Islamic Philosophy and Occidental Phenomenology in Dialogue – serie

Over the millennia, philosophy has sought the ultimate understanding of the full human horizon of existence as well as of human destiny and the ultimate sense of it All. The innumerable attempts to grasp the answers to these questions, each taking its own approach and having its own preconceptions, have engendered a range of different philosophical approaches, one so broad that seemingly unbridgeable rifts impede possible, cross-fertilizing communication. And yet the themes of all of them, e.g., the immeasurable cosmos, life, the individual being bearing life, the human person within his or her world, and his or her longings to transcend that world, the human mind, its pragmatic/cognitive tools, creative, speculative pursuits, remain constants. The logos they all share is one. It is not that no vicarious sharing of intuitive glimpses by the proponents of the varied doctrines and methods in question occurs. The history of philosophy is in fact marked by the juxtaposing of theories and approaches having different trajectories and by the mixing of insights, the crossing of borders, etc. However, what is greatly needed is in-depth comparison of the various doctrines and a reflection on the contrasting, opposing, clashing perspectives that seeks foundations for all of them in the human, creative condition, in that microcosm that extends its tentacles toward the two great infmities: the external infmity of the cosmos and the internal infinity of transcending destiny.

By proposing the Microcosm and Macrocosm analogy for dialogue between Islamic Philosophy and Occidental Phenomenology, the authors of this volume are reviving the perennial positioning of the human condition in the play of forces within and without the human being. This theme has run from Plato through the Middle Ages, Renaissance and Modernity, and has been ignored by contemporaries. It now acquires a new pertinence and striking significance due to the scientific discoveries into the "infinitely small" in life, on the one hand, and the prodigious technological discoveries of the "infinitely great" on the other. Both open up undreamt-of prospects for the continuing conquest of cosmic forces. The human person – thrown into turmoil by the new approaches to life and needing to acquire new habits of mind, having lost security of all beliefs – desperately seeks a new clarification of the Human Condition within the unity of everything-there-is, of cosmic forces, and of his destiny. The dialogue between Islamic Philosophy and phenomenology of life can show the way.Papers by: Gholam-Reza A'awani, Mehdi Aminrazavi, Roza Davari Ardakani, Mohammad Azadpur, Gary Backhaus, Marina Banchetti-Robino, William Chittick, Seyed Mostafa Muhaghghegh Damad, Golamhossein Ebrahimi Dinani, Nader El-Bizri, Kathleen Haney, Salahaddin Khalilov, Sayyid Mohammad Khamenei, Mahmoud Khatami, Mieczyslaw Pawel Migon, Nikolay Milkov, Sachiko Murata, Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, Daniela Verducci.

From time immemorial, concern with timing of life has been crucial for the regulation of human praxis as well as for the philosophical quest to understand existence by seeking its meaning. The two used to inform each other, until modernity, when they parted. In spite of the extensive progress in manipulating change and motion, and of the abundance of metaphysical attempts to enlighten human beings about their fate, the puzzling nature of temporality and timing of reality remains controversial.The present collection of studies seeks a new answer by initiating a novel investigation informed by the ancient wisdom of the Greaco-Arabic-Islamic sources and inheritance, on the one side, and the contemporary discernment of Occidental phenomenology of life, on the other, in a common dialogical effort to unravel this great enigma of existence.Papers by: Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, William C. Chittick, Reza Akbarian, Daniela Verducci, Michael F. Andrews, Seyyed Mohammed Khamenei,Nader El-Bizri, Mehdi Aminrazavi, Massimo Durante, Abdul Rahim Afaki, Maria-Chiara Teloni, A.L. Samian, Kathleen Haney, Jad Hatem, Robert J. Dobie, Michel Dion.

The Volume brings together scholars from Azerbaijan, Egypt, Germany, India, Iran, Iraq, Italy, the Netherlands, and Turkey to approach the new field of Eco-Imagination from various philosophical and disciplinary backgrounds. Sufism and its Micro-Macro philosophy in Ikhwan al-Safa, Ibn Arabi, Suhrawardy, Nishabouri, and Mulla Sadra are in dialogue with the Logos of Life Philosophy founded by Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka (1923 – 2014). This book provides a multi-perspective insight into the understanding of Life in Islamic Philosophies.Philosophers, mystics, and poets from a variety of Islamic countries, schools, and worldviews are introduced and debated. Sustainable futures evolved in harmony with everything there is alive (Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka), are currently more threatened than ever. Wars, ecological destructivity, the climate crisis, and not least the crisis of the Human Being call urgently for a cross-religious, cultural, and generational understanding. Lively debates in Islam, taking place on philosophical problems for hundreds of years, often based on the same roots as in Occidental Phenomenology, e.g., Plato, Aristotle, and Plotinus, are still too little known in the Occident/West. The prolific and poetic arguments, introduced for the first time in an eco-imaginative horizon, do not belong to the past. This volume invites students and researchers to uncover Islamic Philosophies’ potentialities for a shared sustainable future.

