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“Only the Imam Knows Best” The Maktab-e Tafkīk's Attack on the Legitimacy of Philosophy in Iran1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 October 2012

SAJJAD H. RIZVI*
Affiliation:
The University of [email protected]

Abstract

Philosophy, as an intellectual discipline emerging from Hellenism, had an ambiguous and disputed role in the theology and apologetics of Islam and continues to be contentious. In this article, I examine the arguments over the legitimacy of philosophy between the philosophical school of Mullā Ṣadrā (d. c. 1635), dominant in the present Shiʿi seminary in Iran, and its detractors in the maktab-i tafkīk who insist that knowledge of reality and the faith only derives from the teachings of the Shiʿi Imams and cannot be contaminated with Aristotelianism. After an introduction to this fideist school of separating religious and ‘foreign’ sciences, three questions are analysed. What is philosophy? How do we know God? How can we demonstrate the Qurʾanic doctrine of the resurrection of bodies? What emerges is a more radical challenge to uṣūlī rationalism than that posed previously from the Akhbāriyya and their insistence upon a ḥadīth-based jurisprudence.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 2012

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Footnotes

1

This article was given as a lecture on 21 January 2010 in the Shiʿi Studies series at the Institute of Ismaili Studies in London. I am grateful to the attendees for their valuable comments.

References

2 Al-Ṣaffār al-Qummī, Baṣāʾir al-darajāt al-kubrā fī faḍāʾil Āl Muḥammad, ed. Mīrzā Muḥsin Kūcha-bāghī (reprinted Tehran,1374 Shamsī/1995), juzʾ I, bāb IV, ḥadīth #1, 26. All translations are mine unless otherwise indicated.

3 On the pivotal issue of the Imam's knowledge and the disputes over its nature, see Bayhom-Daou, Tamima, The Imāmī Shīʿī Conception of the Knowledge of the Imām and the Sources of Religious Doctrine in the Formative Period: from Hishām b. al-Ḥakam to Kulīnī’, unpublished thesis (PhD), School of Oriental and African Studies, (University of London, 1996)Google Scholar; Amir-Moezzi, Mohammad Ali, Le guide divin dans le Shîʿisme originel (Paris, 1992), pp. 174199 Google Scholar; Modarressi, Hossein, Crisis and Consolidation in the Formative Period of Shiʿite Islam (Princeton, 1993), pp. 2751 Google Scholar.

4 This latter option was especially true of the tradent-jurists who rejected independent legal reasoning, the Akhbāriyya – see Gleave, Robert, Scripturalist Islam: The History and Doctrines of the Akhbārī Shīʿī School (Leiden, 2007), pp. 268296 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 al-Ṣadūq, Ibn Bābawayh, Risāla fī-l-iʿtiqādāt (Tehran, 1951), p. 74 Google Scholar; Ghaffārī, A. (ed.), Abū Jaʿfar al-Kulaynī, al-Kāfī, (Tehran, 1968), I, pp. 170171 Google Scholar. For discussion on this point, see also Modarressi, Crisis and Consolidation, pp. 109–117.

6 Rizvi, Sajjad, “The developed kalām tradition part II: later Shiʿi theology”, in Winter, T. (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Classical Islamic Theology (Cambridge, 2008), pp. 9096 Google Scholar.

7 Schmidtke, Sabine, Theologie, Philosophie und Mystik im zwölferschiitischen Islam des 9./15. Jahrdhunderts: Die Gedankenwelten des Ibn Abī Ǧumhūr al-Aḥsāʾī (um 838/1434–35 — nach 906/1501) (Leiden, 2000)Google Scholar; Rizvi, Sajjad, Mullā Ṣadrā and Metaphysics: Modulation of Being (London, 2009)Google Scholar.

