Muhyiddin Ibn Arabi
1165-1240 · Sufism · Prominent
Ibn Arabi was an Andalusian Sufi philosopher whom Sufis call the Greatest Shaykh. He taught the unity of being: God alone has real being, and every creature is God showing himself in one particular shape. His Meccan Openings runs to thousands of pages, and the Bezels of Wisdom reads each prophet as another facet of that self-disclosure. The two form the most systematic mystical theology in Islam.
Signature
The position Ibn Arabi is most identified with in the Profiler:
- Nature of Reality
- strongly leans Unity
- Good and Evil
- Good Real, Evil Privative
Positions on the 11 axes the sources answer
- The Divine
- leans Indescribable (75 on a 0–100 scale from Describable to Indescribable)
- Beauty
- leans Objective (75 on a 0–100 scale from Subjective to Objective)
- Universals
- leans Realism (25 on a 0–100 scale from Realism to Nominalism)
- Identity
- leans Unchanging (25 on a 0–100 scale from Unchanging to Changing)
- Meaning
- leans Inherent (75 on a 0–100 scale from Constructed to Inherent)
- Nature of Reality
- strongly leans Unity (4 on a 0–100 scale from Unity to Multiplicity)
- Ground of Being
- mildly leans Transcendence (63 on a 0–100 scale from Immanence to Transcendence)
- Truth
- leans Objective (75 on a 0–100 scale from Subjective to Objective)
- Nature
- leans Harmony (75 on a 0–100 scale from Mastery to Harmony)
- Ethics
- mildly between Ends and Means (56 on a 0–100 scale from Ends to Means)
- Conviction
- mildly between Uncertain and Certain (42 on a 0–100 scale from Uncertain to Certain)
9 of 20 axes are left blank: the sources do not answer them, or Ibn Arabi refused the framing. Nothing is imputed; a blank is not a middling score.
Foundational questions
- Theology
- Non-Trinitarian Monotheism / Panentheism
What is your position on the existence and nature of God or gods? - Highest Good
- Union with God
What is the highest good? - Good and Evil
- Good Real, Evil Privative
What is the fundamental nature of good and evil? - Perception
- Idealism
What do we directly perceive? - Knowledge
- Intuition
What is the ultimate foundation of knowledge? - Ethics Basis
- Divine Command
What is the ultimate basis of ethics? - Agency
- Divine Providence
What is the nature of human agency and freedom? - Beginning of Things
- Emanation
What is the origin of reality? - Time
- Sacred Time
What is the fundamental shape of time? - Authority
- Divine Revelation
What is the legitimate source of authority? - Language
- Logos
What is the fundamental nature of language? - Paradox
- Coincidentia Oppositorum
What is the status of paradox? - Law
- Sacred Law
What is the ultimate source of legitimate law? - Death
- Ascent of the Soul
What happens at death? - Role of Emotion
- Path to the Divine
What is the proper role of emotion? - Human Nature
- Imago Dei
What is human nature? - Primary Bond
- The Divine
What is your primary bond and loyalty?