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.