Ibn Al-'arabi's Barzakh: The Concept of the Limit and the Relationship between God and the World

by Bashier, Salman H.

• ISBN13: 9780791462270
• ISBN10: 0791462277
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2004-10-07
• Publisher: State Univ of New York Pr

Summary

This book explores how Iban al-'Arabi (1165-1240) used the concept of barzakh (the Limit) to deal with the philosophical problem of the relationship between God and the world, a major concept disputed in ancient and medieval Islamic thought. The term barzakh indicates the activity or actor that differentiates between things and that, paradoxically, then provides the context of their unity. Author Salman H. Bashier looks at early thinkers and shows how the synthetic solutions they developed provided the groundwork for Ibn al-'Arabi's unique concept of barzakh. Bashier discusses Ibn al-'Arabi's development of the concept of barzakh ontologically through the notion of the Third Thing and epistemologically through the notion of the Perfect Man, and compares Ibn al-'Arabi's vision with Plato's.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	xi
List of Abbreviations	xiii
Introduction	1	(10)
Ibn al-Arabi's Liminal (Barzakhi) Theory of Representation: An Outlook from the Present Situation	11	(18)
Presentation and Representation: Complementary Elements in the Mystical Experience	11	(4)
Carter's View	15	(4)
Rorty's Antirepresentational Stand	19	(3)
Ibn al-'Arabi's Stand	22	(3)
Wasserstrom's Criticism of Mystocentrism	25	(4)
Creation ex nihilo, Creation in Time, and Eternal Creation: Ibn Sina versus the Theologians	29	(14)
Creation ex nihilo in the Qur'an	29	(2)
Creation ex nihilo, Creation in Time, and Islamic Theologians	31	(5)
Ibn Sina's Answers to the Theologians' Arguments	36	(2)
Ibn Sina on the Possible- and the Necessary-of-Existence	38	(2)
Ibn Sina's Distinction between Essence and Existence	40	(3)
Ibn Rushd versus al-Ghazali on the Eternity of the World	43	(16)
Between The Incoherence of the Philosophers and The Incoherence of the Incoherence	43	(2)
The First Proof	45	(4)
The Second Proof	49	(2)
The Third Proof	51	(1)
Ibn Rushd's Doctrine of Eternal Creation: The Emergence of the Problem of the Limit	52	(7)
Mysticism versus Philosophy: The Encounter between Ibn al-Arabi and Ibn Rushd	59	(16)
Mysticism between Theology and Philosophy	59	(1)
An Interpretation of the Encounter between Khadir and Moses from Ibn al-Arabi's Perspective	60	(6)
The Encounter between Ibn Rushd and Ibn al-Arabi'	66	(9)
The Barzakh	75	(22)
The Intermediate State (Barzakh) in the Qur'an and in the Canonical Tradition	75	(5)
The Barzakh in the Exegesis of the Qur'an and in Scholastic Theology	80	(3)
Plato's Theory of the Forms	83	(3)
Ibn al-Arabi's Definition of the Barzakh	86	(6)
Ibn al-Arabi versus Ibn Sina: Two Conceptions of the Relative	92	(5)
The Third Entity: The Supreme Barzakh	97	(16)
Plato's Form, The Mutazilites' Nonexistent, and Ibn al-Arabi's Fixed Entity	97	(2)
Plato's Introduction of the Receptacle	99	(3)
Ibn al-Arabi's Introduction of the Third Thing	102	(4)
The Problem of the Creation of the World Revisited	106	(7)
The Perfect Man: The Epistemological Aspect of the Third Thing	113	(16)
The Perfect Man as the Conclusion of Divine Love	113	(4)
The Perfect Man as the Possessor of Divine Knowledge	117	(5)
The Logic of the Knowledge of Perfection	122	(7)
The Limit Situation	129	(14)
On Knowing the Waystation of ``In The Articulations is the Knowledge of the Stairs''	129	(3)
The Paradox of Infinity	132	(2)
The Limit Situation	134	(9)
Conclusions	143	(6)
Notes	149	(38)
Bibliography	187	(10)
Index	197