History Of Islamic Philosophy

Henry Corbin

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781135198886
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Anthropology
• Index: Social Sciences

First published in 1993. Published here for the first time in English, this highly important work by Henry Corbin, the Islamic scholar, philosopher and historian of religion, is a definitive interpretation of traditional Islamic philosophy from the beginning to the present day. In this authoritative volume, Corbin makes clear the great themes of the doctrinal and mystical vision of lslamic philosophy through a wealth of comparative parallels and in relation to the most profound currents of Western philosophy. In Part One, From the Beginning Down to the Death of Averroes, Corbin considers the Sourc­es of Philosophical Meditation in Islam; Shi ism and Prophetic Philosophy; the Sunni Kalam; Philosophy and the Natural Sciences; the Hellenizing Philosophers; Sufism; Al-Suhrawardi and the Philosophy of Light, and the Andalusian Tradition. In Part Two, From the Death of Averroes to the Present Day, he examines Sunni Thought, the Metaphysics of Sufism, and Shiite Thought. Corbin's History of Islamic Philosophy is both an inspirational book and an essential work of reference, enabling readers to discover themselves the richness of this body of thought.

I
From the Beginning Down to the Death of Averroës (595/1198)

I. The Sources of Philosophical Meditation in Islam

1. Spiritual Exegesis of the Quran

1. It is commonly said in the West that the Quran contains nothing of a mystical or philo sophical nature, and that philosophers and my sties are not indebted to it in any way. Our concern here is not to argue about what Westerners find or fail to find in the Quran, but to know what it is that Muslims themselves have actually discovered in it.

Islamic philosophy may be seen, first and foremost, as the work of thinkers belonging to a religious community characterized by the Quranic expression ahl al-kitāb: a people in possession of a sacred Book, a people whose religion in founded on a Book that 'came down from Heaven', is revealed to a prophet and is taught to the people by that prophet. Properly speaking, the 'peoples of the Book' are the Jews, the Christians and the Muslims. The Zoroastrians, thanks to the Avesta, have partially benefited from this privilege, while the so-called Sabians of Ḥarrān have been less fortunate.

All these communities are faced with the problem of the basic religious phenomenon which is common to them all: the phenomenon of the Sacred Book, the law of life within this world and guide beyond it. The first and last task is to understand the true meaning of this Book. But the mode of understanding is conditioned by the mode of being of him who understands; correspondingly, the believer's whole inner ethos derives from his mode of understanding. The lived situation is essentially hermeneutical, a situation, that is to say, in which the true meaning dawns on the believer and confers reality upon his existence. This true meaning, correlative to true being—truth which is real and reality which is true—is what is expressed in one of the key terms in the vocabulary of philosophy: the word ḥaqīqah.

The term designates, among many other things, the true meaning of the divine Revelations: a meaning which, because it is the truth of these Revelations, is also their essence, and therefore their spiritual meaning. One could thus say that the phenomenon of the 'revealed sacred Book' entails a particular anthropology, even a certain definite spiritual culture, and that it postulates, at the same time as it stimulates and orientates, a certain type of philosophy. Both Christianity and Islam are faced with somewhat similar problems when searching for the true meaning, the spiritual meaning, in, respectively, the hermeneutic of the Bible and the hermeneutic of the Quran. There are also, however, profound differences between them. The analogies and the differences will be analysed and expressed here in terms of structure.

To say that the goal to be attained is the spiritual meaning implies that there is a meaning which is not the spiritual meaning, and that between the two there may be a whole scale of levels, and that consequently there may even be a plurality of spiritual meanings. Everything depends therefore on the initial act of consciousness which establishes a perspective, together with the laws that will henceforth govern it. The act whereby consciousness reveals to itself this hermeneutical perspective, at the same time reveals to it the world that it will have to organize and structure on a hierarchic basis. From this point of view, the phenomenon of the sacred Book has given rise to corresponding structures in the Christian and Islamic worlds. On the other hand, to the extent that the mode of approach to the true meaning differs in the two worlds, so they have been faced with differing situations and difficulties.

2. The first thing to note is the absence in Islam of the phenomenon of the Church. Just as Islam has no clergy which is in possession of the 'means of grace', so it has no dogmatic magisterium. no pontifical authority, no Council which is responsible for defining dogma. In Christianity, from the second century onwards, prophetic inspiration and, in a more general way, the freedom of a spiritual hermeneutic, were replaced by the dogmatic magisterium of the Church. Furthermore, the birth and spread of the Christian consciousness essentially signalled the awakening and growth of a historical consciousness. Christian thought is centred on the event which occurred in year one of the Christian era: the divine Incarnation marks the entry of God into history. As a result, the religious consciousness is focused with ever-increasing attention on the historical meaning, which it identifies with the literal meaning, the true meaning of the Scriptures.

