It would appear that
religious intellectualism has
turned into a weight, otherwise
they wouldn’t be sending their
henchmen into the ring to knock
it down. Recently, one of the
knockers wrote a disquisition in
which he likened religious
intellectualism to three things
in order to prove its
impossibility to his own
satisfaction. The three similes
were: 1. An eight-sided
triangle; 2. Woollen steel; 3.
Metallic sour-grape juice.
The first simile was a
shabby imitation of the squared
circle or circular square, which
dejectedly hobbled away a few
years ago scarcely after making
its debut - much to the
disappointment of its
ringmasters. But metallic
sour-grape juice was, in all
fairness, of much stronger
mettle. It encapsulated the kind
of flair and talent that’s only
possessed by ‘poets of dire
times’ which endures and
shrivels into a raisin before
souring, and, then, springs
shoots anew in ‘ruddy times’,
with rejuvenated vigour and
grace.
But the
present piece is not a critique
of sour-grape philosophers or a
defence of religious
intellectualism, which needs no
defence or argumentation. Here,
religious intellectualism is
only a pretext for a
philosophical discussion about
how we can determine whether
something is possible or
impossible. In science, the
situation is clear: Any
occurrence that contravenes
confirmed scientific laws is
impossible. For example,
scientists cannot believe in the
possibility of an occurrence in
which the principle of the
conservation of matter or the
principle of the conservation of
energy is contravened. But what
about philosophy? Can we, on the
basis of a priori, metaphysical
laws, say that this or that
event is impossible; and, hence,
that we mustn’t expect it and
must promptly deny it if it ever
happens? We don’t have to look
very far for an example: Can the
phenomenon known as religious
intellectualism be declared
impossible on the basis of a
priori principles? Can it, in
effect, be removed from the
realm of possibilities with the
assertion that it is a
contradiction in terms? And is
it basically possible to make an
empirical ruling about it or
not? I’m not concerned with the
‘reasoning’ of the gainsayers
for the moment. In fact, all
they’ve done is to present
similes, which is neither
argumentation nor validation. If
we change the simile, we obtain
a different result. Why
shouldn’t we say that
intellectualism and religion are
like milk and sugar; different
but combinable. And when they
combine, they produce a
delightful concoction and
composite. A simile can always
be knocked down with another
simile. And this suffices to
disprove the assertions of the
deniers and the sneering. But
the important point for us now
is to see whether we can say
that an external event has not
occurred and cannot occur on the
basis of a philosophical, a
priori argument.
The
problem can be formulated in
another way. We can ask: Can
philosophy do the job of
science? Can a priori principles
give birth to a posteriori
principles and laws? Can
appealing to phenomena’s
essences or natures (assuming
that they can be grasped and
identified) make us unneedful of
experience? Let me give an
example. Philosophy maintains
that every event has a cause.
Can we conclude on the basis of
this a priori law that aspirin
cures headaches or that smoking
causes cancer or that being
totally submerged in water makes
a person drown? The answer is so
obvious that we don’t even need
to articulate it. Although the
principle of cause and effect
governs those scientific laws,
it does not engender them. In
other words, although each of
those scientific laws is an
instantiation of the
philosophical law of cause and
effect, they’re not born out of
it and the discovery of each one
of them requires recurrent
experience.
Another
example: Let us imagine that
we’ve somehow discovered and
defined water’s essence and
nature (assuming that this can
be done and actually means
something). Can we - having
identified water’s essence -
know a priori that table salt
dissolves in water whereas
barium sulphate doesn’t? Can we
know that iron sinks in water
whereas wood doesn’t? If we’ve
grasped the ‘essence and nature’
of gravity in our imagination,
can we extrapolate from it that
bodies attract with a force
that’s inversely proportional to
the square of their distances
(Newton’s Law)? There’s no end
to examples of this kind for us
to marshal. And they all clearly
tell us that philosophy cannot
determine particular instances
and that empirical laws have
their own method of discovery
and justification; viz.,
experience and nothing but
experience. This point, which
manifests itself so clearly in
the realm of ‘natural studies’,
still has repudiators and
opponents in the realm of ‘human
and social studies’. Some people
still imagine or pretend that
they can arrive at empirical
rulings by referring to the
nature of human affairs, and
that they can, in this way,
explain the present and future
of some human events and
phenomena and unravel the tale
of their possibility or
impossibility. Of course, here,
too, the extent of their daring
(nay, impudence) depends on the
extent to which the relevant
area is ‘scientific’. Economics,
which is more ‘scientific’, is
more likely to rob them of
courage. Hardly anyone would
dare nowadays to claim that by
recognizing ‘the essence of
money’, they can explain how
markets behave and arrive at the
laws of global capitalism in an
a priori way and merely on the
basis of logic, with no recourse
to experience or mathematics.
