"Man, Existence and the Life Balance (Mizan) in Islamic Philosophy," Journal of Islamic Studies...

MAN, EXISTENCE AND THE LIFE BALANCE

(MIZ2N) IN ISLAMIC PHILOSOPHY

ANTHONY F. SHAKER1

Institute of Islamic Studies, McGill University

INTRODUCTION

This study focuses on three master ideas that found expression in theshort transition to the Ottoman world and nowhere with morerefinement than in the Persian heartland. All return to the singlephilosophic insight that ‘man measures every thing’, an obvious play onthe Protagorean maxim,2 to which the ubiquitous issue of the m;z:n(balance) was closely tied. Given the maxim’s enduring importance formedieval ‘philosophy’, taken in its bedrock sense,3 one is justified inasking who ‘man’ is and why he is so constituted as to be able tomeasure, let alone be the measure of every thing.

The medieval philosophers held that Man is the point of intersectionbetween two worlds, divine and created, or the isthmus (barzakh).4 Thisis of more than just specialized interest. One of the most penetratingthinkers of our time, Martin Heidegger, recognized the ‘dual’ reality ofman in his interpretation of Holderlin’s poetic symbolism of earth, sky,etc. In so doing he placed himself within a tradition he had viewedmainly through the eyes of the Latin Schoolmen but which had beenflourishing for fourteen centuries as a full-fledged civilization, not just asa current of thought. Short of laying claim to God’s hidden knowledge or,

1 Author’s note: Many thanks to the Institute of Islamic Studies, McGillUniversity, and to Prof. Robert Wisnovsky.

2 Attributed to Protagoras of Abdera (ca. 490–20 bce). The intention behindit is unclear, although Plato’s Theaetetus gives some idea of the context in whichit was debated.

3 My blanket use of ‘philosophy’ to describe falsafa, mysticism, certainaspects of kal:m, al-Aikma al-il:hiyya, etc., is somewhat problematic butconvenient, as no word in Arabic or Persian covers all these branches.

4 This is central to Akbarian philosophy. See 4adr al-D;n MuAammad b.IsA:q al-Q<naw;, Mift:A ghayb al-jam6wa-l-wuj<d (ed. 2Bim Ibr:h;m al-Kayy:l;al-Eusayn; al-Sh:dhil; al-Darq:w;; Beirut: D:r al-Kutub al-6Ilmiyya, 2010), 100.(Hereafter: Mift:A al-ghayb.)

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Published online 4 April 2015Journal of Islamic Studies 26:2 (2015) pp. 145–198 doi:10.1093/jis/etv034

alternatively, to an inconsequential logical identity, isthmus is wherequestions of truth, certainty, the balance (m;z:n) that determines them,and indeed of existence itself, are said properly to arise. By pointingbeyond the narrow concerns of epistemology and psychology, thisbasically ontic orientation deepened the transformation of Peripateticismand lies at a great remove from the good-feel consumer ‘spirituality’ ofour day, a sentiment many writers on ‘mysticism’ seem to reproduce withcloying regularity.

KNOWLEDGE AND AUTHORITY INPERSPECTIVE

The last couple of decades have uncovered ever-deeper layers in Islam’svast learning tradition, redrawing attention to two interconnectedthough still inadequately explored aspects of knowledge: authority andethics.5 What is deemed ‘true’ is not, beyond its purely formal expositionin logic, unrelated either to the ‘authority’ that grounds it or to thehuman receptacle that recognizes (and therefore, ‘requests’) it. Thequestion is—as always in historical research—what exactly did authoritymean to the world’s first truly ‘global’ civilization? What we propose tostudy here used to be, and maybe still is to some extent, part of a livingtradition, rather than a collection of curious artifacts. Modern researchsupports the view that this living Islamic or Islamicate6 civilization allbut defined the medieval period, in fact so decisively that our currentfixation on a Eurocentric frame of reference—by which we try to plumbthe secret and origin of ‘modernity’ with threadbare designations like‘West’ and ‘East’, or ‘modern’ and ‘premodern’—no longer makes sense.This framing has proven tangential to the main procession of thinkingthat characterized the so-called ‘post-Ghaz:l;’ period (another ill-conceived designation), a key dimension of which I examine in thispaper.

Islamic philosophy envisions an omniscient living God whose justice isunequalled because He is unequalled; the Muslim experience has not, in

5 See Christian Jambet, Qu’est-ce que la philosophie islamique? (Paris:Gallimard, 2011), which nevertheless makes little effort at a definition. For anintelligent view of Islamic philosophy and its significance for modern thought, seeMohammad Azadpur, Reason Unbound. On Spiritual Practice in IslamicPeripatetic Philosophy (New York: State University of New York Press, 2011).

6 First coined by Marshall Hodgson, as far as I know, ‘Islamicate’ obviates thetruncated view of religion we tend to impose upon this multidimensional,multiconfessional civilization.

146 anthony f. shaker

principle, been one of arbitrariness, much less of capricious deities. As aresult, 6adl (justice) connects the concept of knowledge to a knowingwhich is consonant with the structural articulation of existence. This issomewhat paradoxical, because the balance examined in this paperoffers itself at the pinnacle of creation, where both the ‘justice’ ofdistinctions (as suggested by al-Furq:n, a name of the Qur8:n) and true(i.e., ‘just’) measurement can be rendered. Strictly speaking, this isneither an ethical theory of knowledge, nor does it imply a knowledgeindifferent to man. Although we will not be specifically preoccupied witheither ethics or authority, let me begin all the same by stipulating anintermediary epistemological condition—my reason for raising this issueat all—which I think had wide ramifications for medieval philosophy.Ethics as a field and literary genre has had a certain, albeit peripheral,bearing on the concept of existence. Yet, moral consciousness need notend in the subjective ‘bias’ of moral judgment at every turn. In theory,such particularism has no place in genuine or true knowledge and, infact, categorically excludes it. But this ‘epistemological condition’, as Icall it, is equally incompatible with the anonymity of knowledge, at leastin medieval philosophy, where a separate ‘oracle’ for truth was asunlikely as the hermeneutical formalism that led to Kant’s ‘moralimperative’. In Islamic philosophy, the ‘algorithm’ that guides fromknowledge to praxis, as we shall see, neither prescribes a blueprint formechanical action nor the specific practical trajectory, even if the latter isprecisely what living, rational beings are enjoined to do. Praxis providesonly an opening for possibilities through which the living could fulfill apurpose. Language, the vehicle by which these possibilities are realized,furnishes the pregiven elements (letters, words, etc.) and rules ofgrammar that govern the permutations of letters and words, which inalgebra (a field historically tied to linguistics) are said to establish thespecific range of approximations to a ‘solution’. The algorithm calledbalance operates on principles of weighing summed up by the termtriplicity (tathl;th). Elucidated by everyone from Ibn S;n: and Ibn 6Arab;to Sabzav:r;, the idea of tathl;th seems to rescue the oneness of God fromparalysis before the core question about Man, the ‘person’ for whomGod is one in the first place, and his destiny is even posed.

The key for Ibn S;n: and Ibn 6Arab;—effectively, the founders ofIslamic philosophy—lies in fardiyya (individualness, singularity; uneven-ness, oddness), which like ‘thing’ (shay8) describes the ‘positively’pregiven in divine tawA;d (lit., ‘declaring [God] one’) in an active (fi6l;)mode; only, on an order of existence separate from the hidden exclusiveoneness of God, not the inclusive oneness in the divine existentiation(;j:d) it purports to articulate. The philosophic rule that the oneproduces only the one for the manifold testifies to this crucial distinction.

M A N , E X I S T E N C E A N D T H E L I F E B A L A N C E ( M I Z 2 N ) 147

Similar orders of being are assigned to thing7 in the effusion of theabsolute one to the many, all exteriorizations of a hidden factor orcommand in their descent.8 As in algebra, where it emerged as a guidingconcept, thing is not a substitute for what is the partially known object ofinquiry. Given that nothing can be known alone in respect of the simpleessence of the primary object, thing merely stands for the object to bemade manifest, just like in an algebraic operation. The thing figuring inthe all-important expression ‘realities of things’ stands for what is knownto some extent; whereas it is the reality of the thing, being simple, that isfamously impossible to know unaided through formal logic.

Fardiyya acquires its key function in existentiation, of which thetriplicity constitutes the m;z:n principle, due to the exclusive unicity ofpure existence. This exclusivity itself can be translated into theindomitable fact that no mortal can think or act outside of the universe,no matter how sweeping or abstracted the thinking strives to be.9 Everyknowing denizen of the universe suffers the same limitation, making itrather childish to seek an Archimedean point outside that universe inorder to ‘explain’ it. The m;z:n opens up the narrow field of visionassumed by each mortal to unseen ‘practical’ possibilities which, as Ibn6Arab; asserts, span every science thanks to the magisterial ‘realities ofthings’ (Aaq:8iq al-ashy:8) and the concept of thing (shay8).

The algebraic significance of thing was evident to Khw:rizm; (ca. 800–47 ce), the founder of modern algebra, who broke with classical Greektradition by defining the object of algebra as the unknown—moreprecisely, the yet-to-be-defined. Algebra attaches this meaning of solutionto its definition of thing.10 In mathematics, thing is taken numerically orgeometrically for the unknown factor x, which allows for any number ofdeterminations and improvements as its ‘approximations’. It is assumedto exist independently of them because it signifies what is pregiven. Thisis in keeping with the philosophical understanding that something must

7 H. S. Nyberg’s introduction in Kleinere Schriften des Ibn al-6Arab; (Leiden:E.J. Brill, 1919), pp. 1–162.

8 Mohammed Rustom explains the divine Command in relation to theQur8:n, All:h (the comprehensive name) and the soul, in his short but valuablestudy, The Triumph of Mercy: Philosophy and Scripture in Mull: 4adr: (NewYork: State University of New York Press, 2012), 21–31.

9 The fal:sifa pose this problem in the Peripatetic terms of immateriality anddematerialization.

10 Roshdi Rashed, D8al-Khw:rizm; a Descartes. Etude sur l’histoire desmathematiques classiques (Paris: Hermann, 2011), 45–6.


be known about a thing for it to be known.11 Khw:rizm;’s secondoriginal contribution, Roshdi Rashed points out, was to justify thealgorithm geometrically and to demonstrate that it leads operationally tothe result or solution.12 Although the ‘non-Aristotelian zone’ which thisline of thinking represents in mathematics, as Rashed describes it—butwhich the idea of thing stakes out for all the systematic sciences—is notcompletely foreign to the Aristotelian system of classification, it didrepresent a shift in paradigm and ontologies in mathematics, physics and,most decisively, philosophy.13 Thing privileges the syntactical rules oflanguage, whether that of mathematics or logic, which in any case nolonger reigned as supreme as it once had.14 Although Ibn S;n: suppliedno syntatical rules for his theory of emanation, unlike NaB;r al-D;n F<s;,the orientation of his thinking was already in evidence.

While ‘algorithm’ is a fitting description, it should be kept in mind thatphilosophy is not the rigorously artificial discipline of mathematics. Evenif it can be represented mathematically and logically, reasoning is alwaysthe reasoning of human beings, which is very hard to disentangle fromwhat modern philosophy recognizes as the knowing subject. That asubject of sorts should at some level impinge on the noetic process seemsrather obvious, at least to the extent that it measures in this sense. Platosaw in the anthropocentrism of the original maxim about man as themeasure only moral relativism. How the Islamic philosophers conceivedthe subject afresh as a knowing, value-determining and creative agentmarks a momentous break with this ancient relativism. It also resists thepsychologistic subjectivism generallly associated with Western thought,for which only the theoretical faculties of ego cogito, an isolated subjectwhose only function is to ‘know’ and to make inferences on

11 Ibid, 758. Q<naw; (Mift:A al-ghayb, 17) strikes another philosophic rule: Ifthe thing entails something (amran) of its essence unconditionally (l: bi-shar3),then it will not cease so long as the essence persists.

12 Rashed, D8al-Khw:rizm; a Descartes, 45. This ‘new ontology’, as Rashedfittingly calls it, ‘doit egalement nous permettre de connaıtre un objet sans etre enmesure de le representer exactement’. On approximation, see ibid, 45–6.

13 Ibid, 758.14 Ibid, 47: ‘Si une telle conception, sui generis, d’une science mathematique,

fut possible, c’est, on le verifie, grace a un choix formel et combinatoire qui apermis d’etablir une classification a priori des equations. Ce choix s’effectue selonles etapes suivantes: 18 determiner un ensemble fini d’elements discrets (lenombre, la chose et le carre de la chose); 28 a partir de ces elements, recourrir aune combinatoire pour obtenir a priori toutes les equations possibles; 38 isolerparmi ces possibles, grace a la theorie, les cas qui repondent aux criteres de cettederniere. Ainsi, des dix-huit equations obtenues, al-Khw:rizm; retient les sixcanoniques, evitant par la-meme redondance et repetitions’.


‘information’ obtained from ‘outside’ his mind. The Islamic philosophersdeem God’s servant (6:bid) whose faculties are indispensable forcognition and expression, be they moral or otherwise, to be a living,(causally) active being that both has free will and a passive receptacle ofknowledge thanks to the faculties of perception. To disclose the originand ends of man, therefore, they began with that perception according towhich thinking about the object orders itself.

Between the divine attribute of knowledge (6ilm) and the human mindupon which it confers knowledge, however, lies the abyss of nonexistencethat separates ‘God from the world’. In sheer nonexistence (6adam, ornothing, nothingness) the exponents of il:hiyya philosophy recognizedmerely the ‘root’ of pseudo-knowledge (what is ungrounded)—in theirarguments for creation ex nihilo, for example. Judging from theirfragmentary pronunciations, the mutakallim<n exerted a deep influenceon how later thinkers like Ibn 6Arab; interpreted the concept of 6adam, asH. S. Nyberg has shown.15 But Nyberg does not consider the purposefulwill of the knowing agent which, even in a derived sense would renderthe pursuit of knowledge little more than an idle pastime. If not for theseparate free will and command crossing over from the abyss thatseparates creation from the hidden secret of God, one would pay onlylip-service to moral responsibility. This was abundantly clear to theMu6tazila, after whom it had still to play itself out beyond the ambit ofconventional logic, which kal:m employed mostly for rhetorical ends,being the dialectical ‘theology’ par excellence.

In his writings on logic, Martin Heidegger threw the thinking behindthis association of existence and nothing, and unintentionally the Islamicphilosophy that most clearly expressed it, into dynamic perspective. OttoPoggeler, his most incisive interpreter, explained how Heidegger under-stood and related the search for a ‘new logic’ around Leibniz’s time to themodern ‘scientific’ enterprise. Heidegger had averred that it was just suchquestioning that ‘springs ahead as it were into a definite region of Being[my emphasis]’16 His reflections on this ephemeral ‘region’, into whichhe said the modern positive sciences had fallen, appear to take histhinking beyond where scholastic theology and early modern philosophyfirst made commerce in Germany, though he seems not to have

15 H. S. Nyberg’s introduction to Kleinere Schriften is still very useful on thispoint.

16 Otto Poggeler, Martin Heidegger’s Path of Thinking, (transl. DanielMagurshak and Sigmund Barber; Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities PressInternational, Inc., 1989), 35. I have relied on Poggeler’s masterly expose toavoid imposing on the reader unwieldy quotations from Heidegger’s works,many of which have not yet been translated into English.


entertained the possibility that a similar ‘region’ could have come to lightelsewhere, in another form and with other purposes, perhaps under theaegis of a medieval Islamic civilization.17

Heidegger’s philosophy sprang from earlier German interest in the‘philosophy of life’. Wilhelm Dilthey (1833–1911), the most cogentexpositor of the ‘life-philosophy’, deflected the tendency to reduce the‘living force’ of history to factual observations, in the disembodiedmanner of late nineteenth-century science, by expanding the cognitivefocus of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason into a critique of historicalreason, which he anchored to lived experience. Instead of demarcatingphilosophy as an independent pursuit, though, he devised a newapproach to describe the structures that define the human spirit.18

Heidegger, more specifically, argued that the life force came ‘from theknowledge of the character of Being of human Dasein itself’, distancinghimself futher from his colleagues’ psychologism.19 Knowledge cannotbe isolated in every respect from its carriers, much less from existence.Central to Heidegger’s Dasein, which bears a strange resemblance tom;z:n (balance), are identity and ipseity. Something lives becauseidentity finds its root origin among the living, not in mental projec-tions.20 His analysis of the transcendental ‘I’ is, purportedly, of a creativeagent, not ‘a bloodless consciousness’ or self-identity of any particularliving individual.

This old debate not only propelled the rise of the social sciences in theWest, but is germane to the innovations carried out in Islamicphilosophy, from a different direction, with respect to speech (kal:m).Heidegger regards language, which happens to be central to the‘prophetic’ soil of Islamic philosophy, as the very articulation of life; itis, he says, the ‘house of life’, ‘the guardianship to which presence andabsence are each entrusted and thereby the ‘house’ [in a structural sense]in which beings can find their way into their essence without Beinghaving to be changed into the rigid permanence of mere presence’.21

17 Heidegger interprets history teleologically as a ‘Western’ march towardmodernity, though he seems to mean it in the Suhravardian sense of maghrib.Trying to fit history into a mythical ‘West’ or ‘Europe’ in any other sense woulddeform his idea of the ‘end of philosophy’ into something like FrancisFukuyama’s witless declaration that ‘liberal democracy’ somehow ushers in thetriumphant ‘end of history’ for the whole world.

