Dr Ibrahim Kalin - The Royal Islamic Strategic Studies Centre

The most fundamental function of reason/intellect is to
act as a mirror to reflect the intrinsic meaning and order of
things. In performing this task, the intellect has a special relationship
with the Divine because it emanates from the Divine
Nature. What the intellect discovers as order, necessity
and intelligibility in the universe is a reflection of God’s own
Nature and Will. Mulla Sadra provides a vivid description of
this aspect of the intellect:
The intellect, since there is no veil between it and
the the First Truth [God], can witness by itself the
essence of the Truth [God] … there is no veiling
between the two … [God] can certainly manifest itself
to the intellect and the manifestation here takes
place through the lucid [unveiling] of [God’s] essence.
There is no aspect or quality added to the Divine and
another being added to [the intellect]. The essence
of the intellect is like a polished mirror on which the
form of the Truth shines. On the mirror itself, there
is no existential entity except the reflected form, and
the reflected form is nothing but the form related to
the Truth. Therefore in the essence of the intellect
there is nothing other than the form of the Truth and
wa’l-ma’ad. For an extensive survey of their views against the Greek background,
see Davidson, Herbert A., AlFarabi, Avicenna, and Averroes on Intellect:
Their Cosmologies, Theories of the Active Intellect, and Theories of Human
Intellect (New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992).
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