Mansions of Western Wisdom
Reading Whitehead on Philosophy and Religion To be given human state and fail to gratefully acknowledge those who have been its greatest explorers in different domains is both a moral and intellectual failure. There have been towering minds who have left behind a legacy of great insights regarding almost every important thing that concerns us and if we don’t visit their palaces of wisdom, we lose our claim to be lovers of wisdom or hikmah . The opposite of philosopher (etymologically lover of wisdom) is not a prophet or saint or theologian but misosopher (hater of wisdom) and we have no choice to avoid philosophy but are unavoidably either good or bad philosophers. Much of Sunni Muslim world’s tragedy is that it fears philosophers and is guilty of slander ( bohtan ) and unfounded opinions ( zann ) about them. It assumes philosophy is threat to religion or philosophers don’t know religion in its proper manner. What a decline from the past practice when it was perceived as an ally a...