hegel and islamic phenomenology

8/2/2019 Hegel and Islamic Phenomenology

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HEGEL AND THE DIVINITY OF LIGHT IN ZOROASTRIANISMAND ISLAMIC PHENOMENOLOGY

Ieginhis essay with a consideration of GW.F. Hegel's claim thatZoroastrian spirituality is pantheist ic. Hegel justifies thi s claimby at tributing to Zoroast rianism the view that l ight is both divineand natural . I defend Zoroastrian Persian thought against the charge ofpantheism by introducing a phenomenological analysis regarding thedivinity of light that has its beginnings in Abu 'AlI Hussain ibn Sina(Avicenna) but gets developed by other Persian Muslim thinkers, nota-bly Abu Hamid Muhammad Ghazzali (Ghazali). I then show that thisanalysis i s compatible with the descript ions of the divine rank of lightin Zoroastrianism.

22 8 MOHAMMAD AZADPUR

1.In this part of the essay, I put forward a general outline of Hegel 's his-tory of spirit and the place of Zoroastrianism in i t. I focus on Hegel 'sPhilosophy of History, in which pre-Islamic Persian civilization re-ceives an extensive treatment, and his Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art,in which Zoroast rianism obtains the label of pantheism. My aim is tosort through textual ambiguities and present Hegel's position charitably.In the next part of the essay, I begin the defense of Zoroastrianism byintroducing the Islamic phenomenological analysis of luminous beings.

In the Aesthetics, Hegel locates the Zoroastrian sacred poetry at theinception of the historical period dominated by symbolic art . Symbolicart, for Hegel, involves "a detachment of a universal meaning from whatis immediately present in nature,"! Hegel considers the Zoroast rianMazdean light as a symbol of the spirit (Geist), but this light does notdetach the spiri tual meaning from the concrete natural objects; ratherthe natural light is the spirit itself and through i t other natural objectsshow themselves: "[F]or them [Parsi s] the l ight, precisely as l ight, isgoodness and so interpreted that, as light, it is present and effect ive inall particular goods, in all l iv ing and positive things,"? Hegel calls thisproto-symbolic moment in the development of the spiri t pantheism andmaintains that it i s t ranscended in sacred Jewish poetry.' Sacred Jew-ish poems are instances of the symbolism of the sublime, because their"meaning, as spiri tually explic it universali ty, is separated for the firsttime from the concrete existent, and makes that existent known as i ts

negative, external to it, and its servant." Toput it in the words ofPaul deMan: "The moment Hegel calls the sublime isthe moment of radical anddefinitive separation between the order of discourse [the concrete exis-tent] and the order of the sacred [the spiritually explicit universality].";Such a moment is captured best in the second commandment ofthe Jew-ish law: Thou shalt not make any graven image, nor the likeness of any-thing which is in heaven, in the earth, or under the earth. The symbolicart , as exemplif ied thus, is self-contradictory: i t annihilates itself , andits destruction refers us to the spiritual universal. It is not accidental thatthe symbolism of the sublime receives expression in the relig ious law.The negation of the particular in the form of a universal law catapul tsthe subject to a consideration of the universal as the ground of action.And this is the beginning of the history of spiri t.

a. In order to clarify Hegel's account of the history of spi rit and theplace of Zoroastrianism in it, I want to turn to the work of an influentialcritic ofHegel, Slavoj Zitek. In The Sublime Object ofIdeology, Zizek ex-amines Hegel's history of spiri t and argues that his understanding ofthishistory is distorted (perhaps because of Hegel's alleged anti-semitism),and that the proper order of spiri tual development is not Jewish, Greek,and then Christian. The history of spiri t, according to Zizek, begins withGreek classicism, moves to the Jewish symboli sm of the sublime, andthen culminates in Christian romanticism. He writes:

[T]he Greek, Jewish, and Christian relig ions do forma kind of triad which corresponds perfectly to thetriad of reflection (positing, external and determinatereflection), to this elementary matrix of the dialecti-cal process. Greek rel igion embodies the moment of'posit ing reflection' : in it, the plurality of spiri tual in-dividuals (gods) is immediately 'posited' as the givenspiri tual essence ofthe world . The Jewish religion in-troduces the moment of 'external reflection' - a ll posi-tivity is abolished by reference to the unapproachabletranscendent God, the absolute master, the One ofabsolute negativity; while Christianity conceives theindividuali ty ofman not as something external to Godbut as a ' reflective determination' of God himself (inthe figure of Christ, God himself 'becomes man')."

1 G. W . F. Hegel, Aesthetics, Vol. 1, trans . T. M. Knox (Oxford : C larendon Press ,1975) p. 323.

2 Ibid., p. 329.J Ibid., p. 364.

The Classical Bulletin 83.2 (2007) 227-246

4 Ibid., p. 318.5 Pau l deMan , "Hegel on the Subl ime ," in Aesthetic Ideology (Minneapolis: Univ. of

Minneapolis Press , 1996) p. 1l0.6 Slavoj Zizek, The Sublime Object of Ideology (NY: Verso, 1989) pp. 201-2.


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HEGEL ANDTHEDIVINITY OFLIGHT 229 230 MOHAMMAD AZADPURI disagree with Zizek's revision of Hegel's history of spirit, but it is,n~n~t?eless, .be~~~cial for understanding Hegel' s own view and mycritici sm of It. Zizek supports his modification by maintaining that itconforms better to the triadic movement of reflection, the Hegelian dia-lectical process.

Zizek's understanding of the triadic reflection is exemplified in hisaccoun~ of textual hermeneutics. We begin, Zizek maintains, by ap-proaching a text - say Sophocles ' Antigone - naively: The first move-me~t ?fr~flectio~, 'positing reflection', "corresponds to a naive readingclaiming immediate access to the t rue meaning of the text : we know,we pretend to grasp immediately what a text says,"? In this manner oftho~ght, we assume that the text is immediately accessible. Accordingto Zizek, the Greeks approached spiri tuality in this way. They positeddivine beings, the spiri tual essence of the world, a longside created be-ings - on the same plane of existence as the created beings. This naiveapproach confronts a problem when mult iple mutually exclusive ac-counts of the spiri tual essence are discovered." In the case of the Anti-gone, the reader isstymied when she discovers many different and ofteninco~pati .b le readings of Sophocles' text offered by readers separatedout historically, culturally, and theoretically," In the same way, presum-ably, the Greeks were befuddled as they came across other accounts ofthe spiri tual essence in their encounter with other cultures. The seconddialectical moment, 'external reflection', "provides a way out ofthis im-passe: _it t ransposes the 'essence', the true meaning of a text, into theunatta inable beyond, making of it a transcendent 'Ih ing-in-i tself"?" Inthe second moment of reflection, the naive approach of the 'positingreflection' is transcended. The reader banishes the meaning ofAntigoneto an unknowable beyond and declares the various interpretations ofthetext partial, distorted, and historical. The Jewish subject, in a similarfashion, finds herself presumably in exile from int imacy with the di-vine. So whatever spiri tuali ty she can muster is at best a pale reflectionof the true transcendent divinity. The final stage of Hegelian dialectic,according to Zizek, is 'determinate reflection. ' We arrive at this momentwhen we realize "how the internal 'essence' is already in itself 'decen-tered,' how the 'essence' of this essence itself consists in this seriesof external determinations,'?' The reader of Antigone learns to let goof "the essential meaning of the text" and to celebrate the plurality of

I ,! leanings provided by the meaning-giving activity of the readers. TheZizekian Christ ian also celebrates the embodiment of the divine in thefigure of Christ, and by emulating him revels in the multiplic ity and theparticularity ofthe divine agency in the world.