18 ‘Wilhelm Dilthey’, first published 16 January, 2008; substantive revision22 March, 2012; http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/dilthey.

19 Poggeler, Heidegger’s Path of Thinking, 21.20 Ibid, 18: ‘The factical historical life is ‘‘origin’’ in the sense of the

transcental I’.21 Ibid, 226.


http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/dilthey

Such a view brings to mind a gamut of concepts connected withcontingency, where the thinking that ‘experiences Being in its essence. . .

as presence and absence’ requires a different logos (i.e., pattern ofspeech) than that of formal logic. Poggeler clarifies that ‘[t]his thinkingcan no longer conform to logic, since it no longer posits beings assomething permanent to which one can always return’.22 Moreover,‘[l]ife answers its questions only in its own language; it understandsitself. . . In factical life, the sense of performative [my emphasis]dominates. The performance of life itself comes before the orientationtoward ‘‘contents’’. Life derives its fundamental sense when it graspsitself in its performance. . .’23 With ‘performance’ we touch the kernel ofm;z:n, according to Islamic philosophy, so we ought to be clear about itsimport from the outset: medieval philosophy does not consign ‘per-formative’ only to the sphere of everyday activities or surface under-standings. On this detail, Heidegger’s ‘path of thinking’ is astonishinglysimilar, surpassing what even Henry Corbin imagined about his affinitiesto Islamic mysticism.24 This is neither coincidental nor of idle interest.Heidegger’s contribution to a mode of thinking that is partial to living aswell as intellecting human being underpins a longstanding project inwhich both German philosophy and Islamic philosophy appear to haveparticipated, without conflating the two.

But what is ‘living’ and ‘intellecting’ without communication, linguis-tic building blocks (the ‘pregivens’ of letters, words, etc.), or rules forcoherent articulation? Islamic philosophy prioritizes what is given in theexistentiation—otherwise represented as logical premises—by which itseeks to unravel the hidden articulated existentiations of man, not atimeless blueprint for a mass cult of pious consumers. As part of thecognitive architecture of perception, pregiven elements are precondi-tional to active (causal), living agency in such a way as to combine themutual procession of knower and known in a single movement of life.God’s Command too is a condition, not to say proof of His absoluteprerogative to create the world. God is said to create the world ‘after’there was nothing, in a sense, as a ‘house of language’ and with theplenary fullness of articulated existence. The ‘nothingness’ (6adam) that‘precedes’ the created world is illusory only in relation to existence assuch; it is not a contrary to it, since there is no question of duality,

22 Ibid, 223. Logic is the science of relations between concepts, which arefixed.

23 Ibid, 17.24 Cf. ‘De Heidegger a Sohravardı. Entretien avec Philippe Nemo’, by Phillippe

Nemo, Association des amis de Henry et Stella Corbin: http://www.amiscorbin.com/textes/anglais/interviewnemo.htm. Accessed 8 August, 2012.


http://www.amiscorbin.com/textes/anglais/interviewnemo.htm

http://www.amiscorbin.com/textes/anglais/interviewnemo.htm

dichotomy or bipolarity in ever-actual existence, as we will see. What‘opposition’ they exhibit comes to light, rather, as the dynamic motion ofcreation and re-creation, perdurance and annihilation, manifesting andveiling—all of which are amenable to the m;z:n (balance) as theirregulating principle. In this manner, knowledge—according to Islamicphilosophy—is indifferent neither to the association of the act of creationwith knowing nor their pregiven conditions, which provide the balance’sproper field of operation. M;z:n was not patterned according to anysingle branch we may today call ‘ethics’. Actionable or not, the centralpreoccupation of professional ethicists is to attach the prescriptive ‘oughtto’ as a value to everything falling within its purview. Philosophy, on theother hand, mints truth (Aaqq, Aaq;qa) as a performative causalrelationship involving the realities of things, which amount to morethan just an exercise in epistemology.

Many scholars in Islamic studies understate or completely ignore thesebasic considerations, but the old-guard Orientalists, wedded though theywere to a deeply contradictory and anachronistic picture of history, atleast had the advantage of clarity. However flimsy, the latter’s criteria forjudging Islam’s vast learning/intellectual activities have neverthelessbrought this medieval tradition into a sort of intellectual competitionwith modern thought, which after all did not appear out of the blue.G. E. von Grunebaum, tended to reduce ‘Islamic tradition’ to twoaspects, in the main: on the one hand, a ‘religion’ that reduces man to asterile relationship with the Creator based on a preordained,God-centred blueprint based on divine commands;25 whereas ‘we ofthe West. . .envisage adjustment to the world which we are subjugating’for a reason.26 And on the other, craft-based know-how glued to apractical mien that compared poorly with ‘Western’ standards formechanical progress.27 This view, like those of other essayists in Islamics,is too close to the Salafist strain, which recognizes no such thing as Manwho measures and is measured; who, true to the intention behind theQur8:nic sense of Aay:w:n (true life), articulates the living for the sake ofsalvation from this world for the Hereafter; who is the balance by whichall is joined and by whom all unfolds. Not the deepest of thinkers, vonGrunebaum, presents a curious but nevertheless useful misconstruction,given the importance with which tradition invests the practical sphere of

25 An Islam fixated on ‘a reasoned order already in existence’.26 G. E. von Grunebaum, ‘Concept and Function of Reason in Islamic Ethics’,

Oriens, 15 (1962): 1–17, at 17.27 Ibid, 16–17.


life, language and knowledge.28 It would be too convenient to turn hisinsouciance into a straw man, despite his faith in the ‘Western’ sense ofprogress and self-worth.

Ideological banalities aside, the most sensible question to ask iswhy Islamicate thought displays such a strong penchant for praxis inthe first place. And why indeed has it given rise to a world civilizationwhich, not only dominated the ‘medieval period’, but also laid thefoundations of something akin to what we seem to value most about‘modernity’?

KNOWLEDGE AND PRACTICE ASCONTINUOUS ACTIVITY

4adr al-D;n al-Sh;r:z; (ca. 1571 or 2–1640), or Mull: 4adr:, expoundedthe theoretical and practical predispositions with respect to man, who hesays is kneaded from two elements—a conceptual form of the command(B<ra ma6nawiyya amriyya) and a sensory matter of creation—just as hissoul has two aspects, attachment and detachment to matter (ta6alluq wa-tajarrud).29 Wisdom (al-Aikma) is accordingly variegated into two fields:theory and detachment, on the one hand; practice, attachment and self-creation (or self-molding), on the other.30 The Qur8:n, he argues, pointsto these ‘two fields of wisdom’ (fannay al-Aikma): ‘Verily, We havecreated Man in the best mold’ (Q. 95.4), where ‘taqw;m’ implies asymmetry of constitution, which of course is not peripheral to the idea ofthe balance. This :ya, he says, spells the form of man which is also the‘model of the world of the divine command’ (3ir:z 6:lam al-amr). Second,the Qur8:n says, ‘Then We cast him back to the lowest of the low’,indicating man’s matter containing the opaque and coarse bodies.31

Third, ‘. . .except those who attain to faith’, pointing to the final goal of‘theoretical wisdom’. And fourth, ‘. . .and do good works’ (Q. 95. 5–6),which has to do with the perfection of ‘practical wisdom’. Philosophy

28 To ‘prove’ his points about Islam, he often used half-digested references toeveryone from Husserl, the pre-Socratics and Levi-Strauss to a host of Americansocial scientists (Edward Said, Orientalism [New York: Vintage Books, 1978],296).

29 4adr:, al-Eikma al-muta6:liya f; al-asf:r al-arba6a (Beirut: D:r al-MaAajjaal-Bay@:8, 9 vols. in 3, 2011), i.31. (Hereafter: Asf:r.)

30 4adr: does not mean takhalluq only in the ethical sense of the wayfarerreturning to his or her created nature. Takhalluq has the same radical as khalq(nature, creation) and khalaqa (to create); hence, ‘self-creation’.

31 4adr:, Asf:r, i.32.


establishes these two ‘fields’ because it is driven by a concern for the‘imitation of the deity’. This is so fundamental to Islamic thought that itagrees even with those intellectual figures whose views were disputed ormaligned—such as MuAammad b. Zakariyya8 al-R:z; (ca. 854–925 or935). It is certainly in keeping with the Greek-inspired maxim above, thepurpose of which the Islamic thinkers understood as the imitation of Godby way of His names and attributes.

Although characterizing this mature philosophy as both theory andpractice would not be far off the mark, 6amal (practice, performativeactivity), which receives wide berth in Islamic philosophy, remains thekey to the ‘algorithmic’ character of weighing with the m;z:n.32 Ibn6Arab; (1165–1240), an indispensable authority on this approach, dividesit twofold: what is of the senses and what is of the heart, just asknowledge is said to be of the intellect and of the law. But both areaspects of the same reality. Each division has ‘a known weighing [waznma6l<m] with God when He bestows it’, for He asks the servant,whenever He charges him with a task, to ‘set up the weighing equitably[bi-l-qis3]. . . Therefore, He asks for justice from His servants in theirtransaction with Him and what is other than Him, including their ownsouls’.33 All activities join in their common pursuit of ‘justice’ throughweighing as a single, continuous act that binds theoretical knowledge toits performative consequences. Weighing remains an activity whether itoccurs in the realm of sensory experience or indirectly as mentalreflection.

Be it ‘practice’, ‘activity’, ‘performance’ or ‘operation’, 6amalencompasses every dimension of man. There is much textual supportfor this inclusiveness. As H:d; Sabzav:r; (1797–1878 or 1881) explains,4adr:’s understanding of Aay:t (life) as ‘the life of knowledge andcognizance according to God’ assumes several levels of life. First, there isthe life that accompanies existence and ‘roams’ where it does, just asGod’s life roams the selfsame existence that permeates all.34 Second, lifeimplies overtaking (al-dark) and acting (al-fi6l), just like the Living One

32 Paul Kraus has a useful introduction to m;z:n’s arithmetical and linguisticbackground, despite his fragmentary philosophical views: (J:bir b. Eayy:n.Contribution a l’histoire des idees scientifiques dans l’Islam (Paris: Societed’Edition Les Belles Lettres, [1942] 1986), 187–303.

33 Ibn 6Arab;, al-Fut<A:t al-makkiyya (Beirut: D:r al-Fikr, 1994), iii.6.34 Sabzav:r;’s commentary on 4adr:, Shaw:hid al-rub<biyya f; l-man:hij al-

sul<kiyya b: Aav:sh; H:d; Sabzav:r; (introduced, edited and annotated by Jal:lal-D;n Ashtiy:n;; Qum: B<st:n-e Kit:b Qum, 1382 sh [2003 or 4]), 684.


(al-Eayy) who gives forth with overtaking and acting.35 A literalrendering, ‘overtaking’ is another word for perceiving (Ar. noun, idr:k),one of life’s functions, since God cannot be said to ‘perceive’ through anyorgan. The third level entails that knowledge proceed according to Godand His angels, books, messengers and the Last Day.

It is worth noting that F:r:b; (d. 950) early on compared perceiving toengraving a tablet (lawA), just as God authors His creation with wordson a tablet.36 The spirit (r<A) of the person is that by which that personlikewise ‘engraves’. It originates in the essential reality of the world ofdivine command (min jawhar 6:lam al-amr). Essential reality remainsunchanged by any multiplicity belonging to the ‘letters’ or the perceptivefaculties, and it is not shaped by a form, molded by a nature or specifiedby a sign.37 Each person embodies two essential realities (jawharayn),38

one of which is ‘varied, formed, qualified, quantified, moved, at rest,corporeal and divisible’, the other not. . .You are a combination of theworld of created nature [6:lam al-khalq] and the world of Command(6:lam al-amr),39 because your spirit is from your Lord’s command andyour body is from your Lord’s created nature’.40 The faculties employedby the human spirit are similarly of two kinds, depending on whetherthey are charged with a specifically performative (muwakkil bi-l-6amal)or perceptual (bi-l-idr:k) task. He stipulates that everything within theirrange contributes to the human act, which ‘consists in choosing thebeautiful and the useful as pertain to the final goal (al-maqBad) known asthe Afterlife (bi-l-Aay:t al-6:jila). But foolishness overtakes equity (al-6adl), to which an intellect then gives guidance for the purpose of trialand error, offers intercourse, and inculcates training after a soundnessfrom the primary intellect (al-6aql al-aB;l)’.41

He explains that equity (6adl, i.e., in the ‘weighing’) can only berestored through a further factor referring back to the essence. This is

35 Dark, darraka and other forms derived from the root d-r-k have variousshades of meaning: overtaking, accomplishing, attaining, comprehending,perceiving, and attaining to a perception.

36 F:r:b;, ‘‘K. FuB<B al-Aikam’ in 6Im:d Nab;l (ed.), al-Thamara al-mar@iyya f;ba6@ al-ris:l:t al-f:r:biyya, (Arabic text, with introduction and notes; Beirut: D:ral-F:r:b;, 2012), 273. This ascription of this work to al-F:r:b; is uncertain.

37 Ibid, 271.38 This idea predates Ibn 6Arab;’s own description.39 Amr signals the decisive, actuating and creative essence. Cf. Rustom, The

Triumph of Mercy, 21–3; the author illustrates 4adr:’s exegetical view of 6:lamand 6:lam;n (ibid, 141).

40 F:r:b;, ‘K. FuB<B al-Aikam’, 271.41 Ibid, 273. This is very close to the thinking behind Ab< Bakr MuAammad

Zakariyy:8 al-R:z;’s (d. 925 or 934), or Rhazes’, allegory of the fall of the soul.


how ‘guidance’ is said to be only by the root (aBl)—e.g., al-6aql al-aB;l (theroot or primary intellect). Man receives the ‘guiding intellect’ because ofthe weakness of his perceptual faculties (his first point of contact withreality) and general constitution. Short of a root or an essence to anchorhis thought and practice, neither the power of choice nor the line ofthinking that valorizes it would be of avail. Given this obstacle, finding‘equity’ requires a specifiable range of activity for the active interventionof the ‘intellect’ (6aql) on behalf of man. The senses pave the way to theperception of pure meaning or concept (Birf al-ma6n:), so one cannotcavalierly expunge them for the sake of the imaginary. These are ‘part ofa mixture’ and cease at some stage in the perception. But while this is so,nothing can stabilize concept and meaning after the sensation ceasesbetter than purity from matter.42 With the formation of a definiteconcept or meaning (taBawwur al-ma6n:) representing the reality from itsmanifold externalizing implications (law:Aiq al-gharbiyya), the percep-tion then stabilizes through the power of the theoretical intellect (al-6aqlal-naCar;), which F:r:b; likens to something polished to refinement.43

The spirit, being a ‘polished thing’, is itself a tablet, where theintelligibles (al-ma6q<l:t) from the divine emanation (al-fay@ al-il:h;)become fixed like images (ashb:A) on a polished mirror.

Without the will to posit purpose, obviously none of this would holdmuch significance and practice could not mean, as it should, a lifeactivity, the finality of which stands for a ‘new creation’, the conse-quence. For there can then be no stable concept, manifestation from thehidden or, for that matter, creation from ‘nothing’ without God’s willand command. These terms relate to His creative power as the PrimeMover. In perception, though, primary concepts are directly intuited andrequire no movement at all for their comprehension. They resembledirect experience in that, in principle, they have no intermediaries orsensory organs. In a sense, they are logically self-identical, since the act ofknowing them resembles the rounding of the circle of identity in less thanan instant. To become fixed (th:bit), conceptualization (taBawwur)aspires to the same stability of form (B<ra). Truth determination bondswith perception in this manner. The trouble is that this truth can neverexactly correspond to the totality of sensations that make it up.

However, there are different kinds of ‘identity’ (Ar., huwiyya bi-l-dh:t)and ‘contradiction’ (Ar., @iddiyya). Although the law of identity isnormally understood as A = A, for instance, the copula in this predicationhas received various interpretations. Modern philosophy considers it

42 F:r:b;, K. FuB<B al-Aikam, 275.43 Ibid, 276.


ambiguous by reason of the variable-A and its range.44 But thetraditional law of identity can also be expressed mathematically asx = x, ‘either of the functional calculus of first order with equality, or inthe theory of types (with equality defined), or in the algebra of classes,etc’. Then there is identity as the essence of truth, the identity of subjectand predicate (of early modern philosophy), and so on. ‘Metaphysics’,for lack of a better word, has to do with both the mental operation thatequates A with A and the existential by which the point of origin quatruth/reality governs the existentiation, failing which there would be onlyeither/or and no vanishing ‘in-between’. However, in becoming A, is Areally A, a variable-A or an entirely distinct B? B (or not-A) is clearly nota variable of A or, in philosophy, an intermediary or a midpoint betweenthe two limits circumscribing a whole. Although conceptually distinct asnoun forms, knowledge and existence spurred interest in various devices(e.g., analogy) by which to relate one level, station, etc., to another forthe variablity or ‘becoming’ within a single permament whole, which canbe divided indifferently to infinity. Infinite regress never constitutes anacceptable expression of the object questioned; having an intermediaryor isthmus that joins two things for a third is unavoidable if there is to be‘knowledge’ and ‘knowing’.