The famous theory of the four levels of meaning was of course to be developed. The classic formula of this theory is as follows: littera (sensus historicus) gesta docet; quid credas, allegoria; moralis, quid agas; quid speras, anagogia. However, it requires a great deal of courage today to invalidate, in the name of a spiritual interpretation, conclusions drawn from archaeological and historical evidence. The question is a very complex one, and we barely touch on it here. Yet we should ask ourselves to what extent the phenomenon of the Church, in its official forms at any rate, can ally itself with the predominance of the literal and historical meaning. Moreover, hand in hand with this predominance goes a decadence which results in confusing symbol with allegory. As a consequence, the search for spiritual meaning is regarded as a matter of allegorization, whereas it is a matter of something quite different. Allegory is harmless, but spiritual meaning can be revolutionary. Thus spiritual hermeneutics has been perpetuated and renewed by spiritual groups which have formed on the fringes of the Churches. There is similarity in the way in which a Boehme or a Swedenborg understands Genesis, Exodus or Revelation, and the way in which the Shiites, Ismaili as well as Twelver, or else the Ṣūfī theosophers of the school of Ibn al-'Arabī, understand the Quran and the corpus of the traditions explaining it. This similarity is a perspective in which the universe is seen as possessing several levels, as consisting of a plurality of worlds that all symbolize with each other.

The religious consciousness of Islam is centred not on a historical fact, but on a fact which is meta-historical: not post-historical, but trans-historical. This primordial fact, anterior to our empirical history, is expressed in the divine question which the human Spirits were required to answer before they were placed in the terrestrial world: 'Am I not your Lord?' (Quran 7:172). The shout of joy which greeted this question concluded an eternal pact of fidelity; and from epoch to epoch, all the prophets whose succession forms the 'cycle of prophecy' have come to remind men of their fidelity to this pact. From the pronouncements of the prophets comes the letter of the positive religions: the divine Law or sharī'ah. The question then is: are we to remain at this literal level of things? If we are, philosophers have no further part to play. Or should we try to grasp the true meaning, the spiritual meaning, the ḥaqīqah?

The famous philosopher Nāṣir-Ī Khusraw (fifth/eleventh century), one of the great figures of Iranian Ismailism, explains the situation succinctly: 'Positive religion (sharī'ah) is the exoteric aspect of the Idea (ḥaqīqah), and the Idea is the esoteric aspect of positive religion... Positive religion is the symbol (mithāl); the Idea is that which is symbolized (mamthūl). The exoteric aspect is in perpetual flux with the cycles and epochs of the world; the esoteric aspect is a divine Energy which is not subject to becoming.'

3. The ḥaqīqah, as such, cannot be defined in the way that dogmas are defined by a Magisterium. But Guides and Initiators are needed in order to lead one towards it. Prophecy itself has come to an end: there will be no other prophet. The question that arises is then: how does the religious history of humanity continue after the 'Seal of the prophets'? This question, and the answer to it, are essentially what constitutes the religious phenomenon of Shiite Islam, which is founded on a prophetology amplifying into an Imamology. This is why we begin this study by stressing the 'prophetic philosophy' of Shiism. One of its premisses is the polarity between sharī'ah and ḥaqīqah; its mission is the continuation and protection of the spiritual meaning of the divine Revelations, that is to say, their hidden, esoteric meaning. The existence of a spiritual Islam depends on this protection. Without it, Islam will succumb, in its own manner, to the process which in Christianity has secularized theological systems into political and social ideologies—has secularized theological messianism, for example, into social messianism.

It is true that in Islam the threat is present under different conditions. So far, no philosopher has analysed these conditions in any depth. The Shiite factor has been almost entirely neglected, even though, the fate of philosophy in Islam and, as a consequence, the significance of Sufism, cannot be studied independently of the significance of Shiism. Where Ismaili Shiism is concerned, Islamic gnosis, with its great themes and its vocabulary, was already in existence before the philosopher Avicenna was even born.

Because it has not had to confront the problems raised by what we call the 'historical consciousness', philosophical thought in Islam moves in two counter yet complementary directions: issuing from the Origin (mabda'), and returning (ma 'ād) to the Origin, issue and return both taking place in a vertical dimension. Forms are thought of as being in space rather than in time. Our thinkers perceive the world not as 'evolving' in a horizontal and rectilinear direction, but as ascending: the past is not behind us but 'beneath our feet'. From this axis stem the meanings of the divine Revelations, each of these meanings corresponding to a spiritual hierarchy, to a level of the universe that issues from the threshold of metahistory. Thought can move freely, unhindered by the prohibitions of a dogmatic authority. On the other hand, it must confront the sharī'ah, should the sharī'ah at any time repudiate the ḥaqīqah. The repudiation of these ascending perspectives is characteristic of the literalists of legalistic religion, the doctors of the Law.

Yet it was not the philosophers who were initially responsible for the drama. The drama began on the very day following the Prophet's death. All the teachings of the Shiite Imāms, which have come down to us in a massive corpus, enable us to trace this drama, and to understand how and why it was that in sixteenth-century Ṣafavid Iran philosophy underwent a magnificent renaissance in a Shiite environment.