In Zizek's account, Zoroastr ianism would have to be a form of clas-si.c~lspir ituali ty , because, as Hegel puts it, i t is a pantheism that lets thedivine essence of the world, the Mazdean light, appear with the otherphe~ome~a: Cla.ssical spiritual.ity is sublated, in Zizek's scheme, by theJewish spiri tuality of the sublime and the Christian Man-God. In thisessay, I am not interested in disputing Zizek's posit ion. I am howeverinterested in disputing his reading of Hegel, as I want to take ' issue withhis revision of the logic of Hegel's history of spirit . Todo this, I want to~on~entrate on Hegel's account of the Zoroastrian Persians as providedIII his The Philosophy of History and his Aesthetics.

b. In The Philosophy of History, Hegel maintains that the world isthe int~rsection of spiri t and matter ." What distinguishes the spiri t frommatter IS freedom. Freedom or self-determined existence isthe essence ofspiri t, and matter is marked by its dependence on something external toit." In other words, matter is determined by something other than itselfi.e., the spi rit. The history of the world is the result of the immersion ofspirit in matter," At first, the spirit manifests itself in natural regularity,but, through man's historical development, it achieves self-conscious-ness." Freedom's self-consciousness is the meaning of world history.

For Hegel, Zoroastrian Achaemenid Persia "constitutes strictly thebeginning of world history?" and the Persians are the "first HistoricalPeople." 17 He interprets "Zoroaster's Light" as the first objectificationof the spiri t, i .e. , the first towards freedom's self-consciousness." TheMazdean natural l ight enables all beings, including the individual hu-man being, to achieve freedom to act in as many ways as their natural

7 Ibid., p. 213.8 Ibid.9 Ibid., p. 214.](IIbid., p. 213."Tbid.

12 G.w.F. Hegel, The Philosophy of His tory, trans. 1. Sibree (NY: Dover, 1956) pp.15-16.

13 Ibid., p. 17 .14 Ibid., p. 70.15 Ibid., p. 71.I~ Ibid., p. 174.Hegel has two main sources for his discussion of ancient Iran: 1)Ancient Greek acco~nts of the Persians in such works as Herodotus' The Histories . 2)The work of Anquetil-Duperron on Zoroastrianism titled: Le Zend Avesta, Ouvrage deZoroastre, contenent les ide'es theologiques, physiques et morales de ce Le'gislateur,

li;s Ceremonies du Culte Religieux_ qu'it a e'tabli, et p lusieur t ra it s importan ts re la ti f aI anctenne Histoir des Parses (Pans, 1771). The latter was a study ofthe Indian Parseesand, as the o~ly s~stematic and sustained study of Zoroastrianism available to Hegel, itinfluenced his philosophy of history tremendously. Hegel may also have had access toThomas Hyde's Historia Religionis veterum Persarum (Oxford, 1700).

17 Hegel, The Philosophy of History, op. cit., p. 173.18 Ibid., p. 174.


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HEGEL AND THE DIVINiTY OF LIGHT 231 232 MOHAMMAD AZADPURpropensit ies allow. This is only the first step towards the spi rit's selfconsciousness. But before discussing the next step, i t is important tonote that, for Hegel, the Zoroast rian spiritual space opened up by theantithesis between light and darkness gets replicated in the Achaemenidpolitical organization (i.e., the Persian empire): "We find ... [the Persianempire] consist ing of a number of sta tes, which are indeed dependent,but which have retained their own individuality, their manners, andlaws ... As Light illuminates everything - imparting to each object itspeculiar vitality - sothe Persian Empire extends over a multi tude of na-tions and leaves to each one its particular character."?"

With Alexander's conquest ofthe Persian Empire, the torch of spiri-tual development gets passed to the Greek World, then to the Romans,and finally to the Germans. The Greeks, according to Hegel, g ive a spir-itual content to the (spiritual) form introduced by the Persians." Where-as the Persian law frees its subjects to exercise their natural abil ities,the Greek law (nomos) demands the subjugation of those abil it ies forthe sake of the non-natural principles ofthe city-state. The Greek law ofthe state further objectif ies the spiri t, as the subjugation of the naturalfor the sake of the spiritual law enhances human freedom. "For Law isthe objectivity of Spi rit; volit ion in it s t rue form. Only that will whichobeys law, is free; for it obeys it self - it is independent and so free.'?'The compulsory prescriptions of the law of the state are transcendent tonatural necessity. Their necessity is derived from the absolute freedomof the spir it . Therefore, obedience to the law can liberate the individualfrom the constraints of natural inclinations. The Greeks, however, re-serve this l iberation for an eli te few.

The Romans generalize the Greek objectification and institute atyranny of the spirit, which stifles the natural side of spirit, the sidethat had found its fulfi llment in Persian pluralism." This is done partlythrough the grounding of the state in relig ion. According to Hegel, suchgrounding helps in preserving the state: "in order to maintain ... [thestate], Religion must be brought into it - in buckets and bushe~s. asit were - and impressed upon people's hearts." 23 The alleged divineorigin of the state is more effective in moving the masses to submittheir wills to its prescriptions, and this submission isuseful in realizingfreedom in the subject . But freedom is denied its ult imate fulfi llment inthis phase of the history of the spi rit. Greek el itism cont inues in the ty-rannical Rome. From the Roman world, Hegel posits the emergence ofthe self-conscious freedom in the Christian , German world. The latter

sponsors the plurality of spiri tual forms of life, free human activities ,that are no longer "the substratum of thei r rel igious concept ions," butof "free and spontaneous developments from their subjective self-consciousness. t' -' The tyranny of the spiri t is l if ted, and the individualrealizes her freedom