This book offers a novel philosophical system - Sufi Phenomenology - rooted in the shared pursuit of essence and truth within two major traditions: Sufism and phenomenology. While these traditions have historically been studied separately, their intersection reveals profound insights into consciousness, experience, and the nature of existence. By adopting phenomenological terminology and integrating Sufi metaphysical insights, this text introduces a fresh perspective on reality, bridging rational analysis and spiritual intuition. Sufi Phenomenology emerges as a distinct philosophical approach that reinterprets fundamental phenomenological structures through the lens of Sufi thought and explores key themes such as the nature of Eidos, Aʿyān-i Thābita, Consciousness, Reason, and Logos, illuminating dimensions of existence shaped by spiritual experience. This book is essential for scholars and students of phenomenology, Islamic philosophy, and comparative philosophy, as well as those exploring the intersections of science, spirituality, and human cognition. By offering a new paradigm that harmonizes Eastern and Western thought, Sufi Phenomenology opens new pathways for philosophical inquiry and personal transformation.

With some exceptions, there is not a real interest in Islamic philosophy and t- ology in Western institutions today. This largely ignored area has the potential to present enlightening insights into the development of the Western thought and to contribute to contemporary discussions in philosophy and theology in general. Scholars working in Islamic thought usually focus on its medieval background and consider it to be mainly of a historical interest and far away from the intellectual world of today. Showing its contemporary relevance is an important task by which the status of Islamic philosophy can be elevated to its proper station. By considering these points in mind, the University of Kentucky organized an international graduate student conference on Islamic philosophy and the- ogy with an emphasis on its contemporary relevance which was held between the 28th and 30th September 2007. This book emerged out of the conf- ence by adding more chapters relevant to the main theme of the book. This book presents analyses and discussions of different topics in Islamic philo- phy and theology by relating them to contemporary debates and ideas in four main areas: epistemology, metaphysics, philosophy of religion and value t- ory. There are ten chapters in sum. Some of the chapters are written by graduate students and some of them by experienced scholars. Each chapter presents c- siderable insight into its relevant topic but does not represent the opinion of anybody except the author.

Over the millennia, philosophy has sought the ultimate understanding of the full human horizon of existence as well as of human destiny and the ultimate sense of it All. The innumerable attempts to grasp the answers to these questions, each taking its own approach and having its own preconceptions, have engendered a range of different philosophical approaches, one so broad that seemingly unbridgeable rifts impede possible, cross-fertilizing communication. And yet the themes of all of them, e.g., the immeasurable cosmos, life, the individual being bearing life, the human person within his or her world, and his or her longings to transcend that world, the human mind, its pragmatic/cognitive tools, creative, speculative pursuits, remain constants. The logos they all share is one. It is not that no vicarious sharing of intuitive glimpses by the proponents of the varied doctrines and methods in question occurs. The history of philosophy is in fact marked by the juxtaposing of theories and approaches having different trajectories and by the mixing of insights, the crossing of borders, etc. However, what is greatly needed is in-depth comparison of the various doctrines and a reflection on the contrasting, opposing, clashing perspectives that seeks foundations for all of them in the human, creative condition, in that microcosm that extends its tentacles toward the two great infmities: the external infmity of the cosmos and the internal infinity of transcending destiny.

By proposing the Microcosm and Macrocosm analogy for dialogue between Islamic Philosophy and Occidental Phenomenology, the authors of this volume are reviving the perennial positioning of the human condition in the play of forces within and without the human being. This theme has run from Plato through the Middle Ages, Renaissance and Modernity, and has been ignored by contemporaries. It now acquires a new pertinence and striking significance due to the scientific discoveries into the "infinitely small" in life, on the one hand, and the prodigious technological discoveries of the "infinitely great" on the other. Both open up undreamt-of prospects for the continuing conquest of cosmic forces. The human person – thrown into turmoil by the new approaches to life and needing to acquire new habits of mind, having lost security of all beliefs – desperately seeks a new clarification of the Human Condition within the unity of everything-there-is, of cosmic forces, and of his destiny. The dialogue between Islamic Philosophy and phenomenology of life can show the way.Papers by: Gholam-Reza A'awani, Mehdi Aminrazavi, Roza Davari Ardakani, Mohammad Azadpur, Gary Backhaus, Marina Banchetti-Robino, William Chittick, Seyed Mostafa Muhaghghegh Damad, Golamhossein Ebrahimi Dinani, Nader El-Bizri, Kathleen Haney, Salahaddin Khalilov, Sayyid Mohammad Khamenei, Mahmoud Khatami, Mieczyslaw Pawel Migon, Nikolay Milkov, Sachiko Murata, Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, Daniela Verducci.

From time immemorial, concern with timing of life has been crucial for the regulation of human praxis as well as for the philosophical quest to understand existence by seeking its meaning. The two used to inform each other, until modernity, when they parted. In spite of the extensive progress in manipulating change and motion, and of the abundance of metaphysical attempts to enlighten human beings about their fate, the puzzling nature of temporality and timing of reality remains controversial.The present collection of studies seeks a new answer by initiating a novel investigation informed by the ancient wisdom of the Greaco-Arabic-Islamic sources and inheritance, on the one side, and the contemporary discernment of Occidental phenomenology of life, on the other, in a common dialogical effort to unravel this great enigma of existence.Papers by: Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, William C. Chittick, Reza Akbarian, Daniela Verducci, Michael F. Andrews, Seyyed Mohammed Khamenei,Nader El-Bizri, Mehdi Aminrazavi, Massimo Durante, Abdul Rahim Afaki, Maria-Chiara Teloni, A.L. Samian, Kathleen Haney, Jad Hatem, Robert J. Dobie, Michel Dion.

