Topoi (2007) 26:167–175
DOI 10.1007/s11245-007-9021-0
Introduction
Hajj Muhammad Legenhausen
In the Name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful.
Published online: 20 June 2007
Ó Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2007
Abstract The place of philosophy in Iranian society is
prominent. Philosophy is discussed in popular media as
well as specialized journals, and in seminaries, research
centers, and universities. Philosophy in Iran is often
divided into Western and Islamic. Sometimes these are
taken to be rivals. The methods of instruction differ to
some extent, as well as the languages needed for advanced
study. The question of the nature of Islamic philosophy is
itself a controversial topic in Iran, and positions on this
issue are often driven by ideological trends. The study of
philosophy in the Islamic seminaries has its own history.
Today Islamic philosophy may be considered a philo-
sophical tradition that is being carried on with increasing
interaction with the study of Western philosophy in Iran.
Keywords Illuminationism
Iranian philosophy

Islamic philosophy
Islamic Peripateticism
Mulla Sadra

Sufism
Tabataba’i
Transcendent wisdom
1 Philosophy in Iran
Philosophy is a subject of great interest among Iranian
intellectuals, much more so than among American and
European intellectuals today, who, if not working in the
field, mostly ignore philosophy. Western philosophy has
become specialized, and as a result, many intellectuals
think of it as being rather arcane. Philosophy in Iran, on the
other hand, is regularly woven into political and religious
discussions. Religious mavericks in Iran often look to
H. M. Legenhausen (&)
The Imam Khomeini Education and Research Institute, Amin
Blvd., Jumhuri Islami St, Qom, I.R. Iran
e-mail: legenhausen@yahoo.com
Western philosophy and Christian theology for ways to
challenge the establishment. During the 80s the intellectual
scene was abuzz with debates between those who drew
inspiration from Karl Popper and advocated a more open
society, and those who inclined toward the mystical ten-
dencies in Heidegger in their defense of tradition. During
the 90s there was a surge in interest in Western philosophy
of religion that continues today. Translations were made of
works by John Hick and Alvin Plantinga, among others, so
that when Plantinga visited Iran in 2002, he was shocked to
find that he enjoyed celebrity status there and was often
asked by students for his autograph. Likewise, when Jürgen
Habermas returned from a visit to Tehran in the same year,
he commented in an interview: ‘‘When you travel from the
West to the East with light intellectual baggage, you
encounter the usual asymmetry of underlying perceptions
that maintain our role as the barbarians. They know more
about us than we do about them.’’1
Philosophical discussions take place in a wide variety of
forums. In addition to an ever-increasing number of
scholarly journals, one can easily find philosophy on tele-
vision, radio, newspapers, and magazines. Philosophy takes
place in Iran on a scale from specialized to popular, in
universities, conferences, coffee shops, and taxicabs. Those
well known for the philosophical positions they advance
are not always professional philosophers. Philosophical
discussions are often mixed with literary and religious
allusions. If one person talks about Pascal’s wager, you can
be sure that another will point out that there is a narration
attributed to the sixth Shi’ite Imam that seems to make the
point that religious belief is one’s best bet. Classical
1
The interview was conducted by Christiane Hoffmann. Jun. 18,
2002, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 2002. (This translation made
available through an email list on June 20, 2002).
123
168
Persian poetry, e.g., Hafez, Rumi, Baba Taher, is often
quoted to underline a philosophical point. Most of the clas-
sical Persian poetry was written by Sufis or poets with Sufi
inclinations. Sufi theoreticians, such as Ibn ‘Arabi, Qawnawi,
Qaysari, Ibn Turkah, Jami, and others have laced their works
with allusions to Islamic philosophy, and in response Muslim
philosophers have taken into account the views of the mys-
tics, modifying them, refuting them, or incorporating them.
There is also a constant debate about this religious and lit-
erary legacy, whether it is an obstacle to philosophical
advancement or a foundation on which to build.
Philosophy is taught in two main venues: the university
and the seminary, but there is also a great amount of
philosophical research, lecturing, and discussions con-
ducted at the many research centers in Iran. Many of these
centers, universities, and seminaries have their own per-
spective on the field.2 In the seminaries, professors of
philosophy are often revered religious authorities. Philos-
ophy is taught as a spiritual discipline as much as an aca-
demic field of study. Such professors often do not write
articles in the modern academic style, but compose com-
mentaries, essays, and books. Often their lectures are
transcribed and published as books. Such figures rarely
debate one another publicly, although there is much private
discussion, and there is debate among their students. In the
universities, one can find professors opposed to religious
philosophy and those who favor it. Numerous academic
journals are published by the university presses in which
philosophical articles can be found, only some of which
specialize in philosophy. Philosophical monographs, text-
books, and translations are published on a wide variety of
topics. Iranians have taken to the internet with zeal, and
Iran has a high blogger per capita ratio; and, as one should
expect, there are a number of Iranian blogs and user groups
dedicated to philosophical discussion. National and inter-
national conferences are held on philosophical topics as
diverse as logic and human rights, and on philosophers as
diverse as Sohravardi and Kant. Special mention should be
made of the large international conferences held in Tehran
and organized by the Sadra Islamic Philosophy Research
Institute (SIPRIn)3 in 1999 and 2004.