8 Muḥammad, Sayyid Ṭihrānī, Ḥusayn Ḥusaynī-yi, Mihr-i tābān: yādnāma va muṣāḥibāt-i tilmīdh va ʿallāma (Mashhad 1417/1996), pp. 105106 Google Scholar; cited and translated in Algar, Hamid, ‘ʿAllāma Sayyid Muḥammad Ḥusayn Ṭabāṭabāʾī: philosopher, exegete and gnostic”, Journal of Islamic Studies vol. 17, no. 3 (2006), pp. 334335 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Dabashi, Hamid, The Theology of Discontent: The Ideological Foundations of the Islamic Revolution in Iran (New York, 1993), pp. 274275, 281–284Google Scholar. An alternative explanation of Burūjirdī's prohibition may lie in the fact that Khomeini had been teaching philosophy since at least 1936 (succeeding Shāhābādī [d. 1950] who moved to Tehran in that year) and Burūjirdī may have been protecting his student and head of his office (from 1944) – for this information but not the interpretation, see Davari, Mahmud, The Political Thought of Murtaza Mutahhari (London, 2005), pp. 1819 Google Scholar. The rivalry may be further deduced from Ṭabāṭabāʾī's words themselves when he claimed that the syllabus in Qum was deficient in the teaching of philosophy.

9 In Iraq, it led to the famous work of Sayyid Muḥammad Bāqir al-Ṣadr (executed 1980), Falsafatunā [Our Philosophy], first published in 1959, which was a defence of metaphysical and epistemological realism against relativism, scepticism and dialectical materialism; cf. Mallat, Chibli, The Renewal of Islamic Law: Muhammad Baqer as-Sadr, Najaf and the Shiʿi International (Cambridge, 1993), pp. 1112 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Our Philosophy, tr. Shams Inati (London,1991).

10 Muḥammad, Sayyid Ṭabāṭabāʾī, Ḥusayn, Bidāyat al-ḥikma (Qum 1401/1981)Google Scholar and Nihāyat al-ḥikma (Qum 1362 Sh/1983); the comparative work is really a set of taqrīrāt in philosophy penned by Muṭahharī, Uṣūl-i falsafa va ravish-i riʾālizm, 5 vols, (Qum 1387 Sh/2008); cf. Davari, Political Thought of Murtaza Mutahhari, pp. 28–29.

11 Ṭabāṭabāʾī, Bidāya, pp. 5–7.

12 Algar, Hamid, Islam and Revolution: Writings and Declarations of Imam Khomeini (Berkeley, 1981), pp. 363434 Google Scholar.

13 Cf. Knysh, Alexander, “ʿIrfān revisited: Khomeini and the legacy of Islamic mystical philosophy”, Middle East Journal, vol. 46, no. 4 (1992), pp. 631653 1992Google Scholar; Algar, Hamid, “The fusion of the Gnostic and the political in the personality and life of Imam Khumaynī’”, Al-Tawḥīd, vol. 17,, no. 2 (2003), pp. 317 Google Scholar; Martin, Vanessa, “A comparison between Khumaynī's government of the jurist and the commentary on Plato's Republic of Ibn Rushd”, Journal of Islamic Studies, vol. 7, no. 1 (1996), pp. 1631 1996CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bonaud, Christian, L'lmam khomeyni un gnostique méconnu du XXe Siècle (Bairut, 1997)Google Scholar.

14 Dabashi, Theology of Discontent, pp. 317–322; “ Āmulī, Abdullāh Javādī, Vilāyat-i faqīh: vilāyat-i faqāhat va ʿadālat (Qum 1378 Sh/1999)Google Scholar; Muḥammad, Sayyid Ṭihrānī, Ḥusayn Ḥusaynī-yi, Vilāyat-i faqīh dar ḥukūmat-i islāmī (Mashhad 1414/1993)Google Scholar; Taqī, Muḥammad Yazdī, Miṣbāh-i, al-Ḥukūma al-islāmiyya wa-wilāyat al-faqīh (Beirut, 2004)Google Scholar.

15 Shīrāzī, Mullā Ṣadrā, al-Ḥikma al-mutaʿāliya fī-l-asfār al-ʿaqliyya al-arbaʿa, Aʿvānī, G. et al. (eds) (Tehran 1382–1386 Sh/2003–2007), I: pp. 1718 Google Scholar. One also notices the complementarity of philosophy, the pursuit of knowledge and Shiʿi ḥadīth in an important work of the Mullā Ṣadrā's student, Kāshānī, Muḥsin Fayḍ, Kalimāt-i maknūna, Ḥasanzāda, Ṣādiq (ed.) (Qum 1386 Sh/2007), pp. 211216 Google Scholar.

