Book: Philosophy and the Intellectual Life in Shi’ah Islam

The Book “Philosophy and The Intellectual Life In Shi’ah Islam” offers insight into the rich intellectual history in Shi’ah Islam of examining enduring and integral theological, mystical, metaphysical, and epistemological questions.

Philosophy & The Intellectual Life in Shi’ah Islam contains the proceedings from The Shi’ah Institute’s first Symposium 2015, comprising a series of studies into the philosophical trends and thinkers associated with the Shi’i tradition. The volume offers insight into the rich intellectual history in Shi’ah Islam of examining enduring and integral theological, mystical, metaphysical, and epistemological questions. The chapters are broad in scope, commencing from the classical period of philosophical theology and proceeding to examine philosophical aspects of the thought of al-Shaykh al-Mufid, Mir Damad, and Mulla Sadra, amongst others. The volume aims to make an initial contribution, both by opening up fresh lines of inquiry into the `Intellectual Life in Shi’ah Islam’ and by encouraging further research into Shi’i intellectual history.

About the Author

Saiyad Nizamuddin Ahmad (Ph.D Princeton University) is Reader in Shi’ah Studies at the Shi’ah Institute. He has published a critical edition of Ibn ‘Arabi’s Fusūs al-hikam (Cairo, 2015) and edited and introduced John Cooper’s translation of Mahdi Haʼiri Yazdi’s Universal Science: An Introduction to Islamic Metaphysics (Leiden, 2017).

Sajjad H. Rizvi (Ph.D Cantab.) is Associate Professor of Islamic Intellectual History and Islamic Studies at the University of Exeter. He has contributed numerous articles to various journals, and is the author of Mullā Sadrā Shirazi (Oxford, 2007), and Mulla Sadra and Metaphysics: Modulation of Being (Abingdon, 2009).

Table of Contents

Preface

Sayyid Amjad H. Shah Naqavi

Introduction

Sajjad H. Rizvi

Chapter 1: The Theory of States from al-Mufīd to al-Murtaḍā by Hussein Abdulsater

Chapter 2: ‘Imamate by any other name would smell as sweet’: Ibn al-ʿArabī’s Doctrine of the Perfect Man (al-insān al-kāmil) by Saiyad Nizamuddin Ahmad

Chapter 3: Seals and Sealing of Walāyah in Ṣūfī and Shīʿī Texts: The Cases of al-Ḥakīm al- Tirmidhī and Saʿd al-Dīn Ḥamūyah by Elizabeth R. Alexandrin

Chapter 4: The Wisdom of God and the Tragedy of History: The Concept of Appearance (badāʾ) in Mīr Dāmād’s Lantern of Brightness by Matheiu Terrier

Chapter 5: Applying Gradational Ontology to Logic: Mullā Ṣadrā on Propositions by Sümeyye Parildar

Chapter 6: The Intellect in Mullā Ṣadrā’s Commentary on the Uṣūl al-kāfī by Jari Kaukua

Chapter 7: Rajab ʿAlī Tabrīzī’s ‘Refutation’ of Ṣadrian Metaphysics by Muhammad U. Faruque & Mohammed Rustom

Chapter 8: The Imām’s Ethical Body: Embodied Virtue and the Human Constitution in Shīʿī Philosophy by Cyrus Ali Zargar

Bibliographic Information

Title: Philosophy and the Intellectual Life in Shi’ah Islam

Authors: Saiyad Nizamuddin Ahmad and Sajjad H. Rizvi

Publisher: The Shiah Institute Press

Language: English

Length: 274 pages

ISBN: 978-0-9935884-3-3

Pub. Date: 30 Nov, 2018