But the essence-peddlers seem to
be much bolder and loquacious in
the realm of culture,
civilization and history.
Bloated with philosophical
pride, they stride along
haughtily and try to intimidate
experience, and they boast that
they’ve travelled to the four
corners of ‘essence’ while
everyone else is still
hopelessly stuck in the alleyway
of experience. They speak so
confidently of the nature of the
West, the essence of
intellectualism, the nature of
technology and the kernel of
religion that you’d think the
truth of the entire cosmos had
bared itself unreservedly to
them. If their boldness ended
here, there’d be nothing to
fear; after all, everyone is
free to dream their dreams. The
tragedy and misfortune lies in
the fact that they step beyond
their field of dreams and
superimpose their imaginings
onto reality. Since, in their
imagination, the essence of
intellectualism cannot be
combined with the essence of
religion, they conclude that the
two cannot be combined in the
external world either. Nothing
could be more astounding, more
daring and more idealistic:
considering the world to be a
mirror - nay, a servant - of
one’s illusions and arriving at
the forms and attributes of
phenomena without ever having
troubled oneself with research
and experience: since this is
our impression (in our minds) of
the essence of intellectualism,
the world has to comply with our
essence-ology! Instead of first
asking the world (for,
experiences are effectively
questions) whether combining
intellectualism and religiosity
is possible or not, they give
the world a stern lesson and
say: Don’t you dare combine
them, for, it is impossible! It
brings to mind the naïve and
dreamy philosopher who’d never
heard of glass and who insisted
that ‘the essence of matter’ is
darkness and opaqueness. And
when they showed him glass in
order to shatter his illusions,
he still wouldn’t budge and
said: This isn’t matter; this is
of the nature of spirits!
There is also the tale
of the late Haj Molla Hadi
Sabzevari, the great philosopher
who (legend has it) said:
Photography doesn’t comply with
our laws, so it’s impossible,
because accidentals would have
to be transferred when you take
photographs and accidentals
cannot be transferred!
There is also a similar
story about the King of Siam
(Thailand). It’s been said that,
one day, the King of Siam was
speaking to the Dutch ambassador
and asking him to describe his
country. The Dutch ambassador
said, among other things, that,
for several months of the year,
water hardens (freezes) in our
land. The King replied: Up to
now, I was more or less prepared
to believe that you’re an honest
man but now I know that you’re a
liar. How can something that’s
liquid and fluid by its very
nature and essence harden and
solidify? Similarly, we can
recall the essentialist remarks
of those who insisted that
there’s no such thing as an
Islamic revolution, because a
revolution cannot be Islamic.
Let them open their eyes now and
see an Islamic revolution.
The same kinds of things
were said about ‘Islamic
philosophy’, but what did they
all come to and which Muslim
philosopher did they prevent
from producing Islamic
philosophy? The idea that
‘philosophy is essentially
Greek’ - even if it actually
means something (which it
doesn’t) - never prevented
philosophy from becoming Islamic
or Christian. This means that
‘essences’ are not afraid of
intermingling in the external
world even if the essentialists
consider them antagonistic
opposites that can never
intermingle in their constricted
imaginings.
We must
ask experience - not essence -
to tell us about the external
dispositions and rulings of
‘essences’. To put it in the
language of Islamic philosophy,
the rulings of existence are
different from the rulings of
essence, and confusing the two
is a fallacy. This is a very
profound and wise point. Milk
and sugar are two essences,
which, as long as they reside in
the mind, are independent and
separate, and there is no
telling how they will behave in
the external world and what will
become of them. And the dreamers
may well issue fatwas about
their eternal separateness, as
they may do with water and fire.
It is experience - and nothing
but experience - that can reveal
the friendship between milk and
sugar, and the enmity between
water and fire.