16 Fātima Ṣādiq-zāda Qamṣarī, “Hamāhangī-yi ʿaql u maʿārif-i vaḥyānī dar ḥikmat-i Ṣadrāʾī’”, Maqālāt va barrasī-hā, (summer 1380 Sh/2001), no. 69, pp. 203–220.

17 Muḥammad, Sayyid Ṭabāṭabāʾī, Ḥusayn, ʿAlī wa-l-falsafa al-ilāhiyya (Beirut, 1980)Google Scholar, and Risālat al-walāya (Kuwait,1987), now translated as The Return to Being by F. Asadi and M. Dasht-Bozorgi (London, 2009); Āmulī, ʿAbdullāh Javādī, ʿAlī ibn Mūsá al-Riḍā wa-l-falsafa al-ilāhiyya (Qum, 1415/1994)Google Scholar.

18 Ḥusaynī-yi Ṭihrānī, Mihr-i tābān, pp. 42–56. However, he did make a distinction between the language, discourse and practice of mysticism and philosophy, opposing Mullā Ṣadrā on this point and supporting his student Mullā Muḥsin Fayḍ Kāshānī; cf. Algar, ‘ʿAllāma Ṭabāṭabāʾī’, p. 336.

19 Rizvi, Sajjad, “Towards a Typology of philosophical Iinquiry in the Ithnā ʿAshariyy tradition’” International Journal of Shiʿi Studies, vol. 4, no. 1 (2006), pp. 189206 Google Scholar, and “‘Being and sanctity: two poles of intellectual and mystical inquiry in Qajar Iran”, in R. Gleave (ed.), Religion and Society in Qajar Iran (London, 2005), pp. 113–126.

20 For example, Ashkivarī, Muḥammad Fanāʾī, Maʿqūl-i thānī: taḥlīlī az anvāʿ-i mafāhīm-i kullī dar falsafa-yi islāmī va gharbī (Qum 1387 Sh/2008)Google Scholar; Zakavī, ʿAlī-Akbar, Basīṭ al-ḥaqīqa az dīdgāh-i Mullā Ṣadrā va monādshināsī-yi Leibniz (Qum, 1384 Sh/2005)Google Scholar.

21 Raḥīmiyān, Muḥammad ʿAlī, Mutaʾallih-i Qurʾān: Shaykh Mujtabá Qazvīnī Khurāsānī (Qum, 1383/2005), pp. 2936 Google Scholar.

22 For one important academic tendency critical of Mullā Ṣadrā and the uncritical perpetuation of his school, see Yathribī, Sayyid Yaḥyá, ʿAyyār-i naqd, 2 vols., (Qum 1384–1387/2005–2008)Google Scholar.

23 For a historical account of the major figures, see Ḥakīmī, Muḥammad Riḍā, Maktab-i tafkīk (2nd edn., Tehran 1376 Sh/1997), pp. 187317 Google Scholar; “Vīža-yi maktab-i tafkīk’” Kayhān-i Farhangī 95 (Isfand 1371 Sh/1993). The only work in English on the school thus far is Gleave, Robert, “Continuity and originality in Shīʿī thought: the relationship between the Akhbāriyya and the Maktab-i tafkīk”, in Hermann, D. and Mervin, S. (eds), Shiʿi Trends and Dynamics in Modern Times (1800–1925) (Beirut/Frankfurt, 2010), pp. 7192 Google Scholar. For a preliminary bibliography, see Ḥujjatī-niyā, Ghulām-Ḥusayn, “Kitābshināsī-yi Maktab-i tafkīk”, Andīsha-yi Ḥawza, (Ādhar va Dīh 1378 Sh/1999–2000), no. 19, pp. 198216 Google Scholar.

