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

36 Part 1: Islamic Philosophy and Its Study
truth and in his practical knowledge to behave in accordance with
truth.” 18 His successor al-Fåråb¥ accepted this definition in principle,
making in addition a distinction between “philosophy rooted in certainty”
(falsafah yaq¥niyyah), which is based on demonstration (burhån), 19
and “philosophy deriving from opinion” (falsafah maz • n¶nah), based
upon dialectics and sophistry. 20 He also gives the well-known definition
of philosophy as “the knowledge of existents qua existents” and also
states that “there is nothing among existents in the world with which
philosophy is not concerned.” 21
The master of Peripatetics, Ibn S¥nå, adds another element to the
definition of ÷ikmah and relates it more closely to realization and perfection
of the being of man when he writes: “¡ikmah is the perfecting
of the human soul through the conceptualization of things and the
judgment of theoretical and practical truths to the measure of human
capability.” 22 This close accordance between knowledge and its practice,
so important for later Islamic philosophy, is repeated in the
definition of the Ikhwån al-S • afå˘ when they say: “The beginning of
philosophy is the love of the sciences; its middle is knowledge of the
reality of things to the extent to which man is capable; and its end is
speech and action in conformity with this knowledge.” 23
With Suhraward¥ and the ishråq¥ school, the close rapport between
philosophy and religion or more precisely between philosophy
as an aspect of the inner dimension of revealed truth and the ascetic
and spiritual practices related to religious discipline, which in Islam
are connected with Sufism and also Shi‘ite gnosis, becomes fully established.
Not only was Suhraward¥ himself a Sufi and a ÷ak¥m at the
same time, but also he conceived of a true faylas¶f or ÷ak¥m as one who
possesses both theoretical knowledge and spiritual vision. 24 He calls
such a person “muta˘allih,” literally, one who has become “God like,”
and speaks in his Partaw-nåmah (The Book of Radiance) of ÷ikmah as
“The act of the soul’s becoming imprinted by the spiritual truths and
the intelligibles.” 25 After him philosophy and spiritual realization became
for the most part wedded except among those who followed
only the Peripatetic school, and al-÷ikmat al-ilåhiyyah became, especially
in Persia and other eastern lands of Islam, the bridge between
the formal religious sciences and the verities of pure gnosis.
The Safavid ÷ak¥ms, who brought many trends of Islamic philosophy
to their full fruition and flowering, continued to relate philosophy
closely to the esoteric dimension of religion, as had many
earlier philosophers including Ism嘥l¥ thinkers, and considered the
traditional philosopher as the person who possesses not only theoretical
knowledge but also a direct vision of the truth so that he speaks