If
the real world obeyed the
essentialists’ imaginings, no
change or combination or
evolution would ever occur in
it. Each essence would, instead,
be like a monk in an isolated
monastery who never sees others
and who never becomes other than
he is. Intellectualism would
forever remain what it was at
first (because its essence
always stays the same); as would
religion and the West and
modernity and technology, and so
on and so forth. And development
would basically become
impossible and unimaginable. The
world would turn into closed,
fixed windows which neither move
nor open and close. It’s no
wonder, then, that these
essentialists believe that
intellectualism is a window
that’s closed to religion and
that religion is a window that’s
closed to intellectualism; as
if, neither intellectualism nor
religion can ever budge. They
are always the same fixed
essences that they’ve always
been. Instead of asking the
external world whether these two
things can ever join up or not,
the essentialists peer into the
mirror of their essences and
issue an edict - regardless of
reality - that they must remain
apart for all eternity.
One of these dreamers once
said that the nature of the
West, which is arrogance and
carnality, can be found in all
the novels that are written in
the West. So, I asked him: Have
you read all the novels that
have been written in the West?
What about all the novels that
are going to be written two
centuries from now? How do you
know what’s in them and what’s
going to be in them? But I could
see that my questions were
futile and that union with the
realm of essence had made him
unneedful of referring to the
external world and exercising
caution in issuing judgments
about things.
In
brief, essentialism is conjoined
with a belief in fixity and
rigidity. And none of these
things is capable of explaining
the development, evolution,
transformation and combination
of phenomena. And they are too
feeble and ineffective to be
used for explaining social
phenomena; so much the more so
for natural phenomena, which
flew this coop long ago.
The fact of the matter is
that neither intellectualism nor
the West nor modernity nor
technology nor religiosity nor
tradition, etc. have fixed
essences. Their destinies and
fortunes have to be viewed in
the real world and over the
course of history, not by
peering into the mirror of
essence. Hence, the question of
whether a marriage and an
intermingling is possible or
impossible can only be asked of
‘the objective world’ not of
‘the mind’.
If we set
aside clear contradictions
(which belong to the realm of
propositions), we can say that
judging what things are
opposites is also an empirical
question. We cannot say a priori
which attributes are opposites
and which ones are not. Mulla
Sadra was unambiguously of the
view that opposition depends on
setting and subject (or, as we
would say nowadays,
‘context-dependent’). In other
words, he maintained that the
opposition of two opposites is
not absolute, does not hold
everywhere and is not a rational
imperative; but that it depends
on where the two opposed
attributes meet. Sometimes, this
meeting is possible; sometimes,
not. And he suggested that the
stronger a person’s character
is, the more able he is to
combine opposites. In other
words, attributes that cannot
coexist in matter, can
occasionally coexist in a soul
and this shows that the
opposition of opposites is not
absolute. If this is the case,
then why should we be so bold,
hasty and rash as to declare
changeable phenomena opposites
for all eternity?
Sheykh Attar wrote: ‘A body
becomes a soul when a soul
enters a body / Could anyone
spin a more wondrous spell than
this?’
In the realm
of theory and with a view to
essences, no two things are as
disparate as body and soul. But
these two very disparate things
exist in a tight embrace for a
whole lifetime and it is only
death that can break this
‘wondrous spell’. Can
religiosity entering
intellectualism be even stranger
than a soul entering a body?
Yes, the real world is a
world of wonders; marriages and
divorces unfold on its stage of
which there’s no sign in the
crude scenarios of fantasists.
‘The times unravel a thousand
designs, not one of which /
matches the ones that are in the
mirrors of our minds.’
They say: This or that
phenomenon is contradictory, so
it won’t occur. They don’t say:
It has occurred, so it can’t be
contradictory. More wondrous
still is that these same
knockers who ‘flexed their
muscles of argumentation’ for
the sake of a pittance and waxed
lyrical about how the Islamic
Republic’s idea of religious
‘guardianship’ was ‘Platonic’,
and happily issued gainful
rulings about the combination of
these two ‘uncontradictory’
concepts, have today arrived at
the conclusion that
intellectualism and religiosity
are contradictory! So, the
guardianship of a Shi’i jurist
can be Platonic but
intellectualism cannot be
religious?! O wonder of wonders!
