Hikmat

God's Angry Madmen

2012-02-14T11:14:00.000-08:00

Navid Kermani is awonderfully creative literary critic and historian specialising in Arabic andPersian literature of the classical period. His earlier work on the aestheticsof the Qurʾan was an excellent contribution to the field of Qurʾanic studies (Gott ist schön: Das äesthetische Erleben desKoran, Munich: Beck, 1999). The present book under review is a challengingand timely intervention in contemporary thought, analysing the important, mostneglected and much reviled tradition within monotheisms of the literary revoltagainst God, the complaints and litanies of ‘speaking truth’ to the ultimatepower, that is the divine, exemplified in the biblical story of Job and in themedieval example of the Muṣībatnāmaof the famous Persian poet Farīd al-Dīn ʿAṭṭār (d. c 1221). It was originallypublished in German in 2005 (Der SchreckenGottes, Munich: Beck) resulting from Kermani’s tenure of a fellowship atthe Wissenschaftskolleg in Berlin, and the translation is fluent and veryreadable.

The fundamentalproblem of evil, the existence of both natural disasters such as earthquakes(natural evils) and of moral failures such as genocide (moral evils) havesince, at least, the Enlightenment provided the primary argument against theexistence of God, or a singular deity. Arguably, polytheisms, whether henotheismsor at the minimum non-monotheisms, have less of a problem here – failings of ahuman, supra-human and natural kind can be explained by the existence ofdifferent and even squabbling gods – even the Qurʾan recognises this aspect ofa non-monotheistic order even if it regards it as a fault. Monotheisms tend tosee themselves, or that is what the main narrative seems to suggest, assingular discourses of the power of a God-King whose tyrannical diktat cannotbe violated. This idea of the divine could be construed from the divine namesthemselves that are depicted in the calligraphies at the beginning of eachchapter: al-qahhār, the subduer; al-ḍārr, the afflicter; al-khāfiḍ, the humiliater; al-makkār, the cunning; al-jabbār, the compeller; and al-muqtadir, the dominator. But he isalso the merciful and the lover – this contrast between the just and wrathfulGod and the merciful and loving lord is a central tension within monotheism.

However,monotheisms also produce the faithful believer who rails against God, a Job, aKierkegaard, and even a Christ on the cross – a figure who in the midst oftrial and tribulation cannot stay silent because he believes. In Islam, we tendto prefer the faithful submitter – and yet forget, at our spiritual andintellectual peril, the one who will not remain silent. We prefer the pious tobe good and to keep their silence, and not to be loud and contrary because ofthe virtues of thankfulness and patience, in the words of the Qurʾan in sūratal-Baqara, verse 155: ‘But give glad tidings to the patient, who surely whenthey are visited by an affliction say, ‘surely we belong to God and to him wereturn’, upon them rest blessings and mercy from their Lord, and they areverily the truly guided’. Kermani’s real contribution is to relate this traditionof revolt which is fairly well known and discussed within westernJudaeo-Christian theologies and literatures to a similar stream within Islamicand especially Persian thought taking as his example the twelfth centuryliminal poet ʿAṭṭār of Nishapur. He could also have selected other figures suchas the poets of the classical period such as al-Maʿarrī (d. 1058), or Sufiscontemporary to ʿAṭṭār such as ʿAyn al-Qużāt Hamadānī (d. 1131) or Ibn ʿArabī(d. 1240), or even more recently poets such as Muhammad Iqbal (d. 1938). Atheismis just a brief step away, a careless neglect and silence and inability to railagainst one whom one denies – and a generation or two ago the late ʿAbd al-Rahman Badawi (d. 2002) wrote a preliminary history of atheism in Islam which remains unsurpassed.Ultimately, one only reproaches the object of one’s love. The book comprisesfive tightly argued chapters. The first begins with the problem of Job, of the sufferingbrought upon by the inexplicable wrong of children dying, a personal account ofthe author’s own experience and moving towards an introduction to ʿAṭṭārhimself. It introduces the central conception of God as good, omnipotent andknowable – and with these three key attributes lies the problem of evil and howit can be reconciled with such a God. The second chapter shifts to a discussionof the text at the centre of the book, the Muṣībatnāma.The third chapter deals with the theology of suffering and fear, examining boththe notion that God in unfathomable and hence suffering a mystery, as well asthe idea that God himself suffers that arises in more modern Catholic (vonBalthasar and Kasper) and Protestant (Barth and Moltmann) theologies. Leibniz (d.1716) struggles to articulate a theodicy (literally, how God can be just in thepresence of evil), thinkers attempt to make sense of the pivotal Lisbonearthquake of 1755, both of which put together Voltaire mercilessly satirisesin Candide. The Augustinian traditionfinds comfort in original sin and the fault of the human while extolling thesalvific power of grace, most Muslim theologians take the course ofagnosticism, but ʿAṭtār prefers an honest cry against the divine, acknowledgingthe terror of God and his ‘cunning’ (makr).God’s cunning, and seemingly arbitrariness, is clear even in the very premissof the Job narrative, namely Satan’s bet with God. A secondary motif of thechapter is to argue for the need to acknowledge that there is a plurality ofinterpretations within Islam even, and especially, with respect to views on thenature of evil. The fourth chapter on the rebellion against God weaves togetherthe Job story and motif with ʿAṭṭār. Contentment and trust are contrasted withvexation and quarrelling – anger at God is a sign of love reciprocating torment,which is, in itself, a sign of divine attention. As such, Kermani provides anargument against those searching for free thinking in Islam, like Sarah Stroumsa, who cannot countenance the slightest revolt or criticism – and indeedmany a modern Muslim theologian would similarly be baffled by the piousindignation and frustration of ʿAṭṭār’s ranters. The final chapter then triesto articulate this theme into a counter-theology, recovering a lost traditionthat is of benefit for us in the modern age to find our believing selves andallow for the possibility of venting our frustrations, impieties, and frailtiesagainst the ultimate alterity of God. The argument is brought full circle – itbegins with the story of the author’s uncle and ends with him and with theultimate response to human frailty that we come from God and return to him, thepious and yet even impious istirjāʿ. Inthe presence of hope, there is always faith; hence no need for a conclusion assuch.

Well-conceived andargued, one cannot quibble with the odd fault here and there in the book’sproduction. It would be interesting to see whether we can find the continuationof this counter-theology or rather counter-narrative on evil in the modernperiod, and one suspects we should start a modern history of it with Iqbal andpoets and thinkers of the early twentieth century and take it up to thepresent. Can our modern sensibilities allow for an intelligent, deeply impiouspiety that rails against God because it affirms his existence and the return ofthe cosmos to him without falling into fatuous arguments about blasphemy andpunishment for thought and speech crime? The embrace of confusion and eschewingthe certainty beloved of theology is a courageous position that is ratherdifficult to sustain. Highly recommended (to use the cliché), The Terror of God is an excellentexposition of the problem of suffering and how monotheists not least Muslimshave attempted to make sense of it without denying their own humanity andwithout letting God off the hook. Thesuccess, and hope of salvation, of being lifted from the confusion of the worldwith its evils that we wish to flee is evoked with the brilliant final verse ofthe text of ʿAṭṭār in which the confused and lost bedouin addresses God: takeme by the hand, if you can, and deliver me from the confusion, as if nothinghad happened (mītavānī gar ze chandīnpīch pīch, dast-e man gīrī va angārī kē hīch).

Sayyid Muḥammad Bāqir al-Ṣadr - Lectures on logic

2012-02-12T05:59:00.000-08:00

Audio files - missing the first - but broadly interesting - follow the links for various others

3rd lecture

But to be honest is it definitely him? I don't recognise the voice

Debate on what is Islamic Philosophy

2012-02-11T03:20:00.000-08:00

Programme with Ali Fanaei and Muhammad Reza Nikfar from BBC Persian's Pargar

Avicenna's Metaphysics - What was that all about?

2012-02-10T13:53:00.000-08:00

Generations of scholars, attempting to grapple with Aristotelianmetaphysics and his notion of first philosophy as the study of being quabeing, had to deal with the seeming confusion in the Metaphysicsconcerning its subject matter and purpose. Was the Metaphysics a workabout the abstract notion of being, was it a primary science that determinedthe subject matter of all the other branches of knowledge, was it another namefor theology (or perhaps more specifically what the post-Heideggerian traditioncalls onto-theology), or was it somewhat a study of ultimate causes? At theheart of the problem was the very notion of metaphysics and indeed of beingitself. This question and problematic animated the young Ibn Sīnā and as hefamously noted in his autobiography, he read and read the text and failed tograsp its purpose until serendipity intervened and he chanced upon a copy ofal-Fārābī’s short work explaining the Metaphysics. It is this Avicennanturn, and the wider question of metaphysics as first philosophy, as atranscendental science whose subject matter itself ought to be transcendentalthat accounts for the research focus of Koutzarova’s published dissertationthat deservedly won one of the Iranian Book Agency’s Book of the Year award in2011. Central to the thesis is the insight that making sense of the metaphysicsis a focal step in the critical systematisation of Aristotelian science and thevery possibility of science. Metaphysics as science is only possible if it is transcendentaland has a transcendental subject.

The text is divided into four parts and three sets of conclusions. Thefirst part lays out the problematic and considers the scope of metaphysicstaking its inspiration from that famous passage in the autobiography of IbnSīnā just mentioned and then considers what it means to define the subject ofmetaphysics as the Being of beings (al-mawjūd al-muṭlaq). For someonelike myself more in tune with later discussions the use of mawjūd asopposed to wujūd is interesting: the texts I tend to study prefer thelatter and the constant conflation of the two in favour of the latter by thelikes of Mullā Ṣadrā may account for his creative misreadings of Ibn Sīnā, apoint on which Koutzarova takes me to task. The second part focuses on thisconcept of mawjūd as the primary referential subject of metaphysics andengages in four chapters of careful textual analysis of Ibn Sīnā’s Metaphysicslinking the ontological structure of being with the epistemologicalarchitecture of science. The third part examines the term mawjūd,starting with a chapter on al-Fārābī and continuing with chapters that locatethe notion in category theory and concern the predication of the term. Centralto this section is a discussion of what one understands by the tertium quidof tashkīk that locates being as a term that is neither univocal norequivocal. The fourth part furthers the epistemological issue of conceptualisation(taṣawwur) by engaging with mawjūd and ‘its sisters’ namely thestatus of being a thing (shayʾ) or being necessary (ḍarūrī). InIbn Sīnā’s work this is partly a critique of kalām ontology thatdisplaces mawjūd as the ultimate ‘genus’ (or at least quasi-genus) isfavour of the term ‘thing’ which in its first diaresis divides into‘existent’ (mawjūd) and ‘non-existent’ (maʿdūm). For Ibn Sīnā,the fact that something exists is equivalent to stating it is a thing (inwhichever mode of existence one takes that since Ibn Sīnā is one of the firstMuslim thinkers to conceive of a mental mode of existence that the latertraditions terms al-wujūd al-dhihnī), and to its being necessary – asthe axiom of Islamic philosophy states (in genuflection to the related radicalcontingency of his proof for the existence of God as the necessary being):‘that which is not necessary cannot exist (lam yajib lam yūjad)’. The conclusions that follow consider metaphysicsas a transcendental science, the significance of the notion of thetranscendental in Ibn Sīnā and the problematic legacy of the Avicennan notionof the existent in consequent philosophical discussions. This clarifies furtheralso why Ibn Sīnā consider his philosophical approach to be superior totheology as a means for understanding the true nature of reality and of God asthe ultimate existent. Throughout the work one notices the careful attention totextual analysis with copious citations and considerations from the Avicennancorpus that one expects from the best traditions of German Arabism andspecialists of medieval philosophy. In particular her inter-textual approach isan important facet of Avicennan studies today – the need to understand how tolocate meaning assigned to terms across his works from the Metaphysicsto the Organon and through the Physics. No serious study ofAvicennan ontology can neglect his category theory addressed in the logic andshe certainly does not fail to do so.

A final note about language. In our times, it is rare indeed to findeven scholars bothering to keep up with literature written in other languagesnot least other European languages (the failure to read secondary literature inArabic and Persian is even more shameful). This work under review makes yetanother case for why anyone interested in the study of Islamic philosophy andtheology needs to have a familiarity with German. It is a pity that the workwas not written in English – it certainly would reach a wider audience andperhaps would have had a larger impact. But the case for a scholarly engagementin German is clear and necessary here.

Philosophy in Shīrāz I: Shams al-Dīn al-Khafrī

2012-02-10T13:49:00.000-08:00

While the art ofediting an Arabic text as part of one’s doctoral training seems to havedisappeared from British academia, it is salutary to note that the situation inGermany remains healthier. Firouzeh Saatchian makes a major contribution toour study of Islamic intellectual history and particularly the development ofphilosophical traditions in the early Safavid period precisely because itprovides us with a careful bio-bibliography and critical edition of two keytexts. Thus far, Shams al-Dīn al-Khafrī (d. 1535) is best known in thesecondary sources as a creative theoretical astronomer, mainly through theefforts of George Saliba, who has studied his al-Takmila fī sharḥ al-tadhkira carefully in part as an assessmentof the later reception of the scientific thought of Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī (d.1274) expressed in his al-Tadhkira fīʿilm al-hayʾa. That al-Khafrī also wrote on matters of philosophy andphilosophical theology demonstrates the abiding connection between theoreticalapproaches to science and philosophy well into the early modern period, anapproach continued in the next generation with Bahāʾ al-Dīn al-ʿĀmilī (d.1621). However, it was also the work of Henry Corbin and Seyyed Hossein Nasrwho alerted us to the philosophical significance of al-Khafrī as part of the‘school of Shiraz’ that predated and influenced the more dramatic ‘school of Isfahan’.It was the short treatise of al-Khafrī entitled On the Four Journeys that directly influenced the schema of the magnum opus of Mullā Ṣadrā Shīrāzi (d.1645) and there is also plenty of evidence of the metaphysics of al-Khafrīsimilarly influencing the later thinker. In terms of the textual productionpresented here, Saatchian’s editions should be read alongside her earlieredition of al-Khafrī’s marginalia onthe metaphysics section of the Sharḥal-jadīd li-l-Tajrīd which was published back in 2003, as well as RezaPourjavady’s edition of his short Risāla fī marātib al-wujūd published in 2005, and two short theological works onthe exegesis of the Throne Verse of the Qurʾān and a collection of Propheticdicta. Taken together these works represent the major contribution of al-Khafrīin philosophical theology and demonstrates his primary concerns with the prooffor the existence of God and God’s knowledge of and agency in the cosmos – asthe title puts it, a concern with the nature of God and of his agency. Pourjavady’srecent published dissertation on Maḥmūd Nayrīzī (Philosophy in Early Safavid Persia, Leiden: Brill, 2011) as well asthe work done by Ghassem Kakaie (Professor at the University of Shiraz) and Ahadfaramarz Qaramalaki (Professor at Tehran University) on logic and thescholastic tradition have also furthered our understanding of philosophicaltraditions immediately prior to Mullā Ṣadrā and the developments in the‘Safavid renaissance’ under Shah ʿAbbās I.

The book is dividedinto five chapters and contains editions of two texts. The first chapter is avery brief introduction to the research question relating to al-Khafrī’streatment of the nature of God and his activity. The second is a detailedbiography and bibliography of al-Khafrī. He studied primarily with Sayyid Ṣadral-Dīn Dashtakī (d. 1497), and while some suggest that he also studied withDashtakī’s rival, Jalāl al-Dīn Davānī (d. 1502), al-Khafrī’s positions are morein line with the former. His most famous student and a significant ‘export’ ofthe philosophical schools of Shiraz was Shāh Ṭāhir Anjudānī (d. 1546), who leftfor the Deccan as an emissary of the Safavids and was secretly an Imam of aline of Nizārī Ismailis. Al-Khafrī’s own adherence to Twelve Shiʿism seemsclear in his theological works as well as his association with the major juristat court Shaykh ʿAlī al-Karakī (d. 1534) as well as the time he spent inKashan, a town well-known for its Shiʿi adherents. With respect to thedisagreement on his death date, Saatchian opts for 942/1535, which seems a fairassessment of the evidence. Apart from a few works of exegesis, Prophetictradition and short treatises on mystical notions of being (most of which havebeen published), his main corpus lies in two areas: philosophical theology witha particular concern for the nature of God and his knowledge as reflected inthe works that Saatchian has edited, and mathematics and astronomy. Shecarefully examines the contents of the text and provides a meticulousdescription of the major manuscripts of the texts. One shortcoming here is thather primary concern is with manuscripts in Iranian libraries; however, thereare numerous manuscripts of al-Khafrī’s work in both of these major areas ofphilosophical theology and astronomy in Indian libraries as well as those inEurope such as the British library. The third chapter is a careful examinationof the twelve manuscripts that she consulted (establishing the manuscripthistory and chain of transmission) and used for the critical editions of thetwo texts included in the book. Once again, one suspects that there are othercopies especially in the British Library and Indian collections such as theRaza Library in Rampur, known for its holdings in philosophical theology.

The fourth chapter isan historical analysis of the nature of God and his knowledge in later Islamicthought – particularly useful is her list of texts affirming the existence ofGod (ithbāt al-wājib) from Avicennato the end of the 18^th century (pp. 100-4). She argues quitesuccessfully that the genre of such treatises was established by Avicenna anddeveloped in his legacy – even the medieval tripartite typology of theapproaches of the philosophers, the physicists and the theologians is based notonly on late antique Greek methods but also on the text of Avicenna’s al-Ishārāt wa-l-tanbīhāt and a famousgloss by Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsi (d. 1274). Her discussion of al-Khafrī’s textswas prefigured in her article from 2003 on the five risālas that he wrote on the topic. She suggests that Mullā Ṣadrā’sfamous version of the ontological proof for the existence of God that he calledburhān al-ṣiddīqīn, and a key featureof his metaphysics of contingency, the notion that the existence of acontingent is ontologically prior to its essence (the doctrine of aṣālat al-wujūd), are both indebted toal-Khafrī.

The final chapter isa paraphrase of the two texts edited with some considerations relating to theircontextualisation and attempts to trace influences on them. This chapter ofseventy pages is where her analysis of the philosophical content of the textsfinally emerges. She traces the thinkers who influenced him from the Greeksthrough to Dashtakī and also mentions some lines of influence on later thinkers,in particular Mullā Ṣadrā, of whom it is often said that his work is averitable journey into the history of philosophy – in practice the style ofargumentation of al-Khafrī and other philosophers of Shiraz is similar and ofgreat benefit to the intellectual historian as sources are often explicitlycited. The structure of his Risāla fīithbāt wājib al-wujūd follows the concerns of thinkers in the period: it isdivided into four sections – one proving the existence of God as a NecessaryBeing, which at its core derives from Avicenna’s famous proof of radicalcontingency, next establishing that the Necessary must be one (i.e.establishing tawḥīd), the thirdsection moves to the nature of God’s knowledge a controversial issue at leastsince the charge of al-Ghazālī (d. 1111) in his Tahāfut al-falāsifa that the philosophers are unbelievers becausethey deny God’s knowledge of particulars, and a final, long and profitablesection on the doctrines of the philosophers on the topic. In that lastsection, his citation of Qurʾanic verses and the views of mystics demonstrateal-Khafrī’s holistic approach to knowledge. One can see how his treatise mightprofitably be studied in class as a primer on philosophical theology on thenature of God in pre-modern Islam. The second text, Risāla fī-l-ilāhīyāt is merely a short summary comprising the samefourfold division. These chapters are then completed with a bibliography and a usefulindex of terms. The texts themselves then follow in Arabic and are well set outand prefaced with a quick statement on the method of the production of thecritical editions.

A fuller and muchdesired intellectual history of philosophical traditions in Islam can only bewritten once we have various micro-studies such as the present book underreview which cumulatively can build up a picture of how ideas developed.Saatchian is to be congratulated for producing such a useful work, which does anexcellent job of contextualising the thought of al-Khafrī and even providingsome wider comparative comments of use to specialists in medieval philosophy.One obvious complaint, and perhaps not entirely a fair one, is that the book isin German and hence the readership will be limited – at the very least onehopes she publishes a Persian version shortly – and one also hopes that anEnglish version will be forthcoming. However, given the technical nature ofmuch of the book apart from parts of chapter five, one does not actually need that much German to profit from the book– and the major contribution of the book lies in the two Arabic texts edited.

The Legacy of Avicenna - Post-classical Islamic Thought

2012-02-09T06:59:00.000-08:00

Scholars and studentsof Islamic thought in the medieval period will be grateful for this latest collection of studies that enhances our understanding of the intellectualhistory, the science, the theology and indeed the philosophy of thepost-Avicennan period. The papers originated in a conference hosted at Bar-IlanUniversity and funded by the German Israel Foundation for ScientificCooperation back in 2005 (and given the time it often takes for volumes toemerge from conferences this is indeed timely). After a short foreword by theeditor summarising the papers and their arguments, there are seventeen chapterson a range of issues from the intellectual legacy of Avicenna through hisstudents to the reception of Avicennan ontology in the thought of the Safavidthinker Mullā Ṣadrā Shīrāzī (d. 1635). The papers have been carefully andmasterfully edited and mistakes are few and far between (two obvious ones beingthe continuous reference in the foreword to the name of one contributor Afifial-Akiti as al-Atiki, and Ali was the Prophet’s cousin and not his nephew).

The first chapter isAhmed al-Rahim’s useful study of the immediate disciples of Avicenna providingus with a fuller historical contextualisation and bio-bibligraphies. Anappendix to it then considers Abū-l-ʿAbbās al-Lawkarī and Shams al-Dīn (or Sharafal-Dīn as the author cites him) al-Īlāqī (the former the subject of a couple ofserious and welcome articles by Roxanne Marcotte in recent years). Al-Rahimshows how a school doctrine developed in this first generation and given thesignificance of Bahmanyār for the later tradition as the representation of theAvicennan school (as understood by Mullā Ṣadrā, for example, and HeidrunEichner in her recent habilitationprovides some evidence for why this is the case), the question remains to whatextent these figures perpetuated a doctrine or substantially revised andpresented it for posterity. There are a number of issues in metaphysics andpsychology where Bahmanyār’s concerns somewhat differ or make explicit pointsin Avicenna such as the nature of the soul-body relationship, the exact significanceof the ‘flying man’ argument and the idea that existence is a scalar adjectiveand a gradational reality (tashkīkal-wujūd). Al-Rahim demonstrates the importance of these individuals inperpetuating both the philosophical and medical legacies of Avicenna, althoughit would have been useful to consider what sort of misunderstandings andcreative mistakes were involved in the development of the Avicennan school. Butperhaps that would be the subject of another article or indeed major monograph.

The next fourchapters concern perhaps the most significant medieval Muslim thinker Abū Ḥāmidal-Ghazālī (d. 1111). Frank Griffel’s study of his cosmology in Mishkāt al-anwār contributes to thedebate over the real Ghazālī raised by Gairdner in his study of the same text.Griffel shows successfully, and provides further evidence to Richard Frank’searlier arguments, that al-Ghazālī’s cosmology is broadly Avicennan and acceptsthe notion of second causality through the creation of a mechanism that is thefirst principle of the philosophers, the mutāʿof al-Ghazālī. Interesting, the use of the term suggests the almost demiurgiccreator of the Ismaili philosophers of the same period. Afifi al-Akiti’s studythat emerges from his much awaited D.Phil dissertation on the Maḍnūn corpus of al-Ghazālī providesfurther evidence for the faylasūf. Heargues that al-Ghazālī presents philosophy in three different ways in Maqāṣid, Tahāfut and the Maḍnūn –the former is plainly ‘ugly’, the middle text shows philosophy to be incorrector bad, while the latter reserves a good opinion. Of particular relevance isAkiti’s suggestion that the Maḍnūnwas critical to the adoption of Avicennan ideas by the Ashʿarī theologians ofthe medieval period. Binyamin Abrahamov’s article is about the reception ofal-Ghazālī in the thought of perhaps the most influential Sufi metaphysicianIbn ʿArabī. He is concerned with the Sufi, and how arational arguments have animportant place in understanding and encountering God and reality for bothfigures. Anna Akasoy’s paper is more wide-ranging and considers the criticalreception of al-Ghazālī in the West, especially Andalus with the circle of AbūBakr al-Ṭarṭūshī (d. 1126) and its influence on thinkers in the East after hisemigration to Alexandria. Akasoy’s paper is a good example of how intellectualhistory ought to consider the migration of ideas and their market in themedieval Islamic world. It also shows the importance of the influence of ideasfrom Andalus on some eminent theologians in the East especially Ibn Taymiyyaand the common point of attack on al-Ghazālī for mixing Sufism and philosophyand their concomitant doctrines of monism and the eternity of the cosmos.

The next two chaptersshift to the significant thinker Ibn Kammūna (d. 1284), who is often describedas a disciple of the doctrine of Suhrawardī (d. 1191). Heidrun Eichner studiesthe chapter on existence in al-Jadidfī-l-ḥikma of Ibn Kammūna to provide further evidence for the argument thatthe medieval Islamic approach to metaphysics was marked by a Rāzīan synthesis,and that al-Mulakhkhaṣ of Fakhral-Dīn al-Rāzī was a pivotal text that drew upon al-Taḥṣīl of Bahmanyār and defined metaphysics and the study ofontology for generations to come well into the Safavid period. She also showsthat in effect that existence centred metaphysics that one encounters in Mullā Ṣadrāalready has important precedents in Ibn Kammūna. Lukas Muehlethaler considersthe reception of Avicennan’s flying man argument in Ibn Kammūna and drawingupon versions found in the works of Suhrawardī concludes that the argument isnot only a thought experiment but constitutes for Ibn Kammūna a valid form ofsyllogistic reasoning. This is another careful textual study of the Uṣūl, a commentary on al-Ishārāt wa-l-tanbīhāt of Avicenna,and al-Tanqīḥāt, a commentary on al-Talwīḥāt of Suhrawardī.

The next two chapterscontinue the theme of the reception of Avicenna. Syamsuddin Arif’s study ofSayf al-Dīn al-Āmidī (d. 1233), better known as a jurist and theoretician ofthe Law, focuses on his philosophical oeuvre, especially al-Nūr al-bāhir which is much neglected. Arif therefore introducesus to another Avicennan who one needs to take into consideration when composinga fuller intellectual history of the Avicennan school. Nahyan Fancy’scontribution examines how the physician Ibn al-Nafīs (d. 1288) encountered andmodified the famous philosophical parable Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān written by bothAvicenna and Ibn Ṭufayl. Taking as the case study the nature of the soul, Fancyprovides further evidence for what Michot has termed the ‘pandémie avicennienne’ of the medieval Islamic thought. DavidBurrell’s brief paper on Mullā Ṣadrā’s reception of Avicenna and Suhrawardī isbased on his work in progress on the first section of al-Asfār al-arbaʿa. It engages with Mullā Ṣadrā’s critique of theposition that Avicenna articulated considering existence as an accident ofessence, and argues for a simple solution through a comparison with Aquinas(although it is worth pointing out that Fazlur Rahman provided two usefulsolutions to the problem in articles published in 1958 and 1981).

Robert Wisnovsky’s chapter on perfect andimperfect syllogisms and Sari Nusseibeh’s return to the question of God’sknowledge brings us back to Avicenna himself. The next set of chapters turns toscience. Leigh Chipman considers the nature of medicine as a discipline byexamining Quṭb al-Dīn al-Shīrāzī’s reception of Avicenna’s Canon in his al-Tuḥfa al-Saʿdiyya. Jamil Ragepconsiders the Avicennan legacy in astronomy through a study of his discipleal-Juzjānī’s short work. Robert Morrison turns to a significant theme of therelationship between philosophy and science and shows that abiding relevance ofphilosophy for astronomers.

The final two chapters concern the Jewishreception of Avicenna. Stephen Harvey’s chapter is a cursory survey of theinfluence of Avicenna’s terminology and the Maimonidean tradition. The finalchapter by Paul Fenton looks more carefully at the influence on Maimonidean worksby taking the example of the nature of the soul and the problem ofmetempsychosis. He shows how these Jewish writings bear the influence ofAvicenna’s own critique of the idea that a single soul can inhabit more thanone body.

