CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2024
| Author | Ulqani, Mohammad Sami |
|---|---|
| Title | From Understanding to Mystical Understanding |
| Summary | Seyyed Hossein Nasr (born 1933), originally from Iran, is considered the foremost living representative thinker of the traditionalist school the intellectual heroes of which were figures such as Rene Guenon, A. K. Coomaraswamy, and Fritjof Schuon, and one the most widely known thinkers of the Islamic philosophical tradition in the contemporary world. His works range from metaphysics, philosophy and history of science to art, spirituality, and the wide range of Islamic studies. A distinctive mark of his approach towards the subjects of his inquiry is his commitment to the worldview countenanced by the perennial philosophers mentioned above; at the heart of which lies the critique of modernity and defense of traditions. His most important philosophical work is his Gifford Lectures in which he argues for a perspective which is multi-cultural and multi-faith, and sees commonalities among different traditions both within and beyond the religion of Islam. In the year 2001 the Library of Living Philosophers dedicated a volume to him, which includes critical essays about different aspect of his philosophy; however, studying his ideas from an analytic perspective is still lacking. In an attempt to approach Nasr from an analytic point of view, I will be examining his theory of mystical knowledge in this thesis. In his article titled “Self-Awareness and Ultimate Selfhood”, Seyyed Hossein Nasr talks about knowledge of the self and the “Ultimate Selfhood”, i.e., God, which are drastically different from knowledge in its usual sense. Relying on Islamic mysticism (Tasawwuf) and other mystical traditions of the East like Hinduism and Buddhism, Nasr claims that knowing the true nature of things is dependent on a form of self-awareness that would lead to knowing the Ultimate Self. What links the knowing agents to Ultimate Self is said to be following a particular discipline of contemplation and spiritual journey, without which they will lack the epistemic status in knowing things as they are. That particular discipline is called the “traditional science of the soul”. In my thesis I am going to examine how the literature on “understanding” in analytic epistemology can provide the conceptual tools to reformulate Nasr’s notion of knowing in terms of “understanding” a develop a theory of “mystical understanding”. Furthermore, I will be examining the ways in which the discussions on the emergence of skepticism regarding “understanding” would help us block similar problems arising for the “traditional science of the soul”; i.e., what is the thing that guarantees the reliability of the “traditional science of the soul” and how is justified “mystical understanding” distinguished from hallucination and deception. For this purpose, I will be employing Linda Zagzebski’s account of understanding; investigating if it would capture Nasr’s notion of “grasping the true nature of things”. Hence, the questions that I will be dealing with are the following: how can Zagzebski’s theory of understanding help us make sense of Nasr’s notion of “knowing” the true nature of thing? Is Nasr’s account of knowledge competent enough to justify itself in the face of deception skepticism? All the ways paved; can we develop a sophisticated theory about “mystical understanding” based on Nasr’s account of self-awarness? This thesis consists of three chapters. In the first chapter I will discuss Nasr’s account of self-awareness, its context, and the questions and problems that emerge from it. The second chapter will be dedicated to the study of Zagzebski’s notion of “understanding” and how she deals with problem of skepticism. In the third chapter, I going to draw a comparison between the two views and see to what extent Nasr’s view is translatable into Zagzebski’s theory of understanding; additionally, I will introduce a preliminary view on mystical understanding and how to overcome the main problem regarding it, i.e., skepticism. |
| Supervisor | Michael Vance Griffin |
| Department | Philosophy MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2024/ulqani_mohammad-sami.pdf |
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