Women are underrepresented, especially in Islamic
philosophy. However, a number of women have been
awarded doctorates in philosophy in recent years, and so
we should expect their contributions to Islamic philosophy
to begin to emerge as they take positions at universities and
research centers and begin publishing.
One of the most important research centers for philo-
sophical studies and teaching is the former Iranian Islamic
Academy of Philosophy and Wisdom, whose official name
2 5
See Akbari (1384/2005).
3 6
See www.mullasadra.org.
123
H. M. Legenhausen
is now the Iranian Islamic Institute for the Study of Phi-
losophy and Wisdom. In 1973, the Pahlavi queen appointed
Seyyed Hossein Nasr to establish a center for the study and
propagation of philosophy under her patronage. Nasr be-
came the founder and president of what was then called the
Imperial Iranian Academy of Philosophy. It became an
important center for the editing of manuscripts and pub-
lishing in Islamic philosophy. A journal, Sophia Perennis,
was published with articles in both Farsi and English. A
good library of books in philosophy and religions was
collected there, and it attracted a number of notable
scholars from Iran and abroad, including Henry Corbin and
Toshihiko Izutsu. Because of the philosophical dispositions
of Nasr and the scholars he gathered, there was a strong
focus on the element of mysticism in Islamic philosophy.
After the Islamic Revolution in 1978, the name of the
Academy was changed with its administration, but the
general orientation remained much the same, although
scholars working at the Academy were by no means
exclusively Traditionalists, and included those who spe-
cialized in Western philosophy, among whom are experts
in the philosophy of science, logic, and ancient philosophy,
and even those who have been openly critical of the
dominant religious ideas.4
The Academy has had an impact on the study of Islamic
philosophy both in Iran and abroad, especially through the
works of Nasr, Corbin and Izutsu. In Europe, Islamic
philosophy had been studied primarily as an aid to under-
standing Medieval European philosophy: e.g., the influence
of Avicenna on Aquinas and the source of the controversy
over Latin Averroism. With Corbin in France and Nasr in
the U.S., the Western study of Islamic philosophy enters a
new age, so to speak, in which it is appreciated as a trea-
sury for perennial gnostic truths.5 Iranians are very proud
of their intellectual heritage,6 and are sensitive to the way it
is received outside Iran. So, the interpretation of Islamic
philosophy by writers like Nasr and Corbin has also given
rise to considerable and constructive controversy within
Iranian philosophical circles about whether Islamic phi-
losophy embodies a perennial philosophy, whether the
relation between mysticism and Islamic philosophy has not
been over-emphasized, and about the relation between
Islamic philosophy and modern Western philosophy.
2 Islamic philosophy and Western philosophy in Iran
In Iran, philosophy is often divided into Western and
Islamic. Most comparative philosophy done in Iran
4
See Soroush (2000).
See Rudolf (2004), 8–9.
See Razavi (1996).
Introduction
compares Muslim with Western thinkers.7 In many uni-
versities, Western philosophy is treated as a separate sub-
ject from Islamic philosophy. At the University of Tehran,
Western and Islamic philosophy are taught on different
campuses: Western on the main campus and Islamic at the
building that houses the theology faculty. As a result, many
who hold doctorates in Western philosophy have little
knowledge of Islamic philosophy and vice versa. Those
trained in Western philosophy learn English or German,
while those trained in Islamic philosophy learn Arabic and
are often members of the Islamic clergy.
There is, however, overlap; and the overlap is growing.
While most classes in Islamic philosophy at the University
of Tehran are taught by the theology faculty, there are
some professors at the literature faculty who specialize in
Islamic philosophy. Likewise, while most of the philoso-
phy taught in the Islamic seminaries is Islamic philosophy,
a growing number of Muslim clerics teach courses on
Western philosophy in the seminaries.
Not all Muslim clerics are comfortable with Islamic
philosophy. Some see it as usurping the proper role of
theology. It takes the ancient pagan Greeks as authorities
instead of the Qur’an and hadiths, they argue. Imam
Khomeini, however, favored philosophy, as did a number
of other important clerics who played important roles in the
Islamic revolution. Shahid Mutahhari was a philosopher
and one of the main authors of the constitution of the
Islamic Republic of Iran. Shahid Beheshti was a philoso-
pher who had a keen interest in Hegel in addition to Islamic
philosophy, and he was a founder of the Islamic Republi-
can Party. Before the Islamic revolution, he used to come
to Qom once a week to teach Hegel to seminarians. Phi-
losophy was seen as an interest of clerics who were more
politically savvy, more concerned with contemporary so-
cial problems, more widely read and more widely educated
than their more conservative colleagues.
