Between Truth and History: The Saga of Islamic Philosophy [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

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Between Truth and History: The Saga of Islamic Philosophy [Electronic resources] - نسخه متنی

Seyyed Hossein Nasr

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Between Truth and History: The Saga of Islamic Philosophy


The Islamic
Intellectual Tradition in Persia
, by Seyyed Hossein Nasr, ed. By Mehdi
Amin Razavi, Curzon Press, Richmond Surrey, 1996, pp. 375.


Sadr al-Din
Shirazi and his Transcendent Theosophy: Background, Life and
Works
, by Seyyed Hossein
Nasr, Institute for Humanities and Cultural Studies, Tehran, 1997, pp. 155.


The present state of the notion of
Islamic philosophy is surrounded by a number of lingering difficulties. First of
all, there is the problem of the orthodoxy or islamicity of Islamic philosophy.
The Orientalist reading of Islamic thought was based on the firm conviction that
Islamic philosophy is not an 'Islamic' philosophy but Greek philosophy in the
garment of Arabic language and culture. The term 'Muslim' philosophy, which
gained a widespread currency especially in the Muslim India and Pakistan, was in
fact a reversed version of the same assumption that Islamic philosophy is not an
Islamic philosophy in the sense of being derived from the worldview and
conceptual framework of Islam but simply a form of philosophy carried out by
Muslims. Thus the contingent nature of Islamic philosophy ruled out the
possibility of having an Islamic philosophy altogether. The presumed drift
between philosophy and the Quranic Weltanschauung came to be seen as an
essential tension underlying the basic parameters of philosophical activity in
Islamic civilization. This tension was so much privileged in the current
discussions of the subject that the so-called clash or confrontation between
reason and revelation in Islam was identified as the perennial problem of
Islamic philosophy. The tacit presumption was and is that 'religion' is in and
of itself 'irrational', that it cannot be accommodated by reason, and that it
needs to be modified and 'rationalized'. Not surprisingly, Islamic intellectual
tradition including philosophy is still seen as part of the problem rather than
the solution.


The second problem that faces Islamic
philosophy is related to the way it is studied in various contexts both in the
West and the Islamic world. With a few notable exceptions such as the works of
Henry Corbin, Toshihiko Izutsu, William Chittick and S. Hossein Nasr whose two
books are the subject of this essay, Islamic philosophy is studied not as
philosophy as such but as part of the history of ideas. Various subjects and
issues that are dealt with in Islamic philosophy are not regarded as genuine
philosophical questions that may have relevance today but as part of a number of
barren propositions which form the underpinnings of a linear-progressive history
of ideas. The historicalization of 'philosophia' in the Pythagorean sense of the
term tends to reduce the most fundamental notions of philosophy to
socio-political and economic conditions and structures. Hence the types of
historicism from which not only Islamic philosophy but also other intellectual
traditions suffer. Seen under this light, what matters to us becomes very
different from what mattered to a Farabi, Suhrawardi or Mulla Sadra.


The last and by no means least of these
problems is the very definition of philosophy itself. Much has been written
about different meanings of philosophy across the world civilizations as well as
within a particular universe of thought. With the rise of postmodern fashions,
however, we are faced with a new phenomenon, namely that we do not talk about
'plural', therefore contingent and relative, meanings of philosophy anymore but
about the meaninglessness of philosophy. Philosophy loses its meaning because
the postmodern mind thinks that it has exhausted all the possibilities by
transcending the dichotomies of the Enlightenment. Everything comes to an end
because things do not have any significance or purpose anymore. The ultimate
questions of philosophy are now replaced with the contingent, the arbitrary, the
historical, and the conventional. Although the severing of philosophy from moral
virtues was already a big comfort, this brings an additional relief to the
modern man because now he does not have to search for something beyond the world
of appearance, for an ultimate ground, meaning or truth. Thus we have the
alluring pleasure of 'taking it easy' as if the temporary oblivion of a problem
solves the problem.


One has to resist the temptation of the
immediacy of the present when the present is equated with the fashionable and
the transient. Fads do not lead us to the principle of things whereas Islamic
philosophy begins and ends with such a set of principles (al-umur al-'ammah and mabadi' of the philosophers). The sharp
contrast between what the classical Islamic philosophers tried to achieve and
where we try to locate them today necessitates a redrawing of the maps of
Islamic philosophy. At this juncture, the guiding principle of any study of
Islamic thought should be not what is fashionable in the market but what
mattered to those thinkers.


