The Oxford Companion to Philosophy Part 47 potx

Plainly a non-central and precarious kind of law and legal
system, there seems no reason to doubt either its positiv-
ity, as something added by human decision to natural
morality, or its obligatoriness in some measure, in a world
where no state can plausibly claim to be a fully complete
community entitled to constitute the ultimate and uncon-
ditional horizon of a just person’s allegiance.
Developments in international law in recent decades
have responded to a set of interrelated questions: Has an
individual person, or a non-state group, the right to move
international organs, as a subject of international law with
substantive and procedural rights derived from inter-
national law? Has an organization such as the United
Nations an international personality comparable to that of
a state, and are its rights in international law limited to
those conceded by the states party to its establishment?
Can the same be said of a non-governmental organization
such as the International Red Cross? If ‘persons’ other than
states can be subjects of international law rights, can they
also be creators of international law rules, as states can?
When can individuals, including rulers of states, be tried
by internationally authorized tribunals for offences
against international law? These questions, like the tenta-
tive affirmative answers being given to them, arise from a
widespread understanding that new interdependencies,
economic, environmental, and cultural, are bringing into
being a world-wide human community which might in
principle become a fully complete community govern-
mentally equipped to supervise, coercively, the doing of
justice everywhere, but that no governmental authority
can yet be envisaged such as could be relied upon to act

with an effective justice sufficient to merit a general trans-
fer or subordination of state jurisdiction to it. This last
proposition, reasonable though it doubtless is, has the
practical implication that international law will remain for
the foreseeable future a system largely bereft of sanctions
and, for that and other reasons, one that is peculiarly open
to violation and to change by fait accompli, not least by
states prominent in shaping and appealing to its rules,
principles, and institutions. j.m.f.
Wilhelm G. Grewe, The Epochs of International Law (Berlin,
2000).
Hersch Lauterpacht, ‘The Definition and Nature of International
Law and its Place in Jurisprudence’, in his Collected Works,
i (Cambridge, 1970).
international relations, the philosophy of. The set of
doctrines, ideas, justifications, and excuses that guides the
study and, perhaps, the practice of sovereign states in their
dealings with one another. Two broadly opposed pos-
itions have been articulated, the first mostly by students of
politics (and also by politicians), the second mostly by stu-
dents of law (and by lawyers). Only in very recent years
has either one attracted much philosophical attention.
The first position is commonly called ‘realist’ because
its advocates claim to see states as they really are (in the
tradition of Thucydides and Machiavelli). On this view,
sovereignty is taken as a kind of exemption from the moral
restraints that apply to individual men and women. The
rulers of states are driven by the ‘necessities’ of inter-
national anarchy, standardly conceived as a Hobbesian
*state of nature, to defend the interests of their own

people without regard to the rights of anyone else. Thus
the Greek generals in Thucydides’ Melian dialogue: ‘they
that have odds of power exact as much as they can, and the
weak yield to such conditions as they can get.’ Strategic
and security studies are the political expression of this real-
ist view.
The second position is best called ‘legalist’ because it
views international society, on analogy with domestic
society, as a rule-governed world. In the absence of a
global authority that might serve as the source of the
required rules, they are derived instead from the tacit or
explicit consent of existing states—hence from customs,
treaties, and conventions—or from some version of *nat-
ural law. *Just war theory is the first moral offspring of this
legalist view, though many of its protagonists believe that
what the domestic analogy requires is that war should be
conceptually, as well as practically, repressed. Unjust wars
must be understood as criminal acts, and just wars simply
as police actions, aimed at law enforcement.
What is at issue between realists and legalists, above all,
is the responsibility of rulers. The realist view is only puta-
tively amoral; its central claim is that rulers are morally
bound to their subjects or fellow citizens and must be per-
mitted to do, or be excused for doing, whatever they have
to do in order to guarantee the physical security and
advance the well-being of those people. The legalist view
is that nothing can be done for those people that they
could not, as individuals, do for themselves. Since they
could not kill innocent people to save their own lives,
innocent people cannot be killed on their behalf. As this