As the true intermediary point, m;z:n brings into play the so-called‘practical’ exigencies of man, not just scientific explanations—morecompletely, the contingent operational unfolding of a simplex accordingto the determinate purposes of human beings. Normally, we interpretpurposeful action in terms of means and goals. Like a beacon, the m;z:nguides each step in strikingly similar fashion as a calculus of movement,change, transition, derivation, etc. It is also ubiquitous among themedieval branches of knowledge as a criterion (mi6y:r), principle(mabda8), rule (@:bi3), in a secondary sense. Ibn 6Arab; associated itwith every ‘field of production’ (Ban6a),45 level, state or station overwhich the weighing (al-wazn) judges ‘in both knowledge and practice(6ilman wa-6amalan)’.46 Thus, ‘concepts have a balance in the hand ofreason named logic (al-man3iq) that includes two scales named premises.To speech belongs a balance named grammar which weighs utterances inorder to verify the meanings (al-ma6:n;) denoted by the tongue’s

44 q.v. ‘Identity, law of’, Dictionary of Philosophy (ed. Dagobert D. Runes;Totawa, NJ: Littlefield, Adams & Co, 1976), 140.

45 God is the 4:ni6, the Creator who ‘produces’ the world. 4an6a can also meancraft, art, occupation, etc.—basically, any purposeful activity to create somethingfrom something else.

46 Ibn 6Arab;, Fut<A:t, iii.6.


utterances (al-lis:n).47 Everything that has a ‘tongue’ is itself a balance,which is the known measure that God has combined with the bringingdown of His blessings. [God] says, ‘And We did not send it except in aknown measure’ [Q. 15.21]’.48 Each application of ‘balance’ occurs in itsown manner on the same principles of weighing. These principlesregulate the relation of knowledge up to its practical instantiation in thesame way the essence governs its respective manifestations. In a way,then, ‘practice’ (6amal) acts as the branch (far6) of knowledge, such thatboth root and branch continue to be linked at every level of theemanation, not as a pure identity, but with every act of Ban6a, fi6l or 6amal,which are all similar in meaning.

6Amal requires the m;z:n for a willed ‘operation’ resembling speech, apurposeful activity that presupposes a willing agent endowed with thepower of speech, or nu3q. The unfoldings of reason, which aspires to thereal and to the true, would be inconceivable without this associationwith language. Divine speech is essentially the Command, or that aspectof essential creative agency by which the absolute essence, beyond whichthere can be no separate human or other material manifestation, survivesthrough all its manifestations. This is not epistemologically differentfrom, say, ‘humanness’, the full dimensions of which can never beconcretely and completely embodied in any single human being.Humanness qua essence ‘survives’ in all its instantiations on the patternof articulated speech, the parts of which are not given in the wayphysiological functions are in relation to the body. This is why 4adr: andHeidegger set out consciously to loosen Aristotle’s rigid focus on‘substance’ as the prime root of everything entifiable.49 4adr: and theIsfahan school focus decisively on motion in the substance itself(al-Aaraka al-jawhariyya) as a simplex.

It is important, finally, to distinguish 6amal (practice) from fi6l (act,actuality), a synonym that does not automatically translate into moral‘deed’ and in philosophy means literally something actualized.‘Actuality’ was important to the philosophers of il:hiyy:t and the lateLatin Schoolmen for different, sometimes radically diverging, purposes.

47 Lis:n in the sense of tongue refers also to one of the balance’s parts. Justbelow, Ibn 6Arab; likens man to the lis:n on the balance (see Ibn 6Arab;, Fut<A:t,iii.6).

48 Ibid.49 The Islamic philosophers rejected substance at the heart of the question of

divinity. 4adr:’s most enduring contribution is to have transformed the conceptof substance, just like Heidegger. With movement by essence, the act ofexistentiation is more plausibly the articulation of existence essentially andbodily to avoid breaching either God’s oneness or hiddenness.


Whereas the active f:6il (‘actor’) has to do with an acting agency—inGod’s case, pure actuality—the passive maf6<l refers to the effect in apermanent relation to its causal agent so long as the cause persists. Butsemantically, fi6l may itself be an operation (6amal) regardless of whetheror not that operation has been completed in the concrete.50 This agreeswith both the standard usage and the concept of m;z:n as an ‘algebraic’device of sorts, where fi6liyya (‘actuality’ or ‘pure actuality’) would beunintelligible without the singular essence qua the creative source, andbefore which every other consideration ultimately must dissolve.

SIMPLES AND COMPOSITES

In hindsight, theory and practice partake of the same field of philosophicactivity, to which we may now add wherever composite beings arefound. Like all created beings, man is simple in one sense, composite inanother. As an intermediary between two realities the perceiving, unitaryagent is called the Perfect Man (al-ins:n al-k:mil), who is said to beneither a particular or a universal. Fusing two realities, the Perfect Manconsummates the upward/downward movements in divine manifest-ation. As an intermediary, he cannot achieve complete self-identity, atleast not in the strict logical sense where A = A, because the root of hisexistence neither is posterior to nor depends on the elements of hiscomposition. Paradoxically, as long as man acts on his own behalf, not asthe rump of some other being and purpose, there is no question of astatic self-identity, either in the pursuit of knowledge or on the Day ofReckoning. By ‘living’ one means to refer to living personhood(shakhBiyya). The truest identity this ‘person’ receives accords with hisAaq;qa and what essential pregivens articulate his concrete existence. Asa field of activity, the pursuit of knowledge (6ilm), which is an attributeman shares with God, is coterminous neither with itself nor with anyspecific instance of its activity in the lap of the multiplicity. This is theonly locus where something new may be said to come forth, as the wordBan6a implies for the creation as a whole. In every instance of production(Ban6a), a new element comes to light, where ‘coming to light’ refers tothe exteriorization, manifestation, etc., of the inner recesses of theindecipherable simple essence.

The ‘nothing’ that precedes every new creation, not the absolutenothing, is therefore not completely vacuous. In the mind, at any rate,something has to be partly known or assumed for it to properly known.

50 Lis:n al-6Arab (Beirut: D:r 4:dir, n.d.), xi.528.


Whereas the ancient Peripatetics privileged the rigidly stable concept asthe desirable endpoint of this process, Ibn 6Arab; argues for thedirectness, rather, of the noetic unveiling (kashf ), which is based on a‘vision’ bestowed by one’s Lord (6al: baB;ra min rabbihi), who addresseswhatever His servant’s constitution or nature calls for. This assumes asoupcon of knowledge ‘before’ the search for knowledge begins, even inthe absence of any proof of the object’s existence. Unveiling is bestthought of as a mode of knowledge. Unvarnished but not arbitrary, itdoes not simply connect to the object. It is the realization of knowledgefor the specific pupose of a request. Compared to it and the ‘guiding’intellect (6aql), reflective thinking (fikr) can only hold the promise ofperfecting knowledge for the created constitution of the person whothinks. Indeed, Ibn 6Arab; recognizes it as the very receptivity of humanperfection (qub<l kam:lihi). In turn, this receptivity requires a balance(m;z:n) to make things known to the fullest possible extent and, in thisway, set the seeker’s constitution (fa-yuq;muhu) for the weighing.51 Inthis way, construction (tark;b) and composition (ta8l;f ), which arepregiven, play a part in the outcome of measuring with the balance,which outcome makes its appearance as a primordially new unity.

Clearly, the classical distinction between simple (lit., ‘singulars’) andcomposite realities (al-Aaq:8iq al-mufrada wa-l-murakkaba)—both ofwhich are tributaries to the concept of mufrada (simple or isolated), aword derived from fard and about which we shall have more to say—helps clarify the nature of that man who ‘measures every thing’. The keyto being fard (single, individual, uneven, odd) is, then, the intermediacybetween the two realities in a root–branch relation, as presented above.Fard signals this peculiar characterization thanks to its unity qua the firstodd number; it should not be thought of as a combination in a duality oftwo realities. To explain the advent of unity in the many, Ibn 6Arab; andthe mystical philosophers begin with idea of the ‘realities of things’(Aaq:8iq al-ashy:8), a common enough expression in nearly every sciencebut extremely important in systematic science. These realities are deemedpermanent and stable because they do not resemble things of the senses.Knowing them in their simplicity rather than their composition becomesa problem when their truth cannot be settled through conventional logicalone, a problem which only the paradigm of speech seems capable ofovercoming.52 This is why Ibn 6Arab; interprets the active unity ‘secretly’conferred upon tark;b linguistically.53 Whereas tark;b simply meansassembling something out of several elements, ta8l;f is closer to fusing,

51 Ibn 6Arab;, Fut<A:t, iii.7.52 On the realities as the product of mixtures, see ibid, i.55–6.53 Ibid, i.56.


synthesizing and composition, with no particular ‘spatial’ connotation.Ta8l;f can also mean composing a text.54 Now, when man’s constitution(khalquhu) requests an ‘insight’ (kashf ), as expected with the immediacyof experience, there is no intervening factor between the receptacle andthe guiding intellect, which is a succour from God.

4adr al-D;n Q<naw; (1207–74), the most important systematizer ofphilosophy in the Seljuk period after Ibn 6Arab;, homes in on Ibn S;n:’s(980–1037) inquisitive doubt that man is capable of knowing the ‘reality ofthings’ in any formal sense because neither construction nor constitution inand of itself can offer such grounding; parts do not in and of themselves addup to a unit. If man cannot know the realities of things in this primitivefacultative sense—that is, through their attributes and qualities—then thereis no such thing as even a root knowledge of all the realities (idh l: mawq<f6alayhi fa-l: mawq<f fa-l: 6ilm bi-l-Aaq:8iq aBlan), according to him. Despitetheir epistemological simplicity, we nevertheless expect to know the realitiesof things primarily or essentially. This is unfeasible from the standpoint oftheir specification in respect of their exclusive oneness (min AaythuaAadiyyatuh:), because we know a thing, he says, only ‘in respect of theattribution of existence to our specifications, the raising up of life andknowledge through us, the lifting of hindrances that keep us from what wedesire to perceive. Consequently, all we know of the realities are theirattributes qua attributes, not in respect of their realities for what takes place,as Ibn S;n: acknowledged’.55 This amounts to a full-blooded rejection of theAristotelian fixation on substance, but not, as one may imagine, of thepossibility of true or genuine knowledge.

Shams al-D;n b. MuAammad Eamza Fan:r; (1350–1431), one ofQ<naw;’s most important commentators, parenthetically notes that suchan illusion accounts for the disagreements and proves there can be noknowledge of the realities without such lifting of hindrances ‘uponrealization in the station of kuntu sam6ahu wa-baBarahu’ (‘I am hishearing and sight’).56 The last of this sentence is the coveted outcome.Human beings may ‘know’ the realities only insofar as they are worthy ofthe living, self-acting and -creating essence that permeates its everymanifestation, not as beings with a penchant for moralizing or theprisoners of their own self-enclosed psychological states. That he andQ<naw; should refer the question of knowledge (in Arabic, 6ilm, not justthe anthropocentric ma6rifa), effectively the knowledge of the ‘realities ofthings’, back to man might appear odd given his denial that this

54 F:r:b;, ‘K. FuB<B al-Aikam’, 273.55 Ibid. Ibn S;n: ‘acknowledged’ it in his K. al-Ta6l;q:t.56 Shams al-D;n MuAammad b. Eamza al-Fan:r;, MiBb:A al-uns bayn al-

ma6q<l wa-l-mashh<d (Beirut: D:r al-Kutub al-6Ilmiyya, 2010), 136.


‘knowledge’ was even possible for man. It makes sense because Q<naw;construes theoretical knowledge as an aspect of the spirit (r<A), whichgoverns a common ‘spiritual’ field where the root activity can take placeby way of consonance, perfection and, finally, the exchange (badal) ofattributes.57 These appear distinct only when the act of knowing isartifically made to be the simple reality of the pair.

6Amal in its basic fundamental sense brings knowledge and practicetogether in this spiritual field of activity as a single operation at the core ofwhich remains, however, the essential distinction between God and ‘whatis not God’. This is the distinction that creates all other distinctions, notonly because it preserves God’s utter hiddenness, but also because with itessence is conferred upon an active, creative mode of the ‘one’ as themanifestation of what the hidden one hides. In this sense, distinction is thevery stuff of creation and safeguards the divine hiddenness together withthe manifesting form of creation. Knowledge is, then, relational notsimply because there are two interlocutors, but inasmuch as it is acognizance of the divine emanation exteriorizing in the essences ofpossible things (ma6rifat al-tajall; al-C:hir f; a6y:n al-mumkin:t) either asthe world’s connection to God or as His connection to the world.58 Thatevery knowledge occurring to man is attached either to God or to what isother than God paves the way to the sole real object of attachment(muta6alliqahu al-Eaqq).59 Knowledge according to God’s hidden He-ness(6ilm al-huwiyya al-b:3ina) requires the lifting of any consideration of theworld, whether the world’s attachment to God or His attachment to it,and a relationship of ‘consonance’. Furthermore, a person observing andattending to existing things and for whom God is the object of attachmentis not the person who does the same by way of attachment to the world,even if this is the same activity.60 In the former, knowledge is perfectible,not frozen for all time in all its external features.

57 ‘The discourse on God’s word and name ‘‘al-RaAm:n’’ in the basmala hastwo aspects: essence and attribute. Therefore, whoever interprets [this name] bysubstitution (fa-man a6rabahu badalan) renders it an essence (ja6alahu dh:tan);whoever interprets it descriptively (na6tan) renders it an accident (6ara@an). Theattributes of soul are six; life is a condition for these attributes, making themseven. All these attributes belong to the essence, which is the alif existing betweenthe ‘‘m’’ and the ‘‘n’’ in the name RaAm:n’. (Ibn 6Arab;, Fut<A:t, ii.157).

58 That is, the connection of deity (il:h) with ‘that to which it is deity’ (ma8l<h)and that of the ma8l<h to the il:h (Q<naw;, Mift:A al-ghayb, 73). See mydiscussion of Q<naw;’s ‘permanent distinction between God and the other thanGod’, in Thinking in the Language of Reality. 4adr al-D;n Q<naw; (d. 1274) andthe Mystical Philosophy of Reason (Montreal: Xlibris, [2012] 2015), 279–99.

59 Q<naw;, Mift:A al-ghayb, 72.60 Cf. Ibid, 73.


Q<naw; is then able to distill a ‘knowledge attained’ from self-identity,an 6ilm A:Bil: attachment to God Himself can only refer to somethinghidden in Him (min Aaythu b:3inuhu), to His He-ness (huwiyyatuhu)under an—albeit ‘secretly’—exteriorized aspect. Because reason unaidedcannot securely fasten itself thus, man its expositor has to rely, literally,on his thinking as a share of the spirit of thinking. At the level of thedivine name ‘Exterior’, where God is known through His manifestation(tajl;hi), unveiling (kashf) apprises the seeker, at the very least, thatbehind what he or she perceives of the many exteriorized manifestationsand experienced forms exists another factor (amran :kharan; literally,another ‘deciding command’) back to which their precepts refer. Whilethese ‘relations’ (nisba, i@:fa), as he calls them, are not strictly speakingabout movement, it is possible to express them in terms of movement,given that movement requires either an internal or external force totrigger it. Islamic philosophy clarifies the movement of perception andthinking based on the levels and perspectives relative to each other inever-changing patterns, not just for classification purposes. Technically, itis algebraic reasoning—rather than ‘analogy’ or the syllogism as is oftenthought—that coordinates this movement,61 though this approachdeepened also the general thinking on the tangled branchiations ofreligio-intellectual doctrines and methods (i.e., in the madh:hib).‘Opinion’ on this grand scale must have been dreaded for the pervasiverelativity and doubt (shakk) it seemed to suggest. The works of Q<naw;,which evince a strong concern with doctrinal disagreement,62 helpedraise the debate on knowledge, what is knowable, etc., to a far richerlevel precisely because it was possible to know despite—or indeedbecause of—their relational character.

THE LIFE PRINCIPLE

Rather than marshal every available textual support, let us now sketchthe general features of life, existence and m;z:n, and their interconnect-edness in man.

61 The value of algebra to logic as a science of relations was understood verylate in the West thanks mainly to Charles S. Peirce’s doctrine of logical relationsin the nineteenth century.

62 See Q<naw;’s Mift:A al-ghayb, I6j:z al-bay:n and correspondence with F<s;:4adr al-D;n Q<naw;, Annaherungen. Der mystisch-philosophische Briefwechserzwischen Sadr ud-Din Qonawi und Nasir ud-Din Tusi (ed. and comm.. GudrunSchubert; Beirut: Franz Steiner, 1995).


