian Academy of Philosophy,
1977), part 2, pp. 55–81.
12. The Mashå‘ir is in fact devoted to ontology and is one of the master’s
last works on the subject. See the analysis of its content by H. Corbin in his
edition and translation of the work, Le Livre des pénétrations métaphysiques.
13. On Mullå S • adrå’s doctrine of the unity of being, see “Mullå S • adrå
and the Doctrine of the Unity of Being,” in my Islamic Life and Thought, chapter
16, pp. 171ff. See also Zailan Moris, Revelation, Intellectual Intuition and Reason
in the Philosophy of Mullå S • adrå (New York: Routledge Curzon, 2003).
14. See Corbin’s introduction to the introduction of Mullå S • adrå’s
Mashå‘ir, in Le Livre des pénétrations métaphysiques, pp.62ff.
15. See my Islamic Intellectual Tradition in Persia, pp. 278ff; see also Izutsu,
Concept and Reality of Existence, part 4.
16. See F. Schuon, Dimensions of Islam, trans. P. Townsend (London:
Allen and Unwin, 1970), chapter 2.
17. The following famous verses of R¨m¥ attest this truth:
I died as mineral and became a plant,
I died as plant and rose to animal,
I died as animal and I was Man.
Why should I fear? When was I less by dying?
Yet once more I shall die as Man, to soar
With angels blest; but even from angelhood
I must pass on; all except God doth perish.
When I have sacrificed my angel-soul,
I shall become what no mind e’er conceived.
O, let me not exist! for Non-existence
Proclaims in organ tones: “To Him we shall return.”
Reynold A. Nicholson, Rumi: Poet and Mystic
(London: Allen and Unwin, 1950), p. 103
18. Logic and Transcendence, p. 44. Schuon also quotes (ibid.) Franz von
Baader’s formulation to the same effect, the German theosopher having said,
in answer to Descartes, cogitor, ergo cogito et sum (“I am thought [by God],
therefore I think and I am”).