example suggests, arguments about responsibility have
focused mostly on the conduct of war, with realists
insisting that inter arma silent leges and legalists refusing
to be silent even then. But the disagreement extends
also to questions of diplomacy and commerce. Here too
rulers of states commonly act as if ordinary moral stand-
ards were relaxed or lifted entirely in their case: gentlemen
do not open each other’s mail, but statesmen authorize
(and pay for) espionage and think themselves morally
justified.
The same issue also arises in discussions of distributive
*justice, which is commonly taken to deal with domestic,
but not with international, transactions. Of course, trade
across borders is governed by the same prohibitions
(against fraud, say) as trade within borders. *Markets are
international; the old jus gentium was first of all market
law. Governments, however, are not international, and
whatever obligations government officials have to pro-
mote justice—to redistribute resources, establish a wel-
fare ‘floor’, ban discriminatory practices, and so on—are
owed to their fellow citizens and not to foreigners. But this
view, standard for a very long time, has come increasingly
under criticism by writers seeking some way of addressing
the radical *inequalities of international society. Perhaps
440 international law
foreign aid is as obligatory as domestic welfare. Perhaps
the *difference principle should be applied globally.
Legalists are likely to be more sympathetic than realists to
such proposals, but even for them these are extensions of
law and morality beyond their current reach.

It might be said that international distributive justice
would not require the reform of international relations so
much as its abolition—in favour of a new global domesti-
city. The society of sovereign states would be replaced by
a new political entity, encompassing all the men and
women in the world and treating them with equal respect
and concern, as rights-possessing individuals. But it is also
possible to imagine states of the world that fall between
international anarchy and global rule. Organizations
like the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund,
and the World Trade Organization have something less
than governmental power, but they could still act, if the
leading states in the global economy wanted them to do
so, in the interests of international distributive justice.
m.walz.
Charles R. Beitz, Political Theory and International Relations
(Princeton, NJ, 1979).
Hedley Bull, The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Pol-
itics (London, 1977).
Terry Nardin, Law, Morality, and the Relations of States (Princeton,
NJ, 1983).
Thomas W. Pogge (ed.), Global Justice (Oxford, 2001).
John Rawls, The Law of Peoples (Cambridge, Mass., 1999).
internet, philosophy on the. The Internet is awash with
philosophy. Type ‘philosophy’ into an Internet search
engine, and it returns millions of entries; and
EpistemeLinks.com, the leading portal website for philoso-
phy, currently features some 13,000 categorized links to
philosophy resources on the Internet. Inevitably, with this
quantity of material available, much of it is not of profes-

sional standard. In part, this is because the Internet facili-
tates publication without editorial control or peer review
(which itself leads to difficult questions about the reliabil-
ity of information found on the Internet). Nevertheless,
professional philosophers and philosophy publishers are
increasingly making use of the opportunities presented by
the Internet.
Most significantly, the worldwide web is beginning to
change the face of philosophy publishing. Partly, it is
doing so because it offers a number of advantages over trad-
itional, non-electronic publishing. (1) A single web publi-
cation has a potential audience of millions of people, many
of whom, in the case of philosophy, would not other-
wise have ready access to such material. (2) The web is a
dynamic medium, allowing for published material to
be updated frequently. For example, online reference
works, such as the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
(), are kept up to date in a way that
their paper-based counterparts cannot be. (3) By utilizing
embedded hypertext links, web publications allow for
sophisticated cross-referencing and facilitate non-linear
research strategies. (4) The worldwide web makes it
relatively easy for individuals to embark on their own
publishing ventures, something which philosophers such
as David Chalmers (at Arizona/ANU), Peter Suber
(Earlham), Ted Honderich (UCL), and Stephen Clark
(Liverpool) have exploited to excellent effect. (5) It is rela-
tively inexpensive to publish on the worldwide web. There-
fore, the option of an exclusively online journal or collection
is an attractive one for publishers. Good examples of

