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

302 Notes to Chapter 6
CHAPTER 6. EPISTEMOLOGICAL QUESTIONS
1. There is still no thorough work in a European language dealing
with the relation of faith and reason or reason and revelation in Islamic thought
as one finds in the famous study of Etienne Gilson for Christian thought.
Arthur J. Arberry wrote a short treatise entitled Reason and Revelation in Islam
(London: Allen and Unwin, 1957), but it is far from being adequate.
2. On the distinction between intellect and reason see our Knowledge
and the Sacred, especially chapters 1 and 4. For a penetrating critique of rationalism
based on reason alone and traditional doctrines based on intellection
see Schuon, Logic and Transcendence, especially the first three chapters.
3. See for example, “They also say: If we had only heard, and had
understood (na‘qilu) we would not have been of the inhabitants of the Blaze.”
Quran (53:10) (Arberry translation). In this verse the refusal to understand, or
literally “intellect,” is equated with the loss of paradise. In many other verses
various forms of the verb faqaha are used with the same meaning as ‘aqala, for
example: “We have distinguished the signs for a people who understand
(yafqah¶n). Quran (6: 98).
4. Concerning this distinction, which became central with Suhraward¥,
see Corbin, En Islam iranien, vol. 4, pp. 65ff., 137; Ziai, “Suhraward¥,” in Nasr
and Leaman, History of Islamic Philosophy, pp. 451ff.; and Ibråhim¥ D¥nån¥,
Shu‘å˘-i and¥shah, pp. 310ff. The most complete work on ‘ilm al-÷ud • ¶r¥ in light
of contemporary Anglo-Saxon analytical philosophy is Mahd¥ Hå˘ir¥ Yazd¥,
The Principles of Epistemology in Islamic Philosophy (Albany, State University of
New York, 1992).
5. On the relation between faith and intellect or revelation and reason,
see Schuon, Stations of Wisdom, “If ‘no man cometh unto the Father but by me,’
this truth or this principle is equally applicable to the pure Intellect in ourselves:
in the sapiential order—it is only in this order that we may speak of
Intellect or intellectuality without making implacable reservation—it is essential
to submit all the powers of the soul to the pure Spirit, which is identified,
but in a supra-formal and ontological manner, with the fundamental dogma
of the Revelation and thereby with the Sophia Perennis.” Schuon, Dimensions of
Islam, p. 76.
6. On Ash‘arite voluntarism see F. Schuon, Islam and the Perennial Philosophy,
chapter 7, pp. 118–51. For a more general discussion of Ash‘arite
“voluntarist thought,” see Daniel Gimaret, La Doctrine d’al-Ash‘ari (Paris: Les
Edition du Cerf, 1990).
7. On Ash‘arism and its views concerning the intellect, see L. Gardet,
Introduction à la théologie musulmane (Paris: Vrin, 1948).