24 To my knowledge, none of his works have been published. On jurisprudence and legal theory, he wrote glosses on the major school texts: namely, Farāʾid al-uṣūl/Rasāʾil of Shaykh Murtażá Anṣārī (d. 1846) and Kifāyat al-uṣūl of Ākhūnd Khurāsānī (d. 1911), and sets of lecture notes based on the classes that he attended in Najaf. On philosophy, he wrote two sets of glosses on Sharḥ-i manẓūma, a gloss on the metaphysics of Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī's commentary on al-Ishārāt wa-l-tanbīhāt of Avicenna, a gloss on the logic of al-Ishārāt wa-l-tanbīhāt, a commentary on the allegory of Salamān va Absāl of Avicenna, a series of treatises on the occult (ʿulūm gharība), a series of treatises on ethics, a Persian treatise on fundamentals of the faith and an Arabic treatise on it, and a commentary on the famous ḥadīth attributed to Imam ʿAlī on the nature of reality (mā-l-ḥaqīqa?).

25 Most of Isfahānī's works are in manuscript in Mashhad: only Abwāb al-hudá has been published a few times, including a recent reprint of the early 1980s edition as well as a new one – Abwāb al-hudá fī bayān ṭarīq al-hidāya al-ilāhiyya wa-mukhālifatihi maʿrāl-ʿul al-ʿulūm al yūnāniyya, Sayyid Muḥammad Bāqir Najafī-Yazdī (ed.) (Mashhad 1364 Sh/1985), and the newer edition, Ḥasan Jamshīdī (ed.) (Qum 1385 Sh/2006). His other works include: Miʿrāj al-qurba, a study of the spiritual significance of prayer; Miṣāh al-hudá, ibṭāl-i maʿārif-i yūnān, a critique of Sadrian philosophy; Maʿārif-i Qur’ān, a contemplation of the scripture that establishes the centrality of the text for the school; and Vajh-i iʿjāz-i Qur’ān on the doctrine of the inimitability of the scripture. On Iṣfahānī, see also Davari, Political Thought of Murtaza Mutahhari, pp. 7–9.

26 Qazvīnī's main work is the five volume Bayān al-Qurʾān in Persian, one volume on each of the fundamentals of the faith, Shiʿi (uṣūl al-dīn) – Bayān al-Qurʾān, 5 vols., (Tehran, 1370–71 Sh/1991–92)Google Scholar. For a study, see Raḥīmiyān, Mutaʾallih-yi Qurʾān.

27 For some relevant sources, see Javād, Mīrzā Ṭihrānī, Āqā, Mīzān al-maṭālib (Qum, 1374 Sh/1995)Google Scholar; idem, Āyīn-i zindagī va dars-hā-yi akhlāqī-yi islāmī (Qum, 1370 Sh/1991); idem, ʿĀrif va ṣūfī chih mī-guyad? (Tehran, 1369 Sh/1990); idem, Falsafa-yi basharī va islāmī (Tehran 1355 Sh/1976); Ḥakīmī, Muḥammad Riżā, Ilāhiyyāt-i ilāhī va ilāhiyyāt-i basharī: madkhal (Qum 1386 Sh/2007)Google Scholar; idem, Maʿād-i jismānī va ḥikmat-i mutaʿāliya (Qum 1381 Sh/2002); idem, Maktab-i tafkīk (2nd edn, Tehran 1376 Sh/1997); idem et al, al-Ḥayāt (Tehran 1367 Sh/1988).

28 And as such a controversial and much maligned work – it is in fact quite difficult to obtain a copy.

29 The Shīrāziyya translate tafkīkī works in Arabic: Shaykh Ḥasan al-Balūshī from Kuwait has kindly provided me with copies. On the Shīrāziyya, see Louër, Laurence, Transnational Shia Politics: Religious and Political Networks in the Gulf (London 2008), pp. 88102 Google Scholar.

30 Two recent examples include John Bishop, Believing by Faith: An Essay on the Epistemology and Ethics of Religious Belief (New York, 2007)Google Scholar and Evans, C. Stephen, Faith Beyond Reason: A Kierkegaardian Account (Grand Rapids, 1998)Google Scholar. For discussions on the usages of the term ‘fideism’, see Richard Amesbury, “Fideism”, in Edward N. Zalta (ed.) Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2007 edn), URL = http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/fideism/ and Nicholl, Thomas D., “The traditions of fideism”, Religious Studies, vol. 44 (2008), pp. 122 Google Scholar.