In his Aesthetics, Hegel divides the various forms of art in a waythat corresponds to the different stages of the history of spiri t, because,for Hegel, art is the sensuous expression of the spir it 's consciousness ofitself." The different forms of art are the symbolic, the classical , and theromantic." Symbolic art i s the form of Oriental art , and, according tothe logic of the Philosophy of History, Zoroastrian Persian art is a kindof symbolic art. Jewish symbolism of the sublime relegates the spiritualessence to a realm transcendent to the natural and, as such, mediatesbetween the Persian - which sti ll considers the spiri tual as natural- andthe classical. To the classical corresponds the art of the Greek and Ro-man worlds. The classical art gives posit ive expression to the spir itual;the spiritual becomes real. Therefore, the classical isthe transition to theromantic age when the spiritual is finally appropriated by the individualhuman subject, whose free agency expresses the divine in the world.The romantic is the artist ic manifestation of the German world .

c. What I take to be the distinguishing feature of Hegel's histo-r y of the spiri t is the way He~el a~ticula~es the notion of free~om. ForZizek, the freedom of the subject ISa ttained when she recognizes thather activities are the source of meaning in the world, rather than theworld having its own meaning (positing reflection) or deriving its mean-ing from a transcendent source (external r~flecti?n). For my Hegel, onthe other hand, the freedom of the subject ISa ttained when the subjectt rains herself not to act or think based on natural inclinat ions (posit-ing reflection) nor from transcendentally postulated principles (externalreflection). Rather, freedom enables the subject to act spontaneouslyand appropria tely in response to t~e relevant ?ormative. ~eatu!es of.asituation. The Zoroastr ian and Jewish conceptions of spiri tuali ty tramthe subject to resis t natural inclinations and to act from metaphysicalgrounds. These systems help the subject in overcoming the pressure ofpassions and appetites, but they unnecessari~y constra~~ the .subject bymetaphysical laws. The Greek and Roman VIews of spiri tuality presentthe subject with concrete examples offreedom, but these exemplars areelite or divine beings that manifest themselves as possessing a law U?tothemselves. The Christ ian moment i s established by the connection

19 Ibid., p. 187.20 Ibid., p. 222.21 Ibid., p . 3 9.22 Ibid., p. 278.23 Ibid., p. 51.

24 Ibid., p. 341.25 Hegel, Aesthetics, Vol. 1, op. cit., p. 72; see also Char les Taylor's Hegel (Cam-

bridge: Cambridge Univers ity Press , 1975) pp. 465-6.26 Aesthetics, Vol . 1 ,op. c it ., pp. 300-2.


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234 MOHAMMAD AZADPURHEGEL AND THE DIVINITY OF LIGHT 233between one divine being - Christ - and the ordinary individuals. Theexemplarity of Christ invites emulation and such an invitation promisessalvation which is manifested, at least in part, in the Christian subject'sfreedom, in her abili ty to act independently of nature and the relig iouslaw for the sake of the relevant particular good. Here, the contrast be-tween my take on Hegel 's view of the development of spiri t and Zizek'scan be seen. My view of Hegel ian freedom emphasizes t~e normativeconstraints of the particulars on the autonomous subject . Zizek's viewhas no place for such a constraint; for him, normative constraint cannotoriginate outside the subject 's meaning-giving activity, Again let meemphasize that Idon 't believe I have undermined Zizek's position here;what I have shown is that Hegel's account of the progress of spirit iscoherent and isnot in need of Zizek 's revision.

Light upon Light!God doth guideWhom he willTo His Light:God doth set forth ParablesFor men; and GodDoth know all things."

a. In his famous The Niche of Lights, Ghazali - the legendary Per-sian thinker and the theologian of Sunni Islam - ponders the signi fi-cance ofthe famous Qur 'anic Light verse:

Ghazali begins by examining the meaning of "light" (al-niir) as that"which is seen in itself and through which other things are seen, suchas the sun.' ?' He then argues that this sense of "light," i.e., the naturallight, is not the primary one, because there are other luminous beingswhich, in addition to the qualit ies possessed by the natural l ight, "see"themselves and others. Therefore, sense percept ion is superior to thesun as the more primary bearer of the name "light" (because the sundoes not perceive)." Intellect, however, corrects sense perception andgets atthe things themselves, so it is even more primary than sense per-ception as that which "light" names." Ghazali does not end his analysishere; he proceeds by arguing that if there is something which "allowsother things to see, while seeing itself and others, then it is [even] moreworthy ofthe name "light','?" All prophets, whose succession terminatesin prophet Muhammad, are lights in this sense." They give human be-ings prophetic wisdom (hikmah) which illuminates their minds like thesun il luminates the eyes." The laws and practices that the prophets in-sti tu te provide the guidance and illumination by which human beingscultivate their souls and acquire the abili ty to see the divine light. At thestage of guidance by relig ious law (shari'ahi, prophetic wisdom is puretranscendence inthe way the divine is in Hegel 's account of sacred Jew-ish verse. Wisdom is the withdrawn source of light whose laws makeabsolute demands on the faithful 's actions. Through the observation ofthe law and the path (leading to the cultivation of the character and themind), the human subject tastes the transcendent divine wisdom." Shebecomes the intimate of the prophet and his divine wisdom.

2.Having spelled out a broad view of Hegel 's history of spiri t and the placeof Zoroastr ianism in it, I want to challenge Hegel 's charge that Zoroas-t rianism is a form of pantheism that is immediately superseded by thesublime transcendence ofthe spiri t in the Jewish verse. I want to arguethat another form of transcendence is present in Zoroastrianism, and Iwant to spell out the nature of this transcendence by invoking the Is-lamic phenomenology of the luminous substances. Itwas in the study ofthis tradition that I was first drawn to see the limitation ofthe Hegeliancharacterization oftranscendence. The principal difference between thetranscendence found in Islamic and Zoroastr ian systems of thought andin that of Hegel is that the former presuppose the development in whichthe Hegelian articulation of transcendence plays a part. In other words,the Islamic and Zoroastrian visions of transcendence already incorpo-rate a Hegelian account of freedom.

God is the lightOf the heavens and the earth.The parable of His LightIs as i fthere were a NicheAnd within it a Lamp:That lamp enclosed in a Glass:The glass as it were a brill iant star:Lit from the blessed Tree,An Olive, neither of the EastNor of the West,Whose oil is well-nighLuminous,Though fire scarce touched it:

27 "'Ayat al-nilr", Qur'an 24:35, tr ans. Abdullah Yusuf Ali (NY: Tarikhe Tarsi leQur'an, 2001) pp. 907-908.

28 AbU Hamid Muhammad al-Ghazali, The Niche of Lights, t rans . David Buchman(Provo, Utah: Br igham Young Universi ty Pres s, 1998) p .4 .

29 Ibid., p. 4.30 Ibid., p. 9.31 Ibid., pp. 12-3.32 For a good discussion of the Muhammadan light in the Islamic tradition, r efer toU. Rubin's "Pre-exis tence and Light: Aspects ofthe Concept ofNur Muhammad," IsraelOriental Studies V (Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv Univers ity press , 1975) pp. 62-119.33 Ibid., p. 10.34 Ghazali, TheNiche ofLights, op. cit ., pp. 32-4.


