Reason, intellect, and consciousness in islamic thought
pp. 11-35
in: Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka (ed), Reason, spirit and the sacral in the new enlightenment, Berlin, Springer, 2011Abstract
In what follows, I address the broad contours of the Islamic "intellectual tradition," by which I mean philosophy and Sufism. Specifically, I want to suggest that the important issue for this tradition was not how the technical operation of intelligence that we call "reason" is accomplished, but how human intelligence itself can be fully actualized. Notions of reason, intelligence, and consciousness were rooted in concepts of human potentiality, and these represented versions of what can be called "spiritual anthropology." Human nature was understood as an on-going and ever-changing manifestation of the Divine Word or the Supreme Reality, and full actualization of this nature was seen as demanding a disciplined body, mind, and heart.