Without venturing into a detailed
discussion of these points, one can say that the works of Dr. Nasr have provided
a certain framework in which these issues can properly be addressed. In his
various writings, Nasr has claimed that Islamic philosophy is not simply
'Muslim' philosophy, a type of philosophy produced by people who happen to be
Muslim, but a particular philosophy whose ontological, epistemological,
cosmological, axiological and political premises have been derived from the womb
of Islamic revelation. From Three Muslim
Sages
to his introduction to History
of Islamic Philosophy
, Nasr has put considerable effort to demonstrate the
fact that the intellectual foundations of Islamic philosophy are rooted in the
Quranic Weltanschauung and not in
Greek thought without denying the existence of the latter along with other
pre-Islamic schools of thought. Nasr goes even further and makes the bold claim
that Islamic philosophy has become even more Islamic as it has developed
historically. This is especially true when we consider the fact that with the
demise of Peripatetic philosophy after Ibn Rushd, Islamic philosophy took
another course in which it not only came closer to the Quran but also
incorporated many elements of later kalam, tasawwuf, ishraq and 'irfan.


As for the meaning of philosophy today,
it goes without saying that the current conceptions of philosophy, whether
modern or postmodern, cannot be taken as a frame of reference to define and
evaluate Islamic philosophy. Differences are blatantly obvious, and Nasr rightly
says that 'one cannot use the term 'philosophy' for both Quine and Mulla Sadra
in the same sense.' Philosophy devoid of ethics, confined to the interpretation
of physical sciences and finally reduced to formal logic is not surely the type
of philosophy a Farabi, Ikhwan al-Safa or Nasir al-Din Tusi would approve of.


At this point, one of the distinguishing
features of the works of Dr. Nasr is certainly the kind of seriousness and
consideration given to that which mattered to Islamic philosophers. In sharp
contrast to the histories of Islamic philosophy written from an Orientalist and
historicist point of view, what comes to the fore in Nasr's account of history
are such fundamental principles as the quest for the truth, the possibility and
necessity of a genuine philosophical understanding, the sacred, tradition, and
continuity. In some ways, this can be compared to the classical way of doing
'history' despite the intriguing fact that 'history' in the ordinary sense of
the term does not exist in classical Islamic thought. An Avicennean reading of
Plato or a Sadrean reading of Suhrawardi and Ibn Arabi is not grounded in the
historical contingencies of a particular thinker and his life-world but in that
aspect which relates and conforms to the truth, its cogent and coherent
expression, and its spiritual realization. Since the lower cannot beget the
higher as the Muslim philosophers have always insisted upon, the centrality of
philosophical truth and its interiorization takes prominence over
socio-historical considerations and conditions which constitute, at best, the
backdrop of the truth, and not the truth per se. Seen from this angle, the
historicist categories of borrowing, influence, transmission, translation,
adoption, reproduction, and so on so forth claim only a secondary importance for
the philosopher. What was poignantly vital for an Ibn Sina in reading Aristotle
was not the historical and contingent conditions which supposedly gave rise to
the way Aristotle formulated his ideas but precisely those ideas and principles
which were 'substantial' enough to be able to survive the debilitating effects
of time and space. In disregarding 'history' as a fundamental category of
philosophy, Islamic philosophy, just like any other traditional school of
philosophy, was making a deliberate choice in order not to fall into the
self-contradiction of historicism which labels everything in history contingent
and constructed except the grand category of 'history'.


This is not to deny the possibility of a
history of philosophy or the idea of history in Islamic philosophy altogether.
One has to distinguish, however, between history as such and historicism because
what we deal with in Islamic philosophy is not the result of the philosopher's
quest for the historical, the transient and the ephemeral, this would be absurd
to say for any philosopher, but, on the contrary, the trans-historical, the
perennial, and the everlasting. This is how the classical Muslim philosophers
read philosophies and sciences prior to them. This is how a Mulla Sadra read the
entire history of philosophy, both Islamic and pre-Islamic, in his Asfar and other writings. This is the
type of history to which the truth matters. This is what Henry Corbin refers to
as hierohistoire as opposed to l'historicisme. Said differently, this
is the type of history for which the categories of truth (haqq) and falsity (batil), the sacred, wisdom, tradition,
continuity, perennial values, moral perfection, and spiritual realization are
indispensable and existentially relevant.