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HEGEL AND THE DIVINITY OF LIGHT 235 236 MOHAMMAD AZADPURHowever, beyond the prophets, the even more worthy bearer of the

name. "light," according to Ghazali , is " the holy prophetic spiri t" ( i.e.,Gabnel, the messenger angel of revelation). He truly deserves this nameinrelation to earthly lights." Insofar asthe heavenly lights are concernedGod, "the Lo~dly P~esence," is, ofcourse, the most perfect, and the angelsor heavenly lights (in whose company Gabriel is included) are ranked inaccordance with their proximity to the divine light." In relation to thesymbols of the Qur 'anic verse, Ghazali interprets the light giving lampas the prophet Muhammad, and the luminous oil is understood as theholy prop~eti~,spirit, which is lighted by the fire of the highest archangel(not Gabnel) , who has seventy thousand faces: in every face are seventythousand tongues, through all of which he glorifies God."37

I .take this analysis of the luminous phenomena to be phenome-nological. Phenomenology, according to Henry Corbin, the prominent~cholar of Iranian philosophy, "consists in 'saving the appearance, ' sav-mg the phenomenon, while disengaging or unveiling the hidden whichshows itself beneath this appearance. '?" The phenomenologist refusesto explain phenomena by forcing them under general theories. Rather,she recogmzes that phenomena must be seen as they are in themselves(they must ~e saved), and inthis process the hidden phenomenon, whichmakes possible all phenomena, should also be unveiled. Ghazali's meth-od isphenomenolo~ical inthat he enumerates the various luminous phe-nomena (natural h~ht of the sun, perception, intellect, and prophecy)a?d look~ f~r th~ pnmary. sense of "light" by discovering internal crite-na t~at dist inguish a lummous phenomenon as conditioning the others.In this process, . he suspends all assumptions, attends to how things ap-pear, and descnbes their particular intelligibility."The suspension of prejudice and the ability to attend to the actualfeatures ofthings are won through a training that frees the subject from~rror. In the Niche of Lights, Ghazali articulates this training for virtueIn the move .t?wards the more primary referents of the term "light".Each recogmtIon of a more primary sense of "light" involves a t rans-mutat ion in the subject. As the subject turns away from the enchant-~ents of the empirical and the abstract, the bodily and the rational, sheIS drawn away from the accidental, towards the essent ial. This move-ment involves the subduing of the empirical and the rational dimensions

of the subject, and brings about her intimacy with the divine source ofintelligibility." In Hegel' s philosophy, as we have seen, the phenom-enological overcoming of intellectual l imita tions and error" results int~e identif ication of the subject with the divine spiri t, but in Ghazali 'sVIewthe subject's perfection and spiritualization only foreshadows theunveiling of a higher transcendence, the Lordly presence.

b. Although unique in important respects, Ghazali's phenomenol-ogy is indebted to the work of his predecessor, Avicenna. In "On theProof of Prophecies and the Interpretation of Prophets' Symbols andMetaphors," Avicenna, after characterizing prophecy philosophically,proceeds to the interpretation of the aforementioned Qur'anic lightverse. Before discussing Avicenna 's remarkable interpretation of thisverse and its relation to Ghazali's exegesis, I want to introduce Avicen-n_a'sdistin~tion between the philosopher and the prophet, as this distinc-t ion contams the elements of Avicenna's hermeneutics of the Qur 'anicverse. For Avicenna's philosopher, the discovery of empirical truths, thecrit ical examination of his thoughts," as well as the acquisition of ajustand balanced soul? must precede his conjunction with and enlighten-ment by the active intellect (al- 'aql al-fa'di). The benefits of this con-j~n.ction include the acquisition of first principles as well as propheticVISIOnsbrought about in the perfected imagination. However, prophets- God's chosen messengers - do not require the mediation of practicaland theoretical perfection (as necessary in the case of the philosopher);they (the prophets) receive immediately from the active intellect: "Thatwhi~h ~ecomes complet~ly actual does so without mediation or through~edIat lOn, and the first ISbetter. This is the one cal led prophet and inhim degrees of excellence in the realm of materia l forms culminate.?"The prophet is the genuinely blessed human being and benefi ts fromunmediated perfection and illumination.

35 Ibid; p. 13.36 Ibid., p . 14.37 Ibid., p . 1 3.

. 38 Henry Corbin, TheConcept of Comparative Philosophy, t rans . Peter Russell (Ips-wich: Golgpnooza Press , 1981) p. 5.. " For a more thorough di scussion of the phenomenolog ical approach to Ghaza li 'sp ro jec t, see my "Unvei ling the Hidden: On the Meditat ions of Descar tes and Ghazza li "Passions of the Soul in theMetamorphosis 0/ Becoming, ed. Anna Teresa Tyrnieniecka(Dordrecht, Netherlands: Kluwer, 2003) pp. 219-240.

40 Ghazali, TheNiche of Lights, op. cit ., pp. 6-10. See also "Deliverance from Error"in TheFaith and Practice 0/ al-Ghazali, t rans . W. Montgomery Watt (London: GeorgeAllen and Unwin, 1953) pp. 22-26.

41 In the Ph~nomenology 0/ the Spirit, Hegel ma intains tha t "[wlhat the Sp ir it p re-pares for Itself 1Il ... [phenomenology] is the element of true knowledge. In this elementthe moments o f.Spi ri t . .. no longer fal l apar t into the ant ithe si s o f being and knowing"[trans. A. V. Miller (Oxford: Oxford Unive rsi ty Press , 1977) pp. 21-2] . For Hege l thephenomenolog ical "get ting a t the things themselves" i s the preparat ion for the ident ityof the subject with the spiri t.

42 Avicenna, "On the Proof ofProphecies and the Interpretation ofthe Prophets' Sym-bols and Metaphors ," inMedieval Political Philosophy: A Sourcebook, ed. Ralph Lernerand Muhsin Mahdi ( Ithaca: Corne ll Universi ty Pres s, 1961) p . l l4 .

43 Avicenna, "Healing:Metaphysics X," inMedieval Political Philosophy: A Source-book, ed. Ralph Lerner and Muhsin Mahdi (I thaca: Cornell Univer sity Press 1961) p.llO. '44 Avicenna, "On the Proof of Prophec ies ," op. ci t. , p. l l5 .


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HEGEL AND THE DIVINITY OF LIGHT 237 238 MOHAMMAD AZADPURc. To appreciate the significance of Avicenna's prophetology, i t isessential to briefly explore the history of the concept of the active in-

tellect. Aristotle, in De Anima, Book III, Chapter 5, postulates a tran-scendent active intellect." He maintains that "in fact mind, as we havedescribed i t, i swhat it is by vi rtue of becoming all things, whi le there isanother which is what i t i s by virtue of making al l things: this is the sortof positive state like light; for in a sense light makes potential coloursinto actual colours.?" Here, the creative intellect or the productive mind(nous poietikos) is contrasted with the mind as passive (pathetikos), theconforming mind." One becomes aware of the active intel lect and canbe inspired by it, once the conforming intel lect is del ivered from thegrip of falsehoods and illusions produced by unexamined and depen-dent modes of thinking and action. The active intellect shines like lighton potential intelligibles, causing them to become actualized by attract-ing the passive mind towards itself. The intimacy with the active lightis therefore an overcoming of i llusions result ing in the perception ofthings them~elves (i.e., actual intelligibles).