Overall, Avicennaand His Legacy is a welcome contribution to our understanding of Islamicintellectual history and the course of philosophy and science in the periodfrom the eleventh to the seventeenth century, the ‘golden age’ as Dimitri Gutasput it (and in fact his article and postulation of this age looms behind thewhole volume). But one wonders where the anti-Avicennans and those whose viewof metaphysics and science was radically different fit. That would be thesubject of an entirely different volume but worth considering. Thinkers did notfail to exhibit the influence of Avicenna even where they disagreed vehementlywith him (one thinks especially of Mullā Ṣadrā), but a fuller intellectualhistory of what happened in the period between 1100 and 1700 would have toexamine those thinkers – and realise that one does not restrict theanti-Avicennan camp to Suhrawardī and his followers.

Is ʿirfān islamic?

2011-11-21T14:15:00.001-08:00

Not a new question but a timely one given the political context of the hegemony of the school of Mullā Ṣadrā as well as the rising popularity of the alliance of the maktab-e tafkīk (who call themselves maktab-e ahl-e bayt) and the Shīrāzīya against the study of philosophy especially in the ḥawzeh.

Documentary on the Life of Sayyid Shihāb al-Dīn Marʿashī

2011-11-21T14:10:00.001-08:00

A somewhat cheesy but still useful documentary on Sayyid Shihāb al-Dīn Marʿashī Najafī (d. 1990) and his library and scholarly contribution.

Four parts in all

3rd:

and 4th:

A recent work on Mullā Ṣadrā - Ibrahim Kalin

2011-11-14T14:41:00.000-08:00

At heart of much ofthe Neoplatonist intuition about knowledge and reality lies the identitythesis, the proposition that in any process of perception and of knowing theperceiving subject and its object are identical, because intellection is animmaterial process. The data that the intellect receives constitutes immaterialideas or essences. The foundational text for the theory is found in Aristotle’sDe Anima III.4, ‘For in the case ofthings without matter, that which thinks and that which is thought are thesame; for speculative knowledge is the same as its object’ (DA 430a3-6).Already in De Anima I.5, Aristotleintroduces the notion that the soul and the objects of its knowledge have a‘like-for-like’ relationship. The soul is an immaterial substance and hence itknows, grasps, assimilates even, that which is similarly immaterial. However,there is one fundamental distinction between the Aristotelian sense of theidentity thesis and a more radically monist or idealist turn that it takes withNeoplatonists such as Plotinus. For Aristotle, knowing and thinking areintentional acts in which the objects of knowing and extrinsic to the soul andidentified through the mutual recognition of like for like in which the essencefor example of a horse that exists in the memory of the thinking person isidentified with the essence of the horse that is grasped through the act ofperception, abstracted from the substance of the actual horse. Thus the twoessences, one intrinsic to the mind and the other extrinsic are identical. WithNeoplatonism, intellection is not an intentional act since all the objects ofknowledge, insofar as the person perceives the truth, are intrinsic to theintellect itself. There is no object of cognition extrinsic to the intellect. Therefore,unlike Aristotelian epistemology’s approach to knowledge of the truth throughrepresentation, knowledge can only be through a direct encounter, a turningwithin of the intellect. There are, therefore, no ultimate boundaries for thebecoming of the soul. The intellect’s ability to grasp knowledge is boundless.It is this version of the identity thesis and the assimilation of knowledge toa metaphysics that is both simultaneously monist and somewhat idealist that isthe concern of Kalin’s sophisticated presentation of the epistemology of the Safavidsage Mullā Ṣadrā Shīrāzī (d. 1635), a published version of his doctoraldissertation supervised by one of the pioneers of Sadrian studies inmetropolitan academia, Seyyed Hossein Nasr.

The work comprisesthree chapters. The first is a historical contextualisation that is dividedinto two parts: a Hellenic genealogy of attempts to make sense of Aristotle’snotion of identity, and then its Islamic reception from al-Kindī throughal-Fārābī, Ibn Sīnā and then Suhrawardī. The second chapter presents theepistemology of Mullā Ṣadrā, beginning with a discussion of his ontology as aframework for making sense of his epistemology which rejectsrepresentationalism and uses the identity thesis (which Kalin calls theunification argument) in favour of a epistemology of presence, the famousso-called knowledge by presence argument of later Islamic, especiallyilluminationist (ishrāqī), philosophymade famous by the late Mehdi Haʾeri Yazdi [ThePrinciples of Epistemology in Islamic Philosophy: Knowledge by Presence,Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992]. The third chapter by way ofa conclusion examines how Mullā Ṣadrā reconciles a monistically orientedmetaphysics with a pluralistic order of cognition through the identity thesis.Appended to the chapters is also an excellent and highly useful (for those ofus who teach Islamic philosophy and need texts in translation to do so)translation of the key text in which Mullā Ṣadrā expounds his understanding ofthe identity thesis, the Epistle on theIdentity of the Intellecting Subject and its object (or as Kalin has it‘the Unification of the Intellector and the intelligible – Risālat ittiḥād al-ʿāqil wa-l-maʿqūl).

The first chapteris a deliberate and judiciously selective history of the identity thesis focusingon those discussions which will best elucidate Mullā Ṣadrā’s argument and whichpresent his own understanding of the genealogy of the thesis tracing throughal-Fārābī and his Risālat al-ʿaql,the Theologia Aristotelis, thatcentral text of significance for Islamic Neoplatonism which represented anArabic paraphrase of parts of Plotinus’ EnneadsIV to VI and was attributed to Aristotle and, of course, Alexander ofAphrodisias whose reading of Aristotle’s DeAnima was so influential in the East and the West. A historian looking fora more thorough background to the identity thesis in Greek thought will bedisappointed here and would be better advised to look elsewhere – Ian Crystal’sSelf-Intellection and its EpistemologicalOrigins in Ancient Greek Thought (Ashgate, 2002) would be a good place tostart (and it is somewhat surprising that Kalin was not aware of it before thepublication of his book, especially as it does a good job of tracing theNeoplatonic trajectory away from Aristotelianism). However, Kalin’s account isfocused upon seeing the issue through the prism of Mullā Ṣadrā’s selectivehistory and for such an account it matters little whether the Theologia was not the work of Aristotle;what matters were those texts filtered through Arabic that played a pivotalrole in shaping the conception of the philosophical heritage. More important isKalin’s contextualisation for the identity thesis as central to epistemology inboth theological and mystical circles: what is clear is that a certainNeoplatonic taste marked out the learned culture of the Islamic East. He quotesmajor illimunationist philosophers such as Suhrawardī (d. 1191) and Shahrazūrī(d. c. 1288) who considered the identity thesis to be at the heart of Sufiepistemology and the quest for mystical union, and also figures from the schoolof Ibn ʿArabī such as his stepson Ṣadr al-Dīn al-Qūnawī (d. 1274), and Afḍalal-Dīn Kāshānī (d. 1214) who was responsible for an influential Persianparaphrase of Aristotle’s De Anima,and whose Jāvīdān-nāma on the life ofthe soul was paraphrased and adapted by Mullā Ṣadrā into Arabic in his own Iksīr al-ʿārifīn (as William Chittickhas shown in his studies on Kāshānī and in his translation of Iksīr). A number of medieval Sufis andtheologians quoted the Theologia, andespecially the famous doffing metaphor derived from Enneads IV.8.1 which provided the basis for their arguments aboutthe original existence in the life of the transcendental nous and in thepresence of God and the ability of the sage and mystic to transcend this lifeand enjoy the beatific vision of the divine in pursuit of mystical union. Andin doing so, some of them recognised that this text represented Platonic, andnot Aristotelian doctrine; in one famous passage in al-Muṭāraḥāt, Suhrawardī quotes from the Theologia introducing it by saying ‘the divine Plato said’. Alexanderseems to be a key link in the noetics from the Aristotelian tradition throughto the Theologia and al-Fārābī, asMarc Geoffroy has shown most recently. However, unlike the Theologia, al-Fārābī’s postulation of the identity thesis was morecircumspect; hence when Ibn Sīnā comes onto the scene and once and for allattacked the non-Aristotelian sentiment not only of the Theologia in his famous notes that comprised part of the lost Kitāb al-inṣāf, but also the identitythesis associated with Porphyry [in a recent article on Porphyrius arabicus Peter Adamson has suggested reasons for thisassociation], editor of Plotinus, as false, this posed a problem for lateradvocates of the identity thesis such as Mullā Ṣadrā. Therefore, hisfundamental task was to show not only that ‘Aristotle’ and al-Fārābī (read in apartial way) were correct, but also that Ibn Sīnā’s critique was unsound. Thechoice laid before later thinkers in Islam was between an Avicennan metaphysicsof pluralism and representationalist epistemology, and a more Neoplatonicmetaphysics of unity and an epistemology of identity. For Ibn Sīnā, the humanintellect conjoins with the active intellect to grasp intelligible in aninfallible manner and rejects union. However, the response by those in favourof identity and of the union of the human intellect and the active intellect(i.e. ittiḥād and not ittiṣāl) began with Suhrawardī whoinitiated the argument that all processes of intellection at their very baseare acts of self-intellection, and since self-intellection is through union, asindeed is divine knowledge, then all acts of knowledge, all perceptions mustalso be based on identification.

Kalin sets up MullāṢadrā’s presentation in chapter two by locating it within his ontology of theprimacy of existence and of the nature of existence that is wholly singular butalso graded (the doctrines of aṣālatand tashkīk al-wujūd), and his widerepistemology in which he discusses four theories of knowledge of which his ownis the most appropriate because it recognises not only that the soul is anexpression of existence but also that knowledge itself is existence; hence allknowledge must be an aspect of a singular and graded existence. This is thepivotal chapter in which the argument culminates with a discussion not only ofthe nature of the simple intellect and its knowledge (modelled on Greek discussionsarising out of the De Anima and Metaphysics lambda), but also how theidentity thesis and the unification of the intellect and intelligibles is thecentral intuition of an epistemology of knowledge by presence, whereby humanscan strike a similitude to the divine. Kalin does not make this explicit, butthe culmination of the argument that links knowledge by presence with God’sknowledge of things is a deliberate instrumentalisation of Mullā Ṣadrā’s veryapproach to philosophy as a way of life; since philosophy is a rehearsal ofwhat is means to be like God (the notion of theosisor taʾalluh in Arabic), thenultimately perfected human knowledge needs to imitate divine knowledge.

The final chapterin which Kalin attempts to show how Mullā Ṣadrā produces a reconciliationultimately between monism and pluralism with respect to epistemology, is alsoan argument in favour of the possibility of mystical experience or of whatrecent philosophers of religion have termed ‘pure consciousness events’.Disembodiment is a key condition of spirituality but Mullā Ṣadrā was not solelyconcerned with otherworldly catharsis. Rather, his synthesis was based on theidea that the intoxication of mystical union and direct experience were not theend of the process but rather a beginning and an inculcation into a practice ofliving. There are, however, two potential problems with the presentation inthis chapter. First, does the identity thesis have to end up in mysticism? Infact, was the fate of philosophy ultimately in the world of Islam somewhat likethat of late antiquity to culminate in mystery cults? Second, while it mightsound like Mullā Ṣadrā’s subordination of his noetics to his ontology signalsan attempt to escape subjectivism through ‘naïve realism’, one wonders whetherit, indeed like his gradational ontology, is successful. This is not a critiqueof Kalin’s excellent analytical reconstruction of Mullā Ṣadrā but rather to askmore critically and interrogate the Safavid thinker himself. The appendixcontaining the text is quite useful – however, again if the author had time torevise more thoroughly the recent critical edition published is far superior toHamid Naji Isfahani’s attempt from the mid-1990s. The annotation on thetranslation is adequate but could do more to point to precise influences andtrace the source of some texts.

Knowledge in Later Islamic Philosophy is a major contribution to the study ofMullā Ṣadrā and indeed to Islamic traditions of epistemology. It is perhaps oneof the best analytical defences of the thought of the Safavid sage; one isreminded of some of the best work of recent neo-Thomists writing on the thoughtof Aquinas. The eminent figures who provided blurbs on the dustcover are notwrong on their assessment. Some elements of the contextualisation could be moreexplicit; my own stress upon Mullā Ṣadrā’s approach to philosophy as a way oflife influenced by my reading of Pierre Hadot is a useful indicator of theframework in which to place his thought. The intellectual historian of Islamicthought would not doubt be pleased and would highly recommend the work. But thephilosopher trying to grasp problems of epistemology and ontology and the veryconception of philosophy in the contemporary Islamic world might reflect onwhat it means. Kalin has in fact provided a certain idiom for the contemporarythinker to think these issues through but the answers still remain elusive.

Some books from India

2011-11-12T07:24:00.001-08:00

Rather fortuitously, a few books arrived last week from India relating to my recent forays into the 18th century in North India:

1) Aḥmad b. Muḥammad ʿAlī b. Muḥammad Bāqir Iṣfahānī Bihbahānī's invaluable travelogue of North India during which he visited Benares and Lucknow in the age of Muḥammad Shāh, published by the Khuda Bakhsh Library in Patna is a wonderful facsimile edition [the text was also partially edited by ʿAlī Davānī and published in Tehran in the early 1980s but this is a far superior version]. To my knowledge, Juan Cole in his classic study of Avadh under the nawabs cites this work from a manuscript in the National Archives in New Delhi, and Muzaffar Alam and Sanjay Subrahmanyam have also cited it in their study of travellers to India. The text entitled Mirʾāt al-aḥwāl-i jahānnumā - subtitled on the front page as Safarnāma-yi Hind - was penned in 1224/1809. A scion of the Majlisī family (among whom he was far from being the first to seek his fortunes in India), he arrived in India in 1202/1787 and settled in ʿAẓīmābād [Patna]. The text itself is dedicated to Muḥammad ʿAlī Khān Qājār (d. 1237/1821) the eldest son of Fatḥ ʿAlī Shāh, and is divided into five maṭālib:

Maṭlab I is a family genealogy of the elder Majlisī, Muḥammad Taqī (d. 1659) and his progeny.

Maṭlab II is a genealogy of the younger and more famous Majlisī, Muḥammad Bāqir (d. 1699) and his family.

Maṭlab III considers the genealogy of another ancestor of the author, the well known Akhbārī figure Mullā Muḥammad Ṣāliḥ Māzandarānī, who wrote a commentary on al-Kāfī, one of the key texts in the promotion of the study of ḥadīth in the late Safavid period.

Maṭlab IV is a biography of the author's grandfather Āqā Muḥammad Bāqir Iṣfahānī.

Maṭlab V moves to the life of the author himself and is divided into three maqāṣid: I -on his birth and birthplace, II - arrival in India in Bombay, his travels in the Deccan and encounter with Sir John Malcolm and his journey north to Murshidabad and then west to Patna and beyond, and arrival in Fyzabad and encounter with notables in Lucknow (includes his rather critical comments on Sayyid Dildār ʿAlī and the 'supine' nature of the ʿulamāʾ at court) and elsewhere, ending with his return to the east and his arrival in Jahāngīrnagar (modern Dhaka), and finally III - on Europe and its institutions and customs [this desire to provide a comparative framework to a study of Avadh was common in a number of histories of the court written under Saʿādat ʿAlī Khān and Muḥammad Shāh. The khātima turns to the role of kings and notables and also provides a short sketch of Persian history from the fall of the Safavids to the time of the composition of the work.

2) Muḥammad Khalīlullāh Anṣārī Farangī-Maḥallī and his family genealogy entitled Tuḥfat al-aḥbāb fī bayān al-ansāb - published by the Amīr al-Daula Library in Lucknow - the edition includes the Persian original (rather a bad facsimile copy) with an introduction and Urdu translation by Shāh ʿAbdussalām, a trustee of the library and now the director of the Raza Library in Rampur. The author does not seem to be well known but the source is a useful supplement to the existing histories of Farangī Maḥall such as Tadhkira-yi ʿulamāʾ-yi Farangī Maḥall of Muftī ʿInāyatullāh Anṣārī and al-Aghṣān al-arbaʿa of Muftī Walīullāh Anṣārī (the only copy of this I've ever seen is in the Oriental Books section of the Asiatic Society in Kolkata). The text itself is fairly short - around fifty pages.

3) The final short work is also published by the Khuda Bakhsh Library in Patna and is a bio-bibliographical work by ʿAbd al-Salām Khān entitled Barr-i ṣaghīr kē ʿulamāʾ-yi maʿqūlāt aur unkī taṣnīfāt. Drawing mainly on Sayyid ʿAbd al-Ḥayy's Nuzhat al-khawāṭir, the standard sources of Kashf al-ẓunūn and Miftāḥ al-saʿāda and some local histories such as Tazkira-yi kāmilān-i Rāmpūr of Aḥmad ʿAlī Khān 'Shawq' (d. 1932, this text was published by the Khuda Bakhsh Library in Patna in 1986), it is a chronological list of those involved in the rational disciplines of logic, philosophy and theology from the earliest period.

Majālis-i Jahāngīrī

2011-09-23T14:30:00.000-07:00

As it turns out my whim of buying this book having randomly seen it in the bookshop next to the Marʿashī Library and having bought it turns out to have been a good thing and a serendipity. Looking through the new book published by Muzaffar Alam and Sanjay Subrahmanyam, one can see the use of the text in finding, for example, evidence of religious debate and interaction at the Mughal court of the Emperor Jahāngīr (r. 1605-27). Alongside the already available Tuzuk-i Jahāngīrī and the Jahāngīrnāma, there are plenty of sources available for a re-evaluation of his court and for the cultural, religious and intellectual life of the period. Unfortunately, for many this may sound like rather old-fashioned Mughal history. It does seem that Jahāngīr and Mughals were far more curious about European culture and Christianity than the old 'Aligarh' school assumed - and the Majālis has led to at least one paper presented at the Indian Historical Congress in 2008 by Shireen Moosvi.

Committed to Rational Traditions in Islam - but is that enough?

2011-09-23T14:19:00.000-07:00

John Walbridge is one ofthe best scholars of Islamic philosophical traditions around and has alreadymade major contributions to the field through his work on Suhrawardī and theilluminationist tradition in the Islamic East. This new book is an excellent example of committed scholarship with a passion for the subjectand a desire to demonstrate not only that philosophical traditions have played(and need to play) a central role in the culture of the Islamic world but alsothat rational approaches to faith (even ones rooted in logic whose study neverdied out in the scholastic traditions of Islamic pedagogy) are viable andessential in the present. It is acombative plea as the author states aimed at an educated general reader tryingto make sense of Islam in the present and for the Muslim reader to recover hisheritage of rationalities. But it is the scholar of the field who is the thirdtype of reader who will probably be most dissatisfied with the final work,aware of some interesting new avenues of thought and engagement with literaturebut wanting to know more and to see a more complete argument. It's a bit of an academic tease and one wonders whether the author was caught between writing a popular work on the rationality of Islam and trying to bring to the fore his research on the logical traditions and school texts of the later middle period in the Islamic East. Nevertheless,this is a work in a field which is increasingly confessional – and one that oneapproves heartily of. We can therefore perhaps forgive the rather excruciatingtitle of the book – which does not quite capture anyway what one finds withineven if his point about caliphate representing authority and hegemony is welltaken.

The book is divided intothree parts. The first concerns the formation of the ‘Islamic tradition ofreason’ and comprises five chapters that began with interrogating the notion ofreason and mind in Islam (he prefers mind as a translation for ʿaqlwhich requires a whole separate discussion) and examines different modalitiesof rationality in Islamic thought ranging from ḥadīth through to falsafaand mysticism. The second part which stands on its own and represents trends inhis research over the last decade or so comprises three chapters that deal withlogic and especially the remnant of the tradition in South Asia. The finalsection of two chapters considers trajectories of ways forward to understandwhy modes of rationality have ‘declined’ and what future they might have in thetwenty-first century and beyond. All in all, the book represents an excellentintroduction to the learned culture of Islam and expresses the proposition, asthe author puts it, that ‘Islamic intellectual life has been characterized byreason in the service of a non-rational revealed code of conduct’. This initself is an interesting way of putting it – an old idea and one which he does wellto indicate its substantiation (and one with which this reviewer broadlyagrees). But the scripturalist might not be terribly happy with recourse totools beyond his textual universe, and the ‘pure rationalist’ might also bedismayed by the idea that rationality’s only recourse is to defend thenon-rational (or the supra-rational). But then we can be confident that suchideal types do not exist: just as pure textual literalists and scripturalistscannot function in a coherent and consistent way, the pursuit of pure reason isa mirage: thought just like text is embedded in contexts which provide horizonsof meaning and modes to come to understanding. Walbridge is careful to state thatnon-rational does not mean irrational – and indeed one of the major flaws inthe field of Islamic philosophy in particular is to dismiss modes of reasoningthat are non-rational, whether mystical or scriptural, as ‘irrational’nonsense.

Most of the chapters aretantalisingly short. The very first one which demonstrates the post-9/11context in which one makes sense of this work raises the question of whetherIslam is essentially non-rational and opts for an answer in the negative and adefence of a scholastic tradition of reason at the heart of scholarly pursuitin the faith, criticising along the way the common idea that (still!) persistsabout al-Ghazālī’s death-blow to reason in Islam – a view that is problematicgiven recent excellent work by Frank, Moosa, Griffel, Pourjavady, al-Akiti andothers that prove clearly al-Ghazālī’s own philosophical and rationalcredentials. A clear corollary of hisanswer is that fundamentalism and its concomitant problem of violence is apeculiarly modern problem – and it is therefore ahistorical to see suchphenomena as culturally peculiar to the ‘Muslim mind’. The next chapter on thediversity of reason reads like a selective introduction to the notion of reasonand rationality drawing upon a relevant philosophical literature and in a sensedefines the terms that are discussed in the work. The following three chaptersdeal with the major modalities of rationality: the first of these examines ḥadīthepistemology and quite correctly avoids the question of the historicity ofthose purported narrations (as Wael Hallaq argued many years ago, theauthenticity of ḥadīth is a pseudo-problem because the real issue is howwe use texts and not necessarily where they come from), the second on theFārābian falsafa tradition argues that the attempt to subordinatereligion to philosophy failed and is illustrated by the complete failure ofpolitical philosophy, and the third points towards what did succeed – themature mystical-philosophical tradition of the Islamic East that became thedominant mode of rationality (and is as such decreed by modern Arab intellectualssuch as the late Muḥammad ʿĀbid al-Jābirī as the triumph of unreason). Walbridge seems to agree partly with such acritique because he locates the decline of physical sciences in Islam to thesuccess of mysticism – but the story is more complicated as Ahmad Dallal hasrecently argued. The chapters that follow on logic are designed to further thecentrality of modes of rationality in scholarly pursuit – but for the actualhistory one would look elsewhere such as Tony Street’s recent sketches or evenAsad Ahmed’s more recent work on logic. The chapter on disagreement isimportant for the polemic as Walbridge’s argument for rationality implies theneed to tolerate difference of opinion and to accept that pre-modern thinkerswere actually comfortable with the idea of completing authoritative narrativesof reason; the institutionalisation of this process is located by him in the madras.

The final chapterscomplete the argument. He implies that the decline of institutions of reason inthe Islamic world have much to do with the colonial state and the ‘newreason’. A complete intellectual historyof what exactly happened to learned Islamic culture still needs to bewritten. The final chapter raises awhole set of issues which are much debate in a large literature of Islam,education and modernity and discussed by the likes of Piscatori and Eickelman,Zaman, and Mahmood. The punchline is worthy of attention. Walbridge makes twopoints: first that any serious future of modalities of reason in Islam today andin the future will have to recognise the history and heritage of Islamiclearned culture – traditional learning cannot just be jettisoned in the name ofmodernism or fundamentalism or even ‘ijtihād’. Second, any serious revival willprobably come from the ‘West’, from America in particular, because of theexperience of plurality and the opportunities that Muslims in American have attheir disposal. For some time scholars have been arguing that serious Muslimintellectual revival will arise from Europe and North America. I am not soconvinced. While there are interesting intellectuals in these places, it isstill difficult to find figures who have an impact in the wider Muslim world.It is also quite clear that the competitive advantage of living in Dearborn asopposed to Beirut is not so great. And then one also suffers from the samedifferences and same problems of traditionalism, conservatism, fundamentalismand modernism in America and elsewhere. In a globalised, cosmopolitan world,Islam may indeed revive in the West as the ḥadīth indicates but onewonders what is meant by the West in the text.

God and Logic in Islam is well worth reading – especially for young Muslims. Even if oneagrees with the basic proposition and many of the lines of argument, theargument is not terribly convincing or well substantiated. As indicatedearlier, it is unlikely that the specialist in the field will agree with muchthat is in the book. But in the times in which we live it needs to be said.Increasingly, the intellectual traditions and the heritage of rationalities isbeing disputed, in works appearing in North America and especially in France,which deny that European rationality and institutions of science and reason oweanything to Islamic learned culture – and the ignorance that many Muslims wholive in marginalised communities in Europe have of their heritage contributesto the problem. In such a context, this book is a further timely reminder thatthe world of Islam did make intellectual contributions and the world of themind was respected in pursuit and defence of the faith – and was indeed one ofthe best ways of glorifying the divine.

Scholarship in a sayyid family of Avadh II: Sayyid Dildār ʿAlī

2011-09-22T13:52:00.000-07:00

Sayyid Dildār ʿAlī b. Muḥammad MuʿīnNaqvī Naṣīrābādī (1753-1820), better known after his death as Ghufrān-maʾāb and as the progenitor of aleading family of Shiʿi ʿulamāʾ of Lucknow known as the khāndān-i ijtihād, was a leading figure in the Shiʿi learnedculture of North India in the post-Mughal period. As the new Shiʿi state inAvadh developed a distinct identity of its own, Naṣīrābādī was responsible forthe production of a new religious dispensation, a theology to rival that of theprevalent Sunnī, rationalist culture of the dars-iniẓāmī in which he had been trained. Coming from a family of prominentNaqvī sayyids in the qaṣbah of Naṣīrābād,he studied in Faizabad and in Shahjahanpur (then still in the control of theRohillas ruled by Ḥāfiẓ Raḥmat Khān until his defeat by Avadh and the Britishin April 1774) with prominent (mainly Sunnī) teachers of the scriptural andintellectual humanities such as:

i) Tafażżul Ḥusayn Khān (d. 1800), a leading Shiʿi intellectualand scientist whose forbears came from Iṣfahān though he himself was born inSialkot and later studied in Benaras with the great literary figure ḤazīnLāhījī

ii) Sayyid Ghulām Ḥusayn Dakkanī Ilāhābādī;

iii) Shaykh Bābullāh Jawnpūrī;

iv) Mullā Ḥaydar ʿAlī Sandīlvī (Sunni son of the Shiʿi philosopherMullā Ḥamdullāh);

v) and Mullā ʿAbd ʿAlī Baḥr al-ʿUlūm of Farangī-Maḥall (d.1801), son of the famous Mullā Niẓāmuddīn who established the curriculumbalancing the scriptural and intellectual humanities named after him.

He later moved to Lucknow in 1775 wherehe found a generous patron in the person of Ḥasan Riżā Khān (served 1776-98),the vizier of Āṣaf al-dawla (r. 1775-97). He sent him to study in the shrinecities of Iraq (1779-82) where he gained licenses from leading uṣūlī jurists ofthe time including:

i) Sayyid Muḥammad Mahdī b. Murtaḍā Ṭabāṭabāʾī Baḥral-ʿUlūm (1155-1212/1742-1797),

ii) Sayyid Mahdī Shahristānī (1130-1216/1718-1801)

iii) Mīrzā Mahdī Iṣfahānī (1152-1218/1739-1803)

iv) and Āqā Bāqir Bihbahānī (1116-1205/1704-1790), theperson most responsible for eradicating the Akhbārī presence from the shrinecities.