One should also pay close attention to
the importance of oral tradition for Islamic philosophy. One finds no trace of
oral tradition in modern scholarship on Islamic philosophy not simply because
oral tradition is not a scholarly category, difficult to ascertain or unreliable
but because orality itself has been looked down upon by the modern conception of
education which privileges the written culture over the oral tradition. In the
same way, almost no attention has been paid to the fact that the Qur'an, the
Islamic revelation, is a sonoral revelation, that is, it has been first told to
and heard by the Prophet, and then written down. Although Islamic civilization
was a deeply bookish civilization, its oral tradition was a sine qua non of this written body of
knowledge. It was within the framework provided by oral tradition that the
written culture of Islamic philosophy was structured, interpreted and taught.
This is all the more so for the works of Dr. Nasr because he himself is part of
this oral tradition as he has received his first education from traditional
masters of Iran and continued to take lessons with them even after he completed
his doctorate. As every serious student of philosophy knows, what is written
down in between the two covers of a book is only the traces the author has left
on the sand. One has to go beyond the limits of the footprints on the sand to be
able to grasp what the philosopher saw in the shore he had walked upon.


The reassessment of the category of
history in relation to the study of Islamic philosophy points to a dire
necessity of rewriting the history of Islamic philosophy on the basis of the
principles of Islamic intellectual tradition. When read with such a concern in
mind, the works of Dr. Nasr provide many clues for the undertaking of such a
daunting task. From Three Muslim
Sages
to History of Islamic
Philosophy
which he edited with O. Leaman, one can detect an underlying
concern for an authentic study and understanding of Islamic philosophy faithful
to the spirit of, say, an Ibn Sina, Suhrawardi or Mulla Sadra.


Both The Islamic Intellectual History in
Persia
and Sadr al-Din Shirazi and
his Transcendent Theosophy
provide a good example of this approach to the
Islamic philosophical tradition. The underlying theme of these two books of Dr.
Nasr as of his other works on Islamic philosophy is the concern for the
restatement of Islamic philosophy within the terms of Islamic intellectual
tradition that he describes as a living tree. With its roots, trunk, branches
and the fruit it bears, the full symbolism of tree helps us understand Islamic
philosophy not as a mere bulk of discrete ideas and impotent formulations but as
a living tradition which maintains its relevance even today for the contemporary
Muslim world. As the last two
centuries of the confrontation between Islamic and Western civilizations attest
to, the most destructive challenge of modern-secular civilization has been not
so much its military and economic power as its philosophical claims. On the
other hand, the Moghul invasion which had come to the point of destroying almost
the entire political fabric of the Islamic world had no intellectual challenge
for Islamic civilization which was then strong and confident enough to ensure
its survival and continuity. Thus, we all know too well that no attempt to
revive Islamic civilization will have a chance of success without bringing out
the relevance of Islamic philosophy for today.


The Islamic Intellectual Tradition in
Persia
edited by Mehdi
Amin Razavi, a former student of Nasr, consists of twenty-four articles by Nasr
and covers the vast field of philosophical activities in Persia over the last
two millennia. Although all of these articles were previously published in
various journals both in Persian and English, the collection gives the reader
the opportunity of having a focused look at various philosophical issues and
figures from cosmology and ontology to Ibn Sina and Mulla Sadra. The first part
of the book deals with the question of the continuity of Iranian culture. Since
Nasr approaches the concept of continuity from the perspective of philosophia perennis or al-hikmat al-khalidah, he singles out
the striking similarities between the pre-Islamic and Islamic cosmological
doctrines developed in Persia not as a matter of cultural and ethnic continuity
but as a result of the omnipresence of hikmah which the Prophet of Islam (saw)
urges his ummah to seek for even if
it were in China. It is to be noted also that Persia, for Nasr, signifies that
cultural zone of Islam and 'landscape' in which the philosophical and mystical
schools gain prominence over linguistic and geographic considerations. Thus the
whole notion of cultural interaction takes on a different meaning which is
totally absent in the so-called cultural and civilizational studies. Nasr states
this as follows: 'Because it was destined to be the last religion and the seal
of the prophetic cycle, Islam possesses a unique power of assimilation and
synthesis. This characteristic enabled Islam to remain fully itself and yet
allow the Persians not only to participate in its life and to contribute fully
to its elaboration but also to enable them to contemplate in its vast firmament
the shining stars of the most profound elements of their ancient religious and
spiritual past, a past which far from dying out gained a new interpretation and
became in a sense partly resurrected in the new spiritual universe brought into
being by the Islamic revelation.' (p. 8)


