Argument of Part II Sample Clauses

Argument of Part II. The second part of the dissertation puts forward a phenomenological interpretation of the writings of Ibn al-‘Arabī’s ontology, showing, through the analysis of his theory of consciousness, that he developed a stance very similar to Kant’s on the role of imagination in defining the human being by hermeneutically connecting the realm of ideas with that of experience. For him as well, imagination (al-khayāl) is the principal meaning-determining faculty. The discussion begins by pointing out the roots of Ibn al-‘Arabī’s theory of subjectivity. While Ibn al-‘Arabī’s conception of subjectivity has been briefly addressed by scholars such as Xxxxx Xxxxxx and to some extent Xxxxxxx Xxxxxxxx, it has not been studied fully from a philosophical perspective. The investigation of the structure of subjectivity in Ibn al- ‘Arabī’s system starts by carefully examining his conception of being (wujūd) and its roots in earlier Islamic philosophy, especially in the work of Avicenna (d. 1037 C.E.) and al-Kindī (d. 873 C.E.). In order to show how classical metaphysics acquired a subjective turn in Islamic philosophy, the discussion briefly considers Avicenna’s and al-Kindī’s critiques and re-formulations of the question being as the key subject matter of metaphysics. In this respect, it shows that Avicenna’s critique of Aristotle’s Metaphysics transformed the paradigm of metaphysics from naturalism into an inquiry into the foundations of metaphysics in rational subjectivity, as Xxxxxxx Xxxxx has demonstrated in Avicenna and the Aristotelian Tradition. Similarly, examining al- the Treatise on First Philosophy, the analysis demonstrates that al-Kindī’s reformulation of the subject matter of metaphysics was based on a distinction between two fundamental subjective attitudes or modes of consciousness in experience. By pointing out this radical turn in the conception of the domain and subject matter of metaphysics, the dissertation argues that Avicenna and al-Kindī discovered the subjective ground of the distinction between the rationally transcendent and empirically immanent modes of consciousness. In turn, this finding opens up the possibility for revisiting Xxxxx Xxxxxx’x argument about the noetic structure of Ibn al- ‘Arabī’s metaphysics in the Creative Imagination in the Sufism of Ibn al-‘Arabī. Xxxxxx was the first scholar to point out that only a phenomenological/transcendental inquiry into the structure of subjectivity could explain the metaphysics of Ibn al- ‘Arabī. Buildin...