these are The Philosophers’ Imprint (www.philosophersim-
print.org), an online journal with an editorial board the
equal of any trad-itional philosophy journal, and the
Marxists Internet Archive (www.marxists.org), a digital library
of works by authors sympathetic to Marxism.
The Internet is also transforming the way that phil-
osophers interact with each other. In particular, email
and mailing lists such as Philos-L (www.liv.ac.uk/Philoso-
phy/philos.html) mean that philosophers around the globe
are in constant communication. j.s.
interpretation. Theoretical or narrative account of facts,
texts, persons, or events that renders the subject-matter
intelligible. As a genuinely philosophical problem, inter-
pretation became recognized first as a specific feature of
the human sciences. Historical interpretation based on
lived experience, understanding, and ordinary language is
contrasted with scientific explanation based on alien con-
struction, observation, and theoretical concepts. In exist-
ential and hermeneutic philosophy, interpretation
becomes the most essential moment of human life: The
human being is characterized by having an understanding
of itself, the world, and others. This understanding, to be
sure, does not consist—as in classical ontology or episte-
mology—in universal features of universe or mind, but in
subjective–relative and historically situated interpret-
ations of the social *life-world. Recent trends like *post-
modernism or *neo-pragmatism have emphasized the
universality of interpretation, arguing that even natural
sciences are nothing but interpretations. h.h.k.
*hermeneutics.

C. Taylor, ‘Interpretation and the Sciences of Man’, in Philosophy
and the Human Sciences, ii (Cambridge, 1985).
intersubjective. This term refers to the status of being
somehow accessible to at least two (usually all, in
principle) minds or ‘subjectivities’. It thus implies that
there is some sort of communication between those
minds; which in turn implies that each communicating
mind is aware not only of the existence of the other but
also of its intention to convey information to the other.
The idea, for theorists, is that if subjective processes can be
brought into agreement, then perhaps that is as good as the
(unattainable?) status of being objective—completely inde-
pendent of subjectivity. The question facing such theorists
is whether intersubjectivity is definable without pre-
supposing an objective environment in which communi-
cation takes place (the ‘wiring’ from Subject A to Subject
B). At a less fundamental level, however, the need for
intersubjective 441
intersubjective verification of scientific hypotheses has
been long recognized. j.n.
*subjectivism.
D. Davidson, Subjective, Intersubjective, Objective (Oxford, 2001).
intrinsic good: see good in itself.
introspection. The nature of introspection and some-
times even its existence are a subject of controversy, and
so it is difficult to provide a neutral account of it. It is not
just the awareness that accompanies some mental states.
It is rather a person’s internal way of ascertaining what
mental state he or she is currently in.
Sometimes introspection is taken to be a type of per-

ception and there is talk of a ‘mental eye’, or, if minds are
thought to be material, brain-scanning. Others deny any
similarity with sense-perception and view such talk as mis-
leading. They think it is acceptable to talk of introspection
as perception only if a very minimal understanding of
perception is brought to bear, in which case it is unin-
formative. Another alternative is to take introspection to
be a form of recollection, or retrospection, in which case
we would have to characterize it as a person’s internal way
of ascertaining his or her mental states just past. The motiv-
ation for this approach is that it is thought implausible for
one to have a thought simultaneously with having
another thought the content of which is the first thought.
Much philosophical discussion has centred around the
status of the beliefs we obtain through introspection. ‘Are
they justified?’ and ‘How likely are they to be false?’ are
questions often asked. p.j.p.n.
*apperception; inner sense.
W. Lyons, The Disappearance of Introspection (Cambridge, Mass.,
1986).
intuition. Originally an alleged direct relation, analogous
to visual seeing, between the mind and something
abstract and so not accessible to the senses. What are
intuited (which can be derivatively called ‘intuitions’) may
be abstract objects, like numbers or properties, or certain
truths regarded as not accessible to investigation through
the senses or calculation; the mere short-circuiting of such
processes in ‘bank manager’s intuition’ would not count
as intuition for philosophy. Kant talks of our intuiting
space and time, in a way which is direct and entirely free

from any mediation by the intellect—but this must be dis-
tinguished from an alleged pure reception of ‘raw data’
from the senses; the intuiting is presupposed by, and so
cannot depend upon, sensory experience.
Intuitions or alleged intuitions have been important in
logic, metaphysics, and ethics, as well as in epistemology.
Recently, however, the term ‘intuition’ has been used for
pre-philosophical thoughts or feelings, e.g. on morality,
which emerge in thought experiments and are then used
philosophically. a.r.l.
*empirical.
D. Pole, Conditions of Rational Inquiry (London, 1961), ch. 1.
intuitionism, ethical. Ethical intuitionism is mainly asso-
ciated with British philosophers; it is sometimes called
British intuitionism. But the term ‘intuitionist’ is used for
more than one position. In one sense, intuitionism is the
view that basic moral truths are known by intuition—that
is, directly, rather than by inference. In this sense,
Sidgwick was an intuitionist. More recently, intuitionism
has been taken to be a form of pluralism, pluralism in the
theory of the right. Monists in the theory of the right say
that there is only one way in which an action can get to be
right. Kant was a monist, and so was G. E. Moore, who
held at one time that for an action to be right is for it to
have the best consequences. Against Moore, Ross argued
that actions can be made right in any of a number of ways.
j.d.
W. D. Ross, The Right and the Good (Oxford, 1930).
intuitionism, mathematical. A school founded by L. E. J.
Brouwer (1881–1966) which construes mathematics as