Although it is often said that Akhbārīsdominated Shiʿi India and that Naṣīrābādi was himself Akhbārī before hereturned to India as the first mujtahid of a new uṣūlī era and helped toestablish uṣūlī hegemony in India through his actions and his writings, thereis little actual evidence for Akhbārī thought in North India (unlike the Deccanwhere the Quṭb-Shāhīs seemed to patronise figures such as the famous ‘reviver’of the Akhbārī school, Muḥammad Amīn Astarābādī (d. 1626) who wrote the Dānishnāma-yi Shāhī for his patrons). Hiscontribution in theology lay in three areas of dispute:

i) displacing the theology of the shaykhzādas in theqaṣbahs which was rational, Sufi and Sunni – ultimately the Farangī Maḥallfamily of scholars in Lucknow (ʿAbd ʿAlī Muḥammad Baḥr al-ʿUlūm and Mullā Ḥasan)and the school of Shāh Walīallāh in Delhi (Shāh ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz) epitomised theirapproach and hence he disputed with them, debated and wrote refutations oftheir works;

ii) displacing the akhbārī tendency of traditionalists –which to a large extent concerned the import of a dispute from the shrinecities of Iraq into North India;

iii) and moving from a Shiʿi theology of the margins tothe heart of empire – establishing a Shiʿi kingship through buildinginstitutions of judiciary, establishing the Friday and Eid congregationalprayers, centres of learning, an office of religious, jurisprudential guidanceand dissemination through the network of his students not least his sons.

He establishedthe new theological dispensation by advocating these methods:

First, importinga controversy from the shrine cities of Iraq, he argued for establishing the uṣūlīmethod and the use of reason in law and theology. He wrote a number of worksattacking Akhbārīs including the main text Asāsal-uṣūl and was pivotal in inaugurating the institution of congregationalFriday prayers, which were not the norm among the Shiʿa in North India beforehim. The first such congregation took place in 1200/1786 and a collection ofhis sermons from that first year was published as an expression of the newpublic theology entitled Favāʾid-i Āṣafīya.Further such congregations were established in the realm eventually reachinghis hometown of Naṣīrābād where a Friday mosque was inaugurated in 1812. Healso wrote a Risāla dar vujūb-i namāz-ijumʿa. In Asās al-uṣūl, a workwritten in Arabic for a scholarly audience (it was lithographed twice in the1890s and 1900s in Lucknow), his main target was al-Fawāʾid al-madanīya of Muḥammad Amīn Astarābādī (d. 1626);however, he did not rely on the adhominem and weak arguments deployed by Nūr al-Din al-ʿĀmilī or Bihbahānī inhis al-Fawāʾid al-Makkīya. The workis divided into four sections (maqāṣid):the first on the probative force of Qurʾanic verses, the second (and thelongest section) on the probative force (ḥujjīya)of ḥadīth – this is in fact thelongest section of the text - , the third section on scholarly consensus (ijmāʿ) which was a major point ofcontention with Akhbārīs, and the fourth on rational instruments for discerningjurisprudence. This last section reveals the theological origins of somedebates in uṣūl and includes sectionson the status of acts before revelation and on the rational ability to discerngood and evil independently. An office was opened in Lucknow to deal withquestions of the faithful and a gradual process of Shiʿification of thejudiciary initiated. His own informal circle of learning became a formalinstitution under his son with the name of Madrasa-yi Sulṭānīya, which is alater iteration became the Sulṭān al-madāris established after the annexationmuch later in 1892.

Second, and mostimportantly given the rivalry at court, he opened an attack on Sufis todiscredit the possibility of considering Shiʿism and Sufism as compatible. Hewrote a scholarly work in Arabic al-Shihābal-thāqib and a more accessible risālain Persian (Risāla-yi radd-i madhhab-i ṣūfīya),both written for his patron Sarfarāz al-Dawla Ḥasan Riżā Khān, the vizier of Āṣafal-Dawla, and the patron also of two major Sufi figures Shāh ʿAlī Akbar MawdūdīChishtī (d. 1795) who led own jumʿaand Shāh Khayrullāh Naqshbandī. Unlike other anti-Sufi tracts, his polemics didnot concern practices on the whole (expect for the use of music in ritual), butrather given the dominance of the Ibn ʿArabī school and the ḥadīth-basedscholarship of the rational Sunnī dars-i niẓāmī tradition in Avadh, his attackcentred upon the idea of waḥdat al-wujūdand the proofs often adduced from the Qurʾan and from ḥadīth in its favour. Thismonism dominated Sufism in Avadh through figures at court (and Mawdūdī’s own al-Fawāʾid al-Mawdūdīya – there is amanuscript copy in the British Library – demonstrates his adherence to thistendency), the tradition of Shāh ʿAbd al-Razzāq (d. 1724) of Bānsa patronisedby the Sunni theologians of Farangī-Maḥall, and the tradition associated withShah Mīna (d. 1467) and his shrine in Lucknow – a leading figure of thistradition was Dildār ʿAlī’s contemporary Irtiżā ʿAlī Khān Gopāmāwī (d. 1836), aSufi and philosopher of the school of Mullā Ṣadrā, who wrote a prominentdevotional work Favāʾid-i Saʿdīya.

Third, hedefended Shiʿi theology against the famous polemic of Shāh ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz, the Tuḥfa-yi isnāʿasharīya, and took on theSunni rational tradition in a major work of theology entitled Mirʾāt al-ʿuqūl fī ʿilm al-uṣūl betterknown as ʿImād al-Islām, a scholarlywork in Arabic that was lithographed at the turn of the 20^th centurythrough the efforts of his descendent Sayyid Āqā Ḥasan who also arranged for anUrdu translation which was also published. His responses to Shāh ʿAbdal-ʿAzīz’s Tuḥfa-yi isnāʿasharīyaincluded Ṣawārim-i ilāhīyāton chapter 5 on philosophical theology, Ḥusāmal-islām on chapter 6 on prophecy, Iḥyāʾ-yisunnat on chapter 8 on resurrection, Risāla-yiDhū-l-fiqār on chapter 12 on tabarraand walāya, Khātima-yi ṣawārim on imāmaand ghaybat. His son Sulṭānal-ʿUlamāʾ later added Bawāriq-i mūbaqaon chapter 7 on imāma, Ṭaʿn al-rimāḥand Bāriqa-yi dayghamīya on chapter10 on indictments, Ṭard al-muʿānidīnon chapter 12 on walāya and tabarra. Although the polemics set off achain of refutations and counter-refutations, these were the best Shiʿireponses alongside Sayyid Ḥāmid Ḥusayn’s more voluminous ʿAbaqāt al-anwār. ʿImādal-Islām was an altogether more ambitious work taking as its target Nihāyat al-ʿuqūl, the mature work ofphilosophical theology of the great medieval Sunni theologian Fakhr al-Dīnal-Rāzī (d. 1209). It is perhaps the greatest achievement in kalām of the Shiʿi scholarly traditionof India.

Sayyid Dildār ʿAlī’slegacy lay primarily in the network of his students and his sons and descendantswho dominated the intellectual scene in Avadh prior to the annexation andcontinued to do so in the present. He had five sons:

1) Sayyid Muḥammad who was born1199/1784 in Lucknow. He became known as mujtahidal-ʿaṣr, a quasi-official post of the leading cleric (title of ṣadr al-ṣudūr), and was given the titleof Sulṭān al-ʿulamāʾ. He died in 1284/1867, and was posthumously known asRiżvān-maʾāb. He wrote works against Akhbārīs and also al-ʿUjāla al-nāfiʿa on Shiʿi kalām. He formalised his father’steaching circle, establishing the Madrasa-yi Sulṭānīya whose post-annexationavatar became the Sulṭān al-madāris, which still exists and was founded in1892.

2) Sayyid ʿAlī was born in Lucknow in1200/1786. He travelled to Karbalāʾ often, lived and studied and died there in1259/1843. There is evidence that he associated with Sayyid Kāẓim Rashtī (d.1843) in Karbalāʾ which accounts for a primary link between the Shaykhīs andAvadh [although for obvious reasons the family biographers omit this]. He wrotea two volume exegesis entitled Tawḍīḥal-majīd fī kalām allāh al-ḥamīd and hence was given the title of Sayyidal-mufassirīn.

3) Sayyid Ḥasan was born in1205/1791 and died 1260/1844, having written some theological works.

4) Sayyid Mahdī was born Lucknow1208/1793 and died young in 1231/1816. His son Sayyid Muḥammad Hādī 1813-1858was a significant jurist of the family.

5) Sayyid Ḥusayn was born in1211/1796. He was important and became a mujtahidand died in 1273/1856. He was known as Sayyid al-ʿulamāʾ and posthumouslytitled ʿIllīyīn-maʾāb. His sons were animportant branch of the family: Sayyid ʿAlī Naqī d. 1893, titled Zubdat al-ʿulamāʾ; Sayyid Muḥammad Taqī knownas Mumtāz al-ʿulamāʾ 1818-72, andSayyid ʿAlī. The recent famous scholar Sayyid ʿAlī Naqī Naqqan ṣāḥab, who wasDean of the Department of Shia Theology at Aligarh University, was a scion ofthis branch.

Scholarship in a sayyid family of Avadh I: Musavī Nīshāpūrī of Kintūr

2011-09-14T16:05:00.000-07:00

People familiar with Shiʿi scholarship in North India will have heard of the famous polemical defence of Shiʿi theology entitled ʿAbaqāt al-anwār fī imāmat al-aʾimmat al-aṭhār or the library associated with the author and his family, the Nāṣirīya in Lucknow (presented run by Sayyid ʿAlī Nāṣir Mūsavī better known as Agha Roohi). A family of Mūsavī sayyids from Khurāsān, namely Nishāpūr, settled in Kintūr in Barabanki east of Lucknow and very much in the heart of Avadh in the 14th century (incidentally that is pretty much the same time as the main branch of my paternal ancestors Rażavī sayyids from Nishapur as well settled in the Delhi area before moving on to Allahabad and other parts of eastern UP including Ghāzīpūr). Interesting one of the descendants of this family, famous because of his own grandson, was Sayyid Aḥmad Mūsavī (d. 1869), the grandfather of Sayyid Rūḥullāh Khumaynī (d. 1989). Sayyid Aḥmad was born in Kintūr and later moved to the shrine cities of Iraq as many scholars did in around 1830 as British encroachment in Avadh increased; he later eventually settled in Khomein in 1839. On his death in 1869, his body was transferred to Karbalāʾ for burial in the shrine city.

But I want to focus to the main branch of the family. Sayyid Muḥammad Qulī son of Muḥammad Ḥusayn, known as Mīr Muḥammad Qulī (1775-1844) joined British service early on and served as a judge in Meerut. He had studied with the famous mujtahid of Lucknow Sayyid Dildār ʿAlī Naṣīrābādī (d. 1820). He was appointed to the top clerical post of ṣadr al-ṣudūr in 1837 and eventually retired to Lucknow a year before his death. A jurist in his own right, he was the author of a number of refutations of the anti-Shiʿi polemic penned by Shāh ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz (d. 1823) the Tuḥfa-yi ithnāʿasharīya including Tashyīd al-maṭāʿin li-kashf al-ḍaghāʾin, al-Sayf al-nāṣirī, Taqlīb al-makāʾid (lithographed in Calcutta, 1846), and Taṭhīr al-muʾminīn ʿan najāsat al-mushrikīn. The former has been published by the press established by the Mūsawī Jazāʾirī Shūshtarī family whose branch settled in Lucknow and were related to the Kintūrīs. The best study of Shāh ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz's polemic and Shiʿi responses remains the late Sayyid Athar ʿAbbas Rizvi's Shah ʿAbd al-ʿAziz: Puritanism, Sectarian Polemics and Jihad (Canberra: Maʿrifat Publishing House, 1982). Mīr Muḥammad Qulī was one of the first Shiʿi ʿulamāʾ to recognise the threat posed by the polemic in inciting violence against Shiʿi symbols, commemorations and also people - further evidence from the past, as we see in the present that violent language of othering, of takfīr and attacks on Shiʿi symbols ultimately leads to the killing of the Shiʿa as well.

However, his two sons became far more famous. First, Sayyid Ḥāmid Ḥusayn (1830-88), the youngest son, had studied jurisprudence and fiqh in Lucknow with Sayyid Ḥusayn son of Dildār ʿAlī Naṣīrābādī (d. 1856), philosophy with Sayyid Murtażā (d. 1860) son of Sayyid Muḥammad Sulṭān al-ʿUlamāʾ and hence a grandson of Sayyid Dildār ʿAlī, and literature and other humanities with Sayyid Muḥammad ʿAbbās Jazāʾirī Shūshtarī (d. 1889), and later went to study in the shrine cities of Iraq. He wrote Asfār al-anwār ʿan waqāʾiʿ afḍal al-asfār on his travels in Iraq, and Zayn al-wasāʾil and al-Dharāʾiʿ in fiqh. He is primarily famous for the ʿAbaqāt al-anwār which was also written in refutation of Tuḥfa-yi ithnāʿasharīya. The work consists of 12 sections dealing with 12 ḥadīth in support of the Shiʿi case and in refutation of the polemic. The first two volumes on Ghadīr lithographed at Newal Kishore in Lucknow in 1294/1877 is available here. The second volume of part five on the famous saying of the Prophet identifying ʿAlī as bāb madīnat al-ʿilm was lithographed in 1317/1898 is available here. The whole text was not completed (only 11 lithographed volumes have been published) especially there was an initial section on Qurʾanic proofs for the imamate which was never written. The contemporary scholar Sayyid ʿAlī al-Mīlānī has written both a summary and a commentary on the text. That text is available here. In search of materials for the text, Sayyid Ḥāmid Ḥusayn travelled widely and collected manuscripts - his library was inherited by his son Sayyid Nāṣir (1867-1942) and established as the Nāṣirīya library in Lucknow, was recognised as Shams al-ʿUlamāʾ by the government of India in 1916 and a major leader in Lucknow. The contemporary scholar Muḥammad Riżā Ḥakīmī wrote an intellectual biography of Ḥāmid Ḥusayn which was published in 1980.

Second, Sayyid Iʿjāz Ḥusayn was born in 1825 in Meerut where his father had been posted as a judge. He died in 1870 and was buried in Lucknow in the graveyard of Sayyid Dildār ʿAlī. Unlike his younger brother he was not known as a major theologian, although he had studied with Sulṭān al-ʿulamāʾ and his younger brother Sayyid Ḥusayn, both sons of Sayyid Dildār ʿAlī in Lucknow. However, he did write three significant works which are essential research tools on the networks of ʿulama and works available at the time. The first one is Kashf al-ḥujub wa-l-astār ʿan asmāʾ al-kutub wa-l-asfār first printed at the Asiatic Society in Calcutta in 1911. Before the publication of Āqā Buzurg Ṭihrānī's al-Dharīʿa ilā taṣānīf al-shīʿa and more modern works, this was the main source for research into Shiʿi texts especially those available in India. The second is Shudhūr al-ʿiqyān fī tarājim al-aʿyān, a major two volume biography of scholars. The third, although it is associated with him despite the text being anonymous, is Āʾīna-yi ḥaqq-numā, another account of scholarly networks based on the work of students of Sayyid Dildār ʿAlī.

Mīr Muḥammad Qulī's eldest son is probably the least known. Sayyid Sirāj Ḥusayn (1823-65) like his father worked in the British judiciary and administration and was one of the first Shiʿi ʿulamāʾ to engage with the new learning in English and translated works of science in Persian and Urdu. He was also associated with Sir Syed Ahmed Khan and encouraged by the moves to establish Aligarh (although he died before its foundation). It was his son Sayyid Karāmat Ḥusayn (1852-1917) who became a pioneer encouraging the education of girls in the next generation as one of the key responses to the shock of the loss of power and prestige with the advent of formal empire after 1857. He also served as a professor of law at Aligarh.

These are some of the key sources that one needs to draw upon for research into the intellectual history of Shiʿi Islam in India. The two volume work of Sayyid Athar ʿAbbas Rizvi still remains the standard but there is still much to do on the actual development of ideas and on networks of scholars. This is the first of a number of notes on scholarship in Avadh.

Peter Adamson

2011-06-07T11:03:00.000-07:00

For those of you who may not have come across Peter (who is a Professor of Ancient and Medieval Philosophy at King's London), here is the link to his history of philosophy blog but even more importantly here is the link to his history of philosophy podcasts that are also available through itunes.

The blog design

2011-06-07T10:59:00.000-07:00

I recognise my own IT frailties and need to get some advice on design - some issues I've noticed (and others have commented upon) is the need to be buttons to link directly to reviews, articles and other categories - as it stands I just have them listed but they are not clickable and require scrolling back in time.

Bear with me as I try to sort these things out.

On some more books from Iran

2011-06-07T10:54:00.000-07:00

First, I should mention Muḥammad Mujtahid Shabistarī’s Taʾammulātī dar qarāʾat-i insānī az dīn (first published by the famous Tehrani press Ṭarḥ-i naw in 2004). A key theme of reformist thinking is to propose humanist(ic) hermeneutics of the text and of reality. The slim volume contains some of his papers from the last decade and follows on the theme that he introduced at the end of his critique of the ‘official reading/interpretation’ of religion (naqd bar qarāʾat-i rasmī az dīn). Not surprisingly around half of the papers are concerned with matters of politics or governance (siyāsat, ḥukūmat, mardumsālārī). It wil be of particular interest to a student of mine writing his MA dissertation on Mujtahid Shabistarī and then going onto to write his PhD on the relationship between faith and freedom.

Second, on the visit to the impressive Dānishgāh-i adyān va madhāhib in the new town of Pardisan in Qum, I met some of the faculty and was introduced to some of their publications including their journals. One of the faculty, Shihāb al-Dīn Vaḥīdī presented me with a copy of his ʿAql dar sāḥat-i dīn: rābiṭa-yi ʿaql u īmān dar āthār-i Mullā Ṣadrā (published in 2008 by the University). This is yet another study of aspects of MS’s thought and focuses on a sort of conceptual history of the terms.

Third, from Bustān-i kitāb, I picked up an interesting study of the debate on whether philosophy is a pure pursuit or is compromised by its historical and intellectual context. Is there such a thing as ‘pure philosophy’ (ḥikmat-i nāb)? This is the title of the study by Muḥammad Riżā Irshādī-niyā that considers the question through an analysis of MS’s ethics both theoretical and practical (virtue ethics and applied) and then moves on to an examination of the hermeneutics and epistemology of mystical experience finally ending with a chapter on whether our understanding of reality is primarily mediated through scriptural tradition or reason (in some sense). In some ways the book is a bit more disappointing than my expectation when I picked it up. I was expecting some analysis of the MS school and tafkīk debate on the nature of philosophy and the foundations of our metaphysical knowledge as well as engaging more deeply with the argument on the nature of philosophy as such as interrogates whether the notion of Islamic philosophy obviates its being ‘philosophy’.

Another purchase from the same official outlet of the ḥawzeh was Muḥammad Ḥusayn Khalīlī’s Mabānī-yi falsafī-yi ʿishq az manẓar-i Ibn Sīnā va Mullā Ṣadrā. Another volume in the comparative genre so beloved of recent ḥawzeh outputs, the starting point is the Risālat al-ʿishq of the former that establishes the principle of erotic motion that underlies the cosmos and is taken up as another one of the ‘sisters of being’ by MS (i.e. ʿishq = wujūd). Anyway I haven’t finished it yet so cannot make a final assessment of it.

Finally, two volumes that I picked up from the Marʿashī bookshop next to the library – which remains one of the best places in Qum to pick up real gems including some old books. They usually stock publications of the major libraries and publishers including the Majlis Library in Tehran. Now one excellent publishing series of the Majlis Library is their Ganjīna-yi Bahāristān edition of risālas divided into subjects. Since I already had volume I of their ḥikmat and ʿulūm-i qurānī va ravāʾī series I was happy to find volume II of both. These works are of great interest because they publish treatises often by major figures from the Timurid/Safavid/Qajar periods. The volume on Qurʾānic and ḥadīth topics includes a collection of 40 ḥadīth by the famous figure of the school of Shiraz Shams al-Dīn Khafrī and a commentary on a ḥadīth by the Sufi and ḥakīm Quṭb al-Dīn Nayrīzī. The volume on ḥikmat includes a number of treatises on logic including al-Sharīf Jurjānī on propositions, a treatise attributed to Mīr Dāmād on the nature of logic and al-Fārābī on Zeno’s paradox. Another treatise of interest is a short work by Muḥsin Fayż on motion in the category of substance that is such a central metaphysical concern of MS.

Some Books I picked up in Iran

2011-06-07T03:40:00.000-07:00

Apart from these political thought volumes which I gratefully received, I went ahead and bought some things which looked interesting or necessary.

In the necessary group were:

Asrār al-āyāt – the new SIPRIn edition which looks like an improvement on the old standard edition – as I am systematically acquiring the new corpus it seemed important – and they’ll all look nice in the same green covers on the shelf (!)

Maḥmūd Shihābī’s al-Naẓrat al-daqīqa fī qāʿidat basīṭ al-ḥaqīqa – published by the Anjuman-i ḥikmat (where I had an interesting meeting with some students and Sayyid Muḥammad Yūsuf-i Sānī especially on the nature of ḥikmat in MS and whether there was a critical culture of the study of Islamic philosophy in Iran today). Shihābī was one of the founders of the Anjuman and a professor at Tehran University, well known for his edition of Ibn Sīnā’s al-Ishārāt wa-l-tanbīhāt with the commentaries of Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī and Quṭb al-Dīn al-Taḥtānī. It was originally published back in 1976 and comprises an Arabic study on this critical principle of monism expounded by MS. The work was a response to a Shaykhī friend of his who basing himself on the critique of Shaykh Aḥmad al-Aḥsāʾī and of the Kirmānī leader of the time Mīrzā Abū-l-Qāsim Khān Ibrāhīmī, wanted to understand MS’s position. So the text is a defence of the Ṣadrian position and of Sabzavārī’s explanation in response to the Shaykhī critique. Its reissue is interesting not because the Shaykhīs are important in contemporary Iran but because of the attack on philosophy and mysticism led by the maktab-i tafkīk and their allies focuses upon the issue of the simple reality encompassing all things as heresy. Given my recent interests in the tafkīkīs and in the Shaykhīs it seemed sensible to get this.

In the interesting group were:

ʿAbd al-Sattār Lāhūrī’s Majālis Jahāngīrī, a little known text edited by ʿĀrif Nawshāhī and Muʿīn Niẓāmī based on a unicum and published in Mīrāth-i maktūb’s series of studies and texts from the Indian subcontinent. This Mughal period was pivotal to the reception of philosophy and the intellectual traditions from Iran into India so I am hoping to find material useful to my background project on an intellectual history of Islamic thought in India in the Mughal period.

The Political Thought of Mullā Ṣadrā??

2011-06-07T03:22:00.000-07:00

I was briefly in Iran last week having some meetings and giving a lecture. The original idea was to go to the Bunyād-e Mullā Ṣadrā’s annual conference which was supposed to be in Isfahan on the interesting topic of Shiʿi philosophy. Anyway an email came a couple of weeks before saying that it had been cancelled but given that I had a visa (and they’re quite difficult to come by these days), I decidedly to book a flight on Iran Air (not really a good idea) and go anyway. As ever, any trip to Iran involves the customary buying, receiving and exchanging of books. As I was giving a lecture on selfhood and the nafs in Safavid philosophies at the Pazhūhishgāh-i ʿulūm va farhang-i islāmī (ISCA in English) at the Daftar-i tablīghāt (a large building on the Ṣafāʾiyyeh roundabout opposition the Bustān-i kitāb shop), I spoke to the (Sharīf Lakzāʾī) chap in charge of their political thought unit – which specialises and he does in particular on the ‘political thought’ of Mullā Ṣadrā.

[One PhD student who completed with me a few years ago wrote on the ethics and politics of Mullā Ṣadrā – the dissertation is apparently forthcoming as a book in English and Persian. I remember the supervision being quite a struggle – especially over the issue of vilāyat-i faqīh]

Intriguing – since I do not think MS ever wrote on the topic and in fact as I told SL, a better candidate for a Safavid precursor to vilāyat-i faqīh would be Mīr Dāmād, MS’s teacher and not the student. So I got these books:

1) Najaf Lakzāʾī’s Andīsha-yi siyāsī-yi Ṣadr al-mutaʾallihīn – part of a long series of monographs on thinkers published by ISCA. The original edition dates from 2001. I have yet to examine the contents in details. But it comprises five chapters: the historical background to the political personality of MS (did he have one? Setting aside the fictive oppositional and anti-monarchical posture portrayed in the famous Jām-i jam serial Rawshantar az khāmushī), the place of political thought in MS’s philosophy, the political life in MS’s thought, religious government (ḥukūmat-i dīnī) in MS’s thought (read: vilāyat-i faqīh in MS), and establishing the structure of religious government in MS’s thought. The main text is followed by 10 appendices providing summaries of political thought present in his major works – al-Shawāhid al-rubūbīya being the most controversial. But much of this material relates on discussions on imāma or merely reflects the ideal of Platonopolis expressed in al-Fārābī and those influenced by him (including of course MS).

2) Four volumes of articles edited by SL entitled Siyāsat-i mutaʿāliya dar manẓar-i ḥikmat-i mutaʿāliya. Vol I is focused on MS, vol II on theoretical and practical issues, vol III on the politics of the human and the imamate and its relationship to politics, and vol IV on the relationship between ethics and politics. The Aristotelian and Platonic frames remain clear. Much of this is not really about MS himself or his thought but involves studies of those from his school including the recent great thinker ʿAllāma Ṭabāṭabāʾī (and making him a political supporter of the revolution troubles me even more than making the long departed MS one).

3) ʿAlī-Riżā Ṣadrā’s Mafhūm-shināsī-yi ḥikmat-i mutaʿālī-yi siyāsī is another short study.

These developments raise an important question about the relationship of philosophy and politics in Iran. Do thinkers in the public sphere use philosophy to justify a certain form of politics? Or is the study of philosophy an end on itself? Or do some engage in politics to defend the scope and legitimacy of a certain metaphysics? Is it even possible nowadays to study MS and his school as a critical historical-philosophical inquiry without being implicated in a politics that one finds distasteful? It reminds me of my first trip to Iran many years ago and being at a shab-i yaldā party. Engaging in small talk and being asked what I did, I said I study Islamic philosophy being naive to its connotations in those days. Those with whom I was speaking changed their attitude towards me immediately and one of them said, ‘I hate Islam – it’s the cause of all of our troubles’. I did not realise at that time that the very phrase ‘falsafa-yi islāmī’ had been political co-opted and I had foolishly placed myself in a camp without being aware of it. The legitimacy and possibility of speaking about and critically evaluating ‘Islamic philosophy’ today, thankfully, is still I think possible in other places and an endeavour worth pursuing even if to conclude that Islamic philosophy, much like Heidegger famously said of Christian philosophy, is a bit like a square circle, a nonsensical and impossible concept.

Muslim Politics in Europe - Data yawn

2011-02-06T04:56:00.000-08:00

While the study of Muslim communities in Europe is not exactly a new subject and was part and parcel of research into issues of immigration, integration, multiculturalist policy and racism within the social sciences (exacerbated by the upheavals of 1989 – the Rushdie affair and the foulard islamique), the academic scene has been dramatically transformed in a post-9/11 world, exacerbated by the events in Madrid and Amsterdam in 2004 and London and Denmark in 2005. The presence of Muslims in Britain therefore has become problematised both in terms of social as well as security policy. In response to policy requirements, focus has shifted not just to the study of ideology but also to the demographics. The Yearbook of Muslims in Europe Volume 1. Edited by Jørgen S. Nielsen, Samim Akgönül, Ahmet Alibašić, Brigitte Maréchal & Christian Moe (Leiden: Brill, 2009) is a useful example of collaborative work that covers basic surveys of communities in various European states (and significantly Europe is not defined in simple EU terms), some analyses of major controversial themes and assessments of some of the major interpretative approaches to the study of Muslims in Europe. However, the potential problem of a yearbook is that it can only provide a series of snapshots that are rendered obsolete almost as soon as they are published – especially in the case of a series published in such an expensive manner.