The methods of philosophical instruction used for
Western and Islamic philosophy in Iran differ. Western
philosophy is usually taught through classes on specific
figures, schools, and subfields. For example, there are
classes on Plato, Spinoza, Kant, and Heidegger; also one
finds classes on existentialism, analytic philosophy, and
hermeneutics. There is a greater tendency today to offer
classes in such areas as the philosophy of religion, ethics,
epistemology, and the philosophy of mind. Classes are
usually taught on a semester basis, with fifteen or sixteen
sessions of one and a half hours per week for a two unit
course. Two unit courses are the norm even at the graduate
7
For a noteworthy exception, see the article by Sayyed Muhammad
Khamenei, ‘‘Islamic philosophy and Chinese Culture,’’ http://www.
mullasadra.org/new_site/english/Paper%20Bank/His-
tory%20of%20Philosophy/chaina.htm.
169
level. Islamic philosophy, on the other hand, like the other
areas of traditional Islamic seminary studies, is focused on
texts. Even the introductory texts are often rather opaque
for those not well versed in the tradition, and classes often
consist of detailed elaborations and explanations of a page
or two, or even of a single sentence. In the seminaries, oral
exams used to be most prevalent, but today written exams
are the rule. Often the student is presented with a passage
from the Arabic text and asked to translate it and explain
the position of the author in Farsi. Traditionally, students
might take years to read through a multi-volume text with a
professor from the Islamic clergy. Today it is more com-
mon to find students studying selected portions of a text on
a semester basis; but the focus remains on the text.
3 Metaphilosophy: what is Islamic philosophy?
One of the major debates in philosophical circles is about
the nature of Islamic philosophy itself. Western treatments
of the subject8 often use the term Arabic philosophy instead
of Islamic philosophy on the grounds that the discussions of
the philosophical issues associated with such key figures as
Farabi, Ibn Sina, and Ghazali were carried out by Chris-
tians and Jews and not only Muslims, all of whom wrote in
Arabic. However, important works by Ibn Sina, Sohra-
vardi, Mulla Sadra, and others in this tradition were written
in Persian, and much contemporary Islamic philosophy is
written in Persian. Neither religious nor linguistic affilia-
tion serves to pick out the desired philosophical tradition.
Leftist and secularist Iranian intellectuals have argued
that there can be no Islamic philosophy because philosophy
implies a freedom of thought that is incompatible with
religious commitment. Another secularist argument against
‘‘Islamic Philosophy’’ is that philosophy is a science to
which no religious beliefs are relevant. One might be a
committed Muslim, Christian, Buddhist, or whatever, but
when one does philosophy one’s religious beliefs are no
more relevant than the religious beliefs of a physician or a
chemist. According to this line of thought, most of what is
called ‘‘Islamic Philosophy’’ or ‘‘Arabic Philosophy’’ is
really theology. Against this view, Muslim philosophers
argue that philosophy is the love of wisdom and a quest for
ultimate truth and as such is at one with religious aims.
Philosophy aims at a comprehensive understanding of
being, knowledge, and values, and no such understanding
can be complete if it excludes religion. Defenders of the
philosophical credentials of Islamic philosophy typically
argue that Muslim philosophers have not made use of re-
vealed truths as premises in their arguments, but, like
secular philosophers, appeal to pure reason.
8
E.g., Adamson and Richard (2004).
123
170
Some, such as Seyyed Hossein Nasr9, have argued in
favor of the need for sacred, specifically Islamic, sciences,
not just Islamic philosophy, but Islamic natural and human
sciences. They argue that all artifacts, arts, and sciences to
some degree express the fundamental beliefs of the
craftsperson, artist, and scientist, respectively. Lack of faith
among moderns is expressed in the character of the modern
arts and sciences. Traditional arts and sciences were sacred
because they were expressions of, or based on, sacred
principles. Modern arts and sciences lack soul or seem
hollow, while traditional arts and sciences display the light
of the divine spark in man. Mehdi Golshani has argued the
more moderate position that the natural sciences are in
need of a basis in metaphysics and theology.10
Attention to the discussions in such authors as Dilthey
and Gadamer have prompted some Iranians to argue that a
distinction should be made between the natural sciences
and the spiritual sciences (Geisteswissenschaften). The
latter can reflect religious ideas and values, it is held, while
the former are taken to be purely secular.
Many of the arguments are not made in print, but in
discussion; and much of the Iranian philosophical tradition
remains oral. Philosophical discussions eventually make
their way into newspapers if they touch a religious or
political nerve. Interviews are conducted and published in
magazines on current topics of philosophical dispute.