Islamic philosophers , including Avicenna, modify Aristotle 's ac-count of the transcendent active intellect by synthesizing itwith the Pla-tonic view that what makes things intelligible, their form, has a separateontological status. The latter thesis resists assimilation to the Aristote-l ian account because, for Aristotle, forms do not exist independentlyof sensible objects; they can be separated from them only in thought."The Aristotelian act ive intellect, as a result, brings l ight to the humanperception of the essential a ttributes of things; i t does not impart th~seattributes to the mind and the things. Avicenna and his fel low Muslimphilosophers, however, maintain "that the min~ is con~tituted by i~sna-ture to function in di fferent ways at the same t ime; bemg percept ive ofintelligible substances on the one hand, and speculative about sensibleobjects on the other.?" In other words, Islamic philosophers view the

training which resul ts in the int imacy wi th the active intel lect as morethan gett ing at the way sensible things are. For them, the active intellectis also the divine being that infuses the sensible world with intelligibil-ity; it is the angelic giver of forms (wiihib al-suwar, dator formar~m),corresponding to Plato's Demiurge." The philosopher who has attaI~edintimacy with the active intellect not only possesses clear perceptionof sensible objects, she can also receive forms directly from the source(rather than through the sensible intermediaries).The development of this unifying approach to Plato and Aristotleis also indebted to the influence of Neo-Platonism on Islamic philoso-phers. A crucial text evidencing this influence isthe Theology attributedto Aristotle. Although doubts have been expressed about its authorship,this text - which is a paraphrase of Plotinus' last three Enneads -hascontributed immensely to the development of an Islamic spiri tual di-mension in philosophical psychology. In a particularly influential por-t ion of the Theology - Ennead IV, 8, 1- Plotinus describes the philoso-pher's solitary journey, which climaxes in her union wi th the divinityand then ends by her return to the limited human domain." In the Histo-ry of Islamic Philosophy, Henry Corbin writes that in this Ennead "themystical philosophers [including Avicenna] found both the exemplar ofthe Prophet's celestial assumption (mi'riij),52 which is reproduced in it sturn in the Sufi experience, and the exemplar ofthe vision which crownsthe efforts of the divine Sage, the Stranger, the Solitary,"? It should benoted that the Islamic philosophers do not adopt the Plotinian exemplarwithout modification. For instance, they interpose angelic intermediar-ies between God and the world. Consequently, the Plot inian ideal ofunion with God is transformed into the spiri tual conjunction (itt isiii) ofthe wise with the angelic active intelligence."

45 See a lso Book II, Chap te r 7 .Although Ari stot le i s o ft en c redi ted with pos it ioningthe crea tive o ther o f thought out side the soul , i tmay be a rgued tha t i twas Socrates whoorigina lly conceived though t a s an exchange be tween the soul and a t ranscendent being .In accounts of Socrates' l ife, there are frequent references to Socrates' daimon, a divinebeing who descends upon him and inspires him in a negative way, telling him not to dosuch and such a thing. See Plato 's "Apology" 40a, "Euthydernus" 272e, and "Theaetetus"ISla. See also Xenophon's Memorabilia, t rans . Amy L. Bonnette (Ithaca: Cornell Uni-versi ty Press , 1994) 1,1,4.

46 Aristot le , "On the Soul ," in The Complete Works of Aristotle, Vol. 1,ed. JonathanBarnes, trans. W. D. Ross (Princeton: Princeton Univers ity Press , 1984) 430a 14-17.

47 Ibid., 430a 25.48 Ibid., 427-9." Mehdi Ha'er i Yazd i, The Principles of Epistemology in Islamic Philosophy (Al-

bany: SUNY Press , 1992) p . 9 .

50 Plato "Timaeus. " in The Col lected Dia logues o f Plato, ed. Edith Hamilton andHuntingto~ Cairns (P;inceton: Princeton Univers ity Press , 1962) 2ge-30c.

5L "Many times ithas happened: l ifted out of the body into myself; becoming externalto a ll o ther things and se lf -encen te red; beholding a marvelous beauty; th~n , more . thanever , a ssu red of communi ty wi th the lof ti est o rder ; enac ting the nob le st l ife, a cqumngidentity with the divine; s ta tioning within Itbyhaving attained that activity; poised abovewha tsoever within the Intel le ctua l i s l e ss than supreme : yet , there comes the moment o fdes cent f rom intel le ct ion to rea soning , and af ter tha t sojourn in the d iv ine , I ask mysel fhow it happened that I can now be descending and how did the Soul ever enter into mybody, the Soul which, even within the body, is the high thing it has shown itself to be"(Plotinus, The Enneads, t rans . S tephen MacKenna [New York: Pantheon] p. 357).

52 P lea se refer to f tn . 68.53 Henry Corbin, History of Islamic Philosophy, t rans . Liadain Sherrard (London:

Kegan Paul International, 1993) p. 18.54 Ibid., p . 160 . See Maj id Fakhry 's "Three Variet ie s o f Myst ic ism in Islam," in Phi-

losophy, Dogma, and the Impac t o fGreek Thought in Islam (New York: Variorum, 1994)pp. 195-6, for a defense of the c la im that the Neoplaton ic and Per ipatet ic predecesso rs o fIslamic philosophers considered God as the object of conjunction.


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HEGEL AND THE DIVINITY OFLIGHT 239 240 MOHAMMAD AZADPURd. Avicenna's exegesis of the light verse is a working out of the

meaning of this verse in view of his distinction between the philosopherand the prophet. God is light, the "niche" isthe materia l intellect (al- 'aqlal-hayulanii - the lowest level of human intellect , and the "lamp" istheacquired intellect (al- 'aql al-mustafady - the intellect of the philosopherand the prophet. The glass separating the niche from the lamp symbol-izes the intermediate levels of the intellect , that is, the stages in the de-velopment of the intellect preceding the acquired intellect's conjunctionwith the active intellect. The intermediate intellects include the habitualintellect (al-'aql bel rnalaka) and the actual intellect (al- 'aql bel-f''eh.Active intellect is symbolized by the fire that i lluminates the fine oi lof the intellectual power, endowing it with an understanding beyondwhat the intellect could obtain on its own resourcefulness. This fire, ofcourse, is not God (as could be claimed by Alexander of Aphrodisias"),because it is not a unity. The true God is unified and gives unity to themanifoldness of the active intellect."

