Logic and The Light The rise of practical wisdom from within the illuminationist logic

Abstract

This essay is an attempt to make some textual material of Islamic philosophy speak to us. The first part of this article discusses the importance of re-reading and making the silent texts of the Islamic philosophy speak. In this way only, the Islamic philosophical tradition can contribute to the development of the philosophy world we live in today. The second part of this essay reviews the development of a significant philosophical problem that has changed our understanding of the meaning and applications of philosophy. The problem concerning the relationship between the theoretical and the practical has been considered from a different point of view since the18th century. Many philosophers since then have deviated from the traditional cliché of the separation between the practical and the theoretical discussing the two as intertwined concepts. This unifying view can be discovered within the Illuminationist philosophy of Sohrawardi. It portrays thought and practice in a so deeply unified consistency that practical philosophy is being born and bred from within the most theoretical part of philosophy, that is, logic. The Illumationist logic gives birth to a moral philosophy. The last part of the essay endeavors to re-construct this co-existency of logic and ethics in the Illuminative philosophy.

Keywords

• illuminationist philosophy
• illuminationist logic
• theoretical and practical wisdom
• making text speak