Life enthralls and puzzles for some of the same reasons that ‘existence’does. Though both are considered simple ‘primary concepts’, they havemeant many things. For example, Aay:t in Arabic, as in English, cancarry the plainly ethical meaning of ‘the life of this world’. The Qur8:nproclaims, ‘What is this worldly life if not a passing delight and play?’(Q. al-6Ankab<t, 29. 64). Yet, the living soul cannot but seek knowledgefrom within the spatio-temporal of Aay:t al-duny: (i.e., the life of thisworld) even if the world is play and amusement. This is because theQur8:n regards life with both unmitigated gravity as well as a matter ofamusement for human beings.

Life may be conceived of as the body’s ‘animating force’. The Ikhw:nal-4af: defined ‘living being’ (Aayy), in the more restricted sense ofmovement given it by Kind; (801–873), as ‘what moves of its ownaccord,63 reaffirming both movement and the freedom to move in theact. The famous al-Sayyid al-Shar;f al-Jurj:n; (1340–1413) echoed thiswith a precise definition of Aayaw:n (animal or living being) as ‘the bodythat grows and senses and which moves according to will’.64 This isdistinctly different from speaking of life as the ‘beginning’ (or principle)of the human soul, or even the active source of all life, al-Eayy being the‘Living One’ of the Qur8:n and one of God’s names. This is why 6Abd al-Kar;m al-J;l; (1365–1428) recapitulated it in five senses. First isexistential life (Aay:t wuj<diyya), which permeates all existents andconstitutes their very essence.65 Second, ‘spiritual life’ (Aay:t r<Aiyya), orangelic life, which belongs ‘fundamentally to the existents in the spiritualworld (al-6:lam al-r<A:n;)’; the animals partake of the spirit but have nointellectual faculty. Third is the life of the beasts, consisting of ‘heat andhumidity which are natural and latent in the blood penetrating the cavityof the liver’; in short, the animal soul. Fourth, Aay:t 6:ri@a—roughlytranslatable as ‘ascribable life’—comprising ‘the perfections that occuraccording to the thing obtained—for example, that knowledge forignorance is life, or that spring for the earth is life. . . or the rise of thesun’s luminosity [ka-ishr:q @aw8 al-shams] upon the surface of the earththat is likewise life to the earth’. And fifth, ‘the life of the concomitant

63 Ikhw:n al-4af:, Ras:8il Ikhw:n al-4af: wa-khull:n al-waf:8 (ed. Khayr al-D;n Zirikl;; Cairo: al-Ma3ba6a al-6Arabiyya, 4 vols. in 2, 1928), iii.320.

64 al-Sayyid al-Shar;f Jurj:n;, K. al-Tacr;f:t (Beirut: D:r al-Kutub al-6Ilmiyya,1983), 94. This definition betrays the influence of empirical medicine, which, ofall the disciplines, was instrumental in anchoring the medieval conception ofanimal life to its organic functionality.

65 6Abd al-Kar;m b. Ibr:h;m al-J;l;, Mar:tib al-wuj<d wa-Aaq;qat kull mawj<d(ed. 62Bim Ibr:h;m al-Kayy:l; al-Eusayn; al-Sh:dhil; al-Darq:w;; Beirut: D:r al-Kutub al-6Ilmiyya, 2004), 40.


root figure (Aay:t al-hay8a al-aBliyya al-l:zima), every aspect and everyconsideration of which belong to perfection to the greatest extent’. Thisis not an exercise in semantics, but the concatenated meanings of a singlereality. Whereas some existents exhibit only one type of life and othersmore, J;l; says, only the Perfect Man (al-ins:n al-k:mil) encompasses allfive; hence his rank as jam6 (comprehensive union). ‘Perfect Man’ is animportant concept to retain, because without it no comprehensive union(considered the cause of manifested life) is conceivable, but onlyseparation and death, assuming those were then even possible. F:r:b;held that Aayy (living) may be ascribed to every existent, or mawj<d, thatattains its ‘last perfection’ and reaches this existence ‘so as to producefrom it that whose nature it is to be from it exactly like its nature to befrom it’.66

Given these senses, life then cannot be reduced to a passive receptacleor an object for sensory observation. Zamakhshar; (1075–1144) ascribesto the mutakallim<n the idea that a living thing, or Aayy, is what hasknowledge and power, the two most consequential divine namesaccording to Islamic tradition.67 N:sir-i Khusraw (1004–1060) preg-nantly defines ‘living’ as that from which an action proceeds, applyingthe same principle to ‘power’, ‘will’, ‘act’, and other nouns.68 Theseprimordial associations give an indication of how the divine name lifeoperates and, indeed, what the main object of philosophy is: life or theliving, existence or the existent? The Mu6tazila like NaCC:m (d. ca. 835–845) judiciously denied that the substantive ‘life’ (as opposed to verbalnoun ‘living’) could apply to God because God was said simply to live, inactu. The majority followed Jubb:8;, for whom certain divine attributeswere identified with the divine essence, though they may be attributed toboth God and the human being.

From another angle, 2mul; (1319 or 1320–1385) alludes to 6ayn al-Aay:t (source or wellspring of life) as the interior (b:3in) of the nameEayy,69 since the Qur8:n associates water with life. Whoever imbibes it

66 F:r:b;, K. Ar:8 ahl al-mad;na al-f:@ila (ed. Albert Nader; Beirut: al-Ma3ba6aal-Kath<l;kiyya, 1964), 32.

67 Zamakhshar;, al-Kashsh:f (Cairo: Ma3ba6at MuB3af: al-B:b; al-Ealab;,3 vols., 1948), i.291.

68 Eric Ormsby, Between Reason and Revelation. Twin Wisdoms Reconciled(an annotated English translation of NaB;r-i Khusraw’s Kit:b-i J:mi6 al-Aikmatayn; London: I.B. Tauris, 2012), 87.

69 Sayyid Ism:6;l 2mul;, J:mi6 al-asr:r wa-manba6 al-anw:r, texts publishedwith introductions by Henry Corbin, Osman Yahia and Sayyid Jav:d Fab:3ab:8;(Tehran: Centre de Publications scientifiques et culturelles, 1989), 381.


shall never die, because he lives through the life of the Real—God’s.70 Inhis commentary on 4adr:’s al-Shaw:hid al-rub<biyya, Sabzav:r; tellinglyrefers to ‘the water of life which is existence’71 to indicate the activemode of the singular source of all existents and living beings, whereuponliving—a divine name—is equivalent to existing. God, as well as createdand uncreated things (necessary of existence), are considered existents(mawj<d), though no one thinks that existents or ‘living beings on theirown measure up even to ‘what is other than God’ (creation) as theirproximate cause, let alone the divine essence under any guise. That onlyGod is the Living One and who alone knows Himself in His absolutehiddenness does not, however, contradict the master idea that everythingliving in the world lives through the life of Man, whose life is thatof God.

For mature Islamic philosophers like 4adr:, life and such are as youhave learned in connection with the root of existence (aBl al-wuj<d),correlative (al-mu@:f ), when (al-ayn), continuity and so on (Asf:r,ii.660). Necessary Existence (w:jib al-wuj<d) is first in that His lifecannot but be existence, because He is a simple reality. Even moreexplicitly, ‘Know that the life of every living being is a mode of Hisexistence, since life is the thing in respect of the acts that emanate fromliving things’ (ibid, 659). It is only the factor of corporeality thatdistinguishes ‘what is God’ from ‘what is other than God’. Living thingsare of two kinds, he states: that for which a pregiven coming-to-be(kawn) is necessary (i.e., their living bodies), and that for which this isnot necessary because bodies are irrelevant. The second kind obviouslyrefers to the separate and the immaterial forms, for which existence is byessence their very life (kawn wuj<dih: bi-6aynihi huwa Aay:tuh:) andwhich do not suffer the composition of matter and form (ibid, 660)Finally, the life that is in the separate substances and immaterial forms ‘isnot that by which a thing is alive, but the very fact that it is alive(Aayyiyyatihi)’ (ibid).

70 The Qur8:n says: ‘And from water we made everything’. 2mol; refers toal-m:8 al-mu3laq (absolute water), which corresponds to absolute knowledge,or mu3laq al-6ilm. Absolute knowledge cannot be ascribed to anything, nor canit be ascribed truth or falsehood. The product of ‘living water’, contrary to theworldly sense of wellwater, is ma6rifa, Aikma, akhl:q, taw:@u6, khush<6, iAs:n,waf:8, Aay:t, mur<8a, futuwwa, shaj:6a. . .6ad:la. God’s Throne is above the‘formal water’ (6al: al-m:8 al-B<r;), since the latter exists only ‘after’ theThrone in a time proper to the one and with the absence of time for the other(ibid, 519–22).

71 Sabzav:r;, commentary on 4adr:’s al-Shaw:hid al-rub<biyya, 704.


When 4adr: interprets the concept of life as ‘principle’,72 though, it ‘isnot [equivalent to] the concepts of knowledge and power’ with which itis usually grouped among the divine names. Referring to a contemporarykal:m view of how the divine names are related to the divine essence, headds, ‘It is as if it were the principle of both’ (ibid, 660). With respect tohuman beings this principle enables life to act like other perfectionalattributes (al-Bif:t al-kam:liyya),73 figuring as it does among theperfections of the existent qua existent (ibid). At the same time,‘perfection’ cannot be specified by any natural, quantitative or numericalmethod with respect to either the Absolute Existent (al-mawj<d al-mu3laq) or to the existent qua existent, since it is ‘affirmable only of themabda8 (principle) of existence and its first perfection with thatperfection’.

4adr: uses mansha8 (origin, source) and mabda8 (beginning, principle)several times in this section in connection with life in the physical world,which he points out is perfectible through perception and action (bi-idr:k wa-fi6l). Perception in animals connotes the sensory and ‘act’ thespatial movement spurred on by desire (ibid, 657). Perception higherthan sensation (e.g., intellection) is different. ‘If what is its mabda8 ofperception is the selfsame and indistinguishable mabda8 of its action,without any modification, such that its own perception is the action andorigination (fi6lahu wa-ibd:6ahu), then it is all the more deserving of thisname because it is free of composition’ (ibid). By the same token, the‘true Eayy’ (the Living One) cannot be affirmed by means of anycompositeness (tark;b), especially through the human faculties thatperceive it. The Necessary Being is a simple reality that possesses theexclusive oneness of the essence (aAadiyyat al-dh:t), such that God’sintellection of the things (al-ashy:8) is their very emanation from Him.Put differently, from the simple inclusive oneness (w:Aidan bas;3an) stemboth this intellectual principle and beginning (mabda8) of the whole.

Mabda8 (principle) would not make complete sense if it did not alsomean ‘beginning’; however, the beginning 4adr: has in mind is neitherthe absolute origin nor a beginning in space/time. Let us for a momentassume that such an origin refers back, not to what actually originatesbeings, but more categorically to what cannot but be hidden from viewin any current mental operation. Epistemologically, it would have thefunctional equivalence of ‘nothing’ (6adam), though not as an opposite ofexistence as such. In his discussion on perception (idr:k) and intellection(ta6aqqul ), 4adr: distinguishes 6adam simply as the hiddenness and

72 Cf. Aristotle, De Anima 402a, 6–7; for life explained as movement, see405b, 32.

73 That is, divine attributes by which human beings may perfect their souls.


nothingness ascribed to ‘matter and material [things]’, which ‘have nopresence in themselves (l: Au@<r lah: f; nafsih:) and not a thingaccording to that existence’ (ibid, 659). Perception is thus more easilygrasped as consisting ‘of the existence and presence of a thing to a thing’,which is true to the literal sense of the word Aa@ra—or ‘presencing’, asHeidegger would say. Failing this, the hiddenness and nothingness ofmatter and material things’ comprehensive existential union (ghaybatih:

wa-6adam wuj<dih: al-jam6;) leave the perception merely unknown. Andthere it remains unknown until form is manifested. The divine nameLiving One (al-Eayy) alerts, then, to an intellectual existence consideredin relation to ‘the form of the whole, which is intellected also in thesecondary intention. . .since the Living One effects both perception andagency’ (ibid).

MIZ2N AS WEIGHING AND GUIDANCE

M;z:n, which involves a living process, is derived from wazana74 (toweigh) and commonly refers to the instrument used for weightmeasurement. In philosophy, the principles of weighing and valuedetermination were especially conducive to reasoning past the formalismof the logicians. Weighing operates on the assumption of a movement oftwo scales which begins in earnest from a point of imbalance, which isset aright by leveling both sides for a unique measurement. What is oddand single in this calculus—in short, fard—can only be valuated on thecorresponding unity and oneness. The singularity of fard, resting as itdoes on this oneness, reflects creative power behind manifested existence.‘Life’ shares this efficient oneness with existence under an aspect wherethe hidden oneness is set in motion as an equally unique process ofself-exteriorization.75

That Ibn 6Arab; should refer to the simple realities as al-mufrada(singles or, numerically, odd), instead of bas:8i3 (simples), is telling, sincea similar pattern of transference permeates the process that includes thesimple realities. Fardiyya is germane to the effusion of the one fromthe one and the many from the one, but it is especially sensitive to thecomplication of man’s perspectival faculty of perception. For, how is it

74 Widely used, the word thaqlayn (two weights) in the expression taw:zun6amal al-thaqlayn is Qur8:nic (see Fan:r;, MiBb:A al-uns, 154).

75 This is not a new idea. See Richard MacDonough Frank, Beings and TheirAttributes. The Teaching of the Basrian School of the Mu6tazila in the ClassicalPeriod (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1978), 42.


even possible to conceive of the ‘highest philosophy’ or wisdom if manboth measures and is measured? There is but one simple answer:‘philosophy’ conceived in these proportions is not about explanation—ofcreated beings for scientists or philosophers—but about living in all thephysical, social, political and spiritual dimensions of life on the scale ofMan, not just human beings. This ‘living’ is self-moving and entails theproportionality of ‘weighing’ in its guiding functionality as a mode ofexistence.76 In short, the m;z:n—which conceptually derives from Man,indeed is Man—cannot replace human agency; it merely formalizes thepurpose of the operation and provides the guidance.

In this respect, it can be descibed more abstractly as an algorithm,which consists of ‘a mechanical step-by-step procedure operating onsyntactically well-defined symbols in a way that captures relationsamong the things the symbols represent’.77 Mathematically, an algorithmis a finite set of cases with a table of values corresponding to all thepossible answers to a question or problem. Its operation requiressyntactic and semantic rigour and a priori elements similar to the terms/premises of a syllogism, written or spoken words, letters, sentences, etc.It generates the most appropriate answer to a question based on a finitenumber of steps. That said, no ‘algorithmic solution’ can dictate the actof living; nor is the philosophic m;z:n reducible to a m;z:n ofratiocination for just any end.

On the one hand, the Qur8:n describes itself as having come downwith it (Q. 21. 48); on the other, it likens both itself and man to m;z:n.78

All share in the living, purposeful movement where two elements are setin motion for the ‘measurable’ relationship. Because weighing requiresmovement, the m;z:n’s field of operation are congruent with existentia-tion (;j:d). Aristotle explained both ‘life’ and ‘existence’ in terms ofmovement variously defined as actualization from a state of potentiality,locomotion, etc.,79 where life is quintessentially what is self-driven in itsnatural, uninterrupted course as an ‘unmoved mover’. The soul, forexample, need not move just because the body moved. One may refer tothis as a kind of self-guidance, but it remains a guidance when thestructure of reasoning behind weighing is duly considered with its root or

76 ‘Algorithm’ is based on a transliteration of the ninth-century mathematicianal-Khw:rizm;’s name in the Latin translation of his theories, Algoritmi denumero Indorum.

77 ‘Algorithm’, The Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy: www.rep.routledge.com/article/GLOSSITEM11. Accessed 13 August, 2013.

78 Rustom identifies 4adr:’s views on the ‘reality’ of the Qur8:n relative to thestructure of existence: The Triumph of Mercy, 21–6.

79 See De Anima 412a, 3–4, 6–7.


www.rep.routledge.com/article/GLOSSITEM11

www.rep.routledge.com/article/GLOSSITEM11

source of life, not as a self-enclosed self-generating system. In fact, 4adr:distinguishes between the hid:ya and irsh:d, the latter suggesting themore emphatic rightly or correctly guided.80 Divine revelation (waAy)provides hid:ya for man’s instruction and learning (namely, of pregivenknowledge). The Qur8:n also provides irsh:d, that human beings mayact with equity (bi-l-qis3) and ‘do commerce’ with justice (mu6:mala-tuhum bi-l-6adl). As in the m;z:n, this counsel invokes two persons—abuyer and a seller. As the Qur8:n makes explicit, the real transaction iswith God for the Afterlife, which turns out to be of ‘profit’ in this lifeonly, because the fulfilment of earthly life takes place only in the next. Inthis respect, of all the rational tools at man’s disposal m;z:n comesclosest to the guidance intrinsic to the original act of existentiation. Asword/speech (qawl/kal:m), its soteriology can be didactically brokendown to its algorithmic elements, as indeed Ibn 6Arab;, Q<naw; and somany philosophers have done.

