Universal Science: An Introduction to Islamic Metaphysics

Mahdī Ḥāʾirī Yazdī
Translated by John Cooper
Edited and Introduced by S. N. Ahmad

For many years used in Iran as a foundational textbook on philosophy, metaphysics, ontology, and epistemology, Universal Science (ʿIlm-i Kullī) by Mahdī Ḥāʾirī Yazdī (d. 1420/1999) is a concise yet authoritative outline of the fundamental discussions in Islamic philosophy. Yazdī was born in the holy city of Qum into a prestigious scholarly family, the son of the renowned jurist Ayatollah ʿUẓmā ʿAbd al-Karīm b. Muḥammad Jaʿfar Yazdī Mihrjirdī al-Ḥāʾirī (b. 1276/1859) and the younger brother of the respected scholar Murtaḍā Ḥāʾirī Yazdī. Mahdī Ḥāʾirī Yazdī undertook his formal training at Qum, where he studied with leading intellectuals including Ayatollah al-Sayyid Muḥammad Ḥujjat b. al-Sayyid ʿAlī Kūhkamarihī Tabrīzī (d. 1372/1953) and Ayatollah al-ʿUẓmā al-Sayyid Ḥusayn b. al-Sayyid ʿAlī al-Ṭabāṭabāʾī al-Burūjirdī (d. 1380/1961). Yazdī was granted a license to engage in juristic reasoning (ijtihād) by Burūjirdī at the age of just twenty-eight, indicating that he had attained expertise in legal matters, such that he had the authority to determine the legal ordinances of religion. He was not only a legal thinker, however, but also pursued knowledge in a range of fields including the rational sciences (ʿulūm ʿaqliyyah) and the philosophical works of Ibn Sīnā (d. 428/1037), Mullā Ṣadrā (d. 1050/1641), and Mullā Hādī Sabzavārī (d. 1289/1873), Euclidean mathematics, and even traditional astrology. Yazdī moved from Qum to Tehran in 1370/1951 and took up a teaching post at the University of Tehran, becoming assistant professor (dānishyārī) in 1374/1955 and full professor in 1379/1960. It was during these turbulent times, which saw the 1953 coup d’état that ousted the nationalist government led by Muḥammad Muṣaddiq [Mosaddegh] and restored the Pahlavi monarchy, that Yazdī wrote Universal Science (ʿIlm-i Kullī). Soon after, Yazdī departed Tehran for the United States, where he embarked upon a course of study aimed ultimately towards confronting Western materialism and secularism. He completed an undergraduate degree in philosophy at Georgetown University, a master’s degree at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, and in 1979 earned a PhD in analytic philosophy at the University of Toronto.

Yazdī’s doctoral thesis was later published as The Principles of Epistemology in Islamic Philosophy: Knowledge by Presence (1992), considered by many the most groundbreaking and original English-language study of Islamic philosophy and epistemology, and a work equally learned in the thought of Immanuel Kant (d. 1804), William James (d. 1910) and Bertrand Russell (d. 1970) as that of Suhrawārdī (d. 587/1191), Ibn ʿArabī (d. 638/1240), Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī (d. 672/1274), and Mullā Ṣadrā. Yazdī became senior fellow at Georgetown’s Kennedy Institute of Ethics and later a visiting professor at Yale University. He travelled extensively between Europe, the United States, and Iran, producing works on topics including comparative ontology, ethics, metaphysics, political theory, Shīʿī legal theory, and the Nahj al-Balāghah of Imam ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib (40/661), peace be upon him.

Prepared under the supervision of Dr Sayyid Amjad H. Shah Naqavi, the general editor of the Modern Shīʿah Library Series and the Dean of the Shīʿah Institute, Universal Science: An Introduction to Islamic Metaphysics offers English readers a readily accessible, lucid, and yet deeply learned, guide through the Sadrian, Avicennan, and Illuminationist schools of thought, whilst also demonstrating how the ‘living tradition’ of Shīʿī philosophy engages with central ontological, epistemological, aetiological, and psychological questions. Discussions include: the primacy of existence; the proper classifications of quiddity; and the manifold properties of causality and causal explanation. The translator, John Cooper (1947–1998), was E. G. Browne Lecturer in Persian at the University of Cambridge. Cooper studied at Cambridge and the Qum Seminary in Iran and was the general editor of Encyclopaedia Iranica, as well as a prolific author and translator. Universal Science: An Introduction to Islamic Metaphysics also includes an introduction by S. Ahmad.

Universal Science: An Introduction to Islamic Metaphysics is available to purchase here.

ISBN: 978-90-04-34302-3 (Hardback)
ISBN: 978-90-04-34334-4 (Paperback)
ISBN: 978-90-04-34311-5 (E-Book)