Taking Philosophy Seriously in Islamic Cultures

As curriculum is national debate and countering intolerance generally acknowledged priority, it is time to consider philosophy, the queen of sciences. The pursuit or love of wisdom, as philosophy aspires to be, there can be no doubt about its need for anyone in any culture. In Islamic culture the Prophet (S.A.W) is quintessential teacher of hikmah which means wisdom. Muslims settled score with wisdom traditions from other cultures and today are required to take stock of several wisdom traditions that we encounter in globalized world. How do Muslims approach this crucial task? I would suggest that philosophy’s central definitions/charecterizations/objectives including love of wisdom, seeing things as they are or right vision, preparation for death, self discipline and self inquiry, examination of life and opinions/critical thinking, life of mind/contemplative activity, orientation towards the Good and cultivation of beauty constitute perennially or universally sought/relevant ideals every student should be exposed to. Philosophy is not opinion of philosophers but search for truth as distinguished from mere opinion/speculation and it needn’t be reduced to rationalism or construed as rejection of Sacred as such. None would like to be classified as misosopher (hater of wisdom) or side with executors of Socrates or doubt the value of reflection/contemplation. Let us note how central philosophy or the figure of hakeem (sage) has been to the task of being religious/spiritual/Islamic. 

    Although it is generally recognized that faith and reason can coexist or complement each other, philosophers of diverse persuasions have often been greeted with suspicion or contempt. General misgivings about Muslim philosophers persist till date mainly due to supposed unorthodoxy of some opinions of philosophers and not to essence of philosophy/quintessential philosophical activity as such which has been, as queen of sciences or science of defining terms or thinking, central to diverse disciplines from poetry to Sufism to theology to ethics to various sciences including politics, jurisprudence and exegesis. 

    Eric Voegelin’s statement that Christianity is the "philosophy itself in a state of perfection" may be more appropriately transposed to Islam according to its great sages who cultivated/theorized prophetic hikmah. They have endeavoured to cultivate hikmah implicated in the Quran as a function of prophet and great blessing. This may be easily understood if we grant that worship is the "consummation of philosophy" as Catherine Pickstock would argue. This would follow from the fact that the spirit of worship concerns “not merely the love of wisdom, but the celebration of wisdom given to us and accepted by us as that to which our minds are ultimately directed.” However, if we keep classical Greek and Islamic and Indian conceptions of philosophy as involving preparation for death, vital preparatory role of ethics/tazkiya in philosophizing and the shared trajectory with religion, mysticism and art as a way of life and its fruit a higher life of spirit or blessed life. Voegelin acknowledges that philosophy is identical with the classic definition of theology: “faith seeking understanding.” 

    In Islamic cultures, Mutakalimoon and Sufi metaphysicians besides those who are called philosophers have shared trajectories and all may be loosely said to be doing philosophy that itself is to be distinguished from modern emasculated and narrow definition of it. Note for instance what Ghazzali did in his magnum opus Ihya and another great classic Kimayae Saadah was to  centralize intellectual-spiritual aspect of Islamic tradition, borrow heavily from IbnS ina (for instance, his epistemology, as has been cogently shown in a book length treatise  is Avicenean in fact Kalam till date is heavily indebted to him for proof of God and we need to note that classification of sciences current in Islamic cultures is owed to philsophers such as Farabi) and his greatest work converges with the objective of philosophy as underlined in “can be called a preparation for death". What al-Ghazālī teaches is to help man to live a life in accordance with the sacred law, by a sanctification of the whole life so that he is ready for the meeting with his Lord at any moment. It thus brings the lover into the presence of his eternal beloved and thus fulfills the longing of the soul, which had finally found eternal peace.” For Socrates, “one aim of those who practice philosophy in the proper manner is to practice for dying and death.”(In fact it has been argued that Ghazali has modeled his great Ihya on the Aristotelian model of practical and theoretical knowledge and it is not difficult to see essential convergence in aims of preparation for felicity in hereafter or science of knowledge of God in Al-Ghazzali and that of philosophy a pursued along essentially Neo-Platonic lines by Al-Farabi.) Muslim historians, from al-Shahrastani in the twelfth century to Qutb-al-Din Ashkivari in the seventeenth, as Corbin notes, take the view that the wisdom of the 'Greek sages' was itself also derived from the 'Cave of the lights of prophecy.'

    Today’s religious (especially Muslim) critics of philosophy don’t know that it is aqli kulli/illumined theonomous reason/intellect or nous rather than reason or ratio, God rather than man, other world/higher intellectual-spiritual world rather than this (sensory) world, ethics rather than libertine excuses that have been privileged by Muslim philosophers. 

    Accustomed to modern notions regarding philosophy as conceptual or linguistic analysis  or problem solving enterprise or that raises questions and synthesizes knowledge of other domains it looks extremely anachronistic to assert little noticed functional definition of philosophy  as preparation for death that Al-Farabi upholds with his master, Plato’s Socrates. I wish to understand this claim in its proper setting in ancient traditional cultures to make sense of Socratic claim and ground his arguments in cross disciplinary fashion. 