The second part of the book is comprised
of six articles devoted to the salient figures of early Islamic philosophy.
Nasr's article on al-Farabi discusses one of the most interesting subjects of
the history of Islamic philosophy, namely the reason why al-Farabi was called
the second teacher (al-mu'allim
al-thani
) after Aristotle, the first teacher (al-mu'allim al-awwal). The following two
articles on Ibn Sina attempt to look at Shayk al-Rais not as the ardent
rationalist philosopher of Islam but as the doctor maximus of philosophy and
sciences on the one hand, and the author of such works as Mantiq al-Mashriqiyyin and Maqamat al-'Arifin, on the other.


The third part brings together three
important articles on Suhrawardi and the school of illumination, which attests
to the long preoccupation of Nasr with the Shaykh al-Ishraq and his illuminationist
metaphysics. As we all know, the credit for introducing Suhrawardi into the
English-speaking world goes to Nasr who views the Suhrawardian metaphysics not
as a remnant of the history of ideas but as a genuine and integral path leading
to the realization of truth. It is, therefore, not surprising to see a whole
chapter devoted to the figure of Suhrawardi. An important issue raised by this
chapter is the question of the schools of Islamic philosophy and how to classify
them. It is almost impossible to locate the school of Ishraq within the Islamic thought if we
limit ourselves to the standard division of falsafah, kalam, and tasawwuf. This holds true also for the
school of Ibn Arabi, school of Isfahan, and a considerable part of the Ottoman
intellectual history. This tripartite division was made first by classical
authors in an instrumental way without excluding the possibility of other
schools and modes of thought. The al-hikmat al-muta'aliyah of Mulla Sadra
or 'irfan and tahqiq of Ibn Arabi is a case in point
here. Furthermore, this description was primarily meant to delineate the early
period of Islamic thought and not the post-Avicennian Islamic philosophy where
we see the flourishing of all of these schools in a new vain with the rise of
such prominent figures as Ghazzali, Suhrawardi, Fakhr al-Din al-Razi, Ibn Arabi
and Mulla Sadra. It is, therefore, important to emphasize the school of Ishraq not only from the point of view
of doctrine and metaphysics but also historical periodization and
classification.


The fourth part contains six essays on
'Omar Khayyam, Hakim Nizami Ganjawi, Nasir al-Din Tusi, Qutb al-Din Shirazi and
Rashid al-Din Fadlallah which is misprinted as Fadallah in the table of
contents. Regarding this chapter, one only wishes that Dr. Nasr would have
allotted more space on 'Omar Khayyam and his philosophical work.


The fifth part of the book deals with
figures of later Islamic philosophy. Nasr's three important essays on the school
of Isfahan, Sadr al-Din Shirazi and Mulla Hadi Sabziwari provide a vivid account
of the course of later Islamic philosophy in Persia. As the names of Haydar
Amuli, Mir Damad, Mir Findiriski, Mulla Muhsin Fayd Kashani, Mulla Sadra, Abd
al-Razzaq Lahiji, and Sabziwari become more and more important for the later
development and continuity of Islamic philosophy, these essays appear as a
strong statement of the continuity of philosophical activity in various parts of
the Islamic world, especially in Persia. The closing essay of the book completes
this theme by providing a detailed survey of Islamic philosophical activities in
Persia in the 50's and 60's.


Nasr's way of reading the history of
Islamic philosophy is carried on to his book on Sadr al-Din Shirazi, also known
as Mulla Sadra. Before turning to this short yet important book, however, the
editor of The Islamic Intellectual
Tradition in Persia
, Mehdi Amin Razavi should be congratulated for his
effort in bringing these essays together. Amin Razavi not only collected these
essays published in various journals over the years but also translated some of
them written originally in Persian. He is also to be credited for his
introduction that supplies the reader with a concise analysis of Nasr's concept
of philosophy as it is reflected in the essays.