mental constructions, opposing the view that mathemat-
ical reality is independent of our thought. (Intuitionism is
thus a species of *constructivism about mathematics.)
The intuitionist criticizes classical mathematics for its
unrestricted use of the law of excluded middle, the claim
that ‘A or not-A’ is always true. Classically, one may prove
A by refuting not-A, or by showing that A follows both
from B and from not-B. But for the intuitionist, if a state-
ment is neither provable nor refutable, we cannot assume
that either it or its negation is true: there is no mathemat-
ical reality, independent of our thought, to settle the truth-
value of all mathematical statements. See *intuitionist
logic for the framework in terms of which intuitionists
investigate how much of mathematics survives their cri-
tique. The applicability of intuitionist thought outside
mathematics has been explored by Dummett. d.e.
M. A. Dummett, Elements of Intuitionism, 2nd edn. (Oxford, 2000).
A. Heyting, Intuitionism: An Introduction (Amsterdam, 1956).
intuitionist logic. A logic in which truth is equated with
provability, or warranted assertibility, or something of the
kind. Let us use ‘
ٗ’ to abbreviate ‘We have grounds for
asserting’ or ‘We have a proof’ or ‘We have a method
which, if applied, would yield a proof’, and so on. Then
the intuitionist connectives answering to ‘and’, ‘or’, ‘if’,
and ‘not’, are explained thus:
ٗ(P & Q) if and only if ٗP and ٗQ.
ٗ(P ∨ Q) if and only if ٗP or ٗQ.
ٗ(P → Q) if and only if ٗ (If ٗP thenٗQ).
ٗ ¬P if and only if ٗ not ٗP.

In words, the explanation of ‘→’ would often be given
thus: ‘We have grounds for asserting that P
→ Q if and
only if we have a method of transforming any grounds for
asserting that P into grounds for asserting that Q’. And the
explanation of ‘¬’ would be: ‘We have grounds for assert-
ing that ¬P if and only if we have grounds for asserting that
we could never have grounds for asserting that P’. (An
equivalent account defines ‘¬P’ as abbreviating ‘P
→⊥’,
442 intersubjective
where ‘→’ is understood as above and ‘⊥’ represents an
arbitrary contradiction.) As for the quantifiers, where D is
the domain of quantification, the explanation is
ٗ∃xFx if and only if for some object a, ٗ(a is in
D) and ٗFa.
ٗ∀xFx if and only if ٗ(for every object a, if ٗ(a
is in D) then ٗFa).
The logic that results from these explanations differs
from classical logic primarily where negation is con-
cerned. Notoriously, it lacks the law of *excluded middle
‘P ∨
¬P’, for on the intuitionist account we should have
grounds for asserting that P ∨
¬P only if we have grounds
either for asserting that P or for asserting that we could
never have grounds for asserting that P. But of course it
may be that we do not have grounds for either. Similarly,
this logic lacks the law ‘
¬¬P → P’, and many other clas-

sical laws for negation. This has some unexpected conse-
quences. For example, none of the connectives and
quantifiers listed above can be defined in terms of any
combination of the others.
The simplest way of formulating intuitionist logic is in
a style suitable for *natural deduction, with one introduc-
tion rule and one elimination rule for each sign. The rules
are just the same as the classical rules in all cases except for
negation, where the introduction rule is reductio ad
absurdum and the elimination rule is ex falso quodlibet.
There are several ways of giving a formal semantics for
this logic, the most popular being that based on ‘Kripke
trees’, but this topic is too complex to be explained here.
There are also several ways of ‘translating’ some or all
of intuitionist logic into classical logic. The most inter-
esting one, because it seems to be most in accordance with
the intended meaning of the intuitionist connectives and
quantifiers, is this. In the explanations given earlier,
assume that the English expressions used on the right
are the classical connectives and quantifiers. Then where
φ is any formula of intuitionist logic, the formula
ٗ φ
will translate, via these explanations, into a formula φ*
containing only classical connectives and quantifiers,
interspersed with occurrences of
ٗ. It turns out that φ is
valid intuitionistically if and only if φ* is valid in the modal
logic S4.
Intuitionist arithmetic is obtained by adding to this
logic the same axioms as for classical arithmetic. The two