Rationality in its various expressions and innumerable applications sustains understanding and our sense of reality. It is traditionally differentiated according to its sources in the soul: in consciousness, in reason, in experience, and in elevation. Such a functional approach, however, leaves us searching for the common foundation harmonizing these rationalities.The perennial quest to resolve the aporias of rationality is finding in contemporary science’s focus on origins, on the generative roots of reality, tantalizing hints as to how this may be accomplished. This project is enhanced by the wave of recent phenomenology/ontopoiesis of life, which reveals the workings of the logos at the root of beingness and all rationality, whereby we gaze upon the prospect of a New Enlightenment. In the rays of this vision the revival of the intuitions of classical Islamic metaphysics, particularly intuition of the continuity of beingness in the gradations of life, receive fresh confirmation.

With some exceptions, there is not a real interest in Islamic philosophy and t- ology in Western institutions today. This largely ignored area has the potential to present enlightening insights into the development of the Western thought and to contribute to contemporary discussions in philosophy and theology in general. Scholars working in Islamic thought usually focus on its medieval background and consider it to be mainly of a historical interest and far away from the intellectual world of today. Showing its contemporary relevance is an important task by which the status of Islamic philosophy can be elevated to its proper station. By considering these points in mind, the University of Kentucky organized an international graduate student conference on Islamic philosophy and the- ogy with an emphasis on its contemporary relevance which was held between the 28th and 30th September 2007. This book emerged out of the conf- ence by adding more chapters relevant to the main theme of the book. This book presents analyses and discussions of different topics in Islamic philo- phy and theology by relating them to contemporary debates and ideas in four main areas: epistemology, metaphysics, philosophy of religion and value t- ory. There are ten chapters in sum. Some of the chapters are written by graduate students and some of them by experienced scholars. Each chapter presents c- siderable insight into its relevant topic but does not represent the opinion of anybody except the author.

A world ever more extensively interlinked is calling out for serving human interests broader and more compelling than those inspiring our technological welfare. The interface between cultures – at the moment especially between the Occident and Islam – presents challenges to mutual understandings and calls for restoring the resources of our human beings forgotten in the struggle of competition and rivalry at the vital spheres of existence. In the evolutionary progress of the living beings the strictly vital concerns, emotions, attributes become sublimed and elevated to the spiritual sphere at which human beings encounter each other and share. Studies presented here bring forth sublimity, generosity, forgiveness, beauty, and are exalting the quest after ciphers and symbols which lead to our sharing the common deepest stream of fraternal reality.

Rationality in its various expressions and innumerable applications sustains understanding and our sense of reality. It is traditionally differentiated according to its sources in the soul: in consciousness, in reason, in experience, and in elevation. Such a functional approach, however, leaves us searching for the common foundation harmonizing these rationalities.The perennial quest to resolve the aporias of rationality is finding in contemporary science’s focus on origins, on the generative roots of reality, tantalizing hints as to how this may be accomplished. This project is enhanced by the wave of recent phenomenology/ontopoiesis of life, which reveals the workings of the logos at the root of beingness and all rationality, whereby we gaze upon the prospect of a New Enlightenment. In the rays of this vision the revival of the intuitions of classical Islamic metaphysics, particularly intuition of the continuity of beingness in the gradations of life, receive fresh confirmation.

A world ever more extensively interlinked is calling out for serving human interests broader and more compelling than those inspiring our technological welfare. The interface between cultures – at the moment especially between the Occident and Islam – presents challenges to mutual understandings and calls for restoring the resources of our human beings forgotten in the struggle of competition and rivalry at the vital spheres of existence. In the evolutionary progress of the living beings the strictly vital concerns, emotions, attributes become sublimed and elevated to the spiritual sphere at which human beings encounter each other and share. Studies presented here bring forth sublimity, generosity, forgiveness, beauty, and are exalting the quest after ciphers and symbols which lead to our sharing the common deepest stream of fraternal reality.

The contributions, composed in this volume, are inspired not only by the necessity but also by the potentialities of a process which continues and deepens cross-cultural understanding, especially between Islamic and Western philosophy. Following the tradition of an East-Western symphony of thoughts, the authors focus on common horizons and while applying comparative and historical approaches, varieties of unity appear on the ways towards a New Enlightenment. The creative force, orchestrating the harmony in the web of Life, communicates in the mean time with the capacities of human beings, advancing in deciphering its micro-macrocosmic dimensions. Here, the encounter of the Logos of Life Philosophy (A-T. Tymieniecka) and Islamic Philosophy open the space for constructive disputation. In the wake of the crisis of postmodern unknowability, paths towards a new critique of reason go hand in hand with fundamental issues, being reflected newly.