Speeches in which a philosophical stand is taken and which
are presented in mosques, religious research centers, and
Husayniyyahs (places for the commemoration of the mar-
tyrdom of Imam Husayn) are more likely to catch public
attention than those given at academic conferences. There
are round-table discussions of philosophical issues on
television talk shows and on some radio programs. All of
this adds to confusion about the nature of Islamic philos-
ophy. Discussions of whether the Muslim world should
accept Westernization or not, whether or not Islamic law is
in need of reform, and if so, how, and whether Islam is
compatible with trade unionism, for example, all may be
more or less philosophical. Students of political philosophy
are often asked their opinions about current political affairs
and seldom about their philosophical positions. Oftentimes
any sort of polemic dealing with large issues and which
seeks to defend, or presumes, the truth of Islam, no matter
how interpreted, is considered Islamic philosophy. Let’s
refer to this usage as the populist sense of Islamic
philosophy.
9
See Nasr (1989).
10
See the journal Islam & Science (first published in June, 2003),
edited by Muzaffar Iqbal for the Center for Islam and Science in
Canada, in which the views of Nasr, Golshani, and others may be
found. Also see Golshani (1988), Golshani, ed., (1988), Nasr (1989),
Nasr (1993).
123
H. M. Legenhausen
In the populist sense, Islamic philosophy requires faith
in Islam. One cannot practice Islamic philosophy unless
one is a committed Muslim, and no particular knowledge
of, or training in, academic philosophy is required. Ideol-
ogy is taken for philosophy. To the contrary, Oliver
Leaman defines Islamic philosophy as ‘‘the style of phi-
losophy produced within the framework of Islamic
culture.’’11 Although there are problems about how to
identify and distinguish styles, this definition has the
advantage of allowing works that are very similar in con-
tent and method to be classed as Islamic philosophy,
regardless of the religious confession of the author.12
Against the view that Islamic philosophy is simply the
philosophical product of Islamic culture, it is argued that
we should not call any philosophical product Islamic just
because it arises in Islamic culture. After all, when Islamic
culture produces a philosophical literature that is continu-
ous with some Western school of philosophy, like Iranian
Marxist philosophy, we should not call this Islamic phi-
losophy, no matter how unique the style. With this argu-
ment in hand, Ayatullah Misbah Yazdi has proposed that
Islamic philosophy should be understood as a religiously
committed philosophy that draws inspiration from the
Qur’an and other religious texts even as it employs rational
methods to seek truth. Islamic philosophy is not to be
understood in the populist sense, because this ignores the
philosophical dimension in its legacy; but it is not to
be defined as whatever springs up from soil on which
Muslims reside. Non-Muslims can be said to practice
Islamic philosophy, according to Ayatullah Misbah, to the
extent that they partake in this tradition. The tradition is
identified through its relation to Islam and its employment
of the rational methods of philosophy. The claim is made
that there is something essentially Islamic in a religious and
not just a cultural sense to Islamic philosophy, but this is no
obstacle to the appearance of Christian, Jewish, or other
variations on Islamic philosophy that draw on different
religious traditions as well as the legacy of Islamic
philosophy.
In practice, as it is taught and studied in Iran today,
Islamic philosophy is a specific tradition of philosophy
with several major branches and which has had a tremen-
dous influence on other areas of Islamic culture, including
theology, principles of jurisprudence, mysticism, and the
understanding of the sciences. It has drawn inspiration
from the ancient wisdom of India, Iran, Greece, and Egypt,
as well as the religious teachings of Islam. At the same
time, Islamic philosophers have placed a great emphasis on
11
Oliver Leaman, ‘‘Islamic Philosophy,’’ in the Routledge Ency-
clopedia of Philosophy, CD V. 1.0., 1998.
12
This view is also endorsed by Rudolf (2004), 10, and for the same
reason.
Introduction
rational method and logic. Islamic philosophy today as
practiced in Iran is greatly indebted to Mulla Sadra and the
strains of thought he synthesized: Sufi theory (which is
usually referred to as ‘irfan-e nazari (theoretical gnosis) in
Iran and includes the teachings of Ibn ‘Arabi, called
Shaykh al-Akbar (the greatest master), and his followers),
Illuminationist (Ishraqi) thought (stemming from Sohra-
vardi, called Shaykh al-Ishraq (master of illumination)),
and Islamic Peripateticism (from Ibn Sina, called Shaykh
al-Ra’is (head or top master)). While some philosophers
today draw more from one of these strains than the others,
and are therefore considered to have Peripatetic, Illumin-
ationist or Sufi leanings, these leanings are by and large
within the framework of Mulla Sadra’s general outlook.
It is much more difficult to identify and asses sources of
influence from Western philosophy and from the other
Islamic sciences. The Islamic sciences have always played
a role in Islamic philosophy. In the crudest form, philos-
ophers have sought to find religious support for their views
by finding appropriate verses from the Qur’an or relevant
narrations from other sacred literature. At a deeper level
there are scholars who approach sacred literature with
philosophical questions, and who attempt to formulate
philosophical theories based on what they find there. The
Islamic sciences are not limited to the study of the Qur’an
and hadiths, however. One can also find philosophical
discussions in the science of kalam (scholastic theology), in
‘irfan al-nazari (theoretical mysticism), and in usul al-fiqh
(the principles of Islamic jurisprudence). All of these have
effects on Islamic philosophy, just as Islamic philosophy
has its effects on the discussions in these fields.
