School
Illuminationism
Illuminationism (Ishraq) is the Islamic philosophy of Suhrawardi, which explains reality as degrees of light and knowledge as direct presence.
Suhrawardi (1154–1191) set it out in The Philosophy of Illumination, criticising parts of Ibn Sina's Aristotelian philosophy and drawing on Platonic and ancient Persian themes. He held that we know ourselves, and in the end other things, by their presence to us rather than by definition. He was executed in Aleppo, but commentators carried the school on, and it shaped the later Transcendent philosophy of Mulla Sadra. On this site it answers questions on the sources of knowledge (2.2), consciousness and aesthetic experience.
Thinkers of this school
Guide: Schools of Philosophy: The Main -isms and the Questions They Answer
-
Knowledge by presence: does Suhrawardi show why experience resists description?
I edit films in Tehran, which means my working day is spent deciding what time and space should feel like to someone else. The one thing I cannot edit is what it feels like to be me watching the cut. Suhrawardi, the…
Started by Parisa Moghaddam5 replies -
Bullough’s fog at sea, seen from an edit suite in Tehran
Edward Bullough's 1912 essay on "psychical distance" begins with a fog at sea. For the passengers it is mostly misery and anxiety: delays, danger, the foghorn. But if you can set the practical side aside, the fog becomes strange and beautiful: the…
Started by Parisa Moghaddam4 replies -
If I know myself “by presence”, why am I so bad at knowing my own motives? Suhrawardi meets psychology
In my psychology courses, self-knowledge is treated as a model the brain builds of itself, and a fairly unreliable one. People misreport their own motives all the time. So I was surprised to find, in a book about Persian philosophy, the claim…
Started by Elif Yıldız5 replies