31 Dr ʿAlī-Akbar Naṣīrī of the University of Baluchistan and Sistan has been working for some years on comparing the epistemology of the maktab-i tafkīk with reformed epistemology.

32 Zakariyyā Dāwūd, ‘al-Madrasa al-tafkīkiyya wa-l-taʾṣīl li-l-ʿaql al-shīʿī’, [email sourced from Shaykh Ḥasan al-Balūshī, October 2009], p. 4.

33 Ḥakīmī, Maktab-i tafkīk, pp. 25–29.

34 Raḥīmiyān, Mutaʾallih-i Qurʾān, for example.

35 Islāmī, Sayyid Ḥasan, Ruʾyā-yi khulūṣ bāz-khwānī-yi maktab-i tafkīk (Tehran, 1383 Sh/2004), pp. 189342 Google Scholar, especially pp. 269–294 on the takfīr of Mullā Ṣadrā.

36 Cf. Hadot, Pierre, Philosophy as a Way of Life, tr. Chase, M. (Oxford, 1995)Google Scholar; Domański, Juliusz, La philosophie, théorie ou manière de vivre? (Fribourg, 1996)Google Scholar.

37 Corbin, Henry, Histoire de la philosophie islamique (Paris, 1986), pp. 2138 Google Scholar; Rizvi, Mullā Ṣadrā and Metaphysics, pp. 17–26.

38 See Ḥaqq-panāh, Riżā, ‘Ḥikmat-i shīʿī’, Andīsha-yi Ḥawza, (Ādhar va dīh 1378 Sh/1999–2000), no. 19, pp. 2636 Google Scholar; Dāwūd, ‘al-Madrasa al-tafkīkiyya’.

39 Dāwūd, ‘al-Madrasa al-tafkīkiyya’, pp. 1–2.

40 On these Akhbārīs, see Gleave, Robert, Inevitable Doubt: Two Theories of Shiʿi Jurisprudence (Leiden, 2000)Google Scholar and Scripturalist Islam: the History and Doctrines of the Akhbārī Shīʿī School (Leiden, 2007), pp. 31–60.

41 Mahdī, Mīrzā Iṣfahānī, Gharavī, Abwāb al-hudá fī bayān ṭarīq al-hidāya al-ilāhiyya wa-mukhālifatihi maʿ al-ʿulūm al yūnāniyya, Muḥammad, Sayyid Najafī-Yazdī, Bāqir (ed) (Mashhad, 1364 Sh/1985), pp. 34 Google Scholar; cf. Raḥīmiyān, Mutaʾallih-i Qurʾān, pp. 36–40.

42 Astarābādī, Muḥammad Amīn, al-Fawāʾid al-madaniyya (Qum 1424 Q/2003), p. 571 Google Scholar.

43 Iṣfahānī, Abwāb al-hudá, pp. 4–5.

44 Ḥusayn Muẓaffarī, “Mukhālifat-i imāmān-i maʿṣūm va aṣḥāb īshān bā falsafa az dīdgāh-i maktab-i tafkīk”, Maʿārif-i ʿaqlī, (summer 1385 Sh/2006), no. 2, pp. 67–86; idem, ‘“Muʿarrafī-yi maktab-i tafkīk va naqd-i nigāh-i īn maktab bih tarjuma-yi falsafa az yūnānī tā ʿarabī’”, Maʿārif-i ʿaqlī, (autumn 1384 Sh/2005), no. 2, pp. 83–104.