In some ways, Mulla Sadra dominates contemporary
philosophy in the Shi’ite world analogously to the way in
which Aquinas dominates Catholic philosophy. Just as one
might find Thomists who take Kant or Wittgenstein or
Heidegger very seriously, one can also find thinkers in the
tradition of Mulla Sadra who focus on these same figures.
It is not only comparative philosophy, however, that
provides opportunities for the development of new lines of
thought within Islamic philosophy; inter-religious dialogue
and political debate also stimulate philosophical thought.
The debate about the nature of Islamic philosophy is a
debate not only about the best way to go about the study of
an academic discipline; it is also a debate about identity
and ideology.13 Some seek to portray Islamic philosophy as
Iranian philosophy for nationalistic purposes. Ibn Sina,
Sohravardi, Mir Damad, Mulla Sadra, Fayd Kashani, and
many other luminaries were Iranian. Likewise the imagined
face of Farabi graces coins in Kazakhstan. Traditionalists
present Islamic philosophy as a source of perennial wisdom
and theosophy. There is also a sort of revolutionary
13
See Shafaghi (1998).
171
religious nationalism that lauds Islamic philosophy as
providing a suitable foundation for the worldview of the
Islamic Republic. Among those who are harshly critical of
Islamic philosophy, there are some nationalists who see it
as an Arab imposition on Iranian thought. Others criticize it
as being too religious, or too mystical. Some criticize the
entire tradition and propose the abandonment of Islamic
philosophy in favor of Western philosophy or the devel-
opment of an Iranian philosophy that builds on the modern
Western tradition. Some religious thinkers criticize Islamic
philosophy for usurping the place of theology in Islamic
thought. In some ways the debate is similar to the discus-
sion in the Christian world about whether there is such a
thing as Christian philosophy, and if so, whether it is to be
identified with medieval philosophy. There are advocates
of contemporary versions of Islamic philosophy, just as
there are advocates of new forms of Christian philosophy,
from Neo-Thomism to Reformed Epistemology. The dif-
ference is that in Europe the break between medieval
philosophy and modern philosophy in the seventeenth
century is fairly clear, while the development of Islamic
philosophy before and after Mulla Sadra (who was con-
temporary with Descartes) is much more continuous. His-
torians sometimes speak of the medieval period in Europe
as the ‘‘age of faith’’ in contrast to the modern ‘‘age of
reason’’; while this is a gross oversimplification, whatever
grounds for the division exist in European history have no
counterpart in Islamic civilization, because the earlier
Islamic thought was no less rationalistic and the later
thought was no less religious.
4 Islamic philosophy in the Islamic seminaries
In fact, over the past twenty years or more, there has been a
growing interest in Western philosophy among those
trained in Islamic philosophy. This occurred, in large part,
because of the threat of Marxism in the years prior to the
revolution. It was because of the perceived need to provide
a response to the philosophical foundations of Marxism
that Islamic philosophy began to be taught publicly in the
Islamic seminaries in Qom in the 1950’s. Earlier, students
would only study the texts of Ibn Sina or Mulla Sadra in
private sessions in the seminaries. Public classes were only
given in theology, Islamic law and its principles, the
Qur’an, hadiths, and such topics as were considered di-
rectly relevant to the goal of training novices to derive the
laws of Islam from their sources. Religious opposition to
philosophy was widespread. Philosophy, even Islamic
philosophy, was considered by many to be at best a hobby
to be taken up in one’s spare time, but clearly secondary to
the duties of a student of Islam. Marxism changed that. In
order to defend Islam against the Marxists, ‘Allamah
123
172
Tabataba’i argued, one must be familiar with Islamic
philosophy.
‘Allamah Tabataba’i (1904–1981) may be considered
the father of contemporary Islamic philosophy.14 It was he
who for the first time began the public teaching of phi-
losophy in the seminaries of Qom; and it was he who
trained some of the most brilliant minds in the next gen-
eration of Islamic philosophy. ‘Allamah was not only a
philosopher, but a mystic. Islamic mysticism has become
so interwoven with Islamic philosophy that advanced stu-
dents and professors usually have a proficiency in both.
Often students who wish to study theoretical mysticism
(‘irfan nazari) are told that they should first study Islamic
philosophy. This is supposed to give them a rational
grounding and prevent deviant interpretations of the ideas
of the mystics, such as pantheism. ‘Allamah’s talent for
mysticism was not merely a proficiency in theory, how-
ever; he was also revered as one who put mysticism into
practice. His most famous student in this area was the
prolific and highly revered Ayatullah Husayni Tehrani (d.