Islam, after all, was based on kal:m All:h, His qawl. Central to itscivilizational project was not ‘religion’ as we know it today, but the openand fecund idea of the Book, which enabled it quickly to find its bearingsin relation to a spent Hellenic legacy and to develop its own intellectual,scientific, spiritual and religious institutions. This is the first instance inhistory where systematic thinking appears to have found its place in thearticulation of social order and human relations as a full-blownmulticonfessional, multi-faceted civilization. It is precisely the coherenceit maintained in this richness that writers on Islam overlook with thelegalistic sophism of the Wahh:b;-cum-Salaf; worldview, which is nowmore or less what passes for ‘Islam’ in the West today.

THE LANGUAGE OF EXISTENTIATION

F:r:b; writes, ‘The First Existentiator (al-m<jid al-awwal) is alive, beinglife itself, although this does not lead to two essences; rather it is basedon a single essence, such that ‘alive’ means that He intellects the bestobject of intellection according to the highest intellect; or that He knowsthe best object of knowledge by way of the best knowledge’.81 ‘To live’(Aayy), he asserted elsewhere, is a metaphor for the true life—orAayaw:n, which does not always mean ‘animal’, being the Qur8:nic

80 4adr:, Tafs;r al-Qur8:n al-kar;m (Beirut: D:r al-Ta6:ruf lil-Ma3b<6:t, 1419/1998), viii.330.

81 F:r:b;, K. Ar:8 ahl al-mad;na al-f:@ila, 32.


word for the Afterlife.82 The connection of life, existence and intellectionthat the m;z:n depicts has been a feature of Islamic philosophy from theoutset, and incidentally, can be explained using the light analogy, forwhich Shih:b al-D;n YaAy: Suhraward; (1154–1191) is best known.Affirming their connection by essence, not just their accidential features,allows Suhraward; in turn to concentrate on life not just as self-movingor –generating, which is a blunt concept, but as the ‘thing’s being evidentto itself, the living thing being percipient and active [al-darr:k al-fa66:l].You know about perception and [the attribution] of activity to light isclear, since light emanates by essence. Thus, pure light is alive, and everyliving thing is a pure light’.83 ‘Evident to itself’ here indicates neither truelogical identity nor attribution by correspondence, which in any casefailed to satisfy either Aristotle or the Islamic philosophers, who turnedto the Neoplatonic theory of perception and intellection at least forinspiration. Thanks to this opening Suhraward; established himself bypresenting the ‘existentiating light’ determining the essence of life for allcreated beings, including the human soul, as a trope to account for theemanation of the many from the one.

Kind; takes a different tack. His description of living being (Aayy) as asubstance (jawhar) cannot pass muster, since substantiality is a relationalconcept and applies only to ‘created living being’; it cannot stand as thegrounding essence.84 True, created beings are equally the ‘shadow ofexistence’ (Cill al-wuj<d), the ‘contingency’ which Q<naw; collectivelyrefers to as ‘the ocean and presence of created being’.85 That man shouldrecapitulate two worlds—divinity and created being—and stand as theiristhmus (barzakh) is, he warns, only a synoptic or undifferentiated(mujmal) manner of stating the issue. Confusion arises, says Q<naw;,when Man is so obscured that only a multiplicity of humannesses isvisible and no single willed purpose (al-mur:d) is discernible in thesynopsis or confers identity.86 The line separating existence from

82 Perfect State: Ab< NaBr al-F:r:b;’s Mab:d;8 :r:8 ahl al-mad;na al-f:@ila (arevised text with introduction, translation, and commentary by Richard Walzer;Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985), 76.

83 Suhraward;: The Philosophy of Illumination: a new critical edition of thetext of Eikmat al-ishr:q (with English transl., notes, commentary, andintroduction by John Walbridge and Hossein Ziai; Provo, Utah: BrighamYoung University Press, 1999), 83–4. Unfortunately, the authors’ arbitraryrendering of key expressions and arguments makes the English text somewhatconfusing for the novice.

84 Ya6q<b b. IsA:q al-Kind;, al-Ras:8il al-falsafiya (ed. MuAammad 6Abd al-h:d; Ab< R;da; Cairo: D:r al-Fikr al-6Arab;-Ma3ba6at al-I6tim:d, 1950–53), 267.

85 Q<naw;, Mift:A al-ghayb, 100.86 Ibid.


intellection can be any obscured view that degenerates into such a fiction,always lagging behind the purpose focusing the will on the givenconcern.

Ir:da (will, intention)—both it and mur:d (purpose) are derived fromthe same radical—can belong to only one person, not a collection ormultitude of persons. The implications are rather astonishing, as thisimplies that ‘community’, which is built on relations, is itself relational(i.e., composed of at least two elements). Therefore, m;z:n has to operateto the measure of the singular Man qua fard. In order to ground thehuman will according to a transcendent purpose the m;z:n cannot beidentified with an amorphous, self-reproducing collection of humaninstantiations. Epistemologically, it may appear as only a simulacrum ofMan’s life, an artificial construct of self-organization and self-movement.But this holds only if one discounts F:r:b;’s theory of perception, whichconnects intellection and existence.

This is very significant, because Fan:r;, for one, avails himself of theliteral meaning of darraka (‘to reach’) in order to describe the ‘perceiver’,above all, as a ‘relation of joining’ (nisbah ijtim:6iyya) dependent on leveland type of joining, as follows.87 ‘Rise to the perceiver..’., he says—inother words, rise to the relational level and see with the eyes of theperceiver, that you may see what the relation brings forth.88 The higherthe ascent, the clearer the perception, the further recedes the multiplicityof relations, and the more efficiently possibilities are realized. Any‘relation’ here can only be that of the ‘perceiving’ agent primordiallyoriented toward his object of perception.

By capturing this sense, Ibn 6Arab;’s concept of triplicity bringsknowledge and practice together dynamically as a single purposefuleffusion in the form of articulated speech rooted in God, because onlyHe knows Himself. Jand; (d. 1300) follows him and Q<naw; inconfirming knowledge in its subordinate role relative to (or following)the object known (al-6ilm t:bi6 li-l-ma6l<m) and shedding light on thesyntactical properties of what I call the ontic orientation.89 He saysGod’s ‘eternal knowledge’ itself (al-6ilm al-azal;) signifies ‘that God hasmade knowledge. . . subordinate to the object known (al-ma6l<m), whichmeans that knowledge attaches to the object known according to [the

87 Fan:r;, MiBb:A al-uns, 179.88 Ibid, 182.89 Mu8ayyid al-D;n Jand;, SharA FuB<B al-Aikam (ed. Sayyid Jal:l al-D;n

2shtiy:n;: Intish:r:t-i D:nishy:h-i Mashad, 1361 sh/1982), 450. For anappreciation of taba6iyya’s significance for this new philosophy, its provenancein Arabic philology and grammar has to be taken into account.


latter]; else it would not be knowledge’.90 The exegetes’ and jurists’general interest in the syntax of language and dialectics of speech is not,of course, what the mystics and philosophers saw in the Book. So, whatis it about the revealed Qur8:n, over and above its paper embodimentthat attracts expert and mystic alike?

The same may be asked of Sabzav:r; about his own philosophicalpoem, the ManC<ma, on which he penned an influential commentary; orfor that matter of Martin Heidegger for his interest in the German poetHolderin, Meister Ekhart and the pseudo-Scotus. The partial answer isthat living language appears to contain the mechanics that allow it toplead the philosophers’ case more capably than formal logic, which ismerely a tool for mental representation.91 By historical standards alone,the Qur8:n is not a book one selects off a shelf. It is an address to andabout man in the form of a single divine word (qawl), on the one hand,and the divine word qua articulated complex or whole known as kal:m,on the other. In comparison, ordinary language mimics the divine word’spower to open and close, veil and disclose the hidden realities throughoutward expression. In their respective ways, though, both ordinarylanguage and the Word of God posit, one, the noetic-existential elementsthat form each ‘word’ and ‘sentence’; two, the rules of grammar; andthree, the word meanings. A m;z:n like the syllogism cannot discharge itsfunction without pregiven terms and premises—a recognizable ‘alphabet’and the building blocks of an argument. Every language, to be a languagefor current use, has to display the structural features and coordinatingrules necessary for the intelligible conveyance of meanings.

But what captivated the Islamic philosophers about ‘revelation’ wasnot ‘language’ or ‘speech’ per se, but what the speaker/perceiver hidesand makes visible in his ‘intermediary’ role. One would be hard pressedotherwise to see how speech could create or annihilate the physicaluniverse on its own. This is not the game of magicians. If words are to bemore than ‘phantom images’ or ashb:A in the mind, then any efficacyconferred on speech and language has to reside in their relationalfecundity as possibilities. A relation (nisba) is not real in the ordinarysense. Its function consists in joining two elements either as abstractcorrelatives or as a root–branch articulated according to their creativefactor or command. There is no path to the truth without the onticorientation expressed in the manner of a single commanding, guidingsource. The essence rushes forth and withdraws with every instance of

90 Ibid.91 What Pierre Lory calls ‘letter science’, in the J:bir b. Eayy:n tradition,

reflects this logocentrism of Islamic thought; see Lory, La science des lettres enislam (Paris: Editions Dervy, 2004).


knowledge, every existentiation, just like speech, which is made up ofsounds but also of silence, pause, stress, etc. Existence as well asknowledge are grasped as the interplay between b:3in (interior) and C:hir(exterior). There is no question of an identity between them except byway of ‘approximation’, which, in turn, conjures up the algebraic searchfor a solution.92

In sum, if one assumes every utterance is made by someone, forsomeone and to someone, at least one of those ‘someones’ has to beliving, and there is no rule against speaking to oneself. In this sense,speech and book may be the epitome of willed expression and a mode ofbeing, but communication is not characteristic of sentient living beingswith the capacity only to use their sensory organs. Creative life—originally the domain of medicine in ancient times93—attunes thought toits purposes and through this grants the power it has to fuse the parts ofspeech, knowledge and existence together by the root ‘reality of thething’ (Aaq;qat al-shay8). This safeguards their affinities, which is whythe object of inquiry revealing itself from the root in the first place occursby way of consonance. Islamic philosophy has to clarify consonance asthe very articulation of life for Man as a singular, purposeful living being;else, what is the sense of anyone even reasoning by ‘consonance’(mun:saba), as opposed to a mechanical theory of correspondence, to getat the truth?

EXISTENCE HAS NO CONTRARY

Both medieval and ancient philosophy are agreed that truth bycorrespondence, like any sensory mirage, is a poor way to describereality, much less partake of it. This is perhaps why 4adr: demurs thatthe concept of life (like that of existence) cannot be conditional uponwhat we observe of it with our sensory organs.94 Reasoning fromsensations in this fashion leads only to ramshackle inferences. This iswhy, too, Ibn 6Arab; invokes the nodal concept of unveiling (kashf) toestablish the exclusivity of existence and, indeed, life. Kashf surpassessensation in crucial respects. Both occur without intermediaries, but theydiverge on the question of certainty. Whereas kashf establishes the

92 The thing can only be known by approximation, a notion Rashdi Rasheduses to describe the algorithmic procedure for a solution.

93 Plato described the cosmos as an animal—that is, as living.94 Ibn 6Arab;, Fut<A:t, iii.324.


exclusivity of life, on par with existence, the senses confirm only that theworld is divided into living and nonliving.95

According to his expansive definition, innate life (al-Aay:t al-fi3riyya)permeates all things existing: man, animal, plant and even mineral.96 If‘there is not a thing that does not extol God with His praise. . . nor anythat praises except the living, then every thing is alive’.97 The world ‘inits entirety is alive’, he says, ‘because the absence of life (6adam al-Aay:t)or of the existence of the existent (aw wuj<d al-mawj<d) from the worldis [itself] not living’. Life in this essential sense is identifiable withabsolute existence. That existence has no contrary, therefore, can meanonly one thing: there is only existence. This appears to gainsay not onlythe common consensus about how our multiplicity-ridden world turns,but also how the m;z:n works. Weighing requires not one existentiatingfactor or byproduct of one, but two sides to compare for a measurement.While unique and exclusive, however, existence is also inclusive in that itconstitutes the ground of every existent. This inclusiveness introduces themanifold of nonexistence on a second order. While existence as suchcannot be compared or weighed, it nevertheless disgorges nothingnessand manifestation, presence and absence. From this our philosophersinferred an ‘existential opposition’ for the special sense of muq:bala(opposition) they gave to weighing with a balance, as we shall see.

An important consequence of this train of thought is that the 6adam(nonexistence, nothing, absence or privation) said to precede creationcannot be its root or the root of anything in any primary sense. ‘Root’emerges only with ‘branch’ in the existentiation, which in turn ispredicated on a single, exclusive existence. 6Adam has ‘no divine basis inexistence (mustanad il:h; f;-l-wuj<d). . . whereas every created thingcannot but have a basis’.98 Likewise, death is simply the separation of the‘living thing qua regulator (mudabbir) of a living thing’ from ‘living thingqua regulated’—root from branch.99 With separation, death expresses arelation of nothingness, not of any existence, which nothingness passeson to passive irrelevance and indifference. Existents are related only to

95 He denies such a division even if sensory observation compels us to thetruism that ‘death follows life’.

96 Ibid, 490–1.97 Ibn 6Arab;, FuB<B al-Aikam, 211. Based on Q. 17. 44, ‘And there is not a

thing but extols Him His praise’. FuB<B al-Aikam, 170. Su6:d al-Eak;m puts thisin the form of syllogism (al-Mu6jam al-4<f;, [Beirut: D. Nadra, 1401/1981]).

98 Ibn 6Arab;, Fut<A:t, iii.324.99 Ibn S;n: held that life finds its contrary in death (@idd al-Aay:t al-mawtu),

where ‘the body dies but the soul does not’: SharA Kit:b ith<l<jiyya (Paris: DarByblion, 2009), 144.


life such that the essence’s manifestation is to essence what the branch isto the root.

The pure ‘theorists’, says Ibn 6Arab;, reckon from this that God knowsall things because they assume that to Him belongs the ‘root knowledgeof all things’ and His knowledge transcends (tanz;hihi) all sensations. Butthis root knowledge has to be ‘stripped of its garments’—i.e., thebranches, decorations and all else emanating from the root of structuredcreation—before it can be said to give forth whatever is created with orattributed to it. The root extends the branch according to what itexteriorizes, but the branch will not persist in its ‘branchness’ and thelatter’s precepts (baq:8 f; far6iyyatihi wa-aAk:mihi) except through theirproper root. But since divine transcendence has no attachment, nothingcan issue from God’s hidden Essence (min dh:tihi) before the divinename ‘Living’ finds precedence over another name for a reality (i.e., tobring that reality to existence). Whatever lives in this world or beyond isalive only as the branch (far6) of a particular nominological root (aBlasm:8;). And what is ‘bequeathed’ of knowledge—recalling that bequestsnormally occur after ‘death’, as Ibn 6Arab; points out—is what theKnower bequeathes through His divine names. This knowledge, he says,signifies that God can actualize the beginning (yaf6alu l-ibtid:8) of whatHe has not fulfilled through human agency.100

In a noetic (light) continuum, not to be confused with numerical orgeometrical infinity, both knower and known are similarly conjoined atthe root of the very existentiation that renders them distinct.101 In thismanner, man is God’s instrument and acts on his own behalf simultan-eously. A true Akbar;, 2mol; develops the logocentric framework as theBook writ large, the Qur8:n as the prototypal act of praise (tasb;A).102

Cast as a book, this act extols God through the names by which the onepraising ‘arrives’ at his object of praise in the first place. Similarly tomanifestation from the hidden, divine speech or revelation (waAy)implies the further technical (is3il:A;) sense of an originating eventindissociably linked to the time of ‘request’, whether for a revelation oran unveiling.

By ‘technical’ Amol; does not mean contrived, though. Nevertheless,this technical lexicon is precisely what demarcates the mystics and

100 For this to hold, names and atttributes must at some point be exchanged inthe noetic continuum; hence the concept of badal (substitution).

101 Ibn 6Arab; renders the elements in this dialectic as two personifications (ibid,Fut<A:t, i.179, 185).

102 This is in keeping with Ibn 6Arab;, Q<naw; and others, for whom theutterance of divine praise was another name for creation. (Cf. Ibn 6Arab;,Fut<A:t, iii.324.)


philosophers from the ideological militancy that began to flock aroundIbn Taymiyya (1263–1328). Ibn Taymiyya, the irrepressible scepticalfideist, instead regarded the plain mind (Bar;A al-6aql) interpreting theplain meanings of the Qur8:nic text as the only path to felicity. Herejected the mystics and philosophers because the ‘technical’ (amriB3il:A;) nature of their discourse, which he claimed was in breach of thepristine comprehension he attributed to the Salaf, intruded into ‘mattersof the spirit’, and confounded the common man.103 In short, heconnected what he regarded as the pristine religion of the forefathers toplain reason on the grounds that they are consistent with each other andwith the Qur8:n and refractory to later and foreign additions. Hisremedy for the world’s ills was adherence to the Salafiyya and the ‘plainintellect’, which curiously enough is tantamount to thinking withoutroots, references, history or any particular structure. It sounds oddlyclose to any run-of-the-mill strain of modern positivism.