arithmetics differ only on formulae involving quantifiers.
The intuitionist theory of the real numbers is a *predica-
tive theory. d.b.
M. Dummett, Elements of Intuitionism (Oxford, 1977).
M. Fitting, Intuitionistic Logic, Model Theory, and Forcing (Amster-
dam, 1969).
D. Scott et al., Notes on the Formalization of Logic (Oxford, 1981),
part iv.
inversion. A term introduced by J. N. Keynes to signify
inferences in which from a given proposition another
proposition is inferred having for its subject the negation
of the original subject. One such inference is interesting
because it violates a rule of *distribution. A series of
*immediate inferences permits us to infer ‘Some non-S are
not P’ from ‘All S are P’, but P is undistributed in the
premiss, distributed in the conclusion. c.w.
J. N. Keynes, Formal Logic, 4th edn. (London, 1906), 137–40.
inverted spectrum. That two people outwardly indistin-
guishable in their colour discriminating may nevertheless
systematically differ in their colour experiences was a pos-
sibility raised by Locke (Essay, bk. ii, ch. xxxii). Under the
title ‘spectrum inversion’ it has entered modern debate via
objections to *behaviourist accounts of the mind that at
least some conscious mental states have no clear relations
to behaviour. Similarly, the causal relations that *func-
tionalists appeal to in accounting for colour discrimin-
ation are dogged by the possibility of subjective differences
which, being systematic, escape the functional net. Some
functionalists argue that spectrum inversion is a meta-
physical possibility, but scarcely credible, while, being

epiphenomenalists, they may not care anyway. Those
who take colour experiences to be states of the brain rely
on the possibility of inversion being discounted explana-
torily by future neurobiological advances. It is neverthe-
less difficult to say what precise discoveries would enable
science to explain what Locke himself could only describe
as God ‘annexing’ ideas in our minds to certain objects.
a.h.
William G. Lycan (ed.), Mind and Cognition (Oxford, 1990).
John R. Searle, The Rediscovery of Mind (Cambridge, Mass., 1992).
invisible hand. Although in a free transaction the butcher
sells me meat to profit himself, and I buy his meat as
cheaply as possible, we each benefit the other as well as
ourselves. Adam Smith regarded the *market as a whole
as a universally beneficent order which comes about spon-
taneously (as by an invisible hand) from countless such
acts, whose agents have no thought of their systemic
effects. Any order which arises spontaneously without
intention or design can be regarded as an instance of the
invisible hand, but Smithian economics was the first study
of the phenomenon. a.o’h.
*conservatism.
Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations (1776).
inwardness. The inner form or quality of a person’s out-
ward-looking engagement, rather than self-scrutiny or
silent pondering. A concept associated with existentialism
and central in Kierkegaard (Inderlighed—drawing on the
senses of ‘fervent’, ‘intimate’, ‘tender’, ‘sincere’, ‘with
longing’, but not of ‘directed inward’). Inwardness is meas-
ured not by external criteria but by the mental pitch, as it