the ontologically distinct realm of Platonic forms and to the Neo-Platonichierarchy of souls and intellects. In their place, he postulates a purelyIslamic cosmology, and assigns to the power of imagination, instead ofthe intellect , the key to the spiri tual realm:

God most high, however, has favoured his creaturesby giving them something analogous to the specialfaculty of prophecy, namely dreams. In the dreamstate, a man apprehends what is to be in the future,which is something of the unseen; he does so eitherexplic it ly or else clothed in symbolic form whose in-terpretation is disclosed.

e. Comparing Ghazali's phenomenology of light to that of Avi-cenna, i tbecomes apparent that both place the subject in a regiment toimprove her soul. This regiment involves the acquisition of practicaland theoretical virtues and culminates in the conjunction with spiri-tualia. The prophet institutes the elements of this regiment, which iscomprised of the laws and the practices of religion. The ideal subjectlearns to appreciate the various meanings of "light" that are beyondnatural l ight, by submit ting hersel f to the condit ioning for wisdom inreligious practice."

Ghazali 's interpretation of the light verse and his account of thesignificance of "light" depart from those offered by Avicenna in thatGhazali curtails the role of intellect." In his spiritual autobiography, the"Deliverance from Error," Ghazali argues that "[b]eyond intellect, therei s yet another stage. In this another eye is opened, by which he beholdsthe unseen, what is to be inthe future, and other things which are beyondthe ken of intellect in the same way as the objects of intellect are beyondthe ken Of'59 lower faculties. An analysis of the details of Ghazali's mys-tical psychology and cosmology is beyond the reach of this essay. It suf-fices to say that Ghazali rejects the Islamic philosophers' commitment to

The special faculty of prophecy is restricted to God's chosen proph-ets. Imagination (i.e., the faculty of dream), however, is analogous toit and can be prophetic, e .g. , apprehend extra-intellectual objects." Asthe mystic cult ivates her soul by means of ascetic relig ious practice, shebecomes capable of attending to the prophetic phenomena themselvesand (in the case of prophetic representations and symbols) recognizingtheir proper meaning and value."

55 Avicenna , "On the P roof of Prophecies, " op. c it ., p . 117 .56 Avicenna, "On the Proof of Prophecies," Ibid., pp. 117-18.51 See the excerpts from Avicenna's "Healing: Metaphysics X," op. cit ., pp. 101-110,

where Avicenna lays out the importance of religious law and practice for the cultivationof the soul to the point o f d iv ine int imacy.

58 In my essay, " Is ' Is lamic' Ph ilosophy Islamic," in Voices of Islam, vol. 5, eds . V.Cornel l and O. Safi (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2007) pp. 23- 41, I off er a response toGhazali's attack on Avicenna's philosophy.

" "Del ive rance f rom Error ," op. ci t. , p . 64.

60 "Deliverance from Error," ibid., p. 66.61 Ghazali 's intel lectual successor, Shihab aJ-DIn Yahya Suhrawardi, the founder of

the Ish raqt ( il1uminat ion is t) t radi tion , deve lops thi s not ion of sp ir itual imagin~~ ion ~swe ll as the phenomenology ofluminous beings espoused by Ghazal i, Suhrawardi s ma111work i sPhilosophy of Illumination, trans., John Walbridge & Hossein Ziai (Provo, Utah:Brigham Young Univers ity press , 1999). For a discuss ion of the relevance of Suhrawar-d i' s con tr ibut ions to the Isl amic phenomenology and the t reatment o fthe power of rmagi-nat ion, see my "The Sublime Vi sions of Philosophy: Fundamental Ontology and theImaginal World ('Alamal-mithiil)" islamic Philosophy and Occiden!a~Phenomenologyon thePerennial issue ofMicrocosm andMacrocosm, ed. A. T. Tyrniniecka (Dordrecht:Springer, 2006) pp. 183-201. See also Fazlur Rahman, "Dreams, Imagination, and 'Alamal-Mithal," in Islamic Studies, 3, 1964. Later, Mulla Sadra Shirazi revrves Avicenna'sintel lec tual ism whi le a lso pre se rv ing the ins ight s gained by Ghaz~ l. i, SuhrawardI ; andhi s Ish raq t p redecessors. For relevant aspec ts of Mulla Sadra 's posi tion , re~e r to hIS Onthe Hermeneutics of the Light Verse of the Qur'an, t rans . Latimah-Parvin Peerwani(London : ICAS Pres s, 2004) .


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HEGEL AND THE DIVINITY OFLIGHT 241 242 MOHAMMAD AZADPURf. For Hegel, as we have seen, the symbolic expressions ofthe tran-

scendence, that is, prophetic phenomena, point to the transcendent byannihi lating themselves, showing their own inadequacy. Just as theKantian sublime isthat which "cannot be contained in sensible form butconcerns only ideas of'reason.?" the Hegelian symbolism ofthe sublimeis a label for that form of art which indirectly represents the divine spiri tby its sensuous inadequacy to do SO.63 Hegel identifies Jewish propheticpoetry as the paradigm of such art and considers Zoroastrian "panthe-ist ic" scripture as a precursor to it. For Hegel, prophetic symbolism in-troduces the divine law into the historical development ofhumanity andpropels mankind forward to its perfection, culminating in the Germanromantic subject's consciousness of her own freedom. Through the ex-amination ofthe Islamic phenomenology ofluminous substances, I haveshown that the symbol ism of the sublime should not be, pace Hegel, amere relic of the history of humanity. In fact, an unprejudiced atten-tion to the relevant phenomena indicates that Hegel construes propheticsymbolism too narrowly and that full human realization may yet estab-lish a connection with and an inspiration by the transcendent divine. Inother words, prophecy presupposes the Hegelian cultivation and libera-tion of the subject and has significance beyond it s Hegelian funct ionas the mere expression of the divine law. The lat ter, to use Ghazali 'sphrase, is"but a drop in the ocean of prophecy.?"

3 .I now return to Hegel's critique of Zoroastrianism in order to use theabove excursion into Islamic philosophy in the defense of Zoroastrian-i sm (against the charge of pantheism). We have seen that the Islamicthinkers interpret the t rue meaning of "light" as transcendent to andthe condi tion for the possibility of natural light. For Hegel, however ,the appeal to that which is transcendent to the natural is only a stage inthe development of the fully realized subject. This notion of transcen-dence is also available to Muslim thinkers as the referent of "the authorof relig ious law (sharl'ah)." But they have access to another sense of"transcendence" that becomes available to the subject as she cultivatesher soul beyond the mundane concerns, that is, to those who achieveprophetic insight. Against Hegel 's reading of Zoroastr ianism, I submitthat this move to prophetic insight and to the second sense of"transcen-dence" is also available in Zoroastrian prophetology.In the Dinkard, a ninth century encyclopedia of Zoroastrianismwhich contains paraphrases and quotes of some much older material,there is an account of prophet Zarathustra's first theophanic vision. Thisvision takes place when the prophet has reached the age of thirty and hasachieved an all around perfection presupposed for prophetic insight.