Part one comprises thirty-seven country reports from Albania to Malta for the year 2008. A short chapter discusses the very category of Muslim which is many ways is an objectification of modern politics in a post-1989 context. Following this, various categories of issues are developed for each country ranging from basic population figures, the relationships of religious communities and institutions with the state, an outline of those organisations, mosques and religious centres, education and access, festivals, food, dress, media, law, opinion, cultural events, and issues around life-cycle from birth to death. The breadth is informative since there is little academic research on some of these countries. Nadia Jeldtoft is her piece raises the question of defining ‘Muslim’ and the dangers of focusing too narrowly on practice and religiosity as well as a caution against assuming individuals affirm and understand their identity in similar terms. One cannot comment on all of the reports so it is probably best to say something about three different contrasting entries. First, the entry on the UK by Tahir Abbas is a useful and short survey covering the required sections. It would be worth commenting on the demographic shifts – after all the 1989 events and Muslim politics under New Labour primarily concerned communities of South Asia origin, while more recent immigration has brought new actors onto the scene from Iraq, Afghanistan, Kosovo and Somalia among others. It would also have been useful to indicate issues at the centre of the debate in 2008 such as the question of sharia accommodation under British legal jurisdiction. Second, the entry on Turkey by Ahmet Yildiz stands out because it concerns a country with a clear Muslim majority and so one would have thought it would require a separate discussion – majority-minority dynamics and their differing impact on state relations is significant and worth comment. Third, the entry on Poland is indicative of those surveys of countries with small numbers of Muslims. However, the relationship with Muslim communities is long standing going back to the medieval period. On the whole the raw data involved in these entries is indicative.

Part two on analysis comprises chapters on the relations between Turkey and the EU, youth issues, the veil, the media and religious freedoms – and there is no denying the importance of these issues. But there are further umbrella themes missing, most important among which is the question of ‘sharia in the West’ to cite the title of a recent important volume on political thought: how can secular, liberal states accommodate ‘theocratically’ minded communities? Another significant theme is immigration and the labour market and the response within Europe among the far right. Yet another relates to the training of religious leaders and the intersection of the role of Muslim seminaries and Islamic studies departments in universities, most controversially debated recently in Tubingen.

The final part includes nine reviews of major relevant publications. One can always quibble over this selection as well, given the absence of major works such as Jytte Klausen’s The Challenge of Islam and studies on the phenomenon of Islamophobia. Ultimately the issues that arise from the study of Muslims in Europe are not just demographic and sociological but also political and theological.

Given the size and information in the volume, it is unfortunate that there is no index. But overall the volume makes a useful contribution, at least, in terms of bringing together useful and often divergent and mutually exclusive lines of research into one place. As such, it can play a role in providing background for further serious research into the major theoretical challenges to understanding the role of Muslim communities in contemporary Europe.

Is Pluralism only a political issue?

2011-01-23T11:16:00.000-08:00

Pluralism has become somewhat of a hegemonic approach to dealing with diversity and the epistemic peer conflict that arises out of the many rational thinkers and actors defending quite divergent views on the nature of reality. Our liberal overlapping consensus certainly points towards pluralism in a number of human spheres of activity and religiously-minded individuals active in the public sphere are required to adhere to that consensus. This rather slim volume of articles edited by Abdou Filali Ansary and Sakeena Ahmed brings together quite a glittering line-up of intellectuals from Middle Eastern and Muslim backgrounds to consider historical and philosophical perspectives on pluralism and how in different Muslim contexts one finds responses to the challenges of such a consensus. Liberty and tolerance are not quite enough: pluralism requires a far more involved engagement with the other, an attempt to know the other and to foster a more interpenetrated living beyond more co-existence. Live and let live (or ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ in another context) are no longer options within a post-multicultural liberal democracy.

In his introduction, Filali-Ansary argues that it is not just the social and political context of the world which we inhabit that pose the challenge of pluralism; in fact, scripture itself forces one to consider the other and challenges the exclusivity of one’s own position – in this context, he draws upon sūrat al-Māʾida verse 48 which he describes as proposing a ‘pluralist vision’. It is thus for the contributors to respond to that challenge: that unity is not divinely mandated but difference (with each community possessing its own sharīʿa and way of life) is, and that difference requires people to compete and strive for the good and suspend judgement and final destination to God. Of course, such a reading of the Qurʾanic verse is itself a deeply contemporary act, forsaking any attempt to contextualise the verse in its revelation or even within its exegetical traditions (whose own diversity could make a useful case). But Ansary is keen not to over-determine the positions set out in the collection. Diversity is a basic fact of life: instead of trying to read pluralism into history and to make normative Islam compatible with pluralism, the book is designed to demonstrate multiple responses and ways in which the challenge of diversity is addressed. This reader would have wanted a clearer statement of how the social fact of diversity can be decoupled with a theoretical espousal of pluralism – as well as a clearer statement of what is meant by pluralism because at least in terms of religious pluralism it is neither identical to ‘universalism’ or a ‘globalism’ of fact and idea.

The book is then divided into two parts. The first on historical contexts comprises two chapters, one by Aziz al-Azmeh (currently completing an ambitious history of Allāh that is keenly anticipated) on pluralism in historical Muslim societies, and the other by Sami Zubaida on the relationship between the private and the public (perhaps with the notion that this distinction whilst upheld with more urgent legal enforcement in the contemporary is actually breaking down). The second part comprises studies of various contemporary contexts from Bangladesh and India through to the major challenges of globalisation and global liberalism in the contemporary world. Al-Azmeh’s brief piece is more of a caveat: the very unified notion of ‘Muslim societies’ requires further interrogation and that the notion of pluralism (with the implication of political and religious plurality that is sanctioned by the state) does not arise drowned in various forms of corporatism and communalism. Therefore, his point is that the historical ‘experience’ does not really offer resources for an argument in favour of pluralism today. Simplistic equations of traditional concepts with modern liberal-democratic ones will not do. Al-Azmeh at heart remains an old-fashioned enlightenment intellectual equally suspicious of traditionalist arguments as he is of newfangled multiculturalist ones. Zubaida similarly issues a caveat about extrapolating too much from historical spaces of co-existence and plurality because the challenge for today relates to the role and space of religiosity in the Habermasian public sphere.

In part two, Amena Mohsen’s study of civil society in Bangladesh really offers some perspectives on conflict management while using notions such as civil society, fundamentalism, nationalism and so forth too loosely. What this chapter offers as a vision of how to deal with pluralism is therefore not clear to this reader beyond presenting a snapshot of the problems. Akeel Bilgrami deals with the issue in a similar manner with respect to India but also with an eye to the civilizational clash discourse within American academia. Bilgrami is concerned with political conflict and diversity which he argues is a good. In some ways his short piece links into his recent work about to find expression in a work on Muslim identity politics. Nur Yalman’s piece is a nuanced work of an anthropologist of religion addressing the challenge of globalisation and using Ottoman and other historical examples to show that cultures are never monolithic, unchanging entities that fail to influence or be influenced. Nevertheless, his conclusion is in a political direction, arguing that the concerns of human rights necessitates an orderly and just society with liberties underpinned by legal and political institutions that are tolerant and inclusive. But the cold fact of institutional development within modernity is insufficient: one needs to develop a culture of openness and acceptance in interpersonal relations. Ridwan al-Sayyid and Adel Daher’s contributions bring us to the most pressing political challenge: can (political) Islam find accommodation with secular, liberal democracy? Al-Sayyid’s chapter evokes a nostalgia for the liberal age in the Arab world both in the pre-modern and modern times, offset and transplanted by revivalism and Islamism and he asks whether there are serious alternatives available now that historicise the faith and extricate people out of cultural pessimism. Daher is pessimistic and does not think that Islamists can be reconciled with value pluralism or the common conception of the ‘just’ in procedural democracy. His political framework is more Rawslian than Habermasian.

While the contributors are leading academics in the field, it is perhaps slightly disappointing not to find some leading Muslim philosophers who have contributed to the discourse on pluralism. One would also have liked to see a more engaged and sustained form of argument – many of the contributions are far too brief. There is also a focus upon the political: while one acknowledges that many of the challenges that Muslims face in the contemporary world may well be of a political nature, it is a missed opportunity in the context of this volume not to discuss value pluralism and religious pluralism in more depth especially as a number of contemporary Muslim theologians are engaged in that discourse. Religious pluralism can therefore allow for a ground of justification that functions in the political sphere. At the same time, one accepts that communities sometimes described as being theocratic and exclusivist with respect to their views on epistemology and soteriology are clearly capable of entering a Rawlsian style bargain for participation in the public sphere and recognition of civic and legal pluralism. Thus, this volume is a wonderful appetiser, and one wishes to see further volumes published in this series that will really give us something to chew over and ponder on the challenge that diversity, globalisation and pessimism pose to us.

Some books acquired in the Gulf

2011-01-04T03:39:00.000-08:00

For obvious reasons, the Gulf is just not the place to buy books – they are expensive and usually bookshops are pretty lame. For religious/turāṯ books, Iraq, Iran and Beirut are much better and cheaper and have fewer restrictions and censorship. For contemporary thought and philosophy, Beirut and Damascus are way ahead. In Kuwait one has a few choices in Hawally, and in Bahrain either the National Bookshop on Exhibition Road in Manama or Fakhrawi especially the Jid-Hafs branch. But books are well over-priced no doubt because few people buy or read. Apart from various titles relating to the history of the region, the Aḫbārīya or the followers of Šayḫ Aḥmad al-Aḥsāʾī, I did buy a few titles which I had meant to get for some time as well as one new one:

· ʿAbdullāh Muḥammad al-Ġudāmī: Ḥikāyat al-ḥadāṯa fī-l-mamlaka al-ʿarabīya al-ṣuʿūdīya – Ġudāmī is one of the leading figures in criticism and especially in what is called cultural criticism (naqd ṯaqāfī). I was first alerted to this literature by a Bahraini friend Nader Kadhim who works in this field. Intellectually, in liberal and elite circles, clearly philosophical speculation and a commitment to critique as an intellectual position is thriving in Saudi albeit within certain parameters. Saudi is seen as the leading conservative and traditionalist force in the Arab-Islamic world and hence the course of modernity and the desire of secular intellectuals to drag Saudi into modernity is worth examining. I’ve been looking at the work of other secular Saudi intellectuals on the tanwīr project and its failure (works published by the Association of Arab secularists in Paris and al-Sāqī books) inspired by a former student who wrote his dissertation on intellectuals and their use of Averroes and Kant in their project of enlightenment.

· The late Naṣr Ḥāmid Abū Zayd’s Naqd al-ḫiṭāb al-dīnī is in many ways a classic originally published in Egypt two decades ago before his famous takfīr and exile. Have been meaning to get hold of a copy for ages having read this in the late 90s. It remains an important critique focusing not only upon salafī and jihādī discourse but also deconstructing the so-called Islamic left (made famous in Egypt by the ubiquitous Ḥasan Ḥanafī), as well as reformists, modernists and ‘official Islam’.

· ʿUmar b. Sahlān al-Sāwī’s al-Baṣāʾir al-naṣīrīya in logic. I visited the small philosophy department at Kuwait University and met Ḥaydar Ḥusayn, one of the professors who had received his doctorate from BU and the head of the department who had studied with Sellars et al at Pittsburgh many years before. The department is rather narrowly focused upon the Anglo-American analytic tradition (which is to be expected) and dismissive of ‘Islamic’ philosophy, a position that I understand though I cannot completely endorse. Ḥaydar gave me a copy of this and we had a long chat about what was analytic in Islamic thought especially Avicennan thought. I had to agree broadly with his assessment that to someone trained in that analytic tradition, Mullā Ṣadrā does indeed sound like nonsense. But what is needed is a careful assessment of what we mean by philosophy or perhaps wisdom – MS I would argue is interested in being a sage and to guide people to the path of the sage in which philosophy is an ethical commitment and a way of life (apud Pierre Hadot) and hence more than just a series of language games.

· Murāsalāt al-Nābulusī edited by Bakrī ʿAladdīn originally as part of his doctoral work in Paris and now published by Ninawa which seems to specialise in the ḥikmat and taṣawwuf traditions. ʿAbd al-Ġanī al-Nābulusī (d. 1731) is probably the most important figure of the school of Ibn ʿArabī in the Bilād al-Šām. ʿAladdīn had earlier published his important defence of monorealism entitled al-Wuǧūd al-ḥaqq, published by the French Institute in Damascus. The collection is an important testament to scholarly life in high Ottoman Syria.

Some more on the Iḥqāqīya who follow Šayḫ Aḥmad

2010-12-31T02:54:00.000-08:00

· Kuwait: Maktabat al-ʿAḏrāʾ is a wonderful little Šayḫī bookshop in Bneid al-Gār run by devotees originally from Iran (the whole area is very much a Šīʿī Iranian area) and they publish many of the works at their press – simple and fairly cheap paperbacks (at least for Kuwaiti standards where 1-2KD is hardly anything for a paperback). Their risāla ʿamalīya is available there – one in two thick volumes with a long introduction on doctrine and belief by Mīrzā ʿAbd al-Rasūl, and another more recent entitled Aḥkām al-šarīʿa by Šayḫ Muḥammad al-Ǧadī.

· Kuwait: Ǧāmiʿ al-Imām al-Ṣādiq in al-Šarq (the Imam there is Šayḫ ʿAbdullāh al-Mazīdī) is their main centre with the Ḥusaynīya Ǧaʿfarīya next door which act jointly as headquarters for publishing, dissemination and services – there are two laǧna-s for publication – one for the works of Šayḫ Aḥmad and the tradition and another for the works of Sayyid Kāẓim al-Raštī. Rather odd that they prefer to published the many risāla-s separately and do not publish the complete Ǧawāmiʿ al-kalim as the Kirmānī branch has.

· Beirut: the Damascus based Muʾassasat al-fikr al-awḥad publishes usually through one of the major Šīʿī presses like al-Maḥaǧǧa al-bayḍāʾ; the Kuwaiti laǧna-s also use Muʾassasat al-balāġ

Some more on the Iḥqāqīya who follow Šayḫ Aḥmad

2010-12-31T02:33:00.000-08:00

The book by the former head of the community Mīrzā ʿAbd al-Rasūl on the two centuries of the scholarly and religious service provided by his family is a valuable record of how the family moved from Tabrīz to Karbalā and then to al-Aḥsāʾ and Kuwait and the centres, mosques and ḥawzāt they established. At his death, his son Mīrzā ʿAbdullāh succeeded but was not declared the full head of the community but now certainly seems to be. He is given titles such as ‘al-ḥakīm al-ilāhī’, ‘rūḥ al-šarīʿa’ and even the title of a marǧaʿ (which they now use for him) ‘āyatullāh al-ʿuẓmā’. His visits to Kuwait are major events most recently a few months ago. The difficulty is to figure out how large the community is. It seems fairly small confined to parts of al-Šarq and Bneid al-Gār in Kuwait, some pockets in the eastern province in al-Aḥsāʾ and al-Hufūf and a very small community of students in al-Sayyida Zaynab in the southern suburbs of Damascus where they have a Muʾassasat al-fikr al-awḥad (although most of the books are published in Beirut). The works of their scholars are published in the following places:
• Kuwait: Maktabat al-ʿAḏrāʾ is a wonderful little Šayḫī bookshop in Bneid al-Gār run by devotees originally from Iran (the whole area is very much a Šīʿī Iranian area) and they publish many of the works at their press – simple and fairly cheap paperbacks (at least for Kuwaiti standards where 1-2KD is hardly anything for a paperback). Their risāla ʿamalīya is available there – one in two thick volumes with a long introduction on doctrine and belief by Mīrzā ʿAbd al-Rasūl, and another more recent entitled Aḥkām al-šarīʿa by Šayḫ Muḥammad al-Ǧadī.
• Kuwait: Ǧāmiʿ al-Imām al-Ṣādiq in al-Šarq (the Imam there is Šayḫ ʿAbdullāh al-Mazīdī) is their main centre with the Ḥusaynīya Ǧaʿfarīya next door which act jointly as headquarters for publishing, dissemination and services – there are two laǧna-s for publication – one for the works of Šayḫ Aḥmad and the tradition and another for the works of Sayyid Kāẓim al-Raštī. Rather odd that they prefer to published the many risāla-s separately and do not publish the complete Ǧawāmiʿ al-kalim as the Kirmānī branch has.
• Beirut: the Damascus based Muʾassasat al-fikr al-awḥad publishes usually through one of the major Šīʿī presses like al-Maḥaǧǧa al-bayḍāʾ; the Kuwaiti laǧna-s also use Muʾassasat al-balāġ

Some Notes on the Iḥqāqī/Tabrīzī branch of the followers of Šayḫ Aḥmad al-Aḥsāʾī (d. 1826)

2010-12-21T00:52:00.000-08:00

In Kuwait at the moment following up some research on this branch of what is known as the Šayḫīya school of Twelver Šiʿi theology (although as my main interlocutor Šayḫ ʿAlī al-Jadī who is the imam at Ǧāmiʿ al-Ṣaḥḥāf insisted this is a pejorative term that should not be used and is like referring to the Šiʿa as the rawāfiḍ - best to use terms that are self-referential such as followers of the madrasat al-Šayḫ al-awḥad and its like). This is small community locally (and regionally) known as the Ḥasāwīya because of their origins in the region of al-Aḥsāʾ in the eastern province. Since the death of Mīrzā ʿAbd al-Rasūl al-Iḥqāqī al-Ḥāʾirī, there is no designated head or marǧaʿ (his son Mīrzā ʿAbdullāh residing in Tehran is seen as too young without relevant iǧāzāt – hence his wearing of the gatra and not the ʿamāma). There is no ḥawza in the centre of Kuwait – the old Ḥawzat al-nūrayn al-nīrayn Amīr al-Muʾminīn wa Fāṭimat al-Zahrāʾ founded by Mīrzā Ḥasan has basically been defunct since the death of Mīrzā ʿAbd al-Rasūl. They do, however, have two ḥawzas in Aḥsāʾ, one entitled Ḥawzat al-Imām al-Riḍā run by Šayḫ al-Jāsim.
Not wishing to replicate the excellent work of Stephen Lambden, I reproduce a selected bibliography of relevant sources for this school below, which focus on the Iḥqāqī and constitute the main sources for the current research project.

Primary Texts

I: Šayḫ Aḥmad b. Zayn al-Dīn al-Aḥsāʾī (d. 1241/1826)

Dīwān al-Šayḫ al-Awḥad, Beirut: Muʾassasat al-Balāġ, 2004

*Kitāb al-fawāʾid – Šarḥ al-fawāʾid, Kuwait, n.d., n.p., offset of the lithograph

Ǧawāmiʿ al-kalim, 6 parts in 2 vols., Tabriz: Muḥammad Taqī Naḫǧavānī, 1273/1856

*Ḥayāt an-nafs (wa-uṣūl al-ʿaqāʾid li-l-Sayyid al-Raštī), ed. Mīrzā ʿAlī al-Ḥāʾirī, Kuwait: n.p.,

n.d.

[many other printings – have one other by Šayḫ ʿAlī al-Jadī; also *Šarḥ ḥayāt al-nafs of Šayḫ ʿAbd al-Ǧalīl ʿAlī al-Amīr (Iḥqāqī in Saudi), Damascus: Maktabat Imām Ǧaʿfar al-Ṣādiq, 1416 H with blessings of ʿAbd al-Rasūl Iḥqāqī]

*Kaškūl al-Aḥsāʾī, 2 parts in 1 vol, Beirut: Dār al-maḥaǧǧa al-bayḍāʾ, 2005

*Kayfīyat sulūk ilā Allāh, ed. Mīrzā ʿAbd al-Rasūl Iḥqāqī, Kuwait: Maktabat al-Ṣāliḥīn, Jāmiʿ al-Imām al-Ṣādiq, n.d.

*Rasāʾil al-ḥikma, Beirut: al-Dār al-ʿālamīya, 1993

*al-Raǧʿa, eds. Šayḫ Muǧtabā al-Samāʿīl & Šayḫ Rāḍī al-Aḥsāʾī, Beirut: Muʾassasat al-fikr

al-awḥad, 1427 H/2006

Šams ḥaǧar, ed. Aḥmad ʿAbd al-Wahhāb Bū-Shafīʿ, Beirut/Kuwait: Laǧnat iḥyāʾ turāṯ

al-Šayḫ al-Awḥad, 2003

*Šarh kitāb al-ḥikma al-ʿaršīya, ed. Ṣālib Muḥammad al-Dabbāb, Beirut: Muʾassasat

al-Balāġ/Muʾassasat Šams haǧar, 2007

Šarḥ al-mašāʿir, Kirman: Maṭbaʿat al-saʿāda, 1408 ???; 2 vols., Beirut: Muʾassasat al-Balāġ,

2007

*Šarḥ al-ziyāra al-ǧāmiʿa, 4 vols., Beirut: Dār al-Mufīd, 2003

*Risālat al-taǧwīd, ed. Mīrzā ʿAbd al-Rasūl Iḥqāqī, (Kuwait?: Laǧnat al-sayd al-amǧad

li-iḥyāʾ turāṯ madrasat al-Šayḫ al-Awḥad, n.d.

II: Sayyid Kāẓim b. Qāsim al-Raštī (d. 1259/1843)

*Asrār al-ʿibādāt, Kuwait: Ǧāmiʿ al-Imām al-Ṣādiq, 1422/2001

Asrār al-šahāda: sirr al-ḥaqīqa fī waqʿat al-ṭafūf, Damascus/Sayyida Zaynab: Madrasat Imām

al-Awḥad, 1421/2000

Dalīl al-mutaḥayyirīn, Kuwait: Ǧāmiʿ al-Imām al-Ṣādiq, 1423/2002

*Kašf al-ḥaqq fī masāʾil al-miʿrāǧ, ed. Amīr ʿAskarī, Beirut: Muʾassasat al-Balāġ, 2000

*Risālat al-sulūk fī-l-aḫlāq wa-l-aʿmāl, ed. Vaḥīd Bihmardī, Beirut: Ergon Verlag, 2004

Šarḥ duʿāʾ al-simāt wa šarḥ ḥadīṯ al-qadr, Beirut: Muʾassasat fikr al-awḥad, 1423/2002

*Šarḥ ḥadīṯ ʿImrān al-Ṣābiʾ, ed. Mīrzā ʿAbdullāh Ḥāʾirī Iḥqāqī, Kuwait: Maktabat al-ʿAdhrāʾ,

1426/2005

Šarḥ al-ḫuṭba al-tuṭunǧiya, 3 vols., Kuwait: Ǧāmiʿ al-Imām al-Ṣādiq, 1421/2001

*al-Sulūk ilā Allāh, ed. Mīrzā ʿAbd al-Rasūl Iḥqāqī, Kuwait: Ǧāmiʿ al-Imām al-Ṣādiq, 2000

Tafsīr āyat al-kursī, ed. ʿAbd al-Munʿim al-ʿUmrān, 3 vols., Beirut: Dār al-maḥaǧǧa

al-bayḍāʾ, n.d.

III: Šayḫ ʿAlī-Naqī b. Aḥmad al-Aḥsāʾī (d. 1246/1831)

Minhāǧ al-sālikīn, 3 vols., Kuwait: Ǧāmiʿ al-Imām al-Ṣādiq, 1419/1998

IV: Mīrzā Ḥāsan Gawhar Tabrīzī (d. 1266/1849)

Kitāb al-maḫāzīn wa-l-lamaʿāt wa-l-barāhīn al-sātiʿāt, ed. ʿAbd al-Ǧalīl ʿAlī al-Amīr,

Beirut: Muʾassasat al-Balāġ/Muʾassasat Šams haǧr, 2006

Šarḥ ḥayāt al-arwāḥ, ed. Mīrzā ʿAbd al-Rasūl Iḥqāqī, Kuwait: Maktabat al-Imām al-Ṣādiq,

2002

V: Šayḫ Muḥammad Bū-Ḫamsīn al-Aḥsāʾī (d. 1316/

Mafātīḥ al-anwār fī bayān maʿrifat maṣābīḥ al-asrār, 2 vols., ed. ʿAbd al-Munʿim al-ʿUmrān,

Beirut: Dār al-maḥaǧǧa al-bayḍāʾ,vn.d.

*al-Nūr al-muḍī maʿrufat al-kanz al-maḫfī, ed. ʿAbd al-Munʿim al-ʿUmrān, Beirut: Dār

al-maḥaǧǧa al-bayḍāʾ, 2007

Al-Risāla al-Ḫurāsānīya šarḥ man ʿarafa nafsahu faqad ʿarafa rabbahu, ed. ʿAbd al-Munʿim

al-ʿUmrān, Beirut: Dār al-maḥaǧǧa al-bayḍāʾ, n.d.

VI: Mīrzā Mūsā Uskūʾī al-Ḥāʾirī

Iḥqāq al-ḥaqq

VII: Mīrzā Muḥammad Bāqir Uskūʾī al-Ḥāʾirī

*Al-Risāla al-badaʾīya, ed. ʿAbd al-Munʿim al-ʿUmrān/Mīrza ʿAbd al-Rasūl Iḥqāqī, Beirut:

Dār al-maḥaǧǧa al-bayḍāʾ/Kuwait: Ǧāmiʿ al-Imām al-Ṣādiq, 2000

VIII: Mīrzā Ḥasan Iḥqāqī al-Ḥāʾirī

*Risāla insānīya, ed./annotated Šayḫ Ḥasan Šams Kaylānī, Kuwait: Maktabat al-Imām

al-Ṣādiq al-ʿāmma, 1993

*al-Tadayyun bayn al-sāʾil wa-l-muǧīb. 4 vols., Beirut/Kuwait: Maktabat al-Imām al-Ṣadiq

al-ʿāmma, 1992

IX: Mīrzā ʿAbd al-Rasūl Iḥqāqī al-Ḥāʾirī (d.

*Qarnān min al-iǧtihād wa-l-marǧaʿīya, Kuwait: Ǧāmiʿ al-Imām al-Ṣādiq, 1996

*al-Taḥqīq fī madrasat al-awḥad, Kuwait: Ǧāmiʿ al-Imām al-Ṣādiq, 2003

*al-Walāya: baḥṯ ḥawl al-walāya min waḥī al-Qurʾān, ed. ʿAlī al-ʿAsaylī al-ʿĀmilī,

Beirut/Kuwait: Maktabat al-Imām al-Ṣādiq al-ʿāmma, 1999

Studies/History

Ḥasan Fayḍān, Madḫal ilā falsafat al-Šayḫ Aḥmad al-Aḥsāʾī, Dār al-maḥaǧǧa al-bayḍāʾ,

2003

Muḥammad Zakī Ibrāhīm, al-Madrasa al-Šayḫīya, Beirut: Dār al-maḥaǧǧa al-bayḍāʾ, 2004

Aḥmad ʿAbd al-Hādī Muḥammad Ṣāliḥ, Aʿlām madrasat al-šayḫ al-awḥad fī-l-qarn al-ṯāliṯ-

ʿašar al-hiǧrī, Beirut: Dār al-maḥaǧǧa al-bayḍāʾ, 2006

*Sayyid Muḥammad Ḥasan Āl Ṭāliqānī, Al-Šayḫīya: našaʾtuhā wa taṭawwuruhā wa maṣādir

dirāsātihā, Naǧaf: Maktabat al-maʿārif, 2007

Another library goes online - Majlis

2010-11-30T12:56:00.000-08:00

Amazing that libraries are realising issues over access. The library of the Majlis in Tehran has made its excellent collection of 35,000 mss available as pdfs online. The link is here.

Some Recent Titles on Mullā Ṣadrā

2010-11-30T07:38:00.000-08:00

Of course, visiting Iran provides opportunities to see what’s recently been published (although I’m lucky to receive books all the time from generous friends). A few more titles have been published by the Sadra Islamic Philosophy Research Institute (SIPRIn) including a new edition of Risāla ittiḥād al-ʿāqil wa-l-maʿqūl edited by Biyūk ʿAlīzāda. The edition itself is prefaced with practically 200 pages of discussion. No doubt it should be used alongside Ibrahim Kalin’s new translation which is embedded in his recent book on Mullā Ṣadrā’s epistemology published by OUP.