1996). ‘Allamah’s own training in spiritual wayfaring (sayr
o suluk) and personal ethics was under the direction of Hajj
Mirza ‘Ali Qadi.15 The saintliness of the sage philosopher
mystic is also an important part of the tradition of Islamic
philosophy in Iran. The Islamic philosopher is expected not
only to be able to give insightful elucidations of difficult
passages in key texts and to be proficient in keen rational
analysis, but to live a philosophical life, contemplative,
humble, simple, and pious.
Contemporary Islamic philosophy is dominated by the
ideas of Mulla Sadra (1571/2–1640). This is not to say that
contemporary Islamic philosophers agree with everything
Mulla Sadra wrote, but that the topics of discussion are
largely derived from his works. ‘Allamah Tabataba’i taught
Mulla Sadra’s Asfar as well as works of Ibn Sina, but
however much it may be appropriate to classify him as a
member of the school of thought of Mulla Sadra, called
transcendent wisdom (hikmat muta’aliyyah), he was also
critical, came to different conclusions in various matters,
and taught his students to do the same.
‘Allamah considered Ibn Sina to be stronger than Mulla
Sadra in rational analysis, but he credited Mulla Sadra with
the introduction of over five hundred issues that had not
previously been discussed by Greek or Muslim philoso-
phers. ‘Allamah introduced his own new issues, too. He
elaborated Mulla Sadra’s notion of substantial motion by
considering time as a fourth dimension. The distinction
between objective realities and subjective constructs was a
14
See Algar (2006). In a number of sources the date given for Ta-
bataba’i’s birth is 1892. This is an error and the correct date is 1904,
as Algar reports.
15
See Tehrani (1417/1996).
123
H. M. Legenhausen
primary focus of his attention. Among the subjective
constructs he included social and legal conventions. He
described God as reality (vaqi’iyat) whereas previous
philosophers had used the term existence (wujud). In his
rebuttals of Marxist materialism, he taught that Islamic
philosophy was a kind of realism, and he used the Persi-
anized European word, re’alism, to describe the view that
there is a reality beyond what is evident by sense percep-
tion. The result of the sessions in which he discussed such
issues as idealism, materialism, and realism was a series of
volumes compiled by his favorite student, Morteza
Mutahhari (who was martyred in a terrorist attack after the
revolution) published as Usul-e Falsafeh va Ravesh-e
Re’alism (The Principles of Philosophy and the Method of
Realism).16
Many of the most important teachers of philosophy in
Iran were students of ‘Allamah Tabataba’i, including,
Ayatullah Misbah Yazdi, Ayatullah Javadi Amuli, and
Ayatullah Hasan Zadeh Amuli in the seminaries of Qom,
Sayyid Ashtiyani in Mashhad, and Dr. Dinani at the
university of Tehran. Among the martyrs of the Islamic
revolution, in addition to Shahid Mutahhari, mentioned
above, Shahid Beheshti and Mustafa Khomeini were also
his students. Other famous students include the presumably
martyred Lebanese scholar Musa Sadr and the former
president of Iran, Mahdavı́ Kani. Among the scholars
subsequently living outside Iran, Dr. Seyyed Hossein Nasr,
Henry Corbin, and William Chittick also benefited from
lessons or collaboration with ‘Allamah.
When ‘Allamah was teaching in Qom, the seminaries
were in a state of some turbulence. Many of the most
brilliant scholars of the seminaries, including Imam
Khomeini and Shahid Mutahhari were calling for reform.
The old teaching methods seemed inadequate to the new
challenges facing the clergy. One step toward reform was
made with the founding of the Madrasah Muntaziriyah,
later known as Madrasah Haqqani, which remains in
operation today as Madrasah Shahidayn (Two Martyrs
School), named after the two martyrs, Qudussi (Allamah’s
son-in-law) and Beheshti who taught there. The manage-
ment of this school decided that philosophy (and other
subjects) should be included in the curriculum, in addition
to the standard core of Arabic and Islamic jurisprudence
and its principles. For this purpose, ‘Allamah was re-
quested to write two philosophy texts for the beginning and
intermediate students. The fulfillment of this request was
realized with Bidayah al-Hikmah (The Beginning of Wis-
dom)17 and Nihayah al-Hikmah (The End of Wisdom),
which were published in 1970 and 1975.
16
Tabataba’i and Mutahhari (1376/1997).
17
This has appeared in English translation by Sayyid ‘Ali Quli Qara’i
as The Elements of Islamic Metaphysics, see Tabataba’i (2003).
Introduction
Islamic philosophy has been taught in the Shi’ite sem-
inaries using three principal texts. Through most of the
twentieth century until the appearance of Bidayah al-
Hikmah, the didactic poem and its commentary, both by
Mulla Hadi Sabzavari, was the standard introductory text,
known as Shahr-e Manzumah. Like Tabataba’i’s Bidayat, it
was written in Arabic. In 1985–86, one of Tabataba’i’s
former students, Ayatullah Misbah Yazdi, published his
own text book in philosophy in Farsi, Amuzesh-e Falsafeh
(Philosophical Instructions).18 A comparison of the con-
tents of these three provides a good indication of the
direction in which Islamic philosophy has evolved during
the twentieth century.