were, of a person’s engagement. Kierkegaard’s concept is
well captured in his ironical reference to ‘town criers of
inwardness’. It is only when matters of moment are
grasped with appropriate inwardness that they can be
properly addressed. Noise and show rob human activity
of all of the positive characteristics of inwardness.
Kierkegaard was especially occupied with those cases in
inwardness 443
which the noise and show were marketed as expressions
of the very matters that call for inwardness. a.h.
S. Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript (Princeton, NJ,
1992).
Iqba¯l, Alla¯meh Muh
.
ammad (1877–1938). Born in Sialkot
(now in Pakistan), Iqba¯l was a Muslim thinker and poet.
Educated in Berlin, his goal was to revitalize Islamic
thought and re-establish its creative role in philosophy.
His prose work, The Development of Metaphysics in Persia, is
one of the first modern non-polemical Muslim texts
reflecting Western scholarly methodology. Most of his
works are in Persian and Urdu poetry, inspired by classical
Persian mystical poetry, especially that of the great Per-
sian mystic Jala¯l al-Dı¯n Ru¯mı¯ (1207–73). Iqba¯l’s most
accomplished poem, the Persian The Secrets of the Self, is a
modern reaffirmation of Islamic philosophy’s widely held
epistemological principle of the primacy of intuition and
experience by the self-cognizant ‘I’, or ‘knowledge by
presence’. h.z.
B. A. Dar, Iqba¯l and Post-Kantian Voluntarism (Lahore, 1944).

Irigaray, Luce (1932– ). French feminist philosopher, lin-
guist, and practising analyst. Her early work focused on
psycholinguistics, analysing speech patterns in senile
dementia and schizophrenia. She studied with Lacan but
was expelled from his Vincennes school for dissenting
from his views on women’s sexuality. Speculum of the Other
Women (1974) is a large-scale critical reading of the history
of Western philosophy as ‘the master discourse’, which
exposes an exclusion or suppression of the feminine and
the maternal and an undue bias towards masculinity, writ-
ten in her characteristically allusive style. Many of her
texts attempt to construct a version of feminine subjectiv-
ity (‘speaking (as) woman’) in the light of the above exclu-
sion, using the strategic and symbolic positioning of
Woman as *Other (e.g. This Sex which is not One (1979)).
Some of her recent work is more explicitly political, some
more lyrically poetic. a.c.a.
*feminism.
Margaret Whitford, Luce Irigaray: Philosophy in the Feminine
(London, 1991).
Irish philosophy. There has been only one period of con-
tinuous, creative philosophy in Ireland—from the 1690s
to the 1750s. Before that the only prominent figure is John
Scotus Eriugena, whose work has some points of contact
with that in the eighteenth century, particularly in its ten-
dency towards *pantheism, negative theology, *idealism,
and heterodoxy; although Irish philosophy has been
traced back to the so-called Irish Augustine,
c.sixth century. After the 1750s, the most noteworthy
philosophical activity—at least until now—has been

derivative and scholarly, either within Catholic scholasti-
cism, or in elucidating and editing the work of Berkeley
(A. A. Luce), Kant (T. K. Abbott), and Hegel (H. S.
Macran).
The outstanding figure in Ireland’s one creative period
was George Berkeley, whose principal writings indicate
the main concerns of Irish philosophy, i.e. epistemology,
theory of perception and language, and philosophy of reli-
gion. Also important, however, is the contribution in aes-
thetics by Francis Hutcheson—who was born and died in
Ireland and produced most of his important books while
teaching in Dublin in the 1720s—and Edmund Burke,
whose chief philosophical work, Philosophical Enquiry into
the Ideas of the Beautiful and the Sublime (1757), was largely
written while he was a student at Trinity College in the
late 1740s. While Berkeley, Hutcheson, and Burke are
probably the best-known names, there were other able
philosophers—among them, John Toland, William
Molyneux, William King, Peter Browne, Robert Clayton,
and Edward Synge. There were also popular writers, most
notably Jonathan Swift, some of whose writings reflect
key theories and arguments in Irish philosophy.
The seminal work is Toland’s Christianity not Mysterious
(1696), which, drawing chiefly on Locke’s theories of
meaning and essence, argues that Christianity either
asserts meaningless doctrines—‘Blictri’—or is a non-
mysterious religion. Toland’s rationalist challenge was
answered by Browne, then a Fellow of Trinity College,
first in his Letter (1697) and, more weightily, in his Proced-
ure, Extents and Limits of the Human Understanding (1728),