Since I am currently writing a series of pieces on Mullā Ṣadrā’s noetics including the issue of eschatology and the final destination of the human, I finally got hold of the famous explanation and commentary by the late (and greatly missed) Sayyid Jalālodīn Āshtiyānī (d. 2006). All of Āshtiyānī’s works on Mullā Ṣadrā as well as his various editions of texts have been reprinted by the press of the Ḥawzeh in Qum since the late 1990s (Daftar-i tablīghāt – now known as Bustān-i kitāb). The importance of the Sharḥ bar Zād al-musāfir is all the more because the actual text of Mullā Ṣadrā (to my knowledge) has yet to be published in the critical edition – and Āshtiyānī is always worth reading. He begins by replicating the original text – around eight pages of Arabic. This text takes up the issue of corporeal resurrection in a brief manner discussing twelve principles required to understand the issue – and as such mirrors the final volume of al-Ḥikma al-mutaʿāliya where Mullā Ṣadrā mentions eleven principles needed to understand corporeal resurrection and abandon metempsychosis. This is then followed by over 500 pages of Āshtiyānī’s commentary that given his style and interests constitutes a full history of the ḥikmat tradition on this issue. Mullā Ṣadrā’s position is, of course, controversial and has often been criticised and condemned, not least by the school of uṣūlīs hostile to philosophy known as the maktab-i tafkīk. Therefore, I also acquired a new defence of Mullā Ṣadrā published by Bustān-i kitāb. Murtażā Pūʾīyān’s Maʿād-i jismānī dar ḥikmat-i mutaʿāliya published for the first time in 2009 addresses the criticisms by first showing that Mullā Ṣadrā’s position is both defensible rationally and scripturally, and then criticising the refutations or modification proposed by Mullā Ismāʿīl Khājūʾī (18^th C), Mullā Muḥammad Taqī Āmulī (a famed teacher of Sabzavārī’s Sharḥ al-manẓūma), Muṭahharī, ʿAllāma Ṭabāṭabāʾī, and the maktab-i tafkīk especially Mullā Mahdī Iṣfahānī, Muḥammad Riżā Ḥakīmī, and Shaykh Mujtabā Qazwīnī.

Other acquisitions included:

· Hastī va chīstī dar maktab-i Mullā Ṣadrā on the central issue of the relationship between existence and essence in contingents written by Ghulām-Riżā Fayyāżī, a well-known ḥawzeh teacher and published by Pazhūhishgāh-i ḥawzeh va dānishgāh last year in 2009.

· Zamān dar falsafa-yi Ṣadr al-mutaʾallihīn va Saint Augustine by Mahdī Munfarid is also published in the current year by the ḥawzeh and tackles a central issue of the reality of time and its relationship to motion within a comparative context that is so popular in Iran. The comparison with Augustine is quite interesting and appropriate.

· Mabānī, uṣūl va ravish-i tafsīrī-yi Mullā Ṣadrā by Majīd Falāḥpūr is a recent contribution to the question of his hermeneutics and should be read alongside two other recent works published by SIPRIn.

· Khayāl az naẓar-i Ibn Sīnā va Ṣadr al-mutaʾallihīn by Zohreh Burqeʿī tackles a central issue in noetics relating to the imagination – which for Ibn Sīnā is the key internal sense and the one most heightened in prophets, and for Mullā Ṣadrā the one which is the seat of the creative power of the soul whence it reproduces the bodies of the afterlife. This is another offering from the ḥawzeh.

· Natāʾij-i kalāmī-yi ḥikmat-i Ṣadrāʾī, also published by the ḥawzeh and written by Muḥammad Amīn Ṣādiqī addresses a further issue of the implications of philosophy for theology – I noticed other more basic titles in this vein published by the many pazhūhishgāhs now in Qum.

Cusanuswerk Conference

2010-11-29T02:42:00.000-08:00

Spent the weekend in the lovely town of Mainz near Frankfurt for the annual Cusanuswerk conference on philosophy. The Cusanuswerk is a scholarship and mentoring scheme run by the Catholic church in Germany. It's interesting that they picked the theme of Arabic/Islamic philosophy (that old debate returned again). A number of experts were invited to give talks in German and English from the Graeco-Arabic Neoplatonica and Abu Bakr al-Razi through to Mulla Sadra (no prizes for guessing who gave that talk). It was a great experience giving a paper to a collection of experts as well as enthusiastic and bright philosophy students many of whom knew nothing about the Arabic tradition or about Islam. Along the way Prof Ulrich Rudolph from Zurich gave a couple of public talks on Arabic Islamic thought as well as the history of the academic encounter with the study of philosophy in the Muslim world. Those giving papers included Prof Peter Adamson on Razi and how we can not the heretic we all think he was, Prof Heidrun Eichner (Tubingen) on philosophy and theology in post-Avicennan Islamic world engaging with the critical issue of what Islamic theology is given the current German debate on this new centre of Islamic Studies/theology, myself on Mulla Sadra's monistic noetics, Prof Rahim Acar (Marmara) on Avicenna and Aquinas on creation (drawing on his published PhD), Dr Rotraud Hansberger (King's, Cambridge) on the Arabic Parva Naturalia, and others. In the evaluation, we commented on the absence of philosophy of language and ethics and some students were disappointed with the absence of Averroes (although their reasoning was rather old-fashioned and enlightenment oriented as if only Aristotelianism was the way back and forward for dialogue).
One can of course only dream at this stage of Muslim communities in Europe getting their act together to support the education and intellectual development of their own through schemes such as this and also run such wonderful conferences of real debate and exchange.

WPD - First Day, First Panel

2010-11-27T11:42:00.000-08:00

The Italian philosopher Gianni Vattimo had just flown in from Brazil - and flew out almost immediately not spending a day there. I missed much of his talk but what I did catch struck me as being standard for him - a denial of God but affirmation of belief and religion, a denial of objective truth and indeed of the problem within philosophy to seek universals while insisting upon a concept of truth as intersubjective negotiation. This latter makes little sense to me and I cannot quite locate it. While there are plenty of theories of truth out there (wonderfully summed up in Wolfgang Kunne's book) as well as a wide ranging epistemological belief in relative truth, I do not see how truth as inter-subjective negotiation works. I much prefer (as I mentioned before) traditionalist accounts of truth or even tradition-based ones such as MacIntyre's.

Interestingly, the celebrity Ghulam-Hossein Ibrahimi Dinani who has a regular philosophy programme and is at Tehran University took a different view - philosophy as open inquiry and questioning but which assumes a singular truth with 'many faces'. His basic position that humanity is present and alienated in language (using a verse of the poet Bedil) was well taken - and generally his performance reminded me of his excellent recent book on Nasir al-Din Tusi as 'filsuf-e guftagu' (philosophy of dialogue). Philosophy concerns dialoging and practices of discourse that are universal and global and should not be excessively parochialised as Greek, Islamic, Iranian and so forth. This commensurability is precisely what makes philosophy possible and why dialogue at its heart is most effective when it is conducted by philosophers (a probably self-serving suggestion which many in the audience enthusiastically received). To the objection that this seems unrelated to Islamic concerns, he was careful to note that philosophy is tafakkur, tadabbur and ta'aqqul and these are basic epistemological and moral imperatives in the Quran. He remains a eudaimonist at heart - since flourishing happiness arrived through understanding reality and harmonising inter-subjective relations is critical to philosophy, inquiry should keep this in mind. Change is not just about exegesis but fundamental transformation. As such this was a paper clearly geared to a strong ethical role for philosophy in contemporary societies and in Iran critical, citing along the way that change was central to philosophising, quoting Imam 'Ali on the basic point that if any two days of one are the same then one is dead - stable and still and not moving. A wonderful potential call for political change?

WPD – Final day – Analytic Ontology and Political Thought

2010-11-27T11:21:00.000-08:00

While more interesting conflicts were ongoing else, I went to a panel on political thought with the Columbia professors Carol Rovane and Akeel Bilgrami. CR asked the question why individuals matter in the context of considering the limitations of traditional liberal approaches to rights located within a social contract tradition of how the power of the state is restraints by the rights and liberties of citizens. Her argument really asked the question –what do we mean by an individual or even a person and how this conflict brought up the conflict and tension in liberalism between two fundamental commitments that derive from the Enlightenment tradition:
• The moral importance of the individual human being that posits rights, whose integrity is central and whose rights it is wrong to sacrifice for the great good (against utilitarianism)
• The moral importance of rationality (understood minimally through the presence of a first person perspective although one weakness that is clear was the lack of an account of rationality in the presentation)
Solving this tension requires an account of the individual because of the following assumption that rights pertain to individuals:
• I possess rights because I can claim them for myself
Personhood implies membership of civil society but also that anything that can be treated as a person is a person. But how about those who are not rational such as young children, the unborn and the mentally damaged, the old – morally we still do think they are important. Nevertheless we have a basic problem that the rational idea of the individual is not equivalent to the individual human person. Humans are not basic blocks of individualism: deliberation, commitments and the totality of mental states and beliefs suggests that individuals for moral and legal reasons may either be less than one actual person (i.e. with respect to multiple personality disorders) or corporate entities with similar beliefs (and hence have 1st amendment etc rights – CR seems particularly worried about this). But some objections: what about personhood over time? How do we make sense of that? The example given of collective personhood (i.e. the married couple or corporation) does beg the question to what extent it is really position for there to be some form of shared rationality and first person perspective? Does the simple fact of having common goals and shared beliefs really confer personhood and individuality? But the basic take home message that the liberal conception of the individual as the seat for claims to rights needing to be modified and revised seems fair enough.
AB’s paper was related and focused on religious identity and why it clashes with liberal notions and for him this is because of the difference of mentality (and required him to present a schematic and rather generalised view of the too – I look forward to the fully reasoned argument in his forthcoming book). His basic point is that the clash lies at the level of moral psychology and not the rather simple conflict between individual and community. Identity relates to intense commitments and are predicated on reinforced beliefs where reinforcement concerns the linkage between different beliefs/preferences that are held and points towards coherence in will and action (although along the way the issue of weakness of will was discussed). Now in terms of liberalism, he outlined one central proposition:
• Individual citizens must be left unimpeded///to pursue their own conception of the good life
So basically two issues – non-interference and pursuit of the good but which are distinct and can be mutually exclusive (Rawls and Mill). Rawslian position is that one ought to choose liberty for itself regardless of one’s self-interest. He insisted on a present-minded approach to what would happen in the future with liberals open to reversibility of positions held and religious minded committed to irreversibility. However, it seems unclear why one should have such a simplistic opposition. There are religious minded individuals who hold reversibility with respect to postulations of religious truth just as there are liberals committed to the irreversibility of their position. This brought to mind the basic conflict that John Gray discusses between a universalist liberalism that insisted its values represent the ‘end of history’ and those who are open to reversibility and to diversity of positions within society – and in fact one finds the similar tension of positions among the religious. One objection raised including by Tu-Wei Ming was the basic point that there is a distinction between identity politics and identity in politics: the former might well be essentialist, irreversible and highly dangerous, but the latter is unavoidable. After all, none of us are disembodied autonomous selves capable of rational deliberate and its communication in isolation of others. We are rather all rational agents that are products of our communities and our contexts.
Overall, this was a key and excellent panel on analytic approaches to political thought (one of the few properly analytic panels – the absence of many analytic philosophers especially from Iran seemed to be quite striking to me).

WPD - the closing session - what to say?

2010-11-26T12:39:00.002-08:00

Finally, at the end of the controlled nature of the event, security re-emerged - scanners. While AN had come for the opening it was unlikely that he would again. The security seemed strict but second tier which suggested a minister. But not just any minister - the minister of justice, and son of a prominent marja' Ayatullah Hashim Larijani and the son-in-law of arguably the leading marja' in Qum today namely Ayatullah Shaykh Waheed Khurasani - of course I mean Sadeq Larijani.

The three talks were by Prof Rao, Larijani and HA. Aavani seemed conspicuously absent from these proceedings - still caught between a rock and a hard place? I caught various bits (including some quite amusing ones) on video on my phone. Finally we had mention of the boycott and UNESCO and FIS's loss.

WPD Day 3

2010-11-26T12:39:00.001-08:00

I'll come back to the previous days and the closing session later (in which we were entertained with a ramble through the totality of modern 'western' thought with a special interest in Freud it seemed with a simple take home message - I know your intellectual traditions but you fail to know me - unless you are an orientalist).
The first session was rather scholarly - Reshid Hafizovic from Bosnia gave an excellent paper on poesis within the narrative of the prophetic ascension and spoke lucidly about the need for a mythopoeic approach to thought. This was followed by Miklos Maroth's exposition of Avicenna's Topica, a response to Aristotle and a demarcation of the lines between demonstrative approaches to theoretical science and the practices of dialectic and rhetoric and their roles in ancient thought. This was the second of a couple of papers on Avicenna's logic, the other being Wilferd Hodges (emeritus professor of logic at London and now one of our regional neighbours with an interest in the Arab tradition). The final paper on this panel was my own attempt to think about how we understand philosophy and whether hikmat is more than philosophy, juxtaposing the late Pierre Hadot's readings of ancient thought with Mulla Sadra. This is the abstract:
Philosophy as a way of life in the world of Islam: applying Hadot to the study of Mullā Ṣadrā Shīrāzī (d. 1635)

Embarking on my doctoral studies on the thought of the Iranian Safavid thinker Mullā Ṣadrā Shīrāzī (d. 1635), I found myself stumped with a basic question of methodology: how do I make sense of his thought which is so removed from the categories and approaches to philosophy of our own time? Reading the existing secondary literature did not help much; confusion was a basic state of response. What was Mullā Ṣadrā’s thought and the nature of his contribution to Islamic intellectual history? How should we understand what he intended by the term ḥikma(t) often rendered as philosophy? Should we even consider him to be merely a ‘philosopher’? Does our description of him as a philosopher diminish his role of thinker, teacher, and exegete? Are our tastes in Islamic philosophy condemned to following fashions in the wider history of philosophy? What did he understand by the concept of philosophy? The basic problem arises out of how we understand philosophy in contemporary thought.
One way out of this impasse was the chance discovery of the work of the late Pierre Hadot on ancient thought. Hadot’s categorisation and conceptualisation of philosophy seems to fit much better into a paradigm that is useful for the study of later Islamic philosophy. In this paper, I critically examine the key insights of Hadot to one’s reading and understanding of philosophy and consider to what extent it is a key to making sense of what ḥikmat is for Mullā Ṣadrā.

Well received I think - had various people come up to me and I sustained conversations is my rather bad persian for the next couple of hours (!). Finally relented and gave a couple of interviews (avoided before and after) - with Radio Ma'arif. Although it was somewhat disturbing to find that instead of question about practice of philosophising as ethics, I was asked how one distinguishes between true and false religious traditions - which I tried to avoid. And the questions seemed quite different - asked about the tafkikis, I said they were philosophical despite themselves and that the so-called clash between religion and philosophy depends on how one reads and understands the two. I am uncomfortable with two definitions of philosophy commonplace during the conference (and that they were both here is testament to discussion and debate) - one in which philosophy is analytically sound reasoning through propositions, and the other in which philosophy is the pursuit of wisdom culminating in spirituality. But where is the ethics? especially of the applied kind? Which is precisely why it was wonderful to see the panels on philosophy and children that included workshops with children of different ages.
Some more controversial things did happen. I leave some of them for later. In a philosophy of religion panel, a prominent hawzawi thinker Shaykh Hasan Ramezani gave a lucid internal discussion of the basic commitment to ‘aql in religion – ‘aql here of course not being reasoning in any noticeably Enlightenment sense but one which draws heavily from the Shi‘i hadith literature. One chap raised a basic objection: the problem with hawzawi chaps is that they continually repeat old stuff and need to engage especially in this context with new thinkers to avoid obsolescence. The tension between secular trained academics from philosophy departments and hawzawi/hybrid trained philosophers is clear – and yet the latter have really leaped ahead not least in their embrace of the Kantian and analytic traditions. The most lucid and vibrant discussions on pragmatics of truth, on the Habermasian public space and on the linkages between the semantic discussions of usul al-fiqh and the philosophy of language (Kripke et al) are conducted with these hybrid mullahs. Yet one feels that this is very much philosophy as defender of the faith, deployed as the handmaiden of theology, as the key weapon in the new theology (kalam-e jadid) that has been dominant since the 1960s.

A Day in Qom

2010-11-24T13:55:00.000-08:00

Hitched a ride to Qom for the day - apart from the visit to the shrine of Sayyida Fatima Ma'suma, the sister of Imam 'Ali al-Rida (which was busy as it is the eve of eid al-ghadir), got roped into various events and still found some time to buy books (beginning to think my small suitcase cannot handle it. Picked up a series of works relating to Mirza Muhammad 'Ali Shahabadi (d. 1950), the teacher of Khomeini, from the bookshop of the Islamic Research Institute for Culture and Thought (IICT, Pazhuheshgah-e farhang o andishe-ye islami) including the Rashahat al-bihar, Shadharat al-ma'arif and other works. Later in the evening attended a very long mini-conference on Islamic perspectives on the philosophy of art.It was supposed to be from 6.30 to 8.30. Sensibly, I turned up at 8.10 not having agreed to give a paper. It still lasted until 9pm. A hall full of turbans - but bright ones. One of the papers which I did catch was an interesting account of Avicenna's notion of aesthetics based on a reading of the ninth namat of Pointers and Reminders (al-Isharat wa-l-tanbihat). Reminded me of a discussion at the WPD concerning a two-fold division of the text into theoretical and practical philosophy with namats 1-7 comprising the former and 8-10 the latter. Am tempted to go back to Pointers at some point soon to check this (when I have time...) I think I slept through most of the rest.

Earlier in the day had a tour of the Mar'ashi library - the chap had clearly done it a million times before. But it is still an amazing collection - 37,000 manuscripts. Although given my previous experiences, I did not exactly buy the story of helping all researchers and providing copies - but perhaps things are different now since I have a tenured job.

Sandwiched between were sessions at the Research Institute for Islamic Sciences and Culture (Pazhuheshgah-e 'ulum-e islami o farhang). As they are organising a conference in early March on the mind/body/soul problem, I felt going along would be fine. Had a meeting with the research unit on philosophy and Islamic theology. Interesting work being done even it is seems rather too beholden to analytic philosophy's categories. Later before lunch there was a more extensive meeting with Karim Crow, his wife Asna Husin and myself taking questions on everything from the concept of an Islamic science (I really don't understand why the islamisation of knowledge seems to be returning as a concern in Iran) to the political philosophy of the revolution and beyond.Seems there is much interesting and creative work arising out of the seminary that is potentially revolutionary (!). I also suggested that if one assumes that a faith-based philosophy is a requirement, then it would help to engage with successful examples such as the literature on Buddhist philosophy.

Ma'had al-ma'arif al-hikmiyya - Institute for Sapiential Knowledge, Beirut

2010-11-23T14:51:00.000-08:00

Finally met Mahmoud Younes the energetic editor of al-Mahajja which is published by the Institute headed by Shaykh Shafik Jaradi. It's wonderful to see a serious philosophy journal in Arabic and gives hope - especially if seen alongside the new International Society for Islamic Philosophy and its journal. There is an Arabic translation (quite excellent and I think perhaps better than the original!) of my JIS piece on Mir Damad on God's creative agency.
The Institute has also an excellent series of publications - translations of John Hick and Rudolf Otto, but also editions of texts by Muhsin Fayd Kashani such as Usul al-ma'arif and Rashahat al-bihar of Ayatollah Shahabadi.
The contact email is almahajah@shurouk.com

WPD continued

2010-11-23T14:38:00.007-08:00

It's been a busy and very tired few days - 6am starts and finally getting to sleep around 1am. It's been a mixed but good experience. I'll gradually type up my notes on various sessions and key discussions later. Despite everything, intellectual curiosity and vitality, while curtailed, is alive and well. It was only today for the first time that someone accused me of supporting illegitimate power. But that's fine - it's important to have that difference of opinion and not fall into the trap of exceptionalism. Coming to such a conference one knows what to expect especially of opening and closing sessions - although today's was quite 'special', exhausting and for many from abroad quite confusing. The final session featured Ramakrishna Rao, the host of the next WPD in India, HA and Ayatollah Sadiq Larijani, the head of the judiciary.
Some interesting people were here and I was surprised - and many were not and I absolutely understand and support their decisions as well. Intellectual tastes are such that it is not just Mulla Sadra who has dominated - there have even been dissenting voices - but also Habermas (the focus on deliberation, communication and the public sphere) and Rorty (metaphysical scepticism and pragmatism and relativism with respect to truth). But more of that later.

WPD - The Opening Session 3 - Tu Weiming

2010-11-21T13:01:00.001-08:00

As the opening ceremony continued, a few choice luminaries were thanked for their acceptance of invitations including Hans Poser (TU Berlin, VP of the Leibniz Society), Gianni Vattimo (more about his speech later), Akeel Bilgrami (Columbia) and Tu Wieming (Harvard/Beijing).
At which point TM was invited to give his speech, which I must admit rather disturbed me because it begged way too many questions. He began by addressing the human condition and the challenges faced which were common. Intercultural diversity entails dialogue but that cannot b solved by trading and defending particularisms (consistently I really wanted a clearer idea of what he meant by cultures since he sometimes used civilisations and even spiritual traditions as synonyms for cultures). Dialogue is required for human flourishing (the basic virtue ethics and eudaimonistic approach of his was clear and never justified as a privileged approach). He continued with a rather qualified critique of what MacIntyre has called the Enlightenment project (without rejecting the Enlightenment or the notion of a negotiation universal(isable) ethics). While the Enlightenment has become the model for values and ethics in the West, it has also become a dominant ideology stressing rights discourse, liberty, dignity of humanity, autonomy, due process and rationality – seemingly decent values. While he did not wish to raise the old bugbear of Asian values, he stressed that these also include universalisables such as justice, sympathy, compassion and communal solidarity – it is not clear why he wants the lists to be somewhat mutually exclusive. He was right to say that no government nowadays can deny its citizens Enlightenment values (was this a veiled critique of his context? I don’t think so but it could be read so). What is needed is a dialogue between values to create universals, to embrace diversity and not just tolerate it and recognise that E values are not sufficient (why exactly?). Authentic communities (meaning what exactly?) require dialogue, setting aside prejudice that defends an exclusive account of truth, even setting aside the insufficiency of the categorical imperative in search of reciprocity and reflection.
Communication is dialogical and cannot be imposed and monological but requires recognising difference in which the other is relevant (the intersubjective ethics being suggested seemed quite basic to me – I would take Ricoeur before any of this). Dialoging is part of the process of self-reflection and self-becoming (which is actually one of the themes of my paper later in the conference). Pluralism as a good cannot exist with exclusivisms: to establish and help the self one needs to establish and help the other and cultivate the art of listening as central to dialogue. Debate and dialogue are signs of a healthy and wholesome culture – neither pure acceptance nor pure rejection (perhaps some undefined manzila bayna al-manzilatayn?). While communities need identity to be coherent, they also require change and renewal especially in the light of current challenges – he consistently mentioned the ecological challenge. It is only through dialogue that universal ethics may be achievable (strange this naive adherence still to the E project) and a new human consciousness is needed that does not replicate modes of dominance and is not ineffective but holistic. Isolated cultures cannot survive – open ones adapt (again there are ironies of the context – but I must say the discussions have been remarkably open – much more so and more intellectually vibrant than they would be elsewhere in the world whether that is Jerusalem, Cairo or even one suspects DC for that matter nowadays – the boycotters I think really got this wrong). He then shifted to talking about spiritual traditions and not cultures and their need for two elements: a language of global citizenship, and another for the particularisms of their tradition, the latter sinking roots in the former and not allowing the particular to constrain the universal. There was some general notion that spiritual traditions are ecologically more friendly (evidence?). The need for revive humanity require a third turn in contemporary philosophy after the epistemological and the linguistic – this is the spiritual turn (rediscovering Aristotle etc – one sees MacIntyre in much of what he is saying here) – spiritual traditions remain a major source of philosophical inspiration. While calibrating and deconstructing the dominance of the analytic tradition is a good thing, one wonders whether the plea for the spiritual turn can be taken seriously unless one explodes the very notion of the spiritual/religious/theological in terms similar to Vattimo or de Vries and others.
In many ways the spiritual almost walawi conclusion of TM fitted well with AN’s speech that followed – classic messianic fare. Beginning with bits of duʿāʾ al-faraj and moving onto the idea the philosophy is a discourse on reality and a means for acquiring knowledge that lends to a sending down of mercy. Philosophy is needed for harmony (against some of TM’s critique of anthropocentrism this was exactly that). Humans are central to creation – know self through knowing perfect manifestations and disclosures of the divine – the dialectic of self and God is central. True knowledge lies in knowing the perfect manifestation = perfect man = imam (well the last step is clearly implicit but he did not use the word). The sanctity and ontological force of the perfect man is essential for human salvation (which is how he reads philosophy). Philosophy as soteriology and mysticism. Classic AN – and speaking to some of the others invited from abroad they just did not get it.

WPD - The Opening Session I

2010-11-21T11:40:00.000-08:00

Plenty of security as we were entering the large National Library complex - for obvious reasons when later AN came in rather informally with his entourage and photographers (not quite the regal and controlled entrances that one used to expect from Khatami). There was an MC who reminded me somewhat of a game show host. As everyone sat down, we did not know what the opening session would entail - the English programme did not give details although I later found some posters with a Persian programme setting it out. The MC pointed said that it was indeed auspicious that this gathering was taking place between two great eids - al-adha and al-ghadeer - and appropriate that it was held in Iran which had a continuous role in philosophy at least from Avicenna - a phrase that was constantly repeated through the day was: 'the lamp of philosophy has never been allowed to be extinguished in Iran'. Apparently visiting philosophers from 56 countries were present - later this became 90 experts from 42 (well although the assumption was that we are all philosophers, I for one at not and I don't think that would be an appropriate label for many others there either).

First, of course, was the Quranic recitation - quite beautiful and an apt choice of the light verse. The national anthem followed (various interesting graphics came up throughout the session). Then the introductions from the president of the conference Haddad-i 'Adil and the (ex-)president and president of the 'scientific committee' Ghulam-Reza Aavani.

HA went first - after the thanks (guests, participants, president etc) and welcoming words, he addressed the theme of the meeting: theory and practice. He also mentioned messages sent in from the three major philosophers/theologians in Qum (none of whom interestingly were present) - in order - Ayatullah Javadi Amuli, Ayatullah Ja'far Subhani and Ayatullah Misbah. He even strangely thanked UNESCO (especially given their withdrawal of official status - in fact most people seem to have either forgotten or deliberately omitted to mention that UNESCO had changed its mind 2 weeks earlier). HA repeated the lamp of philosophy image and that Iran was a country at whose very heart philosophy and the spiritual quest remained (interesting how the two were equated by a number of people today), and had a venerable 1000 year old history of philosophy. He then tried to define what he meant by philosophy: attempting to deal with the thirst for knowledge, to understand universal truths not particular exigencies, to address challenges of the time and remove doubts and provide solutions - especially contemporary problem like terror, the nature of life, the family and so forth. Philosophy is not just a mental exercise - he quoted the famous definition of Avicenna about the perfecting of the human soul insofar as is humanly possible. Philosophy should have a prescriptive nature - through demonstration and dialectic it should solve problems through dialogue. Dialogue is very much a motif of this conference. And he ended with a verse of Rumi in the essential human action of thinking. But is philosophy about answers or asking the right sorts of questions, or even just of questioning and inquiring (I'll return to this later as it was raised in the afternoon)?

A short video followed showing HA and A going around schools and universities promoting the work of the WPD - a bit later A in his speech mentioned the various preliminary meetings and conferences that had taken place since 2009 in various parts of Iran - Qum, Shiraz, Hamedan, Suhraward and various campuses.

