The Place of the Peripatetic Tradition in Qutb al-Din Shîrâzî’s Illuminist Philosophy

Abstract

The aim of this study is to determine the place of the Peripatetic tradition in the Illuminist philosophy of Qutb al-Dîn al-Shîrâzî (d. 710/1311), an important scholar and philosopher of the 13th century known for his expertise in many fields. Shîrâzî wrote remarkable works on most of the sciences he learned and owes his real fame as a philosopher to the commentary titled Sharh Hikmat al-ishrâq, written on Suhrawardî’s (d. 587/1191) Hikmat al-ishrâq. Due to this work he’d written and the light-based emanation cosmology he adopted in it, Shîrâzî’s philosophy was generally identified with the Ishraqi/Illuminist school in the tradition of Islamic philosophy. However, Shîrâzî’s philosophy was versatile and unique with its different views. The Peripatetic school was another school that found a place both in the education and views of Shîrâzî, who succeeded at being the second most-referenced source after Suhrawardî. Shîrâzî criticized Aristotle (384-322 BC) and his followers, who were known as Peripatetics, because of their methods and the deficiencies he saw regarding some points. According to Shîrâzî, the Peripatetics were deprived of the argument of Illuminism by rejecting zevk [pleasure] and keshf [discovery] and relying entirely on demonstration and bahs [research]. Although Shîrâzî criticized the Peripatetics, he both benefited from them and used peripatetic terminology when necessary. Among the Peripatetics, Avicenna (d. 428/1037) was the philosopher Shîrâzî bestbenefited upon. This study reveals what share the Peripatetic philosophy had Shîrâzî’s Illuminist philosophy.