The point is that the plain mind bears no essential relation to thearticulation of life beyond surface meanings made to conform to ‘public’pronouncements about someone’s official ‘truth’. Scripture then becomesbut a ream of declarations timelessly indifferent to either the root (aBl) orthe consequence (nat;ja, athar), the same ‘timelessness’ that the essayistsof Orientalism have propagated about Islam. Islamic tradition took thelife of living beings not just as an observable phenomenon, but as thepossibility of fulfilment in the Afterlife, the ‘true life’ opened up by theintellect (6aql). Whereas the life of the intellect, by which it becomes‘evident’ to itself, finds its opposite only in death by separation, the plainintellect’s life has eternally to dictate opinions it mistakes for knowledge.Such petty authoritarianism has stood Ibn Taymiyya in good stead withrootless, profoundly atomized societies, be they of the Wahh:b; or‘Western’ brand. Sadly, recent history seems to have proven IbnTaymiyya’s ‘plainness’ to have been an empty vessel now filled to thebrim.

EXISTENCE, NOTHING AND THE TRIPLICITYOF THE BALANCE

Life meets its opposite in death when it no longer finds its origin in thedivine root, the existentiating source of every being. Something similarmay be said about existence; but again, absolute existence tolerates no

103 Ibn Taymiyya, K. al-Ra@@ 6al: al-mantiqiyy;n (Beirut: D:r al-Ma6rifa,n.d.), 177.


‘other’ either as a contrary (@i@@) or a likeness (mithl).104 This is because‘what is not God’ is not the contrary of ‘what is God’ or requiresanything like the Judaic ‘thou’ of recent vintage. Still, as we saw,‘opposition’ (taq:bul, examined below) plays an essential part in themanifestation thanks to a submeaning allowing for the articulation ofexistentiation as a movement from a hidden source.

If it is true that time is the measure of movement (Aaraka), and space isinextricably linked to time (as M;r D:m:d and 4adr: forcefully argue),should one then construe the act of creation ex nihilo, from which ourown cognizance of ‘existence’ cannot rightly be disentangled, throughwords like ‘before’ and ‘begin’, which would impose a time sequence forthe effusion of the one to the many?105 Plato raised this complication inthe Timaeus with his explanation of the world’s beginning. Literalinterpretations are not the most fecund way to think about origins,however, because something of the hidden (i.e., a command or factor;Ar., amr) has still to manifest itself behind a veil of hiddenness for themanifestation to ‘begin’, in the first instance, and for ‘creation’ to comeforth, in the second. The efficient cause governs the process as a whole inthis manner from beginning to end. Furthermore, this holds as long as itpersists as a single cause, qua manifesting root, whereby the process itselfis one effect—since from the one there is only the one, not themultiplicity.

This situation helps explain why M;r D:m:d (d. 1630) refers thequestion raised by Ibn S;n: in al-Shif:8, about whether the world iseternal or created from nothing, to a threefold vessel of the being of timewith respect to the act of creation.

1. Being in time (zam:n taken sequentially, where ‘first’ is distinct from the

‘last’.

2. Being with time (dahr belongs to the permanent things qua permanent things

that see everything in zam:n).

3. Permanent being with permanent (sarmad, the highest level encompassing all

other times).106

104 4adr:, Asf:r, i.232 ff.105 In his debate with Ab< E:tim al-R:z;, Ab< Bakr al-R:z; proposed his

allegory of the fall of the soul as a solution. Modern cosmologists approach theriddle very differently and their explanatory theories function for a fundamen-tally different purpose than in philosophy.

106 B:qir al-D:m:d al-Eusayn (or M;r D:m:d), K. al-Qabas:t (ed.M. Mohaghegh; Tehran: Mu8assasa-i Intish:r:t-i va Ch:p-i D:nishg:h-i,Tehran, 1998), 3–8.


Each of these ‘times’ is enclosed by the one ‘above’ it, but the whole ofcreation cannot be preceded by a nothing (since ‘everything created thinghas a cause’), which is true only during the manufacture of physicalobjects. The sheer nothing (al-6adam al-Bar;A) cannot be said to exist‘before’ sheer existence (Bar;A al-wuj<d), so the nothing must precede thewhole of creation in a special nontemporal time, albeit one the intellectfinds hard to grasp, as M;r D:m:d remarks.107

4adr: considers the movement measured by weighing—existentiation—based on a submeaning of ‘opposition’,108 because only the coming-to-becan express opposition, not pure essence or existence, which remainincomparable. Otherwise everything would cancel itself out on the‘nothing’. Shaykh AAmad AAs:8; (d. 1826) took 4adr: to task fordismissing nonexistence as having no positive existence at all.109 Withouttaking up the issue, let us just say that 6adam can be as trivial as a logicalequivalence with some unknown, the unknowable, what is merelyassumed and invisible in a given inquiry, or any other hidden factor(amr)—which are simply questions of relevancy. To 4adr:, ‘naturalmovement’ illustrates the sheer positivity of the existant qua existant,where nonexistence stands for the privation in an act of existing movingfrom potential to actualized existence.110 Unlike in modern positivism orIbn Taymiyya’s medieval version of the positiveness of what is plain to themind, the ‘positivity’ of the existents stems from the singular existencethey receive from the exclusive hiddenness of the absolute. God knowsbecause the sarmad, the highest time scale, properly belongs to His uniqueand exclusive divine hiddenness, which does not admit the ‘sheer nothing’.Thus, singularity is conferred on the existents and no two things are thesame, which agrees perfectly with the claim that existence can have norival or contrary.

Ibn 6Arab;’s elucidation of the single acting, seeing, hearing life of theexistentiating existence testifies to the role of ‘the form of unevenness’ inthis process—that is, the singularity of the form of the fard, on the ideathat the first uneven or odd number is three, not one. This agrees with therule that only the one can issue from the one, well above the many, evenif no amount of mental reflection can completely crowd out the many,

107 Ibid, 7.108 4adr:, Asf:r, iii.232 ff. Cf. YaAy: Suhraward;, ‘K. al-Mash:ri6 wa-l-

mu3:raA:t’ in Oeuvres philosophiques et mystiques [Majm<6a-i muBannaf:t-iShaykh Ishr:q] (ed. and introd. Henry Corbin; Paris: Maisonneuve; AcademieImperiale Iranienne de Philosophie, 1976), i.317.

109 Christian Jambet, L’Acte d’etre. La philosophie de la revelation chez MollaSadra (Paris: Fayard, 2002), 186 ff.

110 Ibid.


even here. But if we assume that unevenness (or oddness) expresses insome manner the productive inclusiveness of unique existence, as Ibn6Arab; certainly does, does this not taint existence with the relationalityof unevenness, since there is no odd number without an even? True,‘evenness’ is descriptive of two items in a state of evenness. But Ibn 6Arab;insisted that between any two opposing things weighed lies a triplicity,111

because ‘relation’ need not impugn existence when it is of the nature ofroot and branch. Weighing is itself a ‘relational’ concept, but it issemantically associated to 6adl (justice) and aptly represented by abalance with two scales. That the opposite of justice is injustice suggestsan ‘unjust’ state of inequality in need of redress through the balance.Weighing (wazn) is this act of rectification, where rendering justice(i6tid:l) consists in rectifying two scales for a determination of the massof only one of the pair for a new operational outcome. Existence confersuniqueness on all its existentiations in this way, because weighing is not abalancing act for the sake of a static cosmic ‘harmony’. The primarypurpose of weighing is to produce a specific outcome (logically, aconsequence), if only a definitive one, that would otherwise stand for themeasure of the physical object’s mass—equal to the existence conferredupon the reality of the thing. This is the goal of existentiation in a willedprocess for a new creation.

This process is called triplicity (tathl;th), which has been the hallmarkof mystical philosophy at least since the early fal:sifa. M;r D:m:d evenbegins his K. al-Qabas:t with an analysis of the triplicity of time, thetripartite division according to being, as we saw above. Tathl;thconsiders the preponderance of one side or another in the balance inorder to carry their relative inequality forward as a single existentiation.According to Ibn 6Arab;, fard stands at the origin of becoming.112 As M;rD:m:d notes, tathl;th, the first uneven number ‘3’, is called by thephilosophers ibd:6 (literally, ‘new creation’), which he understoods moreor less as the presencing (ta8y;s) of ‘is’ (ays) after ‘is not’ (laysa)—in short,existentiation.113 Weighing discloses existence in its articulations as a‘becoming’ as more or less formalized principle of this emergence,

111 See Ibn 6Arab;, Fut<A:t, iii.6.112 Cf. ibid, ii.519.113 M;r D:m:d, K. al-Qabas:t, 3. Sabzav:r; calls tathl;th (triplicity) ‘shirk’, but

only in reference to a vulgarized version of the Christian Holy Trinity: Sabzav:r;,SharA al-ManC<ma f; al-man3iq wa-l-Aikam, (eds. Easanz:da al-2muli, Mas6<dFalib;; Tehran: Nashr-i N:b, [? 1995] ii.810–11). In his commentary on IbnArab;‘s FuB<B, Af;f; (132–3) wrongly supposed this to be Ibn 6Arab;’s sense.


though as a concept triplicity has untold applications.114 In FuB<B al-Aikam, Ibn 6Arab; codifies it thus:

Know, may God grant you success, that the [Creative] Command in itself is based

on oddness [al-fardiyya], to which belongs triplicity, and goes from three

upward. . . The world is created according to this divine presence [al-Aa@ra al-

il:hiyya]. For He says, ‘Our Word (qawlun:) to a thing, if We will it, is that We

say to it (an naq<la lahu) ‘Be’ (kun),115 and it is’ [Q. 16. 4]. This is the essence of

a will and a word. Were it not for this essence and its will, which is the relation of

‘orientation through particularization’ to the bringing-into-being of something

(nisbat al-tawajjuh bi-l-takhB;B li-takw;n amr m:) and were it not thence for His

Word ‘Be’ to that thing upon that orientation, that thing would not be.

Thereupon, the triple unevenness also exteriorizes (Caharat) in that thing. . .

[being], its thingness (shay8iyyatuhu) [i.e., qua exteriorly structured sense],

hearing [as an act of receiving] and compliance (imtith:luhu) with [God’s]

Command to bring the thing into being with existentiation. Therefore, three lies

opposite three. [The thing’s] permanent essence (dh:tuhu al-th:bita) in a state of

nothingness116 [occurs] upon weighing of the essence of what existentiates it. It is

hearing upon weighing of the will of its existentiator and its reception in

compliance with what bringing-into-being was commanded [of the thing] in the

weighing of His Word ‘Be’. . . God has established bringing-into-being for the

thing itself, not for God. What is God’s in it is His Command, specifically117. . .

which relates the bringing-into-being to the selfsame thing, based on God’s

Command, and in His Word is He the Truthful (al-4:diq)!118

114 Letter-coded, it looks something like what Ibn 6Arab; writes in Fut<A:t,ii.157. 2mul; (J:mi6 al-asr:r wa manba6 al-anw:r, 58–9) employs praise and thedivine names as devices for triplicity and ‘creation’, besides ‘water’ and ‘absolutewater’, to depict life.

115 Kun, the imperative form of k:na (to be).116 Nothingness or absence because the permanent essence would then be

unrealized.117 Here, Ibn 6Arab; maintains the singular form, ‘Word’, underscoring the

singularity and unity of the Command. As Eric Ormsby notes (Between Reasonand Revelation, 9), ‘The imperative mode in grammar denotes a simplecommand (amr), but it also corresponds to the First Intellect in the celestialhierarchy and so foreshadows God’s own command’.

118 Ibn 6Arab;, FuB<B al-Aikam, ii.115–16. ‘Al-4:diq’ suggests an epistemic‘resolution’ akin to Leibniz’s understanding of certainty rooted in an identity. SeeMartin Heidegger, The Metaphycial Foundations of Logic (transl. MichaelHeim; Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1st Midland edn., 1992).


For illustration, he gives the example of the master who commands theservant, ‘Rise [qum]’, as did Fan:r; with respect to the commandingheight of the perceiver. Qum has the same root as iq:ma and maq:m,which are connected with weighing. The command (amr) belongs tothe master, the action to the servant. In other words, ‘Nothing in theservant’s rising will equal the former’s command for him to rise; therising belongs to the servant, not the master. The root of the bringing-into-being rises on the pattern of triplicity; that is, from the threebetween the two scales—the scale of God and that of creation.119

For support, he invokes the paradoxical exteriorization of the ‘one’ (quaessence) in the rather stultifying terms of numbers to clarify his meaning.Each number is accompanied by an exteriorization, he says, because theessences (a6y:n) of two, three, four and on to infinity are said to beexteriorized through the exteriorization of the (essence) one.120 This, heargues, is the aim of their connection, which allows for the ‘thing’(al-shay8)—i.e., ‘one’ qua object of inquiry—to be what is itselfmanifested. For every pair of interlocutors (here God and HisMessenger), the one vanishes (gh:ba) in the other and one finds onlythe one, or the Messenger of God. He regards this as the endpoint of theconnection (gh:yat al-wuBla) called ‘unity’ (ittiA:d) by which the two isitself a one. Beginning and end share in this manner the same reality andorder of governance. Nothing is added existentially, as would be the casein an identity like ‘Zayd is the selfsame 6Umar’. On the contrary, theessence of the instantiations of this human species is that of humanity(al-ins:niyya); Zayd remains what he is in himself (huwa huwa) inrespect of humanness (al-ins:niyya), not personhood (al-shakhBiyya).There is no question of either an identity of two individuals orisomorphism. The sympathy (in6i3:f) of ‘one’ for itself at the level(martaba) of ‘two’ is the selfsame exteriorization of two and, thence,equivalent to the selfsame one, and so on for the rest of the infinite seriesof numbers.121 Conceiving of or thinking of oneness (of God) by anyother means would achieve only the opposite of oneness, leaving twoirreducible elements—e.g., the interlocutors—not the ‘one’. It may soundstrange to make this long-winded argument just to prove a ridiculouslysmall point: the near-tautology by which we understand only too well

119 Ibn 6Arab;, FuB<B al-Aikam, ii.116. Ibid, 116. Just below, Ibn 6Arab; convertsthe principle of triplicity into a logical proof for the statement ‘Everythingcreated has a cause’ (thus confirming the role of formal logic as a type of m;z:n,not as its replacement). On the relation between triplicity and logical proof, seeibid, 116–17.

120 Ibid, 519.121 Ibid.


that the thing is what it is (manifested). Though not quite A = A, this inthe rough is what reason strives but cannot attain through formalthinking or subterfuge. Unraveling the identity, one loses sight of ‘one’ ofthe roots as fard (odd), even as it continues to permeate and conferoddness upon every number.

For Jand;, an influential commentator on the FuB<B who epitomizedthe creative spirit awakened by the Qur8:nic scripture, fardiyya remainsthe unequivocal reason for existentiation and bringing-to-being (sababanli-l-;j:d wa-l-takw;n).122 In this sense, he says, tathl;th properly belongsto the divine presence ‘fardiyya’ and is the very reason that the ‘door ofthe consequent opens up’ at the very root of bringing-into-being.123 This‘secret’, he says, permeates all the levels of existentiation, among whichhe includes the existentiation of ‘conceptual proofs’ (;j:d al-adilla al-ma6nawiyya).124 To others who followed in the footsteps of Ibn 6Arab;like Fan:r; (the first to assume the Ottoman title of Shaykh al-Isl:m) this‘secret’ points to the temporality of the agency. It seems almostinconceivable that the ‘vicar’ of such agency should amount to acultured dilettante with no existential interests.

In a discussion on the cyclical paradigm of the wal:ya, Fan:r;incorporates this broader ‘interest’ into what he called the ‘consonanceby consequences’ (nat:8ij al-tawf;q). He views the master function ofhuman agency emerging through the prism of submission to God (al-waC:8if al-isl:miyya) as im:m 6:lam al-shah:da (whose preeminence inisl:m, or the submission to God, symbolizes the ‘beginning of conson-ance by consequences’), im:m 6:lam al-jabar<t wa-l-malak<t (preeminentin ;m:n, or faith, which is the middle of the consonance), al-qu3b al-j:mi6(preeminent in the seeing and doing of the good, the very purpose ofconsonance), etc.125 Though worth noting, given Fan:r;’s importance inthe transition to the Ottoman period, this area is too complex to examinehere.126 To Ibn 6Arab; and his numerous followers such cyclical time(zam:n, not to be confused with dahr) ‘alerts to the existence of the

122 Jand;, SharA FuB<B al-Aikam, 449.123 Ibid, 446–7. Kal:b:dh; based many of his technical definitions on al-Eall:j,

who refers muq:bal:t to ‘related opposites’. See Ab< Bakr MuAammad b. IsA:qKal:b:dh;, al-Tacrruf li-madhhab ahl al-taBawwuf (ed. AAmad Shams al-D;n;Beirut: D:r al-Kutub al-cIlmiyya, 1413/1993); and ‘al-Eall:d j ’, EI2).

