Shahab al-Din Suhrawardi
1154-1191 · Islamic Philosophy · Prominent
Suhrawardi was a twelfth-century Persian philosopher who founded the Illuminationist school as a rival to the Aristotelian tradition of Avicenna. Reality is light in grades: everything ranks from the Light of Lights down to the faintest glimmer, differing in intensity alone. To know a thing is to have it present to you the way a lit room is. He was put to death in Aleppo in 1191, in his thirties.
Signature
The position Suhrawardi is most identified with in the Profiler:
- Ground of Being
- leans Transcendence
- Beginning of Things
- Emanation
Positions on the 11 axes the sources answer
- Mind
- leans Beyond Brain (75 on a 0–100 scale from Brain Only to Beyond Brain)
- The Divine
- mildly leans Indescribable (63 on a 0–100 scale from Describable to Indescribable)
- 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)
- Order
- leans Vertical (25 on a 0–100 scale from Vertical to Horizontal)
- Nature of Reality
- leans Unity (25 on a 0–100 scale from Unity to Multiplicity)
- Ground of Being
- leans Transcendence (75 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 Suhrawardi refused the framing. Nothing is imputed; a blank is not a middling score.
Foundational questions
- Theology
- Non-Trinitarian Monotheism
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
- Eidetic Intuition
What do we directly perceive? - Knowledge
- Receptive Intellect / 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
- Block Universe
What is the fundamental shape of time? - Authority
- Divine Revelation / Sacred Tradition / Rational Expertise
What is the legitimate source of authority? - Language
- Logos
What is the fundamental nature of language? - Law
- Sacred Law
What is the ultimate source of legitimate law? - Death
- Ascent of the Soul / Union with the One
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?