Aavani's speech described the fourteen panels and their rationale stressing for example the one on philosophy and children (he did not explain philosophy and tourism - not sure many people understand what that is). Iran is the first Asian country to hold the WPD (next year it will be in India) and more about Iran as a country devoted to philosophy. The theme was taken because philosophy needs to address the practical challenges of today (but many of the papers including my own I guess in a sense do not really do that).

But after, we were rather bizarrely entertained by ostad Abbas Shir-Khuda (what a name!) on the drum singing verses from Ferdowsi (translated rather badly into English on the projector above) - was not exactly clear what a scene from a zurkhaneh had to do with philosophy or even the theme of theory and practice (theoria cum praxis).

A speech from the eminent neo-Confucion philosopher and Harvard Professor Tu-Wei Ming and AN and some of the messages - but more of that in a bit.

International Society for Islamic Philosophy

2010-11-21T11:26:00.000-08:00

Just found out earlier today that a group of specialists who were present at the World Congress of Philosophy in Seoul in 2008 established this society. The president is Ghulam-Reza Aavani who heads the Iranian Institute of Philosophy in Tehran. There will be a brief meeting here during this conference to discuss future events including a week long meeting/round table/workshop to be held in Beirut in May 2011.

The ISIP has a journal called Philosophica Islamica. The first issue has just come out - general editor is Aavani and the editor Yasien Mohamed. I am on the editorial board along with some of usual suspects - Ghulam-Husain Ibrahimi Dinani (Tehran U), Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Hans Daiber (Frankfurt), Osman Bakar (U of Malaya), Alparslan Acikgenc (Fatih U), William Chittick (Stony Brook) etc. Contact - isisophy@gmail.com

WPD 1

2010-11-20T04:05:00.000-08:00

The official UNESCO site for the events of the last few days is here. The programme for the Tehran conference is here.

Blogging World Philosophy Day

2010-11-20T03:44:00.000-08:00

Am currently in Tehran for what looks like being a substantial conference despite UNESCO's withdrawal of official recognition. FIS have also pulled out even though in protest some of their council members are here - a political mess it seems. Starts tomorrow on 21st. Thought I might periodically put up some reflections on it, especially as the network in the hotel we are staying at does not allow access to facebook where I would normally upload updates.

As for the programme which is constantly changing for my own interests the panels on history of philosophy, and the one on ethics are most interesting although the others are: philosophy and peace, philosophy and politics, philosophy and children, philosophy and the environment etc. My own paper in the history of philosophy section on the morning of the 23rd is on philosophy as a way of life, examining to what extent the late Pierre Hadot's work presents a method for studying philosophical texts that can be applied to Islamic philosophy, particularly the hikmat tradition and Mulla Sadra. More later.

Shii Sufism - A New Translation

2010-11-13T13:17:00.000-08:00

The study of Sufism within a Shiʿi context has been somewhat neglected in recent academia. Part of the challenge for examining the relationship in religious studies between the two is the lack of serviceable and useful translations of primary texts from the Shiʿi Sufi tradition. While a number of works associated with two branches of the Niʿmatullāhī order (both those following Nūrbakhsh and the Gunābādīs) are available in translation, little else is. The present translator (Mohammed Faghfoory) has himself made an important contribution, rendering Lubb al-lubāb, a work by Sayyid Muḥammad Ḥusayn Ḥusaynī Ṭihrānī (d. 1995) based on the spiritual teachings of ʿAllāma Sayyid Muḥammad Ḥusayn Ṭabāṭabāʾī (d. 1981), into English. The work under review (Tuhfah-yi 'Abbasi of Shaykh Muhammad 'Ali Mu'adhdhin Sabzavari) is a further contribution based on a text associated with the Dhahabiyya order, a Shiʿi branch of the Central Asian Kubrawiyya that were particularly dominant in the shrines cities of Iran such as Mashhad (the shrine of Imam ʿAlī al-Riḍā, the eighth Shiʿi Imam) and Shiraz (the shrine of Sayyid Aḥmad, brother of al-Riḍā). Before saying anything further about the text, the translation, introduction and annotations, it is worth mentioning two basic critiques which should be laid before the publisher. First, the cover is not terribly evocative of the contents. The small miniature depicts what seems to be a North African prayer congregation, perhaps of Sufis – what this has to do with Dhahabīs, Shiʿis or even the Safavid period is beyond me. Second, the font and typeface is really quite inelegant – leaving aside the careful copy-editing needed to correct many small typographical errors. On this latter point, newer fonts available would improve the appearance of the text and still render ably the transliteration and ‘scientific’ elements of the presentation; though even here, on wonders why an Arabic system of transliteration is following for a Persian text and for references which are primarily in Persian.

The introduction does a decent job of explaining the author and contextualising the text in terms of Shiʿi mysticism (ʿirfān-i shīʿī). But what of the historical context – since the text is dedicated to ʿAbbās II, the famous Safavid Shah known as the friend of the dervishes (shāh-i darvīsh-dūst)? How was the text transmitted? What role does it play within the Dhahabī order? Is it still a living text of instruction? Where does one locate the Dhahabiyya in contemporary Iran and elsewhere? All we are given about the provenance of the text is that it was edited by a Dhahabī of Azerbaijan called Mirzā Muḥsin son of Ḥasan ʿAlī Ardabīlī in 1918 and published on the order of the head of the Dhahabiyya Āqā Aḥmad ʿAbd al-Ḥayy Tabrīzī. Little is given about the author Muḥammad ʿAlī Muʾadhdhin beyond his official post as the caller to prayer and as a Dhahabī master who, initially hostile to Sufism became converted by his master Ḥāṭim-i Zarāvandī (d. 1057/1647), and died in 1078/1667. The apology for the Sufi path in the text makes more sense if one understands the background of the debate on the permissibility of Sufism in late Safavid Iran leading to the wholescale suppression even of Shiʿi Sufi order after the death of Muʾadhdhin. A thicker description and analysis of the context of anti-Sufism and the need for Sufi apologetics in the period would have been an excellent contribution.

The text itself is divided into two parts: on Sufi approaches to Shiʿi core beliefs – somewhat similar in scope (although much briefer) to Sayyid Ḥaydar Āmulī’s Asrār al-sharīʿa (Secrets of the Path) albeit in a more apologetic vein – and a section on stations and techniques on the path. A very short discussion on divine justice is appended, written by Najīb al-dīn Riżā Tabrīzī (d. 1108/1697) who succeeded Muʾadhdhin at the head of the Dhahabiyya; it is not clear why it is there or who placed it there. The only indication is that the first printing was on the margins of Tabrīzī’s Sabʿ al-mathānī. Apart from insisting that the Sufi path and the Shiʿi way are entirely interchangeable, the first part has sections on Sufi approaches to the unity of God, prophecy and the imamate, the afterlife, and crucially the relationship of Sufis and the family of the Prophet (ahl al-bayt). Famous Sufis are therefore appropriated for Shiʿi Islam in a way that is familiar from Muʾadhdhin’s older contemporary Sayyid Nūrallāh Shūshtarī (d. 1610) in his Majālis al-muʾminīn in which all the famous classical Sufis are associated with the Imams or with Shiʿi Islam. One of the more surprising claims is that the sober Sufi par excellence of Baghdad, Junayd is identified as a descendent of the seventh Shiʿi Imam Mūsā al-Kāẓim even though it is widely agreed that he came from an Iranian family of artisans who had settled in Baghdad. The final chapter in this section also includes the silsila of the order back to the golden chain of the Imams. Another feature of the text worth mentioning is the importance of Ghawālī al-laʾālī of Ibn Abī Jumhūr al-Aḥsāʾī (d. 1504) as the source for many of the ḥadīth.

The second section deals with stations along the Sufi path and is divided into twelve chapters (the number is significant – just as significantly there were five chapters in the first section) ranging from the excellence of knowledge and asceticism (or perhaps renunciation is a better rendition for zuhd) to invocation of God (being a better term for dhikr) and ecstasy. Two chapters in particular relate to Safavid debates and would have benefited from some annotation or discussion in the introduction: the first is on the permissibility of listening to music – the samāʿ of the Sufis – and the second is on the need for a spiritual master on the path. Although not explicit, the author clearly engages with the attacks of Ḥadīqat al-shīʿa among other texts and this may allow us to date the Tuḥfa. If one assumes that the text is not heavily interpolated, and given that it is dedicated to ʿAbbās II who died in 1666 and given that the Ḥadīqa was probably written in the Deccan in 1648, that would place the text within this period, possibly after settling in Isfahan in 1655. So one can date the text in the period between 1655 and 1666 – the nature of the apologetic and the maximal claims would also indicate that increasingly the legitimacy of Sufism, even in the rule of one so sympathetic to Sufism, was questioned.

The text itself is smoothly rendered and could profitably be used in undergraduate classes in Islamic spirituality and mysticism (and perhaps even in Shiʿi studies). The criticisms raised particularly with respect to a greater need to provide an introductory and contextualising apparatus would vastly improve the published text and make an even greater contribution to the field.

Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy again

2010-04-04T04:50:00.000-07:00

Here are links to a few entries which I have found useful in some of my recent research:

Epistemology of Religion

Epistemology

Consciousness

Religious Diversity

Engaging with Soroush's Latest

2010-04-03T16:10:00.000-07:00

Famously described as the Martin Luther of Islam by The Guardian in 1995, Abdol-Karim Soroush (the pen-name of Hossein Dabbagh) has become a name synonymous with the project of reform in Iran and in contemporary Islam in general. His approach is a radical root-and-branch rethinking that focuses on epistemology and hermeneutics (one only needs to read his earlier works such as ʿIlm chīst, falsafa chīst [What is Science? What is Philosophy], Dānish va arzish[Knowledge and Value], and middle works that usher in the transition such as Farba-tar az idīyūlūjī [Thicker than Ideology]). Since then a number of studies have been published on Soroush (including recently Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi’s Islam and Dissent in Post-revolutionary Iran published by Tauris in 2008) and a highly active website (www.drsoroush.com) promotes his work; an earlier collection of translations of his work was also published by Oxford in 2000 (Reason, Freedom and Democracy in Islam, edited by the Sadri brothers). Soroush’s work since the 1970s has been geared towards a more critical reading of religion, inspired by elements of scepticism in the Sufi tradition and a Popperian approach to epistemology. Translations into Arabic, Turkish and Malay as well as other European languages have further disseminated his thought and approach. Following his insightful work in the late 1980s on the expansion and contraction of religious knowledge (Qabż o basṭ-i tiʾūrīk-i sharīʿat) that articulated an important distinction between religion as a noumenal reality and our phenomenal understanding of religious which entailed subjecting religious knowledge to the same processes of verification and falsifiability applied in the sciences, Soroush’s more recent work illustrated in the translations given in this volume under review applies that Popperian insights to the central issues in the study of religion: the nature of prophecy and revelation, the historicity of religious understanding, and religious diversity. The twelve chapters include eight taken from his Basṭ-i tajriba-yi nabavī [Expansion of Prophetic Experience], two from Ṣirāṭ-hā-yi mustaqīm [Straight Paths], and two (not one as stated in the introduction) from Akhlāq-i khudāyān [Morals of the Pious]. These are followed by appendices that replicate the controversy from 2008 between him and Āyatullāh Jaʿfar Subḥānī, perhaps the leading theologian in the Shiʿi seminary of Qum, on the nature of the Prophet. As a whole, these translations represent the present state of Soroush’s thinking on critical issues of the nature of religion, revelation, and prophecy. They have also further entrenched attitudes against him leading to his self-imposed exile outside of Iran for most of the past decade, a situation unlikely to change following his open support for the Green movement in Iran and his open letter along with other intellectuals in the New York Times in January 2010, following the Ashura violence, calling for end to state repression and later advocating a new referendum in Iran. As many other reformers have come around to similar and even more radical views it is also worth considering what relevant Soroush retains in the contemporary Muslim world.

The main approach in the text is to humanise and historicise religion and prophecy in order to make it accessible and comprehensible to us within our context. The subtitle here is revealing – essays on historicity, contingency and plurality. Along the way a series of sacred cows are slaughtered and red lines transgressed: the prophet is neither infallible nor a scientist who knew everything but deigned to speak to people within their intellectual capacities; the Qurʾan is not the word of God as such; no historical faith can make uncontested claims to the truth of their beliefs hence pluralism must be recognised; religion ought to be practised as a minimal system; and generally jurists, despite their privileges, are mal-equipped to implement the process of contextualising the faith necessary in our times. And much more besides. However, we should not assume that all of this is exciting reformist thinking that breaks new ground. Most of Soroush’s positions are indeed not new in modernist debates. He himself claims that his views on prophecy and revelation are continuous with the philosophical tradition (for example, Avicenna’s theory of prophecy) – this is a claim worth reviewing.

The chapters are introduced with a useful essay by Soroush’s disciple Forough Jahanbakhsh (who wrote her doctoral dissertation on Islamic modernism in Iran including a generous discussion of Soroush’s contribution); she is also the editor of the work and apparently checked through the translations with Soroush himself (whose English is perfectly fluent – the fact that he still writes in Persian is interesting in itself). Jahanbakhsh does a good job of contextualising Soroush’s work within contemporary Muslim thought, comparing him to Arkoun and Abū Zayd, Shabastarī and Rahman all within the twin rubric of the new theology (kalām-i jadīd as it was coined in 1950s Iran) and ‘neo-rationalism’. This latter term is her version of the much contested term ‘neo-Muʿtazilism’ applied to the likes of Abū Zayd. I, for one, do not see how this ‘neo-rationalism’ differs from liberal or reformist thought – it is certainly misleading to claim that it is broadly non-political. She tries to argue that Soroush’s neo-rationalism is the most systematic project of reform available – and even rather counter-intuitively (especially since he is so heavily criticised by feminist thinkers) applied to an issue such as women’s rights. According to Jahanbakhsh, Soroush’s system is balanced, coherent and foundational. There is little doubt that he does arrive at the core of the problem addressing epistemology and hermeneutics – how do we know, and how do we make sense of those texts that are supposed to inform our lives? Where does reason fit? Here is why I am not convinced by the use of the term ‘neo-rationalism’: if all that Soroush is doing is to insist upon rational foundations to ethics, metaphysics and indeed law, and not to see these either as a direct challenge to revelation or to tradition, then I do not see how it differs greatly from the Shiʿi Muʿtazilī tradition of ethics and theology. It is similarly odd to suggest that Soroush is somewhat more critical of tradition than other liberals who embrace it – in fact many liberal thinkers not only criticise tradition but in some cases reject it outright: one thinks of Amina Wadud and Abū Zayd.

Turning to the chapters, they are divided into two sections: the first comprising the first seven chapters deals with prophetic experience and the nature of the text, the second comprising the remaining five concerns reason, love and religiosity. It is shame that this division highlighted in the introduction did not make it to the contents pages. But that is just one of many small errors in the book relating to typography, production, and translation (and I shall have little to say about the latter except that its smoothness is negated by its inaccuracy at times due to the unfamiliarity of the translator with some of the material to which Soroush alludes). Chapter one locates religion and Islam within the prophetic experience and the historical incarnation of the prophetic mission. The Prophet as receptacle and generator was not merely a quasi-omniscient character who translated absolute experiences into concrete realities; rather he was also constituted by the world of his time. This is not the philosophical conception of prophecy advocated by Avicenna and others. The Prophet is wholly human and historical, fallible and a sublime example of experience. The polemical point about the Prophet’s example lying in following his experiences and not just the juridical commands is just that. The perfection of religion signalled towards the end of his life in Qurʾan 5:3 is not a completion but the assignment of a minimum and indeed a beginning. It is in this way that believers imitate and go beyond the Prophet. The Prophetic legacy is manifold but at its heart an experience (along with the scripture, politics and society). Chapters two and three relate to the finality of prophecy as a process. Mysticism and revelatory experiences could be said to have only begun with the Prophet; however, at his demise, the mission came to an end – this is the notion of finality. The addressees of the mission continue to come into existence. Consistent with the school of Ibn ʿArabī, Soroush holds that sanctity and walāya is superior to the missionary function of nubuwwa. Similarly, drawing upon the distinction between the ontological mandate (takwīn) and nomological mission (tashrīʿ) of the Prophet, he argues that the latter constitutes finality but the former which relates to the constant need of experience and a link between the divine and the human remains necessary. In modern times, because of the construction of heresy that lies in the denial of finality of prophecy, the issue is rather sensitive. But the real significance is that finality insists that no one can claim to be a prophet or to transcend the religious dispensation of Islam.

Chapter four tackles the critical issue in reform, namely, separating out the essential from the accidental. To uncover the essential, the accidental aspects that are contextual and historically contingent need to be peeled away. Soroush enumerates eight such accidental features: the Arabic language as the vehicle of communication of the Qurʾan, Arab culture as the context of the revelation, the terms and concepts and indeed language used by the Prophet, the historical events that impinge upon the Qurʾan and the prophetic example, the dialogic context of the communication of revelation between believers and their opponents, the legal precepts of the constructions of Islamic law, historical interventions and ‘fabrications’ introduced into the historical faith, and the contingent understanding of the faith over time. Belief and faith lie in the commitment to essentials. However, in a sense this list of accidentals is rather exhaustive: what is left? Revelatory and prophetic experience? If the essence of religion lies in the goals of the Prophet, how can we understand them? Then the further question arises: how is it meaningful to believe in them if the only means of accessing them that we have is contingent and historically and linguistically constructed like this? On the face of it, distinguishing between the essential and accidental seems sensible: but the problem for the believer is whether once one has peeled away all those layers of the accidental there is anything left at all. At what point does scepticism lead to atheism? Chapter pursues this theme by attempting to define whether religion is maximal or minimal. One of the key claims of Islamism is to insist that religion is maximalist and all-embracing in its essential and accidental features reconciled to the modern world. An eternal, viable and perfect faith must be defined in minimal terms based on its essence – but the same objection remains.

Chapters six and seven shift from religion to religions and address the question of pluralism from a negative and a positive perspective. The former denotes a way of understanding religious approaches to other traditions through the prism of inclusivism – the denial of the truth of other traditions implies a denial of the success of prophetic missions. The latter accounts for a nominalist approach of the different approaches of religious leaders and traditions whose truth and salvation is relevant to them and them alone. Diversity of understanding of texts and diversity of understanding of experiences underlie pluralism. He positively approves of Hickian pluralism based on the Kantian distinction between noumena and phenomena. Besides, different interpretations of faith are multiple and contingent just as the understanding of a particular faith is (following his earlier insight from the 1980s). The odd claim is that no Muslim group can claim to have pure Islam nor does any religion possess any purity. One wonders how this position can fail to lapse into relativism – which it does. However, for Soroush relativism and pluralism do not lead to the collapse of faith in society since belief is not reasoned but flourishes in a pluralistic and ideological context. Does this amount to a non-reductive pluralism? In the conversation reproduced in chapter seven, Soroush attempts to distinguish his critical rationalism from relativism based on his cause/reason dichotomy in epistemology. For him, relativism does not pertain in science; in religion, he advocates a hermeneutical pluralism. Plurality of truth concerns taking intrinsic notions of truth and falsehood seriously. So why should one promote a particular religion? Soroush’s answer is somewhat surprising – he does not invoke religious experience or prophetic experience but rather invokes the idea of artistic expression and the desire to manifest and disseminate beauty.

The five chapters of part two shift from epistemology to the practice of religion in the world. Chapter eight discusses types of religiosity. He sets aside two sets of binary oppositions – pragmatic/instrumental and discursive/reflective – in favour of experiential religiosity. But the main contribution is to open up ways of being religious, a theme developed in the subsequent chapters. Chapter nine focuses on what it means to follow the Prophet. Setting aside theocracy or nomocracy, he argues that once reason enters into revelation, secularisation is inevitable. Soroush along with other reformers is well known for advocating a secular state in Iran, and this chapter details the theory behind the position. Experiential religiosity needs to be revived and rituals conducted in the pursuit of encouraging it. Chapter ten is a short description of the prophetic address and the insistence that following the prophet ought to lie in more than following his commandments. Once again one gets the impression that Soroush is attempting to effect an ethical turn in religiosity and the process of following the prophet. Chapter eleven examines the relationship between faith and hope. Faith is more than belief. Grounded in religious experience it is a cause for hope in the transcendent. Soroush acknowledges that one could dispute the authenticity of the experience but in response seems to lapse into a mystical affirmation. The final chapter on the key notion of walāya, central to Sufi and Shiʿi Islam, seems to amount to a call to an ethical turn and a warning against reducing faith to adherence to legal precepts. The appendices deal with the controversy over Soroush’s views on prophetic infallibility and the composition of the Qurʾan.

Overall, the collection is a good illustration of the importance of Soroush’s later work and demonstrates how it relates to the earlier work up to the early 1990s. The central and controversial postulations presented are ones which many will dispute, believer and non-believer. Others will even take issue with the tone in which he addresses sanctified issues and persons such as the Prophet. But Soroush still challenges us to think deeply about the nature of faith, how we arrive at faith and to what end do we hold faith. In the spirit of both the hermeneutical pluralism he espouses and the critical rationalism he advocates, it is right and proper for us to disagree vehemently with him. Central objections remain: how do we know what is truly essential in religion? How do we ascertain whether religious expression is genuine? If truth is meaningful and precise (beyond theories of correspondence of course) in philosophy and science, why can it not be such in the study of religion taken in the universal sense (and not just in terms of a particular tradition)? Separating out the mutable from the immutable will always be a problem – and Soroush is partly correct: his theory of revelation does have foundation in Avicenna (even if one cannot map the one upon the other) and his distinction between essential and accidental similarly has roots in both Sufi and Safavid thought. I still feel that Soroush does raise a critical point: far too many Muslims still fail to understand the event and process of revelation and what the Qurʾan means and ought to mean for an engaged believer living in this world. The work of Mujtahid Shabistarī to my mind is an excellent account of this focusing on the hermeneutics but thus far none of his work has really been translated into English. One still feels an engagement with Soroush is important – but does his tone and politics increasingly make it difficult for people to take him seriously, not least in Iran?

Universalism, not pluralism - some thoughts

2010-04-01T06:39:00.000-07:00

There is little disputing that we live in a world of many faiths, of many ways and modes of life, practice and doctrinal and truth claims that appear to clash and contradict one another. Far too often identity formation is crystallised in the crucible of conflict and alterity. These traditions of living include not just the Abrahamic faiths that are central to the making of Europe, but other types of theistic and non-theistic belief systems as well as those that mimic or seek to replace religions such as secularism and scientism. The fact of religious diversity and in particular the identity politics and the political theology that arises out of these conflicts seems to pose challenges to people of faith, especially those who make exclusive claims to the truth and salvation of their tradition. The common responses in theology and philosophy of religion to this diversity are threefold relating to both the epistemology of the truth claims articulated in traditions and to the soteriology of the afterlife that many of these faiths postulate. Many conservatives affirm the exclusivism of their faith: it is only the truth claims of their doctrinal system that are valid and only their faith that is salvifically efficacious. Other faiths are false and ineffective (or inefficient) in securing salvation for their believers. In some ways, while this seems an easy option, it is also quite difficult to defend rigorously unless one lowers the threshold of justified belief or warrant for belief for one’s own tradition whilst expecting more of others. Inconsistencies arise and one wonders whether it is easy to separate out a judgment of salvation of the other from one’s ethical stance towards the other. Other theologians posit an inclusivist approach to other faiths: while affirming the truth and salvific efficacy of their own tradition, they allow for the possibility of truth and salvation to pertain to other faiths but in the terms of the faith which they espouse and thus annex the beliefs of others. A common example of this is the notion found in Christianity that non-Christians can be truthful, do good deeds and may even attain salvation because the Holy Spirit may still act through them involuntarily or unwittingly. The obvious problem with this approach is that it does not take the truth claims of the other, on their own terms, seriously. Also, exclusivism and inclusivism share the same assumption about the singularity of the truth of one’s own tradition. The third option arising out of Kantian suspicions of exclusive claims and access to truth and direct experience suggests an attitude of pluralism: the multiplicity of faith systems articulate different truth claims and salvific claims that are compatible insofar as we live in a relativistic world in which no one can claim the exclusive access to The Truth. Pluralism therefore suggests that the ontology of religious diversity entails an epistemological and ethical commitment to plurality, not least because it insists that it thus avoids conflict – the historical experience of religiously sanctioned and founded warfare in conflict in Europe is a key determinant in the formation of this position.

The present book under review partly arises out of a pluralist sentiment but influenced by modes of Sufi hermeneutics and perennial approaches to truth and reality argues for a fourth way to respond to religious diversity: universalism of Islam whilst acknowledging its particularism and that of other traditions. Shah-Kazemi’s work is an attempt to draw upon the resources of Sufi scriptural reasoning to produce a rigorous defence of Islam as a privileged and universal tradition that recognises others on their own terms whilst eschewing the three paths of exclusivism, inclusivism and pluralism. He argues that we need to move beyond polemics and diatribes because the Qurʾan itself affirms the truth and message of other prophets (and since every people in the world is considered to have received revelation this amounts to a recognition of their traditions of belief), it affirms the truth and salvation of those who adhere to a minimal belief in the divine and in the afterlife including explicitly non-Muslim categories of believers, it recognises religious diversity as a moral competition in which different people of faith outdo each other in pursuit of good, and it denies that different faiths traditions necessarily clash and that religions lead to warfare. More than this, he critically suggests a move not just against exclusivism but to go beyond pluralism: a pluralistic hermeneutics of the text actually entails the recognition of different interpretations and their validity in their contexts including exclusivist readings. Herein lies one of the key tensions in the work to which I will return.

The book comprises an introduction on the contemporary context we live and dialogue that it entails, four chapters that develop the argument and a short epilogue on the Bosnian ‘model’ of co-existence and the need for us to remember and share good practice. The introduction begins with a recognition that 9/11 has fundamentally changed our world and reoriented people to the Qurʾan to ‘make sense of what happened’. Shah-Kazemi wants to re-appropriate the Qurʾan for spiritual, ethical and universal ends, snatching it away from the clutches of ideology and ‘political’ Islam. This represents a continuity of his traditionalist approach towards spirituality and away from ideology, privileging the immutable and transcendent and placing the transient and modern in its ‘rightful’ place. Consistent with his perennialism, drawing from the thought of Frithjof Schuon is the notion that tolerance and inter-subjectivity need to be founded upon transcendent norms and points of meeting: the ‘true’ religious tradition of Islam is both universal and particular. Clearly, perennialist metaphysics lie at the heart of the ethics, epistemology and even politics that Shah-Kazemi espouses in the work. Since the study involves readings of the Qurʾan, chapter one advocates a Sufi hermeneutics of the school of Ibn ʿArabī (and indeed of the perennialist masters) against the ‘hermeneutics of suspicion’ offered by the neo-Nietzschean postmodern tradition represented by Derrida and Ricoeur (and some of those influenced by them such as Arkoun). The Sufi tradition is complex, graded and open to the other, embracing the other while articulating its own historical particularity. For Shah-Kazemi, against reform minded Muslim thinkers, traditional hermeneutics does not privilege historical precedents but represents a more rigorous means of understanding the text than postmodern approaches, an ethical defence of tradition that draws upon MacIntyre (but not Gadamer). At the core of Sufi hermeneutics lies taʾwīl and the interpretation of tradition rooted in direct experience, explicitly denied by both Kantians and postmoderns. While one does expect the chapter to provide an exhaustive analysis of comparative hermeneutics (and one expects the author to be selective in favour of his argument), postmodern hermeneutics is given rather short shrift. Derrida is dismissed far too easily and the fruitful approach of Catholic postmodern philosophers such as Richard Kearney, Jean-Luc Marion and John Caputo not engaged at all, figures who have important insights on the nature of faith, encounter, revelation and scripture. In his position that the hermeneutics of Ibn ʿArabī is both inclusive and exclusive, Shah-Kazemi perpetuates the insight of William Chittick in his earlier Imaginal Worlds (SUNY Press, 1994).