[Tfhere is mani fested in him a mind more capaciousthan the whole world, and more exalted than everyworldly possession, wi th an understanding whosest rength is perfectly selected, an intellect of all ac-quir ing power, and a sagacity of all-deciding abili ty ;also with the much heedfulness a/the kingly glory,and the full desire for righteousness, the efficaciousdil igence and authority, and even the superiority inmightiness and grandeur of the priestly glory."

62 Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgment, t rans . Werner S . Pluhar (Indianapolis :Hacke tt , 1987) 245 /99. In the Critique of Judgment, Kant dis tinguishes the reflectivejudgment of t as te f rom that of the subl ime. He wri te s: "In pre sent ing the subl ime in na-ture the mind feel s agi tat ed , while in an aes thet ic judgment abou t the beaut iful in natureit is in res tful contemplation. This agita tion (above all a t i ts conception) can be comparedwith a v ib ra tion , i .e ., w ith a rap id a lt ernat ion of repul sion f rom, and at trac tion to, oneand the same object," Ibid., 258/115. The imagination presents an object, which it cannotcontain as a totality according to the conceptual repertoire of understanding; this resultsin a feel ing of repul sion , but then rea son and i ts idea of the supersensible engage the pre -s entat ion of the imaginat ion and a harmony is s truck; a feel ing of p leasure ensues. Thev ib ra tion or the osci ll at ion be tween repul sion and a tt ract ion determines the pre sentedobject a s sub lime . What i s expres sed in th is exper ience i s the un-presentable, the powerof "pure and independent reason," Ibid., 258/116. In other words , what ispresented is thatwhich makes possible the presentation of the ordinary phenomena. Reason's purposive-ness without purpose (Ibid., 221 /66) unvei ls the phenomena in the judgments o f t ast e(about the beautiful) and in the sublime it is i tself presented indirectly, Ibid., 246/100.

63 Hegel, Aesthetics, Vol. 1,op.cit. , p. 363.64 "Deliverance from Error," op. cit ., p. 66.

These qualit ies map unto the theoretical and practical perfections pos-tulated for the conjunction wi th the angel of revelation by the Islamicthinkers. Dinkard adds physical strength to the lis t, and it is unlikely thatGhazali or Avicenna would have objected to the addition ofthis quali ty.

According to the Dinkard, Zarathustra , at the peak of his personalperfect ion, has a vision of the messenger of God, archangel Vohu Ma-nah (Bahman). The archangel engages the prophet in a dialogue thatresults in an invitation to transcend the mundane plane of existence and

65 Pahlavi Texts, tr ans. E. W. West, ed. F. Max Muller (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass ,1965) p. 46.


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HEGEL AND THE DIVINITY OF LIGHT 243 244 MOHAMMAD AZADPURto appear before Ahura Mazda and the other archangels who togethermake up the divine counsel of the seven." "And Vohu Manah spoke tohim thus: '0 Zaratust of the Spitamas! deposit this one garment whichthou carriest; so that we confer with him by whom thou art producedand by whom I am produced, who is the most propitious of spirits, whoisthe most beneficent of existences, and who ishe that I ,who am Vohu-mano, am testifying."67 Two important features of this passage deserveimmediate attention. Vohu Manah declares that he is the messenger ofGod. Thus he can be situated in the same category as the Islamic angelof revelation, Gabriel. It is no accident that Vohu Manah bears a re-markable resemblance to the Islamic Gabriel , who is interpreted as thepersonification ofthe prophetic spirit and the active intellect for Ghazaliand Avicenna respectively," What is at stake here is more than a his-torical curiosity. We are dealing with a description of prophetic insightthat traverses institutional boundaries and gets at the spiri tual centerof philosophical and religious aspirations. Here it a lso becomes moreapparent that Hegel 's charge of pantheism concerning the luminosity ofthe divine in Zoroast rianism has missed its target. The Mazdean lightsignifies that notion of divine transcendence which fol lows upon theprophet's perfection and his union with the divine spiri t (Vohu Manahin Zoroastrianism). Thus Hegel terminates his inquiry prematurely.There is more to the divine realm than the spir it and it s convergencewith the individual and more to the Zoroastr ian interpretation of "light"than natural light.I now attend to the second important feature of Vohu Manah's an-nouncement. The angel commands the prophet to dispose of his gar-~ent, ~he symbol of ~is mundane existence and the veil covering hismner light. Another mnth century Zoroastrian text, Zad Sparam, givesa further detai l of this theophanic vision essential to establ ishing theconnection with the illumination of the prophet in Islamic philosophy:"When ~e came within twenty-four feet of the archangels, he then didnot see hISown shadow onthe ground, on account of the great brill iancyofthe archangels.=" The brilliancy ofthe divine thearchy, their dazzling

light, envelops Zarathustra, and as he has shed his bodily garment, he isalready light ( in intimacy with light) and shines with his intrinsic lumi-nosity," This luminosi ty is the light of the perfected soul who has beencleansed of mundane contaminations. The exact alignment of Zoroas-trianism with the views of Ghazali, Avicenna, or other Islamic texts andthinkers is irrelevant at this juncture, because the prophetic phenom-enon should be interpretable in different ways as long as its integrity isnot undermined. What is relevant here is the articulation of a transcen-dence - the light of the Lordly presence of Allah or Ahura Mazda - thatis the culmination of spiri tual development and not a mere moment in itsprogress. Zoroastr ianism contains this moment and should not, there-fore, be dismissed as pantheistic.In conclusion, I want to address rather briefly the declaration ofth~ famous scholar of Zoroastr ianism and the historian of religion, GeoWidengren, that Zoroastrianism is indeed pantheistic. He writes:

The cosmological basis of Gnostic religion is rootedin Indo-Iranian pantheistic speculation, wherein Godand the world are regarded as one. The higher lifeprinciple in man, ... Iranian Manah, is identical tothe spiri tual principle in the Universe, ... in Iran theGreat Vohu Manah. The higher element in man isthusa part of the Deity's Spiri tual Ego, while man's bodyconstitutes a part of the divine body, the world,"

66 Ibid., p. 157.67 Ibid., p. 47.68 It is also.worthy of note that such a conference with the divine, facilitated by themessenger divinity, IS also attributed to the prophet Muhammad. The prophet's mi'riij,which has a Qur'anic source (17:1)as well, has been a subject of much reflection byIslamic thinkers including Avicenna. For the latter's interpretation of the prophet's

';Ii'raj, refer to Peter Heath's translation of his Mi 'raj Nama in Allegory and philosophyInAvicenna (Jbn Sina) (Philadelphia, PA:University of Pennsylvania Press 1992)pp.109-143. '

69 Pahlavi Texts, op. cit., p. 157.

70 There is an interesting discussion of the disposing of the dark garment and the~earing ofthe garment oflight inHermetic, Gnostic, and Sufiliterature inHenry Corb-in's "The Hermetic Idea of Perfect Nature," The Man of Ligh t in Iran ian Suf ism, trans.Nancy Pearson (NY: Omega Publications, 1971)pp. 13-25; see especially the discussionin association with Acts of Thomas, pp. 22-25. For a reference to the Zoroastrian gar-ment of light see Corbin's Spiri tual Body and Ce le st ia l Earth, trans., Nancy Pearson(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1977)pp. 34. Geo Widengren, in The GreatVoh~ Manah and the Apostle of God (Uppsala, Sweden: Almqvist & Wiksells Boktry-cken.AB, 1945),also devotes chapter three (pp. 76-83) to a discussion ofthe garment ofhght in Zoroastrianism, Manichaeanism, and Gnosticism.