Sabzavari’s Sharh-e Manzumah was written in two
volumes, one dealing primarily with metaphysics and the
other with logic. Neither Tabataba’i nor Misbah have
written introductory logic texts. Logic is still studied in the
seminaries, and traditional logic is being supplemented by
the study of modern logic.
In the philosophical part of the Sharh-e Manzumah there
are seven parts: (i) general principles; (ii) substance and
accident; (iii) theology in the specific sense; (iv) nature;
(v) prophecy; (vi) the resurrection; and (vii) ethics. The
Bidayah only deals with issues taken up in the first three
parts of the Sharh-e Manzumah. Traditional Islamic phi-
losophy included a section on ‘‘nature’’ that now seems
obsolete to students and professors who have consigned the
topic to the modern natural sciences. Prophecy and the
resurrection are still important and controversial topics, but
are not included in discussions of philosophy for intro-
ductory students. These are topics about which the loudest
criticisms from conservative theologians are heard. Ethics
continues to be studied, but usually separately from general
introductions to philosophy, and there are separate intro-
ductory texts in ethics for seminary students.
The first part of Sabzavari’s text is again divided into
seven sections (called ‘‘gems’’): (i) existence and non-
existence; (ii) necessity and contingency; (iii) eternity and
temporality; (iv) actuality and potentiality; (v) quiddity (or
whatness); (vi) unity and multiplicity; and (vii) cause and
caused. All of these discussions can also be found in
Tabataba’i’s text. The only topic heading in Bidayah that is
not in the Sharh al-Manzumah is the chapter on knowledge,
while all the major topics of Sabzavari’s work are dis-
cussed to some extent in the Bidayah. As we advance
through the twentieth century in Islamic philosophy, epis-
temology takes on an ever increasingly important role. In
Ayatullah Misbah’s Philosophical Instructions we find that
there is an entire part, indeed the first part after the intro-
ductory historical chapters, devoted to epistemological
issues.
18
Misbah Yazdi (1999).
173
Attention to the history of philosophy, and to Western
philosophy in particular, is also a relatively new phenom-
enon in Islamic philosophy. Of course, the classics of
Islamic philosophy from Kindi to Mulla Sadra paid par-
ticular attention to Greek philosophy, sometimes painting a
picture of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle as religious figures
consonant with the ideals of Islamic philosophy, so that, for
example, Aristotle appears to Sohravardi in a dream vision
and encourages him to pursue direct intuitive knowledge as
a key to solving his philosophical difficulties. However,
while Ibn Sina and other Muslim philosophers had a tre-
mendous impact on the philosophical views that developed
in Europe through Aquinas, Eckhart, and others, medieval
European philosophers were not mentioned in subsequent
textbooks of Islamic philosophy until the twentieth century.
Today, there is a great interest in comparative philosophy
and comparative religion in Iran.
5 Technical remarks and acknowledgements
An attempt has been made to render most of the technical
terms used in a consistent manner throughout this collec-
tion. The transliterations of terms in parentheses are pro-
vided as tips for those familiar with the subject in Arabic or
Farsi. Diacritical marks have been dropped; otherwise the
method of transliteration is fairly standard. Many of the
key terms themselves, however, have no standard transla-
tions. I have tended to favor the precedent set by
Mohaghegh and Izutsu (Sabzavari 1983) although I am
indebted to William Chittick’s work (in Chittick 2001;
Mulla Sadra 2003; and many other books and articles) even
when this is not reflected in the choice of a word. The
glossary and discussions in Morewedge (1973) are pio-
neering efforts that continue to be useful.
Here it is important to mention just a few of the tech-
nical terms that raise difficulties. The English word
‘‘essence’’ and the Latin essentia have been used to
translate the Arabic dhat as well as the Arabic mahiyyah.
The dhat is the possessor of attributes, and ‘‘essence’’ will
be reserved for it, despite the fact that the famous dis-
tinction between ‘‘being and essence’’ pertains to mahiy-
yah, not dhat. The mahiyyah is a translation into Arabic of
the ti esti of Aristotle, and hence is translated by Chittick as
‘‘whatness,’’ which will be seen from time to time in this
volume along with the more frequently used Mohaghegh
and Izutsu translation, ‘‘quiddity.’’ So, the distinction that
Aquinas was inspired by Ibn Sina (Avicenna) to write
about is that between existence and quiddity or whatness,
while the essence of a thing is its substratum, that which
has various attributes.