Sadr al-Din Shirazi and his Transcendent
Theosophy
was originally
published in 1978. The new edition published in Iran comes with two new chapters
and a preface. Besides Fazlur Rahman's The Philosophy of Mulla Sadra published
in 1975, this book is one of the first works written in English on Mulla Sadra.
Although both of these books were instrumental in inciting interest in Mulla
Sadra, the only other work published as a book on Mulla Sadra is James Morris'
translation of al-Hikmat
al-'Arshiyyah
under the title The
Wisdom of the Throne
(Princeton, 1981) which is both a translation and
commentary with a long introduction and extensive notes. Most recently, the
Turkish scholar Alparslan Acikgenc brought out his doctoral dissertation on
Sadra and Heidegger which he completed under the supervision of late Fazlur
Rahman. Although Acikgenc's book published in Malaysia as Being and Existence in Sadra and
Heidegger
(ISTAC, 1993) provides a very interesting and successful
comparison of the ontological and existential ideas of the two thinkers, it
lacks, as a common flaw of all comparative works, in concentration.


Given the present state of the Sadrean
studies, Nasr's book comes as a notable contribution to the field. This book was
intended to be the first part of a two-volume work on Mulla Sadra, the first
volume which is the present book in review being an introduction to the life and
works of Mulla Sadra, and the second volume planned as a comprehensive analysis
of the doctrines of Mulla Sadra. Unfortunately, the second volume newer saw the
day of light so far, and the students of Mulla Sadra (perhaps Sadra himself in
the world of spirits!) are still waiting eagerly for this volume to come out.
But we know that Dr. Nasr is now working on the translation of Kitab al-Masha'ir which will include his
own commentary and notes. Since K.
al-Masha'ir
is a summa of the Sadrean doctrines, we hope that this
translation-commentary will substitute for the promised second volume on the
metaphysical and philosophical teachings of Sadra.


The book begins with a delineation of the
intellectual milieu in the wake of which Sadra came to stand at the crossroads
of various philosophical school and ideas preceding him. This part shows that
Sadra was able to create his grand synthesis on the basis of such a background
made possible by the long tradition of Islamic philosophy. What is remarkable
about this chapter is that it depicts the intellectual and philosophical world
prior to Sadra in a very vivid and lucid language. With this background, one
sees clearly how various schools of thought as well as the Shari'ah sciences
were in close interaction with one another. Thus, we are able to trace the
intellectual lineage of Sadra from Ibn Sina and Suhrawardi to Ibn Arabi and Mir
Damad, the immediate teacher of Sadra, from whom he was later to depart his way
on the most fundamental question of metaphysics, namely the priority of wujud over mahiyyah, known as asalat al-wujud.


The second chapter is devoted to the life
and works of Sadra. After providing an account of the life of Sadra on the basis
of traditional sources including the autobiographical sketches of Sadra himself,
Nasr proceeds to the summary analysis of the 46 works of Sadra. This part is
valuable for discussing the contents of these works as well as for showing the
depth and breadth of the Sadrean corpus. The third chapter turns to Sadra's magnum opus al-Hikmat al-Muta'aliyah fi'l-Asfar
al-Aqliyyat al-Arba'ah
which is one of the most monumental works of Islamic
philosophy. One may even argue that Sadra's Asfar ranks as high as the Shifa of Ibn Sina and al-Futuhat al-Makkiyyah of Ibn Arabi in
its scope and originality. In this part, Nasr, after explaining the meaning of
the four journeys (al-asfar
al-arba'ah
) on which the plan of Asfar is based, provides an excellent
survey of Asfar by outlining its
subjects, divisions, subdivisions and main issues discussed. This survey is of
great help and interest especially to those who make their first acquaintance
with the philosophical world of Sadra. The chapter ends with a list of
commentators who have glossed over Asfar from Aqa Muhammad Bidabadi to
Husayn Tabatabai, the most recent commentator of Sadra, thus pointing to the
continuity of philosophical activity in Islamic civilization.


This is followed by a chapter on the
'sources' of Mulla Sadra's ideas. As we have stated before, Nasr's approach to
history is very different from other accounts and, this chapter, in fact,
exemplifies the traditional form of 'doing history'. He puts emphasis on the
'vertical' rather than the horizontal causes as far as philosophy is concerned,
and draws attention to the fact that Sadra's intellectual vision cannot be
reduced to the 'simple amalgamation of a certain number of previously existing
ideas' (p. 69). Seen under this light, no figure of Islamic philosophy including
Mulla Sadra can be reduced to the ''effect' of a number of historical causes'.
With his unusual erudition, Nasr is able to show how Sadra made use of all the
previous ideas, discussions, approaches and sciences without falling into the
trap of shallow syncreticism and eclecticism, and dovetailed them with great
profoundness and originality in his grand synthesis.