which argues for the old negative theology by developing
a radical sensationalist account of mind. Browne, like
Toland, was influenced by Locke, whose Essay is the most
important external influence on Irish philosophy.
There are two principal tendencies in Irish philoso-
phy—the left- and right-wing Lockeans. Toland is a left-
winger, drawing on Locke’s rationalism and enlightened
attitude to religion. Browne is in the right-wing, which
uses Locke’s empiricism and the sceptical and quietistic
trends in the Essay. Yet neither those on the left nor those
on the right were slavish adherents of Locke; instead, they
were often his most astute critics, boldly drawing out con-
clusions from his work which he was either unable or
unwilling to accept. Molyneux comes closest to being a
follower; yet he is more a collaborator than a disciple.
Indeed, the final form of the Essay owes more to him than
anyone (apart from Locke), as their correspondence, pub-
lished in 1708, clearly shows. Another creative response to
Toland from the right was by Archbishop King, whose
Sermon on Predestination (1709) defends religious mystery
by applying *representationalism and the *primary–sec-
ondary quality distinction to theology. King is also
remembered for his influential De Origine Mali (1702),
which is appreciatively discussed by Leibniz in his
Théodicée.
Toland’s challenge also gave rise to Berkeley’s preco-
cious emotive theory of meaning, which Berkeley uses in
Alciphron (1732), dialogue vii, to explain religious mystery.
Yet Berkeley was not a clear adherent of the right wing.
Thus in Alciphron, dialogue iv, he forcefully attacks the

Browne–King theological position and in ways remark-
ably similar to those he had earlier used against matter.
444 inwardness
Browne counter-attacked in his Divine Analogy (1733),
whose scornful and incredulous comments on Berkeley’s
emotive theory of mystery shows the revolutionary char-
acter of the theory, a theory which Burke uses in his Philo-
sophical Enquiry along with sensationalism, which he
probably derived from Browne. Another topic which
shows the inner unity and interest of Irish philosophy is
the *Molyneux problem. Not only was it devised by an
Irishman, but some of the most interesting responses to it
were made by Irishmen—Berkeley, Hutcheson, Synge, as
well as (less directly) Swift and Burke. d.ber.
*English philosophy; Scottish philosophy.
D. Berman, ‘Enlightenment and Counter-Enlightenment in Irish
Philosophy’ and ‘The Culmination and Causation of Irish Phil-
osophy’, Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie (1982).
—— and P. O’Riordan, The Irish Enlightenment and Counter-
Enlightenment (Chicago, 2002). (Contains an introduction,
chart and bibliographical notes to six volumes of mainly eight-
eenth-century Irish philosophical writings, from Toland to
Burke.)
T. Duddy, A History of Irish Thought (London, 2002). (Now the
most comprehensive work on Irish thought and philosophy).
R. Kearney (ed.), The Irish Mind: Exploring Intellectual Traditions
(Dublin, 1985). (The pioneer book on the subject.)
J. Laird, ‘Ulster Philosophers’, Proceedings of the Belfast Natural His-
tory and Philosophy Society (1923).
iron block universe: see determinism.

irony, Romantic. Notion of irony as an attitude or ethos
that calls everything into doubt, from utterer’s intentions
to our knowledge of the world as given (supposedly)
through sensory acquaintance or the concepts and cat-
egories of reason. Such ‘infinitized’ irony—as distinct
from its ‘stable’ or unproblematic varieties—aroused
great interest among poet-philosophers in the early-to-
mid-nineteenth century, notably Novalis, Hölderlin, and
Friedrich Schlegel. These thinkers pursued the various
problems bequeathed (as they saw it) by Kant’s critical
philosophy, e.g. the *antinomies of subject and object, of
*freedom and *determinism, and of thought as a perpet-
ual striving for truth in the face of human finitude. Hence
their fascination with the giddying depths of uncer-
tainty—the interpretative mise-en-abîme—opened up by
reflection on this topic. Such thinking was attacked by
Hegel and Kierkegaard on account of its sceptical or
nihilist implications. c.n.
David Simpson (ed.), The Origins of Modern Critical Thought: Ger-
man Aesthetic and Literary Criticism from Lessing to Hegel (Cam-
bridge, 1988).
irony, Socratic. Socrates, in the early dialogues of Plato, is
depicted as claiming to know nothing, as having no super-
ior doctrine to offer even as he confounds and defeats his
interlocutors by his pointed questions. This famous
Socratic ‘profession of ignorance’ is also regarded as an
instance of Socratic irony, of his saying less than he thinks
or means (as the root of the term in the Greek eiro¯n, a dis-
sembler, suggests). He adopts this affectation, it is said,
simply to avoid being subjected to the same critical treat-