People have produced artificial
intelligence and electronic
brains and they’re even planning
to build robotic human beings,
but our friends are still
muttering ‘essence, essence’ in
a bid to decide whether it is
possible to combine these things
or not!
Let me also
say a word about those similes.
As I said, similes don’t
constitute argumentation; a
simple change of simile will
change the outcome. We can make
something appear possible by
using one simile and make the
same thing appear impossible by
using another simile. We can say
that religious intellectualism
is like metallic sour-grape
juice or we can say that it is
like lemon squash. And, of
course, the choice of simile
depends on one’s flair and
talent (which is very strong in
some people!), as well as
depending on one’s
fair-mindedness (which is also,
in all fairness, very strong in
some people). But the main point
is that the repudiators’ similes
that we began with - in addition
to not amounting to
argumentation - have been based
on a misunderstanding of the
problem. They have assumed that,
when two things are combined or
when something is qualified with
an adjective, the thing turns
into another thing while, at the
same time, preserving its
identity. And they have given
examples to show that this is
impossible. Correct. Not only is
it impossible for a triangle to
become eight-sided, it is even
impossible for milk to turn into
sugar while continuing to be
milk. And so on and so forth.
Intellectualism cannot turn into
religion and religion cannot
turn into intellectualism. Yes,
but milk can become sugary, just
as intellectualism can become
religious. It’s a question of
‘qualification’ (the possibility
or impossibility of which has to
be asked from the external world
and from experience), not on the
basis of a transformation of
essence which (according to
philosophers) is impossible.
Apart from all this,
intellectualism is not a closed
little box about which we can
speak in ambiguous and
mysterious terms and the fate of
which we can extract from such
things as the essential and the
accidental, and the potential
and the actual, which are
themselves a hundred times more
ambiguous than intellectualism
and religion. Religious
intellectualism consists of an
aggregate of big and small
assertions and propositions,
which need to be grappled with
individually if they are to be
shown to be true or false on the
basis of argumentation. Sitting
in a corner, issuing wholesale
judgments, chanting abracadabras,
appealing to kernel and essence,
and longing for quiddities to
murder one’s rivals is not a
laudable way to behave.
The wooden blade of ‘Westoxication’
has become even more dull and
ineffective than all of their
other methods. Even if it once
had a bit of edge and could make
a few timid souls tremble, today
it has neither the charm to rob
any hearts, nor the strength to
cut off any heads. And how
strange it is that they still
try to solve their problems by
brandishing this wretch and beg
for assistance and strength from
a languishing wreck.
These days, some of the
professors who have the task of
teaching the human ‘sciences’
(i.e., theories that rise from
experience and fall with by
experience), unfortunately
behave like philosophers and
present students with
non-empirical, a priori,
metaphysical and, occasionally,
anti-scientific statements in
the guise of science. Neither
science nor philosophy can
emerge from such lessons. All
that they produce is a heap of
pompous, futile phrases which
offer no solutions to any
problems, either in society or
in people’s minds. And if they
have any outcome at all, it is
to keep the social sciences
backwards; nothing else. I
advise university students not
to purchase these fake goods;
and not to be intimidated by the
chatter of essence-peddlers; and
not to exchange science with
pseudo-scientific philosophies;
and not to fall for
‘post-modernist Sufis’ who
denigrate science and bring
shame to scientists; and to seek
refuge in science from their
sham theories.
It
goes without saying that I feel
no animosity towards essences
and have no quarrel with
metaphysics. All I want is for
lovers of learning not to put a
priori philosophy in the place
of a posteriori science; and not
to ask philosophy to do the job
of science; and not to impose
fixity and rigidity on minds and
the world in the name of essence
and nature; and not to shut the
door to change and evolution;
and not to lock up phenomena in
the cage of essences; and not to
rob them of historicity and
changeability; and not to reduce
the sphere of possibilities to
the sphere of their imagination;
and not to declare impossible
things that are possible; and
not to weigh down thinking with
their own illusions; so that
they can both attain truer
learning and avoid falling into
the kind of lamentable torpour
that the world does not abide.
Abdulkarim
Soroush Washington
February 2008
Translated from the
Persian by Nilou Mobasser
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