Chapter five, together with chapter six,
contains the most philosophical discussion of the book and presents an analysis
of the meaning of 'transcendent theosophy' which Nasr offers as the translation
of al-hikmat al-ilahiyyah. Although
Nasr, along with H. Corbin, was at times criticized for using the term
'theosophy' because of the distorted use of this word by some new-age occult
groups, he is, I believe, right in insisting on it as being the correct
translation of al-hikmat
al-ilahiyyah
. Accordingly, hakim-i
ilahi
and hakim-i muta'allih will
be translated neither as philosopher nor simply sage but as 'theosopher' an
appellation and title both Suhrawardi and Ibn Arabi, before Sadra, have chosen
for themselves.


The transcendent theosophy as a distinct
mode of thinking is based on three principles: 'intellectual intuition or
illumination (kashf or dhawq or ishraq); reason and rational
demonstration ('aql or istidlal); and religion or revelation
(shar' or wahy).' This is a type of philosophy
which combines both rational thinking and intellectual illumination, a way of
thinking which begins with logic (al-mantiq) and ends with ecstasy and joy
(wajd wa'l-surur) as we see in the very plan
of Suhrawardi's Hikmat al-Ishraq. Put
differently, this is one of the supreme manifestations of the path of knowledge
(ma'rifah) closely associated with philosophia perennis. Ibn Sina gives the
first signs of this philosophy; Suhrawardi enlarges and deepens it in his
metaphysics of light; Ibn Arabi produces the gnostic formulation of it par excellence; and Mulla Sadra provides
the most systematic and succinct account of it. After discussing the meaning of
al-hikmat al-muta'aliyah, Nasr turns
to the similarities and differences between Mulla Sadra and the school of Ishraq upon which Sadra heavily relies
in his works. He also touches upon the main differences between Sadra and Ibn
Sina and Ibn Arabi both of whose presence are felt vividly in the Sadrean
corpus.


The last two chapters which are the new
additions to the present edition dwell upon the influence of Mulla Sadra on
Islamic philosophy in Qajar period and the Quranic commentaries of Sadra,
respectively. Chapter six, which was, as we were informed by Dr. Nasr, written
as the first chapter of his planned second volume on Mulla Sadra, analyzes the
basic teachings of Sadra's metaphysics with great clarity. It is also in this
chapter that one finds the deeper structure and overtones of the transcendent
theosophy for such fundamental questions of philosophy as essence and existence
and the gradation of being. The last chapter of the book focuses on one of the
most neglected aspects of Mulla Sadra and, in fact, of other Islamic
philosophers, viz. the Qur'anic commentaries of Islamic philosophers. Since
classical Islamic philosophy has usually been set against the teachings of the
Qur'an and the hadith, the
relationship between these two sources of Islam and the works of Muslim
philosophers has either been skipped over or discarded as a subject of scholarly
study. Even today, no serious study of this important subject has been
undertaken by either Western scholars of Islam or by Muslim intellectuals, the
only two exceptions being Louis Gardet's La Pensee religieuse d'Avicenne (Paris,
1951) and Muhsin Salih's unpublished Ph.D. thesis The Verse of the Light: A Study of Mulla
Sadra's Philosophical Qur'an Exegesis
(Temple University, 1993). The chapter
on the Quranic commentaries of Mulla Sadra is, therefore, a very important step
towards bringing out this much neglected aspect of Islamic philosophy. After
discussing the four sources of Sadra's Qur'anic exegesis, namely the Sufi, the
Shi'ite, the theological and the philosophical commentaries, Nasr focuses, as an
example, on Sadra's commentary on ayat
al-nur
which has been the subject of numerous commentaries by Islamic
philosophers and the Sufis.


The overall impression with which one
finishes these two books is substantially different from standard histories of
Islamic philosophy. In contrast to various descriptions of Islamic philosophy as
a barren and outdated form of thinking, Nasr's works present a different picture
of Islamic philosophy which is not only saturated with veritable principles of
the Quranic revelation and metaphysics but also able to offer invaluable
insights for the revival of Islamic civilization. Considering the fact that no
civilization can dispense with philosophy, we hope that the new generation of
Muslim scholars and even the Western students of Islam will pay enough attention
to the picture of Islamic philosophy presented by the works of Dr. Nasr.

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