Chapter two develops the notion of the encounter with the other rooted in the metaphysics of reality and hermeneutics of Sufism articulated in chapter one. The ontological imperative of the Sufi reading of Islam’s central doctrine of tawḥīd is taken to entail the embrace of the other as part of the whole. One reality suggests the negation of duality and alterity which would raise a problem for dialogue. However, the Sufi tradition does not posit a simplistic, even substantive, monism. The transcendence of God alongside his immanence expressed in the divine names and signs suggest that an unreflective monism would not be a fruitful understanding of tawḥīd. Rather, they point towards a position of seeing the many in light of the one, the idea of a hermeneutics of tashkīk or graded and multiple singularity expressed by the Safavid thinker Mullā Ṣadrā (d. c. 1635). This notion of degrees of reality and degrees of interpretation is implicit in the school of Ibn ʿArabī. Dialogue therefore emerges out of the dynamic between the degrees of reality, and between the ‘faces’ of God, aspects of his majesty and beauty (jalāl, jamāl, yin/yang). Interfaith dialogue is an expression of this metaphysics and transcends the literal contradictions of the differing truth claims of dogmatic theological traditions with respect to reality and the afterlife. The acceptance of the medieval coincidentia oppositorum as a mode of transcending the Aristotelian law of non-contradiction will mean that epistemologists will find it hard to see in this chapter a serious foundation for a universalist and particularist reading of reality.

Chapter three brings the focus to Islam as the religious tradition that makes manifest the insight that God has both an exclusive and inclusive face. Unity and diversity, exclusivity and inclusivity are complicit and not contradictory. This is the principle that Shah-Kazemi calls uniting the contradictories (al-jamʿ bayn al-ḍiddayn). Much of the chapter is taken up with the Sufi exegesis of the religion of God (dīn Allāh) and the linked notion of the faith of the ḥanīf. The distinction is between absolute and particular faith. Shah-Kazemi denounces the vanity of chauvinism that reads a particular Islamic identity into the Qurʾanic text in search of normativity. But that does not preclude reading particularism into universalism. He allows for the distinction in two ways, separating out theological exposition from spiritual vision, and distinguishing the ontological mandate (takwīn) from the normative import (tashrīʿ) of the divine will.

The final chapter entitled dialogue, diatribe or daʿwa engages with intra-faith and inter-faith dialogue and addresses the debate between the universalism of Nasr and the relativistic pluralism of Hick. Upholding the normativity of Islam and denying truth and salvation to others is not compatible. The aim of the universalist in dialogue should be the pursuit of beauty and truth not the triumph of one’s tradition. Universalism, and not triumphalist supercessionism becomes the mission. Along the way, Shah-Kazemi cites two examples in different directions that seem to him wrong-headed: the first if Gavin D’Costa’s Christian exclusivism (having shifted from an earlier inclusivism) based on the need to be true to one’s tradition, and the second is Abdulaziz Sachedina’s embrace of an almost relativistic pluralism in the name of the tradition. For Shah-Kazemi, the actual authority of the traditional Muslim ʿulema lies in the affirmation of beautiful discourse and promotion of a universalism that is respectful of difference. The alternative, as he rightly says, to a dialogue of engaged moral agents seeking the good is bloody and violent conflict. Surrendering Islam to the violent extremists whose theology is rooted in violent exclusivism both intra- and inter-faith is a disaster. The epilogue concludes with Bosnia as an expression of the Sufi universalism espoused torn apart by this very exclusivist conflict.

The Other in the Light of the One is a courageous and thought-provoking deployment of Ibn ʿArabī in a highly relevant context. There are basically two theses: inter-subjective ethics must be predicated on metaphysics and hermeneutics that recognise and enhance universality as well as particularity; and the way out of the exclusivist-inclusivist’s argument about truth and salvation is not to advocate a relativistic, postmodern pluralism but to respect the claims made in pursuit of a universal goal of beauty and the good. He therefore distances himself from the pluralist, but also interestingly and subtly from the perennialist by insisting upon the right for the Muslim universalist to privilege concurrently his own tradition’s truth and salvation. For the perennialist, different paths to truth are parallel and equal from their source to their end, true to their own tradition, its hermeneutics and its ethics. And as we have seen with MacIntyre, such a deployment of tradition is often criticised for lapsing into relativism. Shah-Kazemi’s universalist particularism or particular universalism is a step beyond. The basic question is: does it stand up to scrutiny? The logic of the coincidentia oppositorum would render the book practically meaningless to many in philosophy and to those thinking outside of a scriptural matrix. Will it be meaningful to Muslim readers? The espousal of Akbarian metaphysics and hermeneutics is well and good; however, by permitting particularism within universalism, how can one avoid the flourishing of types of totalising and monopolising exclusivist readings of the Qurʾan that prevail in contemporary Islam, regardless of the existence of open-minded traditional ʿulema whom Shah-Kazemi champions? Finally, why should one pander to the expectations of the post-9/11 world and Muslim ‘scripto-centrists’ who insist that every meaning needs to be extracted directly from the Qurʾan, understood as deracinated text, total, absolute and singular? Surely, the one central feature of ‘traditional Islam’ is a logocentric concern with the deus revelatus in person of the prophet and saint on whose authority the Qurʾan speaks to us, in itself an expression of a Christological idea of revelation?

Islamophobia and Biopolitics in the Age of Empire

2010-04-01T06:34:00.000-07:00

Text of a lecture I gave back in November at SOAS:

INTRODUCTION

We live in the age of Empire, of clashes of power and identity politics, of self-affirmations and subjugations, and above all in an age marked by the most violent forms of othering, manipulating and controlling lives through the violence of our actions and our words. If politics is the management of conflict but ultimately of war by ‘other means’, then its most extreme form is biopolitics, governmental and power-dominated forms of total imposition on humans reducing them to their ‘bare life’, stripping them of their rational and political agency and advocating the precariousness of their passivity. The late Michel Foucault, who did much to advocate a new style of politics by diagnosing and excavating the modern problem of the self located in its bare zoology, famously inverted the Aristotelian maxim in his magisterial History of Sexuality:

For millennia, man remained what he was for Aristotle: a living animal with the additional capacity for a political existence; modern man is an animal whose politics places his existence as a living being in question [Foucault 1976: 188].

Biopolitics and the exercise of biopower is the critical context within which to place any understanding of the twin phenomena of radical and violent othering that we call Islamophobia and Anti-semitism, as forms of subjugating the bare lives of Jews and Muslims. As such, it is not of primary theological concern with apologies for the title of this panel and indeed to my colleagues here. But then as the late Jacques Derrida and others have noticed, contemporary intellectual life does not compartmentalise theology to the sole concern of religious studies but to forms of inquiry that have critical relevance to philosophy and indeed politics [de Vries 1999]. Confronting Islamophobia and Anti-semitism should therefore be about confronting biopolitics and seeking means for a reinvigoration of active politics which promotes human agency. Today, I propose to do precisely that by analysing the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben’s use of Foucault’s notion of biopolitics in the construction of his own theory of the bare life of humans and the state of exception which defines the normativity of political life, one in which crucially the concentration camp, the most extreme reality of Anti-semitism and symbol of Islamophobia is no longer the exception. In particular, I will analyse his groundbreaking study Remnants of Auschwitz, his notion of radical agency that derives from the examination of the notion of the ‘Muselmann’ in the camps, and his concept of the witness and memory of the events. Overcoming radical discrimination is entangled with the need for communities to bear witness to their histories and to carry their voices and silences across generations. Islamophobia and anti-semitism are challenges and problems for political thinkers and it is in that context that I want to examine these phenomena.

BIOPOLITICS

But before we move on with Agamben, we need to return to Foucault’s notion of biopolitics and sovereignty to understand the philosophical context. Although Agamben draws upon Foucault’s notions of biopolitics and biopower, Foucault’s own rejection of sovereignty is quite significant. He wishes to transcend traditional notions of sovereignty that are implicated in the concept of European monarchies and the nation-state, in which sovereignty defines legitimacy, acts as arbitration above points of conflict and embodies law and standpoints of judgement [Joseph Rouse in Gutting (ed) 1994: 100–101]. Foucault’s concern as articulated in his History of Sexuality is that ‘in thought and political analysis, we have still not cut off the head of the king’ because the theory of sovereignty remained central as an ideology of right and as the organisation of jurisprudence [Foucault 2003: 36]. Power is exercised on the dual foundation of sovereignty and the mechanics of discipline [Foucault 2003: 38]. Sovereignty cannot deal with multiplicity of powers but seeks unity [Foucault 2003: 43]. Later on, once his rejection of sovereignty was complete, he became more interested in domination than sovereignty and questions of legitimacy [Foucault 2003: 46]. The politics of domination and bare life raises the issue of civilizational struggles, about which we hear so much these days.
Biopower for Foucault is central to the exercise of the state’s sovereign power:

The very essence of the right of life and death is actually the right to kill: it is at the moment when the sovereign can kill that he exercises his right over life. [Foucault 2003: 240].

It was critically in the 18th century that we saw a shift from the right to take life or let someone live to one of ‘make’ live and ‘let’ die because of the nature of the social contract and the rise of modes of political techniques of control [Foucault 1976: 186; Sublon 2005: 153; cf. Agamben 1999b: 159].
Biopolitics is therefore a discipline and power to reduce humans to mere life and biological processes and statistics.

Now that power is decreasingly the power of the right to take life, and increasingly the right to intervene to make live or once power begins to intervene mainly at this level in order to improve life by eliminating accidents, the random element, and deficiencies, death becomes, insofar as it is the end of life, the term, the limit, or the end of power too. [Foucault 2003: 248]

Foucault’s main point fits this within his notion that sovereignty is increasingly dead as a concept of legitimacy and is being replaced by discipline and regulatory power. Biopolitics draws upon the Greek distinction between two terms to render life: zoē and bios, the former denotes unqualified bare life, while the latter is the life of the citizen in the polis [Agamben 2000: 2].
This distinction lies at the heart of Western political thought for Agamben. He rejects Foucault historical genealogy of sovereignty and politics. He sees the world especially in the post-9/11 period as a permanent state of exception in which draconian anti-terrorism laws have reduced humans to their bare life, their zoē, devoid of agency and in which the sovereign power of the state is exercised and defined by its ability, drawing upon Carl Schmitt, to decide on the ‘state of exception’ [Agamben 2005a: 1]. Necessity, contingency, emergency powers, the Patriot Act and so forth are mere names for what classical jurists called the state of exception. The modern nation state, thus, has a biopolitical ‘vocation’. At the heart of his theory is the notion of the homo sacer, the Roman legal notion of human life which is included in the juridical order ‘solely in the form of its exclusion, that is, of its capacity to be killed’ [Agamben 1998: 8]. The paradox of life in modern states converges upon an ambiguity between the good life and the not-good life of Aristotelian politics, of recognising the freedom and happiness of citizens in their very subjugation. It is the nature of the modern even democratic nation state that:

the fundamental activity of sovereign power is the production of bare life as the originary political element and threshold of articulation between nature and culture [Agamben 1998: 181].

It was already in Homo Sacer that Agamben introduced the relationship between his theory of biopolitics and the concentration camp as the biopolitical paradigm of modernity and as the nomos of biopolitical space in the world [Agamben 1998: 119–88]. Significantly, Agamben argues that:

What happened in the camps so exceeds the juridical concept of crime that the specific juridico-political structure in which those events took place is often simply omitted from consideration. The camp is merely the place in which the most absolute conditio inhumana that has ever existed on earth was realized [Agamben 1998: 166]

His interest therefore lies in the political structures that produce such a phenomenon and the types of agency and passivity expressed in that space. It is therefore to the camp that we now turn.

REMNANTS OF AUSCHWITZ – THE MUSELMANN AND THE WITNESS

One of Agamben’s most interesting and disturbing works is Remnants of Auschwitz. It is an extended commentary on the notion of testimony and the liminal region between humanity and inhumanity. The concentration camp expresses for Agamben a ‘space of exception’, a structure within which the state of exception (defined in terms of his understanding of sovereignty) is permanently realized. For Agamben, the camp is therefore the ultimate symbol and manifestation of biopolitics that reduces humans to their bare life:

Inasmuch as its inhabitants have been stripped of every political status and reduced completely to bare life, the camp is also the most absolute biopolitical space that has ever been realized – a space in which power confronts nothing other than pure biological life without any mediation [Agamben 2000: 40]

Any structure, therefore, that replicates such biopolitical objectification of humans is at the very least a virtual concentration camp. Some of his earliest notes on this topic were written in the early 1990s when camps did in fact reappear in the former Yugoslavia populated by, of course significantly, Muslims, humans stripped of every political status and indeed cultural affiliation except for their biological state and indeed their objectification as Muslim.
A number of theorists, following Heidegger, have commented upon the tendency within modernity, within the modern subject and its quest for technology and an interventionist notion of sovereign power to slide towards the limit of mechanised and planned violence that is genocide. During the furore over Salman Rushdie’s novel The Satanic Verses in 1989, the Muslim intellectual and critic Shabbir Akhtar commented upon liberal modernity’s quest to dissolve difference by seeking scapegoats, comparing the image of the Jew in the Holocaust to the Muslim in contemporary Europe. He famously quipped, ‘The next time we see gas chambers in Europe, it will be no surprise to find Muslims in them’. This is a theme upon the notion of the experience of Muslims in Europe who find themselves within a police state, Nazi Germany being the limit of such a case.
It is, therefore, striking that in the work, Agamben’s hero in the quest for an ethics seeking the survival of memory and language is paradoxically the figure of the Muselmann in the camp. Drawing among the testimony of Primo Levi among others, the term Muselmann (Muslim) was used at Auschwitz to denote a passive prisoner who had given up, had no consciousness or conscience, was despised and not an object of sympathy, and was a mere staggering corpse, a bundle of physicality of no consequence [Agamben 1999b: 41–43]. More importantly, he had no agency, no dignity, and was not a survivor who could testify as he was devoid of his humanity. This state of being the Muslim is the limit case, the exception, the Orientalised and objectified Other. Survivors and witnesses speak for the inhuman Muselmann and resent it [Agamben 1999b: 120]. Following Foucault, Agamben argues that racism is the process by which biopower intervenes and marks breaks within the biological continuum of humanity and reintroduces the principle of war into the system of ‘making live’ [Agamben 1999b: 84]. Yet drawing on Levi, it is only the Muselmann as the inhuman who is truly human, a paradox as the witnesses are the mere remnants; at the same time, it is the human being who can survive being a human being [Agamben 1999b: 133]. In this sense, witnesses ‘were’ Muselmanner. Thomas Carl Wall has commented on the central concern of Agamben with inverting passivity; for example, an ontological paradox for Agamben is that a thing is simultaneously itself and its qualities without being the same thing as its qualities [Agamben 1993b: 97–8; Wall 1999: 19]; similarly presence and absence, image and reality [Wall 1999: 153]. The Muselmann is therefore despised and honoured, passive yet active. While all strove to remain human, the Muselmann was seen as having abdicated humanity and dignity. In the fracturing of humanity and subjectivity, he emerges as a figure that is fully human and in control of his subjectivity. Dignity and autonomy were not critical for the retention of humanity; as Agamben says,

Auschwitz marks the end and the ruin of every ethics of dignity and conformity to a norm. The bare life to which human beings were reduced neither demands nor conforms to anything. It itself is the only norm; it is absolutely immanent. And the ‘ultimate sentiment of belonging to the species’ cannot in any sense be a kind of dignity [Agamben 1999b: 69].

It was a state of wretchedness, a final one of complete dehumanisation. And yet because of its existence, a clear and key testimony and articulation of humanity in the face of complete dehumanisation.
But what kind of testimony or witness does the Muselmann represent? For Agamben, testimony is the relation between the sayable and unsayable, but ‘archive’, to which it is juxtaposed, is a system of relations between the said and unsaid [Agamben 1999b: 145]; this is analogous to the radical binaries that Agamben establishes in which the gap between the said and unsaid or rather between voice and language, and between the unwritten and the preface are articulated as key to understanding what we normally understand as philosophy of language or the politics of expression [Agamben 1993a: 6–8]. It also expresses a key feature of Agamben’s philosophy: the primacy and ambiguity of experience over its expression, of infancy over history, the ‘thing itself’ (in Platonic terms – see especially Agamben 1999c, chapter 1) over the manifest object, the deus absconditus over the deus revelatus, and of course of potentiality over actuality. Testimony is normally associated with survival, the ability to live to tell the tale, something which was not the privilege of the Muselmann. However, the Muselmann do the ultimate limit experience; it was his experience of inhumanity that provided the complete witness. On this point, Agamben quotes Primo Levi:

I must repeat: we, the survivors are not the true witnesses…We survivors are not only an exiguous but also an anomalous minority; we are those who by their prevarications or abilities or good luck did not touch the bottom. Those who did…have not returned to tell about it, or have returned mute, but they are the Muslims, the submerged, the complete witnesses, the ones whose deposition would have a general significance. They are the rule, we are the exception [Agamben 1999b: 33].

Testimony therefore comes from the eye of the experience, not from the margins or even the outside. It concerns what can be said and what must be said.

CONCLUSION

There is little doubt that Agamben’s thesis of the state of exception and the homo sacer, and indeed his assertion of the camp as the nomos of a biopolitical world is a hyperbole, indeed a distasteful one to some. We may also disagree vehemently with his post-humanism. I am not arguing that we need to accept it at face value; there are far too many undetermined and unexplained assumptions and wild assertions to consider his argument to be apodictical to use an Aristotelian term. However, the events of the last few years and the responses of states and indeed of those reacting against states in their own form of biopolitics by using their bodies as their only means of agency forces us to consider whether the shift in emphasis in politics away from subjectivity and democracy and towards objectification and the dehumanisations of citizens does require serious attention. Agamben cautions us against thinking that notions of sovereignty are obsolete, that we have moved beyond politics as power that objectifies and controls humans. I have tried to argue that confronting radical forms of subjugation, discipline and order and ultimately othering inherent in the forms of discrimination which we confront in these times and in the idiom of this conference necessitates a serious consideration of the political context in which we live, a consideration that means we not only think about our context and what it means for it to be political but also what it means for us to ‘live’ in the societies in which we live. What is the nature of our life, our power and ability to manipulate ourselves? How can we transcend processes of othering that force us to subjugate and control the other? If anything, Agamben shows us the most pessimistic image of a mirror placed before ourselves. It is the work of political theorists and indeed theologians to replace the mirror of pessimism with a more optimistic one that shows human realization and aspiration at its best, a mirror that allows us to see ourselves in others and realize a co-operative common humanity that defeats the violence of othering.

Mystical hermeneutics?

2010-03-31T03:30:00.000-07:00

It is a rare event indeed when one comes across a study that radically changes our field and makes such a telling contribution by proffering a hitherto unknown text and translation and a masterful introduction and contextualisation of the work. Mayer has presented us with such a work that not only provides us with more evidence for the Shiʿi (even Ismāʿīlī) tendencies of the theologian Muḥammad b. ʿAbd al-Karīm al-Shahrastānī (d. 1153, who was previously considered to be a doyen of the Khurasani school of the Ashāʿira), but also is an excellent example of how to understand the processes of exegesis and hermeneutics of the Qurʾanic text in classical Islam. The Qurʾanic Studies Series convened by the Institute of Ismaili Studies (IIS) is thus to be congratulated for making a further contribution to our understanding of this critical field within the study of Islam.
Scholars at least since the 1950s (and the publication of some texts and studies by Sayyid Muḥammad Riḍā Jālālī Nāʾinī in Persian) have been familiar with the Ismāʿīlī affiliation of Shahrastānī. In more recent times, Diane Steigerwald’s study of some short texts and her monograph (La pensée philosophique et théologique de Shahrastānī m. 548/1153, Saint-Nicholas: Presse de l’Université de Laval, 1997), and Mayer and Madelung’s edition and translation of Shahrastānī’s anti-Avicennan philosophical polemic Muṣāraʿat al-falāsifa (Struggling with the Philosopher) provided key textual points of evidence. The publication of the first part of his exgesis here, therefore, provides further evidence. The Arabic edition based on the Tehran unicum was edited in two volumes by Muḥammad ʿAlī Ādharshab and published by Mīrāth-i Maktūb in Tehran: the thousand page work covers an important introduction and exegesis of sūrat al-Fātiḥa and al-Baqara. The present volume reprints Ādharshab’s first volume covering the introduction and the commentary on al-Fātiḥa. The volume therefore comprises a short foreword by Professor Hermann Landolt (emeritus of McGill and one of the outstanding specialists in the intellectual history of the Islamic East and of Ismāʿīlī thought in particular), a masterful introduction by Mayer, the translation of the exegesis of al-Fātiḥa, some excellent and scholarly endnotes and bibliography, and the Arabic text and indices at the end. One small quibble which I often have with the IIS’s publications concerns whether it would be preferable for them to follow the model of the Islamic Texts in Translation Series at Brigham Young University Press and provide the Arabic on the page facing the translation to facilitate easier bi-lingual reading and study.
The work, as I indicated, makes three contributions: first, it provides further evidence for the Shiʿi affiliation of Shahrastānī and tries to explain how Shiʿi taʾwīl and esoteric reading of the Qurʾanic text can coalesce – especially within a work that does not violate the exoteric reading of the text: in fact much of the introduction is taken up with a study of the collection of the Qurʾan within a broadly non-sectarian context while retaining the notion of a privileged qirāʾa associated with Imām ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib as Shiʿi exegetes have always held. Second, it offers a model for how one ought to translate and make sense of intricate exegetical scriptural reasoning – tafsīr is for many a deceptively simple genre of writing but it can be quite tricky to render into comprehensible, academic English. Third, Mayer offers some excellent advice and readings of what constitutes an esoteric reading of the Qurʾan (and takes up a theme which is to be developed in a volume edited by Annabel Keeler and myself on the theme with a contribution by Mayer, forthcoming in the same Qurʾanic Studies Series).
Turning to the introduction, Mayer first shows that the Ashʿarī school, in which Sharastānī was trained, was more than a simple mainstream Sunnī theological school of apologetics but rather also had important intersections with both Sufi circles in Khurasan and Shiʿi ones relating to the reading and study of the Qurʾan. In fact, in this sense, the book can be seen as offering some further evidence (as is clear in the new literature on al-Ghazālī and on Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī on how the Ashʿarī school is more than meets the eye and far more than just what Abū-l-Ḥasan al-Ashʿarī, Imām al-Ḥaramayn and Ibn al-Bāqillānī argued). To an extent, the study of Ashʿarism has traditionally suffered from a somewhat ahistorical approach that arises out of the construction of Sunnī orthodoxy in the modern period. Second, he makes some comments concerning the link between the Muṣāraʿa and the tafsir Mafātīḥ al-asrār (Keys to the Arcana) on the key theological issue of the nature of God. Third, he argues that the approach to the Qurʾan is decidedly Shiʿi, invoking the existing of a codex of Imām ʿAlī alongside the ʿUthmānic recension and insisting upon the variant readings available, but without denigrating the existing vulgate – in fact, here we do not find, like among some early Shiʿi and indeed non-Shiʿi authors, a position on the corruption of the text (taḥrīf) but rather a position found in Shiʿi ḥadīth and in the theological works of al-Ṣadūq (d. 991) onwards on the integrity of the text ‘between the covers’. Understanding that text, however, requires the Shiʿi affiliation and attachment to the household of the Prophet, one of the two weighty sources, along with the Qurʾan, as indicated in the famous ḥadīth of the Prophet. True understanding arises out of the encounter with the Imam, and the internalisation of the Imam’s teaching (tamaththul), as Mayer indicates, which was an Ismāʿīlī teaching of the period. However, on the face of it, it does seem to me that there is little in the attitude towards the Qurʾan and on its hermeneutics that is explicitly Ismāʿīlī as opposed to generically Shiʿi and this may be a result of the fact that most of Shahrastānī’s Shiʿi works were written for an Imāmī (Twelver) Shiʿi audience and patronage. This address is clear as often ḥadīth are cited from the Imāmī collection al-Kāfī of al-Kulaynī (d. 941). At the same time, the general Khurasani audience for whom Sunni authorities were still of relevance is present as well. Fourth, Mayer indicates four sets of complementary notions that lie at the heart of Shahrastānī’s hermeneutics and which he sources in Ismāʿīlī thought: the dynamic of creation/command (khalq/amr) that explains cosmogony, the balance between hierarchy (tarattub) and contrariety (taḍādd), the accomplished (mafrūgh) and inchoative (mustaʾnaf) that engages with vexing issues of human responsibility and divine knowledge, and standard hermeneutic of the general and specific. To this are added two sets of standard exegetical notions of the abrogated (mansūkh) and the abrogating (nāsikh), and the clear (muḥkam) and the ambiguous (mutashābih). What all of this reveals is the simple point about how the exegesis is formulated through the horizon of the reader’s understanding, the deployment of his training and his self to make sense of the scripture.
The translation of the exegesis itself is fluent and meaningful. Like other works of the period (Laṭāʾif al-ishārāt of al-Qushayrī, the Kashf al-asrār of Maybudī and the Majmaʿ al-bayān of al-Ṭabrisī come to mind), the commentary on each verse is divided into the reading, orthography, lexicography and semantics, and then finally comes the section on the arcana (asrār). As such, it is quite distinct from other Sufi tafāsir of Kāshānī or Rūzbihān Baqlī or even Shaykh ʿAlvān among others who dispense with the need to address the exoteric. Of course, for Shahrastānī, the esoteric is somewhat uprooted from its meaning without the presence of the exoteric, as indicated in a famous ḥadīth of Imam Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq.
Qurʾanic Studies, especially focusing on how the text is understood and what it had within the rich intellectual history of Muslims, is maturing. While others get bogged down into the polemics of the historicity of the text, its literary or theologically immaculate nature and so forth, the Qurʾanic Studies Series and others are making serious contributions to the method by which we can make sense of the text and draw upon the rich intellectual heritage that we have, which in our days cannot be simply and narrowly relegated to a particular tradition. The multivocality of the tafsīr tradition demands of us a similarly multilogical response. For this, the reading of works such as this commentary of Shahrastānī will be of immense value.

Hermeticism in Islam?

2010-03-31T03:28:00.000-07:00

Unfortunately there is still far much by way of conjecture, innuendo, ahistoricity, ideology and basic guess-work in the study of Islamic philosophy and mysticism, at least in what passes for historical studies of these intellectual traditions. But as we have seen the serious study of intellectual history particularly in the Graeco-Arabic period and in classical Islamdom flourish, so too has attention upon those critical intersections between disciplines and bodies of knowledge. It is no longer the case that one can argue for the Neopythagorean roots of a particular intellectual tradition or make the case that the ‘esoteric’ doctrine of a thinker is due to his ‘hermeticism’. The publication of a revised version of Kevin van Bladel’s Yale doctoral dissertation is a wonderfully solid historical masterpiece that greatly contributes to our understanding of certain strands of intellectual transmission in the late antique Near East as well as disabusing us of many a myth about the presence of Hermes and hermeticism in classical Islamic learned culture. Hermetic manuscripts on the occult, on alchemy, on the esoteric doctrine of the soul of course abound, within collections of Sufis works and without; what is critical is to make sense of why they exist where they are found and a deeper sense of what constitutes the Arabic Hermes in the same way that we now understand far better the Arabic Plato and the Arabic Aristotle. The historical transmission of texts and ideas is of course not just an obsession of the positivist pedant but rather to avoid woolly thinking on cross-cultural relations and their possibilities, exigencies and lacunae. It is true that unless texts were available to translators and adaptors, they could not have emerged in an Arabic form; but we should not insist too much on strict historical orthographical trails since orality did figure as a medium of transmission (no doubt partly influenced by Platonic logocentrism) and texts sometimes disappeared and reappeared over the ages. Nonetheless, the story of how early Muslims appropriated Hermes is a case in point of how ideas and figures were taken from their Hellenic (or Hellenizing Near Eastern, or maybe even orientalising Hellenic) contexts and naturalisation within an Arabic idiom. Van Bladel rather carefully avoids the use of the terms Hermeticist and hermeticism because we have an absence of evidence of continuity of communities engaged in hermetic learning and practice from late antiquity into classical Islam.