71 Geo Widengren, The Gnostic Attitude, trans. & ed. Birger A. Pearson (Santa Bar-bara, CA Insti tute of Religious Studies, UC Santa Barbara, 1972)p. i i. There may besome doubt asto whether the prophetic material inthe ninth century texts areauthentic.Itmay be argued, based ontheir date, that they are influenced by the Greek sources andthat they do not reflect the original spirit ofZoroastrianism (see Philippe Gignoux, Manand Cosmos in Ancient Iran (Roma: Instituto Italiano per L'Africa e L'Oriente, 2001)pp. 54-63. See also his "Microcosm andMacrocosm," 16June, 2004. I subscribe to the position ad-~anced.byGeo Widengren that, based on similarities with Indian thought, this materialIS genuinely Iranian. See Geo Widengren's The Great Vohu Manah and the Apostle ofGod,.op. cit., pp. 42-75. Henry Corbin, in Spiri tual Body and Celes tial Earth, op. cit., p.35,cites Greek sources that attribute this material to Zarathustra.


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HEGEL AND THE DIVINITY OFLIGHT 245 246 MOHAMMAD AZADPURWidengren's "pantheism" means something altogether different fromthe meaning that interested Hegel. For Hegel, Zoroastrianism is panthe-i st ic because God is seen as natural light" and the rest of phenomenaare visible and intelligible on its account. This, of course, misses out onthe variety of luminous substances and the spi rituali ty of divine lightin Zoroastrianism. Widengren's claim that Zoroastrianism is panthe-i st ic since it situates the human microcosm within the greater reality(i.e., macrocosm) ofVohu Manah benefits from a more sophisticated ap-proach to Zoroastrianism by allowing a spiri tual element inman and thecosmos. Nevertheless , I do not find it a fair assessment. Ahura Mazda,the one God, is transcendent to the reali ty ofVohu Manah, who isAhuraMazda 's messenger archangel, and it is this dimension of Zoroastrian-ism that is also manifest in the prophetological and theological explora-tions of Persian Muslim thinkers.

MOHAMMAD AZADPURSan Francisco State [email protected]

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al-Ghazali, AbU Hamid Muhammad. 1953. "Deliverance from Error,"in The Faith and Practice of al-Ghazii li . Trans. W. M. Watt. Lon-don. 18-85.

---.1998. The Niche of Lights. Trans. D. Buchman. Provo.Gignoux, P.2001. Man and Cosmos inAncient Iran. Rome.Ha'eri Yazdi, M. 1992. The Principles of Epistemology in Islamic Phi-losophy. Albany.Hegel, G. W. F. 1956. The Philosophy of History. Trans. J. Sibree. NewYork.

---. 1975. Aesthetics. Vol. 1.Trans. T. M. Knox. Oxford.---. 1977. Phenomenology of the Spirit. Trans. A. V. Miller. Oxford.Pahlavi Texts. 1965. Trans. E. W. West, ed. F.M. Muller. Delhi.Plato. 1962. "Timaeus," in The Collected Dialogues of Plato , eds. E.

Hamilton and H. Cairns. Princeton. 1151-1211.Plotinus. 1969. The Enneads. Trans. S. MacKenna. New York.Qur 'an. 2001. Trans. Abdullah Yusuf Ali. New York.Rahman, F. 1964. "Dreams, Imagination, and 'Alam al-Mithal;' Islam-

ic Studies 3.2:167-180.Rubin, U. 1975. "Pre-existence and Light: Aspects of the Concept ofNur Muhammad," Israel Oriental Studies 5:62-119.Sadr al-Din ShIraZI,Muhammad ibn Ibrahim. 2004. On the Hermeneu-t ics of the Light Verse of the Qur 'an. Trans. L. Peerwani. London.Suhrawardi, Shihab al-Din Yahya, 1999. Philosophy of Illumination.Trans. J. Walbridge and H. Ziai. Provo.

Taylor, C. 1975. Hegel. Cambridge.Widengren, G. 1945. The Great Vohu Manah and the Apost le of God.Uppsala.---. 1972. The Gnostic Attitude. Trans. and ed. B.A. Pearson. San-

ta Barbara.Xenophon. 1994. Memorabilia. Trans. A. L.Bonnette. Ithaca.Ziiek, S. 1989. The Sublime Object of Ideology. New York.

BIBLIOGRAPHYAristotle. 1984. "On the Soul", in The Complete Works of Aristotle, ed.

J. Barnes, trans. W. D. Ross. Princeton. 641-692.Avicenna. 1961a. Avicenna, "Healing: Metaphysics X," in MedievalPolitical Philosophy: A Sourcebook, eds. R. Lerner and M. Mahdi.

Ithaca. 98-111.---. 1961b. "On the Proof of Prophecies and the Interpretation

of the Prophets' Symbols and Metaphors," in Medieval PoliticalPhilosophy: A Sourcebook, eds. R. Lerner and M. Mahdi. Ithaca.112-121.

---. 1992. "Mi'riij Nama," in Allegory and Philosophy inAvicenna(Ibn Sina). Trans. P. Heath. Philadelphia. 109-143.Azadpur, M. 2003. "Unveiling the Hidden: On the Medita tions of Des-cartes and Ghazzali," in Passions of the Soul in the Metamorphosisof Becoming, ed. A. T. Tymieniecka. Dordrecht. 219-240.---. 2007. "Is 'Islamic' Philosophy Islamic?" in Voices of Islam,vol. 5. Eds. V. Cornell and O. Safi. Westport, Conn. 23-41.

Corbin, H. 1971. "The Hermetic Idea of Perfect Nature," in The Man ofLight inIranian Sufism. Trans. N. Pearson. New York. l3-25.---. 1977. Spiritual Body and Celestial Earth. Trans. N. Pearson.Princeton.

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72 Hegel, Aethetics, Vol . 1,op . ci t. , p .366 .
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