The Perfect Man as the Crown of All-cosmic Existence in Ibn ʼArabi’s Thought

Abstract

In Sufism, the character and work of the Sufi master Muḥyid-dīn Ibn ʽArabī (d. 1240) is taken as pivotal. The questions and problems of spiritual anthropology are at the center of his attention. Ibn ʽArabī teaches that the cause of all creation is the Perfect Man, the earthly manifestation (maẓhar) of the metaphysical Muḥammadan Reality manifested by the Breath of the All-Merciful by which the river of God’s manifestations originated. That Breath was nothing else but a result of Divine love or longing for seeing Self in the other, which is the basic impulse of the entire cosmic movement. It is the Perfect Man that is the perfect polished mirror, in which divine Names and Attributes are reflected. Only by it, the world continues its existence, which means that at any given moment there have to be perfect men. Finally, those are the questions that are bringing us back to Ibn ‘Arabi’s famous existential theomonism دوجولا ةدحو) ) or singularity of the Being. Theory of the Perfect Man shows it as well. Exactly through it, we are capable to envisage such important transmission of the transcendence into immanent.

Keywords

• ibn ‘arabī
• perfect man
• hayāl (imagination)
• wuğūd (being)