Van Bladel’s study is divided into two parts, the former on the background and the intellectual formation of the Arabic Hermes located in the tripartite history of Islamic learned culture located in Hellenic late antiquity, Sasanian Iran, and those elusive Sabeans of Harran; the latter examines the shift from the concept of Hermes Trismegistus, the thrice-Hermes of the doxographies to the notion of Hermes-Idris as the Prophetic sage and teacher and the proliferation of wisdom sayings associated with him, some of which are extracted and adapted (though not many) from the Greek Hermetica, which in itself survives due to its existence with Gnostic corpora in late antique Egypt, not least the Nag Hammadi codices. What is, however, missing from this picture is one important element of what passed for Hermetic texts in Arabic, namely the alchemical and astrological (and generally occult) works that have interested Charles Burnett and his many students at the Warburg Institute in London for some years. The question which still remains to be considered is the relationship between the alchemical and the philosophical-mystical. Chapter one on the Hellenic heritage and the context of the translation movement does not actually tell us much about the transmission because we have so little evidence of direct translations from what we know as the Greek Corpus Hermeticum into Arabic. Chapter two moves onto the Sasanian context. The skill with which van Bladel demonstrates the existence of a middle Persian hermetica, primarily in alchemy and astrology shows the value of training in ancient Iranian languages for those studying late antiquity and early Islam. Chapter three on the Sabeans engages with a thorny debate on the transmission of modes of learning in late antiquity with the likes of Michel Tardieu arguing for a vibrant school in Syria that bore the Alexandrian tradition of Neoplatonism as well as hermeticism and which bridged the suppression of philosophy in the sixth century to its revival in ‘Abbasid Baghdad. It seems that Sabeans in Baghdad islamicized their doctrines and in pursuit of a prophet for their religious community and dispensation adopted Hermes. This may well have been one of the sources for the appropriation of Hermes into a ‘prophetic chain of philosophical initiation’. What emerges from part I is that there are elements of fragmentary evidence but unlike the transmission of Plato and Aristotle, little actual historical evidence from the Hellenic, Iranian and Syrian background to Islamic learned culture.

Part II engages with the construction of the Arabic Hermes. Chapter four deals with the confused understanding of Trismegistus and the idea that there were in fact three Hermeses. In fact, the early Muslims merely seemed to have perpetuated the notion that there were multiple Hermeses and did not misunderstand the term trismegistus as previous scholars argued. Once again the analysis is based on careful consideration of the texts. The final chapter analyses the prophetic appropriation of Hermes drawing on existing Judaeo-Christian patterns. Ismailis incorporated the prophetic teachings of Hermes as did compilers of wisdom sayings such as Mubashshir ibn Fatik. It is disappointing that so little of this chapter is devoted to the famous text the Zijr al-nafs which had widespread fame in philosophical and Sufis circles in medieval Islamdom. Ultimately van Bladel’s book seems like a prolegomenon – a solidly historical foundation on the basis of which a serious study of what constitutes ‘hermeticism’ in medieval thought needs to be undertaken.

Some Thoughts on Religion and Violence

2010-03-31T03:21:00.000-07:00

There is a strong prejudice in the social sciences (no doubt influenced by Marxian views on ideology and beliefs as motivations that are in fact expressions of false consciousness) against taking religion seriously, a bias that faced with the category of religion finds it removed from our social and intellectual existence in a post-Enlightenment age. Even critical theory suffers from such an assumption, being broadly suspicious of religion’s ontological and epistemological commitments and claims; yet, surely a properly critical approach would be dismissal of such absolutism and apply the metaphysical critique to its very claim about religion itself.

The ways in which we perceive of religion in our time is as constructed a social reality as the development of the notion of secularity as the anthropologist Talal Asad had extensively discussed in recent years. It is an expression of the narrative of the autonomous self that has emerged since at least the Enlightenment, postulating a particular anthropology of what it means to be human and to possess critical human faculties, and how that human self interacts within his cosmos and articulates his identity. In a post-Kantian world in which the immediacy of experience as the source of knowledge is denied and our world constructed through our language and conceptual schemes, religion, history and modernity are similarly constructed. Religion in such a world is seen as a private matter guided by a reason which is not critically interrogated in the public sphere, and yet is seen as a transhistorical essence expressing discourses and beliefs through practices and conventions that yield a vision of reality. The public sphere denuded of religious expression finds it all the more perplexing when political action is justified in terms of religious motivation. Critical to the personal reason of religion is the displacement of the scripture in favour of a symbolic universe of meaning, a natural and rational order of understanding reality. But as such this is a European genealogy and faced with the case of Islam, the shibboleth of the Qurʾan as central idol and referent of the faith signals a complete absence of reason, public or private. The scripturalist approach to reality is therefore an irrational one and unfavourably juxtaposed with both scientific notions and commonsense ones.

Furthermore, if we consider the category through its opposites to understand more clearly what we mean, what constitutes the opposite of religion? Reason? Science? Secularity? Surely all of these are categories that in themselves evince particular genealogies, mythologies and discourses of asserting their power within the marketplaces of disciplinary formations. And yet to paraphrase Slavoj Žižek, in a point which I cite a bit later, religion in its purest form is secularity and secularity religion. In the face of such formations, the understanding of religious even by the religious seems to have shifts in disperse directions: new age spiritualities replace institutions, religion becomes a wider and even overarching category of adherence into which even philosophy and art are placed, and the metaphysical critique of the Heideggerian tradition leads to postulation of a God who may be. Such understandings, I would contend, are for good conventionalist reasons, if not others, divergent from the historical traditions of understanding faith in the past and lead to the hermeneutical problem of the increasing gap between the reader and the text.

At the same time as understanding and contextualising jihad as violence, we need to be self-reflective about violence. Consider three definitions of violence in relation to religion. First, violence, defined expansively, is considered to be part and parcel of the original sin of being human and is articulated in the insights of the significant monograph of Hent de Vries’ Religion and Violence. At the outset, he postulates that

Violence, in both the widest possible and the most elementary senses of the word, entails any cause, any justified or illegitimate force, that is exerted – physically or otherwise – by one thing (event or instance, group or person, and perhaps, word and object) upon another. Violence thus defined finds its prime model – its source, force and counterforce – in key elements of the tradition called the religious. It can be seen as the very element of religion.

While this alerts us to the possibilities in the use of the term, it is too overarching and too elastic a definition to be helpful. It also entails a rather gendered genealogy of religion and violence, one condemned by the late feminist theologian Grace Jantzen in her wonderful critique of the death and violence-centred theological metaphysics of the European tradition in favour of one preferring ‘natality’ and life-affirmation. An imbalanced view of violence in Western metaphysics might lead one to see violence beyond in a rather skewed manner. Nevertheless it considers violence to be a form of relationship between the self and other which is akin to religion and as such both the other and the self of religion. In a post-Kantian world, religion is neither relegated to the private sphere nor are religious categories including righteous, godly violence rendered obsolete. The major contribution of de Vries’ work is to alert us to the elasticity of the terms violence and religion and show how they may apply beyond the narrow confines of what we may have assumed.

The second definition focuses on the very human act of othering. Difference may entail either the recognition and the pursuit of an ethics of identity (such as envisioned by Ricoeur), or the onset of alterity and danger. As the literary historian Regina Schwartz defines it, violence is not

a consequence of defining identity as either particular or universal. Violence stems from any conception of identity forged negatively against the Other, an invention of identity parasitically depends upon the invention of some Other to be reviled.

As such, the process of othering deliberately distorts and forges the self as a positive mirror image of the other. Identity construction is not the sole concern of religious communities, even with the need to define the boundaries of the faith community and objectify heresy although violence is the means through which the formation is effected.

Third, Slavoj Žižek’s wonderful polemic on violence urges us to take the self-reflection a further step. He distinguishes between ‘subjective’ violence, an exertion of one upon the other that is considered to be a violation, a perturbation, of the normal state of affairs such as one man stabbing another, and objective violence which is inherent in normality. The exceptionalism of violence may dissolve into its routineness. The objective is constituted both by our language and our economic and political systems, and of particular concern is ideological violence. Žižek writes:

We live in a society where a kind of Hegelian speculative identity of opposites exists. Certain features, attitudes and norms of life are no longer perceived as ideologically marked. They appear to be neutral, non-ideological, natural, commonsense. We designate as ideology that which stands out from this background: extreme religious zeal or dedication to a particular political orientation. The Hegelian point here would be that it is precisely the neutralisation of some features into a spontaneously accepted background that marks out ideology at its purest and at its most effective. This is the dialectical ‘coincidence of opposites’: the actualisation of a notion or an ideology at its purest coincides with, or more precisely, appears as its opposite, as non-ideology. Mutatis mutandis, the same holds for violence. Social-symbolic violence at its purest appears as its opposite, as the spontaneity of the milieu in which we dwell, of the air we breathe.

Violence may therefore lie in our very conceptual frameworks, our assumptions about citizenship and mutuality, in tolerance and liberalism. Tolerant reason as articulated in liberal outrage against Muslim fundamentalists in Europe is one of his primary examples. However, we need not go that far. It merely suffices to recognise that violence is not just the illegitimate actions and words of the other but also embedded in the self.

The result of this quick assessment (there is after all a far too extensive literature on the relationship of religion and violence to consider in a single lecture – perhaps a good theme for a module?) is that arguments concerning the essential relationship between the two often end up negating themselves. The ‘commonsense’ feeling that one of the major factors that discredit institutionalised religion and indeed the faith imperial is the conduct of war, internecine sectarian fighting and the suppression of liberties, deduced from an interpretation of European history and from the image of an imperial and violent Islam spread by the sword.

It is therefore not surprising that such a polemic, extended by renowned pseudo-academic ex-Muslims such as Ibn Warraq lead to both nuanced questioning by anthropologists such as Asad and theologians such as Cavanaugh as well as Muslim apologetics. Even the very idea that violence is essential to humanity, and therefore to religion as a manifestation of homo religiosus may be conceptually neat and rhetorically persuasive but requires one to step back from one’s pre-understandings. The problem of religious violence becomes acute for the Muslim reformist seeking to understand his faith and reconcile it to his context, historical, political and intellectual, not least because the Muslim reformer tends to be as much a product of a liberal intellectual formation as a non-Muslim one and similarly afflicted by the contradiction inherent within liberalism between a desire to recognise and grant liberties of diversity and the exhortation to universalising the liberal way of life as the pinnacle of human intellectual achievement.

Re-centering Foundationalist Ethics? John Rist on Platonism and Real Ethics

2010-01-19T05:45:00.000-08:00

A constant regard to God in all our actions and enjoyments, will give a new beauty to every virtue, by making it an act of gratitude and love to him; and increase our pleasure in every enjoyment, as it will appear an evidence of his goodness; it will give a diviner purity and simplicity of heart, to conceive all our virtuous dispositions as implanted by God in our hearts, and all our beneficent offices as our proper work, and the natural duties of that station we hold in our universe, and the services that we owe.
[Francis Hutcheson, A System of Moral Philosophy (Hildesheim, 1969), 216]

In this sentiment articulated by a leading member of the Scottish Enlightenment, we remember that the Enlightenment itself was not essentially inimical to deism and indeed to theistically grounded systems of morality. However, nowadays when the Enlightenment is evoked, it is the radical Enlightenment with its pronounced atheism and Promethean vision of humanity that is at the forefront of the ethical debate; the moral self is an autonomous self, a concept attributed to Immanuel Kant. It is for humans to develop a system of morals through agreement that be rationally justified and universalised.
Teaching religious ethics, or any aspect of religion and spirituality, in the disenchanted and de-sacralised sphere of the contemporary metropolitan university is a difficult and frustrating task. One cannot assume the basic contours and narratives of the Judaeo-Christian tradition that once informed European and American societies. Nor can one assume that students have the slightest conception of the belief systems, phenomenal practice and meaning of religious faith and ritual. One cannot even assume that one’s students have a clear, historically contextualised notion of morality, the moral self and moral agency. The ‘now’ culture is which we live affects academia as well: it is rare indeed to find a philosophy department that takes the history of philosophy seriously as an intellectual pursuit that is central to informing the framework of their contemporary concerns.
In this paper, I will investigate (quite critically) one strategy for presenting religious ethics to students of philosophy and the humanities as part of the pursuit of a liberal education, namely, a recent robust and fairly ambitious defence of realist and foundationalist ethics and moral agency articulated by John Rist, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy and Classics at the University of Toronto. By way of some comparison, I will juxtapose his thought with the historically contextualised vision of narrating the moral self through a critique of the ‘Enlightenment project’ proffered by Alasdair MacIntyre, an Aristotelian Thomistic quest for the vibrancy of moral foundationalism, and Robert Adams’ Christian Platonic defence of the concept of the Good and the moral quest for being and doing good. Although they all engage with the contemporary discourse on ethics (Adams most successfully from a philosophical perspective), they deliberately place their ideas beyond the standard fourfold division of ethics: deontology, consequentialism, virtue ethics, and ‘anti-ethics’. But they remain committed to an account for the rational justification for morality. The rehabilitation of a metaphysical moral realism may well be worth considering as it has been so neglected by the ethical academic mainstream. For the purposes of this paper, I will assume that religious ethics are foundationalist and based on transcendent moral realism; the possibilities of a non-transcendent moral realism, therefore, lies beyond the scope of my discussion here.
In these anti-foundationalist and post-Christian (and even post-secular) times, it is a brave (perhaps foolhardy?) person who will defend a moral realism founded upon transcendent principles, rules even, of morality based upon a theistic modification of Platonic realism. The naturalistic fallacy known as the derivation of an ‘ought’ from an ‘is’ lies at the heart of this study. The shift away from foundationalism and ontology was arguably initiated by Kant in his systematic critique of the mediaeval principles of metaphysics and epistemology. But the twentieth century really brought about the death knell of foundationalism, first through the rise of the Vienna circle and logical positivism and later through the linguistic turn and the rejection of ‘philosophy as we know it’ by Derrida in his oeuvre and Rorty in his hugely influential Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. The desire to return metaphysics to its original place as the mistress of the sciences remained the priority of Catholic philosophers dissatisfied with the shift in our academic understanding of philosophy and its branches. John Rist, as a Christian Platonist, has much in common with this latter tendency. Along with Catholic philosophers such as Alasdair MacIntyre, Rist offers a bleak diagnosis of contemporary humans and the inability of societies to function morally and effectively divorced from metaphysical foundations of value. We are in moral and spiritual crisis because professional philosophy fails to address ethical issues in a clear and robust manner that can be communicated to the ‘man in the street’. The academic crisis over the theoretical foundations of moral agency has translated into the public sphere:

The perception in many academic and professional circles of the seriousness and ramifications of the theoretical crisis, combined with the ignorance of ordinary people, makes way for deception, equivocations, and outright lying and humbug in public debates.

MacIntyre’s diagnosis is somewhat bleaker and based on an interesting parallel with the exact sciences:

Imagine that the natural sciences were to suffer the effects of a catastrophe. A series of environmental disasters are blamed by the general public on the scientists. Widespread riots occur, laboratories are burnt down, physicists are lynched, books and instruments are destroyed. Finally a Know-Nothing political movement takes power and successful abolishes science teaching in schools and universities, imprisoning and executing the remaining scientists. Later still there is a reaction against this destructive movement and enlightened people seek to revive science, although they have largely forgotten what it was. But all that they possess are fragments: a knowledge of experiments detached from any knowledge of the theoretical context which gave them significance; parts of theories unrelated either to the other bits and pieces of theory which they possess or to experiment; instruments whose use has been forgotten; half-chapters from books, single page from articles, not always fully legible because torn and charred. Nonetheless all these fragments are re-embodied in a set of practices which go under the revived names of physics, chemistry and biology. Adults argue with each other about the respective merits of relativity theory, evolutionary theory and phlogiston theory, although they possess only a very partial knowledge of each. Children learn by heart the surviving portions of the periodic table and recite as incantations some of the theorems of Euclid. Nobody, or almost nobody, realises that what they are doing is not natural science in any proper sense at all. For everything that they do and say conforms to certain canons of consistency and coherence and those contexts which would be needed to make sense of what they are doing have been lost, perhaps irretrievably.

MacIntyre believes that the loss of the conceptual scheme of morality and the oblivion of the tradition(s) of morality requires us to re-assess and re-acquire our familiarity with that history. Forms of postmodern Nietzschean irrationalism should be eschewed in favour of a narrative and historical understanding of traditions and their interpretive communities. The real challenge is emotivism which MacIntyre defines as:

the doctrine that all evaluative judgements and more specifically all moral judgements are nothing but expressions of preference, expressions of attitude or feeling, insofar as they are moral or evaluative in character.

Rist believes that we should return to Plato’s conception of rational ethics as a moral system that is only justifiable if it is predicated upon metaphysical foundations; only with such a base can morality be more than ‘enlightened self-interest’. He blames, much like MacIntyre, Nietzsche and his followers, for the assault on ‘enlightenment values’ and morality such that one finds a contemporary philosopher like Derek Parfit articulating the modern ‘consensus’ that rejects religious ethics in favour of seeking a consensual morality through ‘principled agreement’. Rist quotes him:

Belief in God, or in many gods, prevented the free development of moral reasoning. Disbelief in God, openly admitted by a majority, is a very recent event, not yet completed. Because this event is so recent, Non-Religious Ethics is at a very early stage. We cannot yet predict whether, as in Mathematics, we will all reach agreement. Since we cannot know how Ethics will develop, it is not irrational to have high hopes.

The desire to axiomatize ethics is odd indeed coming from a (post-)analytical philosopher. Nevertheless, it reflects a somewhat Kantian need to achieve an understanding of the qualifications of a moral agent. As Onora O’Neill, perhaps one of the most eminent of Kantians, says:

Without a more explicit vindication of some background perfectionism, or more generally of the necessary metaphysics, it may quite simply be impossible to establish necessary and sufficient conditions for qualifying as an agent (or person), or as a subject (or holder of rights). Yet most contemporary universalists are uninclined to argue for this type of background position.

The present moral chaos, for Rist, is because ‘Western philosophers and their opinion-forming disciples have come to resemble midwives – to borrow Plato’s metaphor – to the birth of a class of intellectual lager-louts’. He argues for a return to foundationalism in ethics. As an analytical (and ill-tempered, even intemperate) polemic and an argument that eliminates alternative moralities (often willy-nilly and rather unfairly) without really offering a positive account of transcendent moral realism, Real Ethics is reminiscent of MacIntyre’s After Virtue, a work that is equally concerned with showing up the failures of the ‘Enlightenment project’ not least in its inability to establish a vigorous and robust moral theory devoid of transcendent principles, of God and of metaphysics. It is a work that is indicative of one analytical, post-Thomist trend in contemporary Catholic philosophy. Those Catholic philosophers who retain an interest in philosophical theology either attempt to reconcile the demands of revelation and reason and offer an analytical ‘recovery’ and justification of transcendent principles in metaphysics and ethics (as MacIntyre and Rist do), or deconstruct the very notion of metaphysics and ethical theory, even of the ‘supra-category’ of being when talking about God, and permit a hermeneutics of revelation devoid of standard ‘reason’, ethical realism and metaphysics. A good example of the former is the work of the late Norman Kretzmann and Marilyn Adams. The latter trend is well represented by Gianni Vattimo, Jean-Luc Marion and John Caputo. Rist remains an analytical philosopher profoundly alienated by the main preoccupations and interests of analytical philosophy, and wishes to use analytical tools to criticise and condemn postmodern shifts against foundationalism and Kantian contractualism.
Rist’s argument begins with the Republic and the moral choice in that work between Socrates’ transcendent moral realism founded upon the metaphysical theory of the Forms and variations on what he describes as ‘Thrasymachian’ alternatives that are all versions of moral perspectivism or even nihilism; it culminates with the recovery of moral realism through theistic Platonism as exemplified in Augustine and Aquinas. There are three steps to his negative argument to which I now turn in detail.
The first step is rather tendentious. Rist argues that the central point of the Republic is to demonstrate that there are only two options for the first principles of morality: Socratic realist values, and Thrasymachian arbitrary values. He expresses surprise that generations of scholars in ancient philosophy have not discerned this obvious choice (including most recently Julia Annas). But this is precisely because his claim is so debatable. A corollary of this step is to argue that the core of the Republic is the theory of Forms that provides the metaphysical foundations for moral theory and inspiration for ‘how to live the good life’. Rist is not prepared (quite rightly) to justify this theory because it has become so discredited. Instead, he attempts to defend theistic Platonic realism through a via negativa consideration and rejection of some major alternatives. Adams, on the other hand, provides a more nuanced and critical examination of Platonic realism: theism and real ethics is more significant for him than a slavish adherence to a particular vision of Plato; if Plato and Platonism are indefensible and violate the need to save the appearances of theism, then Adams is more than happy to jettison Platonism. Further, instead of focusing on the Republic, he begins with the Symposium which is a more explicit meditation upon love and beauty, love defined as the attraction and orientation towards Beauty as a manifestation of the Good. Adams has no desire to defend the theory of Forms; his intention is to provide a structure for a theory of values and personhood, not of universals. Unlike Rist, he believes that we can differentiate between the language and semantics of value on the one hand and the metaphysics of value on the other. His pursuit is to ward the plausibility of objectivity, not objectivity itself. A central motif to this argument, and arguably the central concern of Platonic ethics, is the notion of godlikeness: theistic moral realism implies the existence of a God, but the pursuit of the good as a resemblance of the divine is even more pronounced. This is what the Platonic tradition calls theosis. Unfortunately, Rist’s argument fails to link to this critical feature and is more restrictive.
Rist’s metaphysically grounded theory has the following characteristics: first, metaphysical realism is the only answer to Thrasymachus; second, pseudo-moralities based on pleasure and subjective preferences will prevail if we do not accept foundations (akin to MacIntyre’s point against emotivism); third, conventional societies need true beliefs and not deception (what is a conventional society?); fourth, metaphysical realities must reveal beauty and inspire love, a critical element of they theory to which we will return; fifth, men (not the gendered language as most critics would put it) are unequal in their abilities to justify their moral beliefs; sixth, a moral society is only intelligible with the existence of a metaphysically defensible God. Nowhere in the book is a demonstration or a positive proof provided for any of these points.
The Thrasymachian alternatives that Rist criticises all engage in ‘free-floating’ moral language and take in a range of positions from Epicurean pursuit of hedonism, Humean constructivism, Hobbesian contractualism, Straussian comunitarianism and Nietzschean nihilism. Moral language, according to Rist, must be ‘more or less stable’ and have transcendent referents which can be inferred and which inspire moral agency. However, his critique fails to deal adequately with those ethical theories that include an account of human nature that constrains choice of agency (as does Hobbes). Another consistent problem, as he admits is deception, both of the self and by those entities that one assumes are transcendent beings, namely forms. He does not explain satisfactorily how his model of ethics circumvents this problem.
The second step in the argument is to present a Platonic theory of the soul that explains how humans acquire moral unity and extract values from the transcendent principles. The pursuit of the good life entails the possession and unification of the soul since we wrong ourselves and become embroiled in immoral activity once our souls acquire extraneous layers and become ‘pluralized selves’. On this point, he actually cites MacIntyre: irrationality and moral turpitude follow from our disintegrated souls. Critical for his argument is the suggestion that humans cannot achieve psychological unity without some external pull factor, whether that be the pull of love (or self-love, or the love of transcendent principles that inspire us such as the Good), or communal filial friendship or even God himself. Thus we cannot construct a robust form of moral unity within ourselves. He criticises political forms and attempts at moral unity that are devoid of ethics such as Marxism and liberal democratic values. However, nowhere does Rist provide a convincing argument to show that we need an extrinsic metaphysical form for moral unity in our selves and many political and theorists and moral philosophers would argue, especially if they are within the Kantian rationalist tradition, that the extrinsic recourse for unity is unnecessary. The concept of love is central to his argument and demonstrates his debt to Augustine. It also reveals the way in which Rist disregards Plato for Christian Platonism as soon as possible. Once again, we see that Adams provides a more satisfactory account of the need for love as the key instrument for identifying the property and nature of excellence and for recognising the Good. Ethics is thus revealed as the means for loving and pursuing the Good. As Adams’ work is aimed at both philosophers and theologians, he allows himself the latitude to discuss in this context notions of grace and idolatry.
Thus far, Rist has completed two steps of his negative argument: first, the need for metaphysical foundations and principles for morality; second, the psychology of the soul that requires unity for moral agency and factors extrinsic to the soul to effect unity. Thus two sides of the moral equation are complete: an account of the moral agent and of moral principles. The third step in the argument is to reintroduce the need for rules and principles and articulate the drawbacks of theories that bypass rules. In this part of the argument, he discusses the ‘principled’ person and the avoidance of hypocrisy. He completes the shift to theistic ethics and continues to cast aspersions upon the misconceptions and lacunae of thought prevalent in the contemporary Anglo-American analytical tradition.
At times, his polemic overcomes the argument and he lapses into a weak position and even admits the inherent weakness of a positive argument for his case:

The epistemological difficulties confronting the Platonic moral realist should not be underestimated. If there are metaphysical or religious truths which validate certain systems of morality and invalidate others (because they give the best answers to questions about what we are and therefore what we ought to be), these truths cannot be demonstrated by ordinary methods of philosophical enquiry. That may seem surprising but it is not fatal: there is no reason why there should not be truths which we cannot even know or discover for ourselves, let alone demonstrate either to ourselves or to others. Our minds may be inadequate to them or the date necessary for understanding them may not be available to us…
Of course, to recognize that a Platonic foundationalism cannot be demonstrated is not to allow that it is implausible, let alone necessarily to open the doors to crude irrationalism; it may still be the most plausible, even the only intelligible, explanation of what we are and of the nature of moral experience.

This rather bizarre apologetic begs at least two questions: what standard of plausibility for moral realism is being advocated, and what are the extraordinary means of philosophical inquiry that might demonstrate the truths of moral realism? At the end of the book, the apologetics give way to utopianism and in an interesting chapter on God and ethics he concludes that moral obligation remains a utopian dream in a non-theistic world.
While Real Ethics may be a disappointing but ambitious work, it merits engagement. His attacks on neo-Nietzscheanism (much like MacIntyre) might conform to the prejudices of many. But he fails to engage properly and adequately with the Kantian tradition that dominates the discourse of ethics and is not entirely opposed to foundationalism. He is also palpably unfair in his dismissal of alternatives to transcendent theistic moral realism. The persistent claim that there are only two options in moral theory, between Socrates and Thrasymachus, between Good and bad, is an unfair, ‘fixed’ choice. Rist may be accused of a basic double standard: he applies a rigorous critique to moral alternatives but never subjects his own theory of realism to the standard critical analysis. Furthermore, he never makes a positive argument in its favour, contenting himself with ‘counter-punching’ and bemoaning the moral crisis of our times. More problematic is his avoidance of a key critical problem: formulating an epistemological theory for explaining the rational distinction between knowledge and mere belief. Whilst many may agree with his diagnosis, few will probably adhere to his prescription. The market of moral ideas deserves a morally rigorous and balanced assessment of positions and a defence of theistic moral realism really ought to engage more critically and fairly with both its opponents and its self.
Teaching and understanding religious ethics requires an engagement with good and bad arguments. There is much in Rist’s negative argument that resonates, informs and renders the moral confusion of a believer in the contemporary world and this may well be the best contribution that he provides. It is now left to others to produce a positive argument in favour of a theistic moral realism and to engage especially with the mainstream of debates on ethics, led as they are by Kantianism. One final point: one need not insist that the pursuit of moral realism should only engage with a narrowly defined set of philosophical problems. Adams’ contribution is precisely more effective because he does not pretend that religious ethics is merely ethics in the way in which, for example, Hare presents his theory. We should not be embarrassed by religion or religious thinkers and it can often be counter-productive to reduce a religious thinker to a mere philosopher. Critical honesty is far better than slavish apologetics.