124 Jand;, SharA FuB<B al-Aikam, 447.125 Fan:r;, MiBb:A al-uns, 148–9.126 On man and origin, see ibid, 561ff. The law of identity is not foreign to

wal:ya as an articulation of process, about which Fan:r; had much to say. Thecycles of wal:ya close in one sense but open for a new creation; ‘repetition’ is nota parody of the previous cycle, as beginnings and conlusions are true even in acontinuum.


Balance’ and flows from the letters in the balance upon the mention of‘zam:n’ (earthly time).127 There is no question that this balance hasnothing to do with idle interests as these are not trivial but millennialissues. M;r D:m:d forthrightly states that ‘the totality of order of thewhole is the personhood of the temple of the Perfect Man [shakhBiyyathaykal al-ins:n al-k:mil]’.128 He takes care to uphold, not an attitude ofpassive curiosity toward the world, as one might impute to a ‘person’,but the personhood of creative agency. Personhood (shakhBiyya) on thescale conceived in and since the medieval period would have beenmeaningless without agency in the coming-to-be; more specifically, thepersonifications of ‘humanity’ within their proper spatiotemporaldimensions, whatever they may be.

There are many ways to address this and the eschatological matter ofthe resurrection with which it is intimately connected.129 Rather thandeal with this complicated topic here, however, let us just mention somegeneralities offered by Fan:r; about consonance (al-tawf;q, philosoph-ically synonymous with Q<naw;’s mun:saba) of the consequence, whichhe predicates upon the consummation of knowledge (taAB;l al-6ilm) basedon God, creation, the law and the path of salvation.130 As the‘consequence’, authorization (or deputation) (antaja al-in:ba) confirmsa return of the exterior from discord and transgression by way of thehidden: from without God toward God. The return, he says, secures thehealth of the consonance, though health may be determined also forthinking. The consequence of retirement (khalwa, or seclusion, refershere to the necessary separation of the distraction of the senses fromrooted intellection) is the thought or concept (al-fikra) declared uponattainment of all that necessitates the consummation. The consequenceof thinking (al-fikr) is the memory of what was requested in the firstplace in a new guise, and so on.131

MULL2 4ADR2 ON THE NATURE OF WEIGHING

We are now in a better position to examine the philosophical principlesof m;z:n as they stood at the dawn of the modern era, 4adr:’s time.

127 On existence and time, see Ibn 6Arab;, Fut<A:3, i.146. Time is thecompounding factor upon which M;r D:m:d expatiated.

128 M;r D:m:d, al-Qabas:t, 425.129 Cf. 4adr:’s arguments for Resurrection in body and soul in al-Shaw:hid al-

rub<biyya, 342–405.130 Fan:r;, MiBb:A al-uns, 149.131 See also Sabzav:r;’s commentary in 4adr:’s al-Shaw:hid al-rub<biyya, 704.


In al-Shif:8: al-Il:hiyy:t, the most Peripatetic of his works, Ibn S;n:had set the terms by devoting a chapter on the opposition (taq:bul) of theone and the many. A necessary condition for weighing, ‘opposition’included the ‘opposition of contrareity’ (taq:bul al- ta@:dd).132 The oneand the many, he said, were not contraries and their only opposition hadto do with measurement: oneness (al-waAda) qua unit of measurement(miky:l) is opposed to the multiplicity (al-kathra) as the measured(mukayyal).133 Moreover, the oneness of a thing was not the same asbeing a unit of measurement (miky:l).134 Oneness gave rise to the many(muqawwima li-l-kathra) and was both a unit of measurement and acause (6illa), just as the unit of everything (w:Aid kull shay8) could be aunit of measurement, and its units of measures are of its genus.135 Withrespect to length the one (al-w:Aid) was itself a length; for utterances itwas an utterance and for letters a letter.

In his commentary on this passage, 4adr: attempts an objective,empirically based view of the ‘reality of the balance and proportion’(Aaq;qat al-m;z:n wa-l-miqy:s). In the first instance, ‘measurability’ forthe balance does not require that the root essence be taken in its absolutehiddenness. Measuring requires an affinity with or correspondence to themeasurable things. It may be based on proportions, ratios and so on,depending on the discipline and field—e.g., sound in musicology. Hence,the ‘reality of the m;z:n’, what it is supposed to do in Peripatetic terms, isto give cognizance of the state (A:l) of what is of the same genus in everyrespect—by way of quantities and qualities, relations and ascriptions(subjunctions or filiations, i@:f:t), or faculties and habits (malak:t).136

But this can be epistemically true of virtually everything that is said to becreated. ‘There is no sensed or intellected thing but that the one and themany are assumed about it from its genus,’ he confirms, ‘if only as amental consideration and presupposition (al-far@ wa-l-i6tib:r)’.137 In thisprimary sense, it is the one and many that are being weighed, exactly asIbn S;n: taught. ‘Every universal [founding] principle (q:6ida kulliyya) is

132 Ibn S;n:, al-Shif:8: al-Il:hiyy:t (eds. al-Abb Qanaw:t;, Sa6;d Z:yid; Cairo:al-Hay8a al-2mma l;-Shu8<n al-Ma3:bi8 al-Amiriyya, 1960), i.126.

133 Ibid, i.130. Likewise, Ibn 6Arab; distinguished aAadiyyat al-6ayn andaAadiyyat al-kathra. (Cf. discussion of this in Hermann Landolt, ‘DerBriefwechsel zwischen K:s:n; und Simn:n; uber WaAdat al-Wug<d’, DerIslam, 50/1 (1973), 29–81, at 49.

134 Ibn S;n:, al-Il:h;yy:t, i.126.135 Ibid, i.130.136 4adr:, SharA va ta6l;q:t-i Il:hiyy:t-i Shif:8 (Freiburg a.N: Al-Kamel Verlag,

2011), 342, 335.137 Cf. Q<naw;, Mift:A al-ghayb, 18.


correctly said to be a balance and measure (miky:l),’ he declares, ‘byvirtue of the acquaintance with the state of the graduated particularitiesbeneath it (li-ta6arruf A:l al-juz8;y:t al-mundarija taAtah:)’.138 Logic, atype of m;z:n, finds its rightful place because it can be said to be ‘ameasure for mental concepts and that by which they are weighed andtheir truth or falsehood understood, [together with] what is strong inthem, like demonstration (al-burh:n), or weak, like rhetoric’.139 But forthe Perfect Man this universality would still be vacuous or incomplete.

Despite the Peripatetic jargon, his point has ultimately to do withconsonance and the new way of reasoning. This is not easy to explain.Ibn S;n: writes,

Since the unit of measurement is that according to which what is measured is

known, then knowledge and sensation count as the measures of things and,

therefore, [things] are known by them. Hence, a certain person said, ‘Man

measures all things’ because [man] has knowledge and sensation and with [these]

two he apprehends all things. It is more fitting, however, that knowledge and

sensation be measured by what is known and sensed, and that [the latter] be the

basis [of knowledge] for him; although it may happen also that the the unit of

measurement be measured by the thing measured. Likewise, it is possible to

imagine the state (A:l) of opposition between the one and the many.140

Q<naw;, for his part, equilibrates the Perfect Man’s relation with eachdivine name geometrically with a circle, the centre of which liesequidistant from every point on the circumference of creation. He callsthe intermediary station of comprehensive union the ‘zenith of univer-sality’ (nuq3at al-mus:mata al-kulliyya), the very centre of the circle thatcomprehends all the levels of rectification or equilibrium, or ictid:l:t—namely, the incorporeal, spiritual, imaginal, sensory instruments (orpreparations).141 Put differently, the elusive ‘realities of things’ areperceivable only in respect of their totality and comprehensivenessthrough one’s own totality and comprehensiveness, assuming as 4adr:pointed out above, that perception is based on a relation of consonance,rather than either correspondence or pure identity. 4adr: extracts two

138 4adr:, SharA va-ta6l;q:t-i Il:hiyy:t-i Shif:8, 342.139 Another m;z:n, grammar, is said to be the balance with which the modality

of inflection and syntax (kayfiyyat al-i6r:b wa-l-bin:8) are known; while prosodyis ‘the balance for weighing the states of poems [aAw:l al-ash6:r] and rhymedprose qua the magnitudes and letters of their words’ (ibid).

140 Ibn S;n:, al-Il:h;y:t, i.132.141 Q<naw;, I6j:z al-bay:n (Hyderabad, Deccan: Ma3ba6at Majlis D:8irat al-

Ma6:rif al-6Uthm:niyya, 2nd edn., 1368/1949), 44. See Shaker, Thinking in theLanguage of Reality, 182.


‘undeniable’ considerations from Ibn S;n:’s statement that ‘Man meas-ures every thing’, a noetic and an ontic one.142 He stipulates that: 1) Manhas the faculties to perceive the objects of sense by sense and the objectsby intellection through knowledge, respectively; and 2) Man is theMicrocosm (al-6:lam al-Bagh;r) that contains everything modeled on andcorresponding to it (mu3:biq lahu).143 Thus, Man perceives theintelligibles with his intellect; the object of estimation with his estimativefaculty (bi-wahmihi al-mawh<m:t); the objects of imagination with hisimaginative faculty; what is heard with his hearing; and what is seen withhis sight.144 He follows Ibn S;n: also in likening ‘knowledge’ (al-6ilm)and sensory perception (al-Aiss) themselves explicitly to the balances andmeasures of the objects of knowledge and of sensory perception. This, hesays, is because their ‘goal’ is the form that corresponds to the externalthing.145 This way experience and sensory perception play theiroperational role within the epistemic boundaries of correspondencetheory, which has its own m;z:n.

He is able to elaborate the relation called ‘opposition’ (al-muq:bala),with which Ibn S;n: qualified the weighing of one and the many, becauseperception is not self-contained or restricted mental correspondence, butopen. This means that whether the form of a thing more properly belongsto what is sensed or to what is intellected, it will remain imperceptible tothe senses as long as it figures in ‘that by which the external things of itsgenus are known’.146 It has to be known through the essence (bi-l-dh:t),not through the sensory perception or some other organ of man, a fittingreason to call it a balance. From this flow several implications for theconcept of Man as the one ‘who measures all things’, keeping in mind thetwo considerations above. One is that if, as agreed, what is known andwhat is sensed can measure knowledge and sensation, respectively, thenthey constitute the real root (aBl), which holds true even if—or because—it so happens that the unit of measure (al-miky:l) is itself measurable(al-mak;l),147 as Ibn S;n: pointed out.148

142 Ibn S;n: uses the active form ‘mukayyil’, whereas the ancient version of themaxim seems to ‘pacify’ the action. See translator’s note in Avicenna: TheMetaphysics of The Healing (ed. and transl. Michael E. Marmura; Provo, UT:Brigham Young University Press, 2004), 395, n. 17.

143 4adr:, SharA va ta6l;q:t-i Il:hiyy:t-i Shif:8, 342–3.144 Ibid, 343.145 Ibid, 342.146 Ibid.147 Or measured, mukayyal.148 4adr:, SharA va ta6l;q:t-i Il:hiyy:t-i Shif:8, 343.


The permanent existence of the things known and sensed byperception in themselves (wuj<dan th:bitan f; anfusih:), to which hethen turns, makes the underlying ontic orientation as permanent astructural feature as the realities. The realities hold the root ofpermanence and confirmation whereby knowledge and sensory percep-tion are subordinate, being posterior to the root or principal (t:bi6:nlahu), as we saw.149 His repeated use of terms drawn from Arabiclinguistics illustrates the structural sense in which man’s knowing andsensing are to be taken as a root. ‘Root’ in the act of weighing signifies,he says, that the externally concrete things (al-ashy:8 al-kh:rija) are theselfsame ‘balances’ by which we gain cognizance in the sciences andperceptions, where the unit of measure is known through what ismeasured. Here, the perceptual forms are the first to occur to man, whobecomes cognizant of things unknown and accedes to them by means ofwhat noetic or sensory forms he comes to possess. With the underlyingorder of priority in perception nothing changes in the state of man withregard to this initial fact, thanks to which knowledge and sensationremain dependent (‘subordinate’) on the root as one element of asentence is dependent on the other.

Lastly, he transposes the finality of man’s state or A:l onto a process ofperfection (kam:l) governed by the ‘greater and less than’, given thatperception is based on a relation of consonance, not mere correspond-ence.150 On this matter, Q<naw;151 holds that if not for our naturallimitations human intellection would go on endlessly as befits the ‘perfectepitome’, in reference to the Perfect Man.152 This is why affirmingattributes requires ‘encompassment’, the limiting condition for theexteriorization of any ascription to a thing. Nothing in the ascriptionoccurs outside this encompassment, which is no doubt safeguarded bythe exclusivity of existence. It is this ‘perfectional containment andencompassment’, by which God manifests Himself in the ‘generalexistential and perfect form’, that constitutes the most perfect ‘balance’,‘the most complete, inclusive and broad locus of exteriorization’ (al-m;z:n al-atamm wa-l-maChar al-akmal al-ashmal al-a6amm). GivenQ<naw;’s earlier reflections about man’s incapacity to articulate (know)what ultimately lay beyond measure, including God, this final Balancemarks the most complete locus of exteriorization in that sense where itcorresponds to the general existential and perfect form, where ‘form’

149 Ibid.150 4adr:, SharA va-ta6l;q:t-i Il:hiyy:t-i Shif:8, 343.151 In The Triumph of Mercy, Mohammed Rustom finally identifies some key

aspects of how 4adr:’s and Q<naw;’s works are textually related.152 Q<naw;, I6j:z al-bay:n, 44.


(B<ra) signifies the prior articulation of the divine word.153 At theirorigin, knowing and existing are not dichotomous but joined.

THE EXISTENTIAL RULE OF OPPOSITION

Q<naw; and 4adr: associate the ‘opposition’ of the one and the many,the root and the branch, with the act (fi6l) of perception (idr:k) for goodreason. Philosophers are not always clear about how knowledge andexistence are related. With the articulated language the perspectivechanges, because here Fan:r;’s ‘perceiver’ cannot simply be dissected intoa physical phenomenon that combines perceiver, perception andperceived. The grammarians must do this, but these are also the termsthat define knowledge. Still, 4adr: takes the literal meaning normallyattached to perception (idr:k) as the primary, ‘linguistic reality’. Oneresult is that the acts of knowing and existing are no longer the simpleexpression of the laws of logical identity and noncontradiction accordingto which they can be analysed.

They are, above all, the single act that constitutes their origin andwhich, true, also expresses what we ultimately must assume but neverfully witnesss as their identity in the divine essence. As noted above,idr:k can mean reaching or arriving; Lis:n al-6arab mentions dark as the‘attaining of a thing’ (al-wuB<l il: al-shay8) or ‘reaching it’ (luA<q). Noneof these terms is far from wajada—finding or existing.154 The former,anyway, is the primary Arabic signification adopted by 4adr:, whodescribes idr:k as ‘meeting’ (al-liq:8) and ‘attaining’ (al-wuB<l). Forexample, when the intellectual power ‘reaches the quiddity of the objectintellected and obtains it’ and is said to be a noetic attainment for it (al-idr:k al-6ilm;), having reached something.155 4adr: contends that whatthe philosophers mean by idr:k here corresponds to this linguisticmeaning (al-ma6n: al-lughaw;), even if the ‘real meeting’ (al-liq:8 al-Aaq;q;) is not corporeal. Reaching this or that table is linguistically real,in his sense, even though the philosophers use the same expressionfiguratively for the intellect’s union with what it intellects.156

For this to hold, the rule has to be that the two things in the ‘reaching’,can still be ‘opposites’ by accident if they are joined from the source. Likeexistence with respect to nothingness (or nonexistence), the one and the

153 Shaker, Thinking in the Language of Reality, 183.154 Lis:n al-6arab, ‘Idr:k’, x.419.155 4adr:, Asf:r, i.854.156 Ibid.


many exhibit opposition only by way of accident, not by substance. Thisopposition is accidental only because their accidents cannot be joined,says 4adr: (SharA va ta6l;q:t-i Il:hiyy:t-i Shif:8, 335). He describes thisrelation as ‘measurability’ (al-mak;liyya) and ‘being the unit of measure’(al-miky:liyya), and alternatively, ‘causativeness’ and ‘causedness’ (i.e.,cause-and-effect) (ibid, 343). He assumes that in the root lies the origin(mansha8) of the special opposition between oneness and multiplicity, solong as that root subsists in a ‘continuous unicity’ (al-waAdaal-ittiB:liyya) and whatever lies opposite the one upon division(ibid, 343–4). When a continuous ‘one’ (w:Aid muttaBil) is divided andbecomes a ‘many’ composed of ones, then two unicities result: the unicityopposite this multiplicity and another (in another perspective) fromamong the parts (units) of this multiplicity (ibid, 344). The fact that whatopposes unicity is multiplicity nullifies only what is not its unit ofmeasure, cause or part. Unicity opposes multiplicity insofar as it denotesa unit of measure, whereas multiplicity denotes only the measurement(al-mak;l) (ibid, 335). The fixedness of quiddity and concept (ma6n:)does not allow the thing to be both ‘one and unit of measure’, or ‘manyand measurable’, since that would mean always intellecting the one as aunit measure and intellecting the many in the same way in which themeasured is intellected. But unicity (waAda) or thing, inasmuch as it isone, can be said to be a unit of measure (miky:l); and many (i.e., themany things) can be said to be multiplicity insofar as it is measurable(mak;la). Finally, when unicity is regarded as a cause (6illa) andmultiplicity the caused, their ‘opposition’ is then in respect of thatfiliation or relationship (i@:fa) which is assigned to them.

