Distributed for Brigham Young University
The Philosophy of Illumination
Suhruwardi’s philosophy grants an epistemological role to immediate and atemporal intuition. It is explicitly anti-Peripatetic and is identified with the pre-Aristotelian sages, particularly Plato. The subject of his hikmat al-Ishraq—now available for the first time in English—is the "science of lights," a science that Suhrawardi first learned through mystical exercises reinforced later by logical proofs and confirmed by what he saw as the parallel experiences of the Ancients. It was completed on 15 September 1186; and at sunset that evening, in the western sky, the sun, the moon, and the five visible planets came together in a magnificent conjunction in the constellation of Libra. The stars soon turned against Suhrawardi, however, who was reluctantly put to death by the son of Saladin, the sultan of Egypt, in 1191.
323 pages | xlvii+, 323 p. | 6 x 9 | © 2000
Brigham Young University - Islamic Translation Series
Philosophy: General Philosophy
Table of Contents
Foreword to the Series
Acknowledgements
Translators’ Introduction
Shahrazuri’s Introduction
Suhrawardi’s Introduction
Part One: The Rules of Thought, in Three Discourses
The First Discourse: Knowledge and definition [comprising seven rules]
The Second Discourse: On proofs and their principles, comprising [seven] rules
The Third Discourse: On sophistical refutations and some judgments between the Illuminationists and the Peripatetic doctrine in [several] sections
Part Two: On the Divine Lights, the Light of Lights, and the Bases and Order of Existence, in Five Discourses
The First Discourse: On light and its reality, the Light of Lights, and that which first was generated from It, in nine sections and rules
The Second Discourse: On the order of existence, in [fourteen] sections
The Third Discourse: Explaining the activity of the Light of Lights and the dominating lights and the rest of the discussion of the celestial movements, in four sections
The Fourth Discourse: On the classification of barriers, their states, their combinations, and some of their powers, in [eight] sections
The Fifth Discourse: On the resurrection, prophecy, and dreams, in [nine] sections
Notes to the English Text
Notes to the Arabic Text
Glossary
Bibliography
Index