Philosophy and the Intellectual Life in Shīʿah Islam – Symposium 2015

Edited  by S. Ahmad and S. Rizvi

The first volume in the Shīʿah Institute Symposia Series, Philosophy & the Intellectual Life in Shīʿah Islam contains the proceedings from The Shīʿah Institute’s inaugural symposium, held at the Warburg Institute at the University of London in September 2015. This important volume, prepared under the close attention and expertise of the Dean of The Shīʿah Institute, Dr Sayyid Amjad H. Shah Naqavi, offers great insight into the rich intellectual history of Shia Islam by examining some of the most enduring and integral theological, mystical, metaphysical, and epistemological questions.

The chapters, written by scholars from leading universities around the world, are broad in scope, covering key issues and topics from the classical period of philosophical theology up to the fourteenth/twentieth century. Philosophy and the Intellectual Life in Shīʿah Islam includes important contributions on subjects including: the theory of states from al-Shaykh al-Mufīd (d. 413/1022) to al-Sharīf al-Murtaḍā (d. 436/1044); Ibn ʻArabī’s (d. 638/1240) doctrine of the perfect man (al-insān al-kāmil); seals and sealing of walāyah in Ṣufi and Shīʿī texts in the cases of Saʿd al-Dīn Ḥamūyah (d. 650/1252) and al-Ḥakīm al-Tirmidhī (d. 295–305/908–918); the concept of appearance (badāʾ) in Mīr Dāmād’s (d. 1041/1631) Lantern of Brightness; the application of gradational ontology to logic and Mullā Ṣadrā (d. 1050/1641) on propositions; the intellect in Mullā Ṣadrā’s commentary on the Uṣul al-Kāfī; Rajab ʿAlī Tabrīzī’s (d. 1080/1669) ‘refutation’ of Ṣadrian metaphysics; and embodied virtue and the human constitution in Shīʿī philosophy from Ibn Sīnā (d. 428/1037) to Sayyid Muḥammad Ḥusayn Ṭabāṭabāʾī (d. 1402/1981).

S. Ahmad (PhD, Princeton University) has edited and introduced John Cooper’s translation of Mahdī Ḥāʾirī Yazdī’s Universal Science: An Introduction to Islamic Metaphysics (Leiden, 2017).

S. Rizvi (PhD, Cantab.) is associate professor of Islamic Studies at the University of Exeter. He has contributed articles to various journals and is the author of Mullā Ṣadrā Shīrāzī: His Life and Works and the Sources for Safavid Philosophy (Oxford, 2007) and Mullā Ṣadrā: Modulation of Being (Abingdon, 2009).

Philosophy & the Intellectual Life in Shīʿah Islam is available to purchase, please email the institute.

ISBN: 978-0-9935884-3-3 (Hardback)