These distinctions arise, not on account of any inherent duality in theopposition of the one and the many, but because of the existentialopposition here taken as a relation between two noetic elements—knower and known—where the ta@:yuf (ascription, filiation orsubjunction) of an accident occurs only by analogy with the ‘one’(ibid, 344). Although logically no single thing can have two opposites,any more than a single object of ascription (al-mu@:f al-w:Aid) can havetwo ascribable definitions, 4adr: insists that an equidistant point standsin opposition to the ‘greater and less than’, each instance of whichopposes both the other and the equidistant point or midpoint. Heinterprets this in terms of anteriority, posteriority, and simultaneity(withness/ coincidence; al-ma6iyya), conforming perfectly with the idea ofmeasurement. The artifice of the either/or dictates that nothing could liebetween one and two, two and three, or greater and lesser, on thespecious grounds that only one thing can oppose another, and thattherefore, there can be no question of an equidistant point between twolimits (ibid). Moreover, the point of equidistance or equivalence


(al-mus:w;) can have, in respect of the ascription, only one opposite thatis equivalent and one other opposite from the standpoint of nonexis-tentiality, by which there is neither equidistance nor equivalence. Thegreater and the lesser are graduated below thanks to the concomitance inboth. This, 4adr: opines, is the proper analogy (qiy:s)157 by which toconstrue the lesser. The view that the relation of ascription (nisbat al-ta@:yuf) cannot belong to a thing save by ‘one’ signifies not only that asingle thing can have no more than one opposite, but also that theascription may not vitiate the one (w:Aid) properly assigned to theintegral thing through the ascription, if indeed we are speaking ofthe same essential thing after the ascription.158

4adr: construes the second ‘kind of opposition’159 in terms of fardiyya(unevenness, oddness), just like Ibn 6Arab;, because fardiyya allows theanalogy to preserve the root in all its branchiation. Short of this, onecould not even be sure of remaining within the intended scope of theinquiry. Under a rule of opposition a thing cannot be known by itscontrary under the aspect of ‘other’ and ‘difference’.160 Q<naw; infersfrom this, with a slightly different angle, that the ‘one’ cannot be knownby the simple fact that it is one, nor can ‘multiplicity’ by the simple factthat it is many,161 since even multiplicity possesses a ‘one’ that is properto it, just as the one has a relational multiplicity (kathra nisbiyya)attached and specified by the one (tata6allauq wa-tata6ayyanu bi-h:),exactly as we saw with 4adr:. The one and the many cannot rightly beweighed either as the same thing or as contraries, because an intermedi-ary position supplies the definitive feature—namely, Man.

For Man, who measures all things and is himself the measure,consonance is the path to perfection by degrees. Short of consonance inthe becoming, the m;z:n would have no bearing on man. Just as Life ism;z:n, so the Perfect Man (al-ins:n al-k:mil) is the m;z:n for all ofcreation. This spiral of equivalences, as it were, works itself down to thehuman beings with their plethora of madh:hib and standpoints. The

157 Underlying which is Q<naw;’s ‘permanent distinction’ between God andwhat is other than God: I6j:z al-bay:n, 43 ff., and Shaker, Thinking in theLanguage of Reality, 257–74.

158 4adr:, SharA va ta6l;q:t-i Il:hiyy:t-i Shif:8, 344.159 4adr:, Maf:t;A al-ghayb (eds. MuAammad Khw:jaw;; Tehran: Mu3:la6:t va

TaAqiq:t Farhang;, 1984), 335.160 See Q<naw;, Mift:A al-ghayb, 15–8.161 Ibid, 18.


m;z:n sifts through this sprawling complexity too, relating one instan-tiation to another.162

All told, 4adr: enlists three aspects of perfection: greater, lesser andequal (equidistant, mus:w;). Given their relevance to the question ofexistence, let us briefly describe them. Primarily and by essence (awwalanwa-bi-l-dh:t), each has a single opposite under two aspects and twoopposites by ascription under a single aspect.163 On the one hand, the‘greater than’ has an existential opposite (muq:bil wuj<d;) facing thesmaller that is ascribed; and on the other, a nonexistential opposite(muq:bil 6adam;) facing nonexistentiality (muq:balat al-6adam), or the‘what is not greater’ (al-l:-a6Cam) that is graduated (yandariju) under theequidistant and the lesser, which in turn face the ‘greater’ in anopposition that is not primary.164 Far from primary, their opposition isdue to something concomitant, in the manner of an accident instead of agenus,165 and what is nonexistential is not a genus to anything perceivedor intellected by its essence.

All this is based on the principles of the balance, which should hold forevery thing that functions as the guiding balance, as we saw inconnection with perception in 4adr:’s Il:hiyy:t commentary. Although4adr: and the entire philosophical tradition since Ibn S;n: havedemonstrated how the special sense of opposition above cannot betaken in the restrictive sense of syllogistic logic, they neverthelesspresuppose the laws of identity and noncontradiction. Sabzav:r; expandson their ‘metaphyical foundations’166 in a discussion on man’s relation tothe world, on the one hand, and to God, on the other. ‘Relation’ (nisba)here is cast as ‘mirror reflection’ (al-6aks), and—with roughly the samepurport—refers to man as the shadow of God.167 This, even though in aperfect identity A is A, ne’er the twain shall meet, existentially speaking.This is the paradox that has always dogged logic in its linguistic soil,where no existential relation can be a mere equivalence or expressive

162 On the taxonomy of perspectives and discplines, Eric Ormsby points up the‘contrastive approach’ as a governing principle in much of Ism:6;l; writing, forexample, where the concept of ahl al-taql;d is considered opposite to Aukam:-yid;n-i Aaqq. See his Between Reason and Revelation, 8–9, for the rest of hisdiscussion.

163 4adr:, SharA va ta6liq:3-i Il:hiyy:t-i Shif:8, 335.164 Ibid, 344–5.165 Ibid, 345.166 The idea of ‘metaphyical foundations of logic’, plain to see in the case of

Islamic tradition, crystallized in my mind after I read Heidegger’s TheMetaphysical Foundations of Logic, which I feel provides valuable insight intoa shared tradition of philosophy.

167 Sabzav:r;’s commentary, 4adr:, al-Shaw:hid al-rub<biyya, 704.


even of a dialectic, as long as there is another factor or ‘command’ (amr)emerging from the root, thanks to the ontic bias—and more basic still,because no two things are alike in every respect.168

Sabzav:r; refers to the Qur8an: ‘And He placed the balance’ (Q. 55.7),which he interprets as the lifting up of heaven (li-raf6 al-sam:8). ‘Lifting’is obviously not unconnected to yaq<mu (i.e., raising to a station on thebalance), the ‘counterpart’ (al-muA:dh;) of creation; God is after all al-Qayy<m. The existential m;z:n means nothing less than this compre-hensive act of creation through God’s command. This command is notfulfilled through a static but ceaselessly ‘moving’ relation of ‘opposition’(in the form of an unfolding book). Fundamentally, both the dialecticityof the opposition and the triplicity have to be true of any given ‘thing’,the reality of which we investigate under the aspect of ‘coming to be’.

KNOWING THE REALITIES OF THINGS

According to 4adr:, intellected things or intelligibles (al-ma6q<l:t) aredistinguishable according to the specific request and the possibility ofacquisition and transformation (istiA:la). He stratifies the intelligiblesaccordingly: 1) what no inquiry can attain or make manifest; 2) what isimpossible because of its difficulty or obscurity; and 3) what can beattained in one respect and which is marked by transformation.169 All inall, ‘things’ (um<r, here synonymous with ashy:8) are present (A:@ira)either through actuality and necessity or potentiality and possibility.Relative to the mind, they consist of two categories—entities interior tothe mind (f; l-dhihn) and those exterior to it (kh:rij al-dhihn). Anythingin concreto (mawj<dan f; l-6ayn) that recapitulates the world of bodies170

may be said to be noetically attainable in a specific sense but not inanother, just as the world of bodies is manifest and sensed but not hiddenand intellected’.171 Quoting the Qur8:n, 4adr: confirms that God showsus things as they are. What we receive through our senses is not all thatcan be perceived.172 Something else is required to act as the root pathwayfrom what is sensed (maAs<sihi) to what is intellected (ma6q<lihi),

168 To be intelligible, an utterance must display structured relations couched inthe root-and-branch of speech articulation.

169 4adr:, Maf:t;A al-ghayb, 300.170 Ibn 6Arab; explains the multiple senses of 6:lam (world), a common Arabic

word (Fut<A:t, ii.231).171 4adr:, Maf:t;A al-ghayb, 301.172 Sensation is insufficient for seizing the reality of the thing in its fullness, as

Q<naw; and countless others assert.


barring induction, a weak inference, because the intellected secrets of athing are hidden deep inside the latter.

To 4adr:, this militates against the doubt concerning the possibility ofknowing the reality of a ‘thing’. That claim—based on Ibn S;n:’s tersedenial that man can know the ‘realities of things’ (Aaq:8iq al-ashy:8)—inspired a key debate between Q<naw; and F<s;, thereby drawing thephilosophical debate to a focal point of interest. The challenge was todetermine how the realities are known, not if they can be known throughthis or that of man’s limited faculties.173 His answer is that man candiscover them scientifically by way of conceptions (al-taBawwur:t) andjudgments (taBd;q:t) in the mind.174 Whereas definition (lit., limit, Aadd)signals the conception of things, judgment points to demonstration(burh:n), such that judgment is related to conception as existence is toquiddity, form is to matter, and differentia are to genus.175 In logicalterms, a m;z:n investigates by way of both judgment and conception,insofar as they procure knowledge of the unknown, indicating thesynthesizing power of the balance.177 Weighing, m;z:n’s primaryfunction, cannot however be collapsed back to a judgment, primaryconcept or some other isolated element of reasoning (qiy:s).177

This is why Q<naw; considers the most urgent task of al-6ilm al-il:h;

(the ‘divine and noblest science on account of the nobility of its object,namely, al-Eaqq), besides understanding its balances, to be establishingits root determinations (@aw:bi3 uB<lihi) and canons (qaw:n;nihi), evenas this science cannot as such be subsumed under the precept of a balance(l: yadkhulu taAt Aukm m;z:n), being vaster and greater than to bedetermined by a law or be encompassed by a specified balance. Far fromhaving no balance at all, this lofty science requires persons of perfectlyrealized cognizance to seek in it a balance for each divine level, name,station, abode, state, time and instantiation (shakhB). Indeed, this is howevery kind of opening (or conquest) (fatA) and science of witness (orexperience), etc., is to be to distinguished, and how man can differentiate

173 Based explicitly on the premise that something may be real even in theabsence of a proof for it.

174 4adr:, Maf:t;A al-ghayb, 301. This is close to the formulation in Mift:A al-ghayb, 13.

175 4adr:, Maf:t;A al-ghayb, 301–2. He concurs (300) with Q<naw;’s view thatthe primary principles (mab:d;8), taken in the nature of bad;hiyy:t, consist ofconceptions and judgments (Q<naw;, Mift:A al-ghayb, 13) and have to accordwith man’s true nature.

177 Ibid, 302. 4adr: later expounds five kinds of m;z:n (which he goes on todescribe), ending with that of the Day of Resurrection, though we need notdiscuss them here.

177 Ibid, 306.


divine or angelic knowledge from the satanic—i.e., truth from falsehood.Al-6ilm al-il:h;, he argues, opens (yaftaAu) or unravels the whole(al-jam;6) through a divine opening and the root antecedent (al-qidamal-aBl;), according to what the (particularizing) Divine Concern(al-mash;8a al-il:hiyya) requires and the Pen inscribes.178

This scheme links the m;z:n to the act of writing and inscription on thebasis of which Sabzav:r; compares a point raised by 4adr: to anotherone closely associated with the mutakallim<n, who were especiallyconcerned with the moral consequences of their claims. Weighing, whichhe likens to a call for an accounting of the good and bad deeds, refers tothe weighing of the ledgers and scrolls (al-daf:tir wa-BaA:8ifih:), whichin turn are possessed of an inscriptional existence (wuj<duh: al-katab;)free of any weighing of the accidents.179 The books and scrolls of thedeeds are weighed according to the Book and Scroll of God, relative towhich they lie opposite (tuq:balu).180 Sabzav:r; declares maximally thatevery ‘rational adult’ has a special m;z:n,181 and that the challenge,therefore, is to develop a relational consonance for the transformation ofthe ‘single man’ (presumably, the individual, community, society, nationor any entity said to be human, ‘uneven’ and one). Unlike analogicalreason or formal logic, the m;z:n paves the way for tadb;l, the exchangeof one imitative attribute for another. Tadb;l is an important term withlinguistic origins that have not been adequately explored within thephilosophical tradition.

In the end, the object of the person weighing lives, and the balancealways begins and ends, with Man.

CONCLUSION

This study aimed at clarifying the long-tortured question about the placeof man (whom we claim to champion in our time), his future and past.The m;z:n’s finality is Man himself—i.e., al-ins:n al-k:mil (Perfect Man)‘who measures all things’ and is ‘the measure of all things’. But Man in

178 Q<naw;, Mift:A al-ghayb, 15.179 Commentary in 4adr:, al-Shaw:hid al-rub<biyya, 768–9. On the relation

between weighing, on the one hand, and accounting and vigilance, on the other,see my introduction to Ghaz:l; on Vigilance and Self-Examination K. al-Mur:qaba wa-l-muA:saba. Book XXXVIII of The Revival of the ReligiousSciences IAy:8 6ul<m al-d;n (transl. and notes by Anthony F. Shaker; Cambridge,UK: Islamic Texts Society, forthcoming, 2015).

180 4adr:, al-Shaw:hid al-rub;biyya,769.181 Ibid, 751.


this sense is not a parody of living humanity with the witheringindifference and anonymity of a stranger. This primary association ofwisdom with the question of man cannot be sundered if its proper scale istruly that of human civilization, which in philosophy it adumbrates andcrystallizes in various ways. If it can guide all other inquiries thanks tothe regulative inclusiveness of the balance, then weighing clearly has todo with more than just measuring, analysing, or even asking about andexplaining things.

Man is the measure of everything, furthermore, because existence hasno contrary and, therefore, no ‘other’. Man is not quite God’s ‘other’;existence is exclusive and the ‘proof’, paradoxically, lies in itsexistentiation (;j:d), which we have seen is ‘uneven’ in its singularuniqueness and thus discloses itself on the pattern of a triplicity by wayof the active, creative unifying singularity transmitted by the root. Itarticulates creation at once as a consequence and as the spoken Wordwhich lives. But who really speaks and lives? God, the Breath of theMerciful or the Perfect Man? That too has to be answered.

At a primary level, balance has to do with the procession of the manyfrom the one, which it weighs one against the other. Yet, the door to thisthinking must have been left ajar for a long time, perhaps inMesopotamia, Egypt, or even by Cro-Magnon man. The point is thatm;z:n is not about some clever new secret device of either Muslim orNeoplatonist vintage. It appears to have been posed and reposed again asan existential question under incomparably different conditions. Thiscontinual questioning suggests a conceptual space with more than oneactor or solution.182 It enabled the Islamic period, in any case, to definephilosophy and reformulate questions on existence and existentiationunder new historical conditions. Hopefully, this paper will help dispel theview that antecedents (whether Neoplatonist or some other precedingcurrent) could amount to an explanation, let alone an explanation of thegalaxy of issues that fell definitively within the purview of medievalcivilization.

In the end, taught Fan:r;, what happens to each existent, itsdestination, is the fruit of what its precept has exteriorized in it fromthe divine names and the created realities (thamarat m: Cahara f;hiAikmuhu min al-asm:8 al-il:hiyya wa-l-Aaq:8iq al-kawniyya). While thecriterion (al-mi6y:r) for this remains the reality of the Perfect Man,183 the

182 Roshdi Rashed also expresses this view in his introduction to the historicalinterpretation of the exact sciences, D’al-Khw:rizm; a Descartes.

183 Fan:r;, MiBb:A al-uns, 561.


mystery of life is that being who lives, because systematic philosophy hasdetermined fardiyya to be the essence of a singular creation the mode ofexistence of which every individual personifies in time and space, ratherthan as a truth abstracted and floating above or subsisting inside thejealous privacy of a mind perched on Mt. Everest.


"Man, Existence and the Life Balance (Mizan) in Islamic Philosophy," Journal of Islamic Studies...

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