45 Iṣfahānī, Abwāb al-hudá, pp. 123–124.

46 Muḥammad, Mīrzā Miyānjī, Bāqir Malikī, Tawḥīd al-imāmiyya (Tehran, 1415/1994), pp. 1453 Google Scholar.

47 Miyānjī, Tawḥīd al-imāmiyya, pp. 59–75. Cf. Qummī, Qāḍī Saʿīd, “al-Nafaḥāt al-ilāhiyya wa-khawāṭir al-ilhāmiyya”, in Ḥabībī, N. (ed.),al-Arbaʿīniyyāt li-kashf anwār al-qudsiyyāt (Tehran, 1381 Sh/2002), pp. 157170 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

48 Raḥīmiyān, Mutaʾallih-i Qurʾān, p. 60.

49 Raḥīmiyān, Mutaʾallih-i Qurʾān, pp. 61–64.

50 Ḥaqq-panāh, ‘Ḥikmat-i Shīʿī’, p. 33.

51 Ḥaqq-panāh, ‘Ḥikmat-i Shīʿī’, pp. 28–30.

52 Birinjkār, Riżā, Ḥikmat va andīsha-yi dīnī (Tehran, 1383 Sh/2004), pp. 95110 Google Scholar.

53 For example, Āmulī, ʿAbdullāh Javādī, Tabyīn-i barāhīn-i ithbāt-i khudā (Qum 1374 Sh/1995)Google Scholar; for a good survey in philosophy of religion to rational approaches to the existence of God, see Oppy, Graham, Arguing about Gods (Cambridge, 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

54 Plantinga, Alvin, “Is belief in God properly basic?Nous 15 (1981), pp. 4151 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

55 Miyānjī, Tawḥīd al-imāmiyya, p. 86; Birinjkār, Riżā, Maʿrifat-i fiṭrī-yi khudā (Tehran, 1374 Sh/1995)Google Scholar; idem, Mabānī-yi khudāshināsī dar falsafa-yi yūnān va adyān-i ilāhī (Tehran, 1371 Sh/1992).

56 Cf. Oppy, Arguing about Gods, pp. 332–344.

57 Dānish-Shahrakī, Ḥabībullāh, ʿAql az naẓar-i Qurʾān va ḥikmat-i mutaʿāliya (Qum, 1387 Sh/2008), pp. 1517 Google Scholar.

58 Dānish-Shahrakī, ʿAql az naẓar-i Qurʾān, pp. 65–133.

59 Dānish-Shahrakī, ʿAql az naẓar-i Qurʾān, pp. 137–207.

60 Raḥīmiyān, ʿAlī-Riżā, Masʾala-yi ʿilm: taḥlīl-i ʿilm dar falsafa-yi Ṣadrāʾī va maktab-i maʿārif-i ahl-i bayt ʿalayhim al-salām (Tehran, 1385 Sh/2006), pp. 25150 Google Scholar.

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62 Sayyidān et al., “Nisbat-i ʿaql u vaḥī”, pp. 315–316.

63 Sayyidān et al., “Nisbat-i ʿaql u vaḥī”, p. 317.

64 Islāmī, Ruʾyā-yi khulūṣ, pp. 70–83.

65 Sayyidān et al., “Nisbat-i ʿaql u vaḥī”, pp. 322–323.

66 Sayyidān et al., “Nisbat-i ʿaql u vaḥī”, p. 327.

67 Islāmī, Ruʾyā-yi khulūṣ, pp. 113–125.

68 Miyānjī, Tawḥīd al-imāmiyya, pp. 87–89.

69 Rappe, Sara, Reading Neoplatonism: Non-discursive Thinking in the Texts of Plotinus, Proclus, and Damascius (Cambridge, 2000)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

70 Mullā Ṣadrā, al-Asfār al-arbaʿa, IX, pp. 163–188.

71 Mullā Ṣadrā, al-Asfār al-arbaʿa, IX, p. 302.

72 Algar, ‘ʿAllāma Ṭabāṭabāʾī’, 335–336.

73 Āmulī, Muḥammad Taqī, Durar al-fawāʾid fī sharḥ ghurar al-farāʾid (li-l-Sabzawārī), 2 vols., (Qum, 1374 Sh/1995), pp. II: 460 Google Scholar.

74 Yathribī, ʿAyyār-i naqd, II, pp. 145–159.

75 Islāmī, Ruʾyā-yi khulūṣ, pp. 236–237.

76 Raḥīmiyān, Mutaʾallih-i Qurʾān, pp. 73–76.