    Philosophy for ancients and Plato whom Al-Farabi takes as a model of a philosopher or more precisely a sage as the former term evokes in modern times is not a mere theoretical rational inquiry but a realization, intellection or noetic vision that transcends subject-object duality and demands something like ethical discipline. For many advocates of traditional philosophy (that encompasses Indian, Chinese, Far Eastern, Islamic, Judeo-Christian and wisdom traditions of primitives) philosophy in the primordial sense of the term prepares one for death and assimilation to God as Plato said and is not a rational logical abstract discipline only and is allied to gnosis, a way of life or realization of the good. It is not a prerogative of ratio or mental faculty of reason but of nous, the supra-individual universal faculty of intellect. Philosophy, as Uzdavinys notes in his introduction to The Golden Chain (2005), in the traditional Orphic-Pythagorean sense is wisdom and love combined in a moral and intellectual purification in order to cultivate divine akhlaq or what he phrases as reaching the “likeness to god.” It involves contemplation of Beauty and Good. In fact all contemplation is a form of death of self/mind. All meditation and contemplation, especially on the void called death, leads to death of the will/surrender of the will and consequent acquiescence to the will of the Other or non-self or what may be in theological terms called God is a sort of the death of the willing self. Islam’s key demand is surrender of the will. 

    Heidegger’s complaint has been pointed out by several historians of philosophy that post-Arsitoltlean philosophy in general and modern philosophy in particular has been forgetful of the notion of what Heidegger calls thinking and Plato would perhaps call attention to death, pure receptivity to Being that reveals itself not to conceptual intellect but to intellection. Receptivity to being achieved by fana in Sufism or consent to become nothing after transcending egocentric view in other traditions including Indian ones, is what is preparation for death. This alone gives the view of the world as full of wonder and beauty. Traditional aesthetics assumes that the joy of art arises from transcendence of ego by contemplating art forms. Narrowly conceived rationalism has largely vetoed mystery and wonder and thus lost that great virtue of being humble and receptive towards unrepresentable truth in phenomena. Plato’s or Al-Farabi’s insistence on preparation for death is not invitation for speculating on our posthumous states but achieving, with mystics across traditions, death in life, death to memory so that one achieves primal innocence that Adam has lost after the Fall that involves seeing objects as separate from subject or what amounts to the same thing as seeing things egoistically, dualistically or outside God. Sufis are supposed to die every moment so that they fully enjoy freshness of revelations of Being. God consciousness is identified in different traditions (especially in Zen and Sufism) with the present moment or Eternal Now, achieved by dying to both past memories and future anxieties. Simone Weil’s definition of God as “attention without distraction” expresses this notion of philosophy as cleansing and sharpening of perception. Philosophy in traditional sense gives us eyes to see, to perceive without distraction or colouring from egocentric desires and passions and ultimately to dissolve into objects so that only seeing is there without a seer and that dissolves all epistemological problems, so to speak. Philosophy has often or largely been reduced to epistemology after Kant and this has taken it to an abyss from which nothing is rescuing it today. Traditionalist scholars have noted that metaphysics, the science of the Real and sacra scientia has been reduced to ontology after Aristotle and this too has proved problematic. We again need philosophy as transformative practice that through rigorous ethical discipline (something absent in modern armchair discipline of philosophy as if it is learning new information or solving logical puzzles) results into a state of supreme clarity of understanding and joy and peace that passeth understanding. Philosophy as a practice of the self – a theme to which Foucault returns – as esoteric discipline allied to mysticism and needing proper initiation and not a profane discipline, logic chopping or linguistic analysis or calculus of abstractions or speculative exercises is what Plato stood for. Tolumin has also observed in his Philosophers: East and West that only a sage can be a philosopher in oriental civilizations. Schuon suggests to reserve the name of philosophers for sages and to describe rationalists as profane thinkers. Philosophy is according to “the best of the Greeks,to express by means of reason certainties “seen” or “lived” by the immanent Intellect.” 

    A philosopher in Islamic tradition is more akin to a mystic who lives the higher truths or virtues; he is ideally a sage, a seer. Many great mystics in Islamic history have been indistinguishable from philosophers; Sufi metaphysicians have been intellectual giants. A philosopher is understood with reference to key virtue of love of wisdom, a choice for certain life style, certain way of life that we ordinarily would classify as both moral and contemplative. He is allied to a poet than to a doubting ratiocinating, arguing “thinker” or scientist. A philosopher is not a dialectician, a disputant, an ideologue – appellations that apply more to exotericist scholars. His is not for unbridled use of reason but uncompromising ability to be open to pursuit or experience of truth. Philosophy is seeking happiness, a preparation for death, a therapy against linguistic and other ideological cobwebs that cloud the vision. It is a quest for the most important “things,” the most enduring, the most beautiful, the most enjoyable “things.” Its goal largely converges with art, religion and mysticism. It has been central to traditional cultures, East and West. It is only in modern times that there is impoverishment in its scope and cultivation. We need to restore love for wisdom that philosophy originally is. There can be no fatwa against love of wisdom in any healthy culture. If we mostly find fools or fanatics or ignorant people talking without basis, it is because we have deserted philosophy. This is the time to revive attention to philosophy in Madrasah curriculum, give hukama (sages) central place that they had been given in Islamic tradition (only below muhaddas and higher than Ulama and saints as elaborately argued in Ismail Shaheed’s Abaqat that builds on Shah Waliullah’s Khayr al-Kaseer and other works).