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Human knowledge is dependent on both experience and reason. Experience provides the “manifold” or material of knowledge; reason provides the necessary, infallible principles by which to abstract the general and to order the manifold of experience. In other words, human knowledge begins with sensory experience, which is an awareness of the concrete particular. Sense experience, however, gives the particular and never the general. Knowledge of the general is possible only on the possession of rational powers. Sense and reason, then, are two faculties which, while quite different, can supply objectively valid judgments of things only in conjunction with each other.
To have sense and sense organs is prerequisite for perception and the acquisition of knowledge about the external world. Sense organs receive impressions of perceptible objects and transmit them as raw materials to the mind. In addition, sense organs can report to the mind the precedence of the impressions, but it is not in the capacity of sense to comprehend the relations or establish connections among the sensory impressions. For instance, through the action of sense organs we do feel the curative effect of medicine after we take it, and, this experience repeated, we deduced that “medicine is the cause of cure.” The implicit syllogism underlying this conclusion consists of the premise that “medicine precedes cure cannot be accidental.” In other words, in argumentative syllogisms, if, for instance, the minor premise is reached through sense organs, the major premise must be general, rational law so that a conclusion may be drawn. Thus, to deduce a conclusion from sense impressions depends on the reasoning power of the intellect, without which man’s knowledge must be a pile of unrelated sense impressions.
A reference to the Qur’an2 :55: “And when you said: O Moses, we will not believe in thee till we see Allah manifestly, so the punishment overtook you while you looked on.”
A reference to the Qur’an,6 :103. The physical vision of man, working as it does only within narrow limits and being able only to see bodies, cannot comprehend the Infinite One. He sees everyone and everything but cannot be seen.
philosophy of Illumination
One of the most valuable schools of Islamic philosophy, the philosophy of Illumination combines Neoplatonic and Islamic ideas. According to this philosophy, the source of all things is Absolute Light. That which is visible requires no definition, and nothing is more visible than light, whose every nature consists in manifestation. We may distinguish two illuminations, i.e. modes of being of the Primal Light:
1/ pure, abstract, formless;
2/ accidental derivative, possessing form.
Pure light is self-conscious substance (spirit of soul), knowing itself through itself ‘for whatever knows itself must be pure light’. Accidental light is related to pure light as effect to cause and only exists as attribute in association with the illuminated object.
Accidental light is of two kinds:
a) dark substance;
B) dark forms, i.e. quantities,
and the combination of these two make up a material body. Since darkness is nothing but the absence of light, and light is identical with reality, the substance and forms of the universe consist of illumination diffused from Primal Light in infinite gradation of intensity. It follows that everything partakes of reality in proportion to the radiance which it receives and toward which it ever moves ‘with lover’s passion, in order to drink more and more of the original fountain of Light.’ This perpetual flow and ebb of desire produces the revolutions of the heavenly spheres, the processes of nature, and all human activities. While the entire universe is eternal as emanating from Eternal Light, but contingent if regarded as the object of irradiation, some illuminations are simple, others compound and therefore inferior. The intelligences, the celestial spheres, the souls of the heavens, time, motion, and the archetypes of the elements belong to a higher world, which may be called eternal in contrast with all below it, though in the relation existing between them not posteriority but parallelism is implied.
To have sense and sense organs is prerequisite for perception and the acquisition of knowledge about the external world. Sense organs receive impressions of perceptible objects and transmit them as raw materials to the mind. In addition, sense organs can report to the mind the precedence of the impressions, but it is not in the capacity of sense to comprehend the relations or establish connections among the sensory impressions. For instance, through the action of sense organs we do feel the curative effect of medicine after we take it, and, this experience repeated, we deduced that “medicine is the cause of cure.” The implicit syllogism underlying this conclusion consists of the premise that “medicine precedes cure cannot be accidental.” In other words, in argumentative syllogisms, if, for instance, the minor premise is reached through sense organs, the major premise must be general, rational law so that a conclusion may be drawn. Thus, to deduce a conclusion from sense impressions depends on the reasoning power of the intellect, without which man’s knowledge must be a pile of unrelated sense impressions.
A reference to the Qur’an2 :55: “And when you said: O Moses, we will not believe in thee till we see Allah manifestly, so the punishment overtook you while you looked on.”
A reference to the Qur’an,6 :103. The physical vision of man, working as it does only within narrow limits and being able only to see bodies, cannot comprehend the Infinite One. He sees everyone and everything but cannot be seen.
philosophy of Illumination
One of the most valuable schools of Islamic philosophy, the philosophy of Illumination combines Neoplatonic and Islamic ideas. According to this philosophy, the source of all things is Absolute Light. That which is visible requires no definition, and nothing is more visible than light, whose every nature consists in manifestation. We may distinguish two illuminations, i.e. modes of being of the Primal Light:
1/ pure, abstract, formless;
2/ accidental derivative, possessing form.
Pure light is self-conscious substance (spirit of soul), knowing itself through itself ‘for whatever knows itself must be pure light’. Accidental light is related to pure light as effect to cause and only exists as attribute in association with the illuminated object.
Accidental light is of two kinds:
a) dark substance;
B) dark forms, i.e. quantities,
and the combination of these two make up a material body. Since darkness is nothing but the absence of light, and light is identical with reality, the substance and forms of the universe consist of illumination diffused from Primal Light in infinite gradation of intensity. It follows that everything partakes of reality in proportion to the radiance which it receives and toward which it ever moves ‘with lover’s passion, in order to drink more and more of the original fountain of Light.’ This perpetual flow and ebb of desire produces the revolutions of the heavenly spheres, the processes of nature, and all human activities. While the entire universe is eternal as emanating from Eternal Light, but contingent if regarded as the object of irradiation, some illuminations are simple, others compound and therefore inferior. The intelligences, the celestial spheres, the souls of the heavens, time, motion, and the archetypes of the elements belong to a higher world, which may be called eternal in contrast with all below it, though in the relation existing between them not posteriority but parallelism is implied.