Since most translators seem to prefer quiddity for
mahiyyah, it seems appropriate to use verity to avoid a
123
174
related ambiguity. Two terms in Arabic are translated as
truth: haqiqah and sidq. The latter is the opposite of
falsehood, and is used to indicate that the predication of a
concept to an object is true. The object of the true pred-
ication of a concept is said to be the instance (misdaq,
also derived from sidq) of the concept. The term haqiqah
(or haqiqat, in Farsi) is usually translated as truth or
reality, and pertains to the essence (dhat) of a thing. The
haqiqah of a thing is what some translators call its ‘‘inner
reality,’’ and Morewedge suggests is roughly equivalent to
the Greek aletheia. In adjectival form, haqiqi normally
means real or genuine. In the articles collected here, true
and truth will be used for sadiq and sidq, as in true
predication, and veridical and verity for haqiqi and
haqiqah.
Some of the most important questions debated in Islamic
philosophy are about what is objectively true about
something and what is described in a certain way only
because of the ability of the mind to transfer concepts from
the area in which they were originally abstracted to new
regions. That to which a concept originally applies is called
principial or fundamental. Here the latter will be used only
because it is more common. The opposite of fundamental is
i‘tibari, the nominal form of which has been translated as
‘‘subjective construct,’’ ‘‘mental posit,’’ ‘‘consideration,’’
and ‘‘respect.’’ Here ‘‘subjective,’’ ‘‘subjective con-
struct,’’ and ‘‘subjective consideration’’ will be used, often
with the term i‘tibari in parentheses beside it as a reminder.
Against this translation, it could be argued that ‘‘sub-
jective’’ carries too much with it from the Western tradi-
tion about what is inner and private that has nothing to do
with the Arabic i‘tibari. On the other hand, ‘‘subjective’’ is
the opposite of ‘‘objective’’ and it may indicate what is
taken to be so because of the action of the mind. So, let the
reader be forewarned that ‘‘subjective’’ as it appears in
these pages translates a word whose home is foreign to
Western debates about subjectivity. There are further
complications. The term i‘tibari is used with different
meanings in different contexts and different authors
disagree about what these meanings are.
There are other terms and distinctions that will be
introduced in context. Those mentioned above have been
discussed here because of their prevalence. One of the
main difficulties in studying Islamic philosophy is that
the concepts it employs are sufficiently similar to those
more familiar to Western readers to entice one to jump to
wrong conclusions. Explanatory notes by this editor will be
indicated by ‘‘[Ed]’’.
Dates in Iran are recorded through the use of three dif-
ferent calendars: this is the year 2007 on the Gregorian
calendar; but it is 1386 on the Persian solar hijri calendar,
and 1428 on the Islamic lunar hijri calendar. Publishers in
Iran usually use the Persian calendar for works published
123
H. M. Legenhausen
in Farsi and the Islamic calendar for works published in
Arabic, and sometimes for other religious texts in Farsi
(although some publishers prefer to use the Gregorian date
without either hijri date). Texts published in lithograph
form often lack any date. In the references cited, if the
publisher gives the date in a hijri calendar, this is followed
by a slash with the corresponding Gregorian date following
it. If the publisher uses the Gregorian date, this is given
alone. This form of citation is fairly standard for such
works.
I gratefully acknowledge that this work would not have
been possible without the moral and administrative support
of the Imam Khomeini Education and Research Institute,
and I thank the Office of Islamic Propagation, Qom, for
funding some of the translations. Dr. Mohsen Javadi’s
constant assistance throughout the project is deeply
appreciated.
The philosophy represented in the articles gathered for
this issue of Topoi is an indication of the state of the art of
Islamic philosophy as it is studied in the Islamic semi-
naries and universities of Iran today. This collection of
articles is designed to be of interest to the specialist at the
same time as it serves philosophers unacquainted with
contemporary Islamic philosophy by providing an intro-
duction to the field. The articles were selected to reflect
topics of current controversy. We begin with two articles
in philosophical theology, followed by two that discuss the
fundamentality of existence. These are followed by one on
philosophical anthropology that focuses on the nature of
the imagination, which will assist in the understanding of
the issues central to the next two papers on Islamic meta-
ethics. Finally, there is an article on causality in Islamic
philosophy that takes a somewhat skeptical attitude toward
the entire tradition, while retaining an insider’s perspec-
tive. The articles by Ghasem Kakaie, Mohammad Sae-
edimehr, Mahmoud Khatami and Mohsen Javadi were
solicited by the editor for publication in this issue of Topoi,
and were written in English. The articles by ‘Abd al-Rasul
‘Ubudiyyat (translated by D. D. Sodagar and the editor)
and Yahya Yasrebi (translated by Rizwan Arastu) were
solicited by the editor for publication in this issue of Topoi,
and were written in Farsi. The contributions of Ahmad
Ahmadi and Sadeq Larijani were written in Farsi for
Iranian academic journals, and have been translated by the
editor with permission and assistance in translation from
the authors. The authors, all of whom are well-
known in Iranian philosophical circles, include both
clerics and non-clerics, teachers at universities and
seminaries, who draw upon the philosophical traditions of
Islamic and Western philosophy, mysticism, and jurispru-
dence in their contributions to contemporary Iranian
Islamic philosophy.
The Imam Khomeini Education and Research Institute
Introduction
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