Throughout the centuries, too, the guiding ideas of Shiite prophetology are always present. They giveriseto many themes: the affirmation of the identity of the Angel of Knowledge ('aql fa "āl, the active Intelligence) with the Angel of Revelation (rūḥ al-quds, the Holy Spirit or Angel Gabriel); the theme of prophetic knowledge in the gnosiology of al-Fārābī and Avicenna; the idea that the wisdom of the Greek sages also derives from the 'Cave of the lights of prophecy'; even the idea of the ḥikmat ilāhīyah which, etymologically speaking, is equivalent to theosophia, not to theology or to philosophy in the sense we assign to these words. Indeed, the separation of philosophy from theology, which goes back in the West to Latin scholasticism, is the first sign of the 'metaphysical secularization' that results in a split between belief and knowledge and culminates in the idea of the 'double truth' professed, if not by Averroës, then at least by a kind of Averroism. Yet this Averroism cut itself off from the prophetic philosophy of Islam. That is why it exhausted itself. It is also why it was so long thought to be the last word in Islamic philosophy, when it was merely a dead end, an episode ignored by the thinkers of Eastern Islam.

4. We will confine ourselves here to a few texts in which the teaching of the Shiite Imams allows us to perceive how Quranic hermeneutic and philosophical meditation were called upon to 'substantiate' each other. There is, for example, a statement made by the sixth Imām, Ja'far al-Ṣadiq (d. 148/765): 'The Book of God comprises four things: the statement set down ('ibārah), the implied purport (ishārah), the hidden meanings, relating to the supra-sensible world (laṭā'if), and the exalted spiritual doctrines (ḥaqā'iq). The literal statement is for the ordinary believers ('awāmm). The implied purport is the concern of the elite (khawāṣṣ). The hidden meanings pertain to the Friends of God (awliyā'; see below). The exalted spiritual doctrines are the province of the prophets (anbiyā', plural of nabī).' Or, as another explanation has it: the literal statement is addressed to the hearing, the allusion to the spiritual understanding, the hidden meanings are directed to the contemplative vision, and the exalted doctrines concern the realization of an integral spiritual Islam.

These remarks echo the statement of the first Imām, Alī ibn Abī Ṭālib (d. 40/661): 'There is no Quranic verse which does not possess four types of meaning: exoteric (ẓāhir), esoteric (bāṭin), limit (ḥadd), divine plan (muṭṭala'). The exoteric is for oral recitation; the esoteric is for the inner understanding; the limit consists of the statements laying down what things are permissible and what forbidden; the divine plan is that which God intends to realize within man by means of each verse.'

These four types of meaning are equal in number to the levels of meaning defined by the Latin formula quoted above. Nevertheless, something else can already be sensed: the types of meaning are differentiated in accordance with a spiritual hierarchy among men, the gradations of which are determined by their inner capacities. The Imam Ja'far also refers to seven modalities of the 'descent' (the revelation) of the Quran, and goes on to define nine possible ways in which Quranic text may be read and understood. This esotericism is not, therefore, a later construct, since it is essential to the teaching of the Imāms and indeed stems from it.

Consonant with the first Imām, and with reference to a Quranic verse 65:12, which concerns the creation of the Seven Heavens and the Seven Earths, 'Abd Allāh ibn 'Abbās, one of the Prophet's most famous companions, cried out one day in the midst of a large number of people gathered on Mount Arafat (twelve miles away from Mecca): 'O men! if I were to comment upon this verse in your presence as I heard the Prophet himself comment upon it, you would stone me.' This observation perfectly describes the position of esoteric Islam vis-à-vis legalistic, literalist Islam, and will help us to understand the account given below of Shiite prophetology.

For the ḥadīth, or tradition, which is as it were the charter of all esotericists, goes back to the Prophet himself: 'The Quran possesses an external appearance and a hidden depth, an exoteric meaning and an esoteric meaning. This esoteric meaning in turn conceals an esoteric meaning (this depth possesses a depth, after the image of the celestial Spheres which are enclosed within each other). So it goes on for seven esoteric meanings (seven depths of hidden depth).' This ḥadīth is fundamental to Shiism, as it was later to be fundamental to Sufism, and to try and explain it involves the whole doctrine of Shiism. The ta 'līm—the initiatic function with which the Imām is invested—is not to be compared to the magisterium of ecclesiastic authority in Christianity. The Imām, as a 'man of God', is inspired; the ta'līm relates essentially to the ḥaqā'iq (plural of ḥaqīqah), that is to say to the esoteric aspect (bāṭin). Finally, the coming of twelfth Imām (the Mahdī, the hidden, awaited Imām), at the end of our Aiōn, will bring with it the full revelation of the esoteric aspect of all the divine Revelations.

5. The Idea of an esoteric aspect which is at the root of Shiism, and an inherent part of it, is seminal outside spheres that are properly speaking Shiite (a fact which, as we will see, gives rise to more than one problem). It is seminal among the mystics—the Ṣūfīs—and among the philosophers. Mystical interiorization, by means of Quranic recitation, conduces to the renewal of the mystery of its o...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Transcription
• Foreword
• PART ONE From the Beginning Down to the Death of Averroës (595/1198)
• PART TWO From the Death of Averröes to the Present Day
• Perspective
• Elements of a Bibliography
• List of Abbreviations
• Index