ment himself. It would seem, however that there was no
dissembling involved. n.j.h.d.
S. Kierkegaard, The Concept of Irony (1841) is a classic treatment.
G. Vlastos, Socrates (Cambridge, 1991) contains a recent discus-
sion.
irrationalism is the opposition to reason on principle as
distinct from the mere tendency to lapse into ad hoc illogic-
ality or unreason. What this outlook amounts to more
specifically depends on the answers to the following ques-
tions. What is the reason thus opposed? What is counter-
posed to it? And what is the extent of the opposition?
To start with the last: irrationalism has never involved
a total disavowal of *reason. For example, an irrationalist
falsely accused of murder can be expected to marshal evi-
dence and argument in proof of his innocence as best he
can. Nor is he likely to ignore well-established algorithms
in the solution of a computational problem. What he
would insist upon is that principles such as those of prob-
able and demonstrative reasoning that are used in the
mental activities mentioned are, though appropriate and
effective in their own spheres, inapplicable to issues of
superior importance like the spiritual self-realization of
the ego, the ultimate destiny of humankind, and the tran-
scendent ground of the existence of the world. Within the
domain to which these issues belong, he would contend,
knowledge can only be attained through some non-logical
and non-empirical modes of direct cognition such as are
encountered (in purest form) in mystical intuition or in
faith induced by some transcendental source.
Faith and *intuition, then, on this reckoning, are and

ought to be recognized as the superiors of reason in mat-
ters that matter. Although the concept of reason has been
variously interpreted, it has an uncontroversial core of ref-
erence which includes deductive and inductive inference,
to which allusion has already been made, and the logical
and semantical analysis of concepts and statements based
on clearly ascertainable rules. Given that these procedures
of thought are supposed to be incapacitated in the areas of
cognition reserved by the irrationalist, it is apparent that
any inquiries by the unconverted into the intelligibility,
not to talk of the validity, of the deliverances of faith and
intuition are irremediably handicapped. And this is, pos-
sibly, the most striking thing about irrationalism: it is apt
to become a constraint on dialogue.
It is a remarkable fact that some of the greatest thinkers
in the history of Western philosophy have had some
irrationalist leanings, however peripheral in some cases.
Thus so ingenious a dialectician as Plato seems to have
credited knowledge of the profoundest truths exclusively
to some superior mode of unmediated cognition, exempt
from all possibility of error and therefore of debate; and
St Thomas Aquinas, for all his demonstrated powers of
reasoning, conceded some truths to the sole competence
of faith. Even Kant, giant of the Enlightenment, confessedly
found it necessary to ‘deny knowledge in order to make
room for faith’.
irrationalism 445
But, of course, reason has not lacked its philosophical
celebrants. It is not for nothing, for example, that the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in European

history have been called the Age of Reason. The rational
foundations laid in the teachings of seventeenth-
century thinkers like Bacon, Locke, Leibniz, Spinoza,
reached their denouement in the optimistic rationalism
(using this word in the broad sense) of the stalwarts of
eighteenth-century Enlightenment such as, to mention
only a few, Bentham and Godwin in England and Voltaire,
Diderot, and Montesquieu in France. Their shared con-
viction, which may not at times have been without a
touch of hyperbole, was that it was entirely possible to
improve the human condition out of all recognition
through the expansion of the role of reason in human
affairs.
It was in reaction to this enthusiastic trust in reason that
Romanticism emerged in art, literature, and philosophy in
the nineteenth century as perhaps the most self-
consciously irrationalist movement in Western thought.
In contemporary culture there are not a few currents of
irrationalism—witness, for instance, the ‘new age’ move-
ment and the even grosser tendencies to demonism in
sectarian life—but in serious philosophy familiar animad-
versions against Reason, when duly analysed, are fre-
quently revealed to be in reality more against certain
conceits about reason than against reason itself. k.w.
Henry D. Aiken (ed.), The Age of Ideology: The Nineteenth Century
Philosophers (New York, 1956).
Peter Gay (ed.), The Enlightenment: A Comprehensive Reader
(New York, 1973).
W. T. Stace, Mysticism and Philosophy (New York, 1960), esp.
chs. 5 and 6.

Irwin, Terence H. (1947– ). A noted classical philosopher
at Cornell University, Irwin has written books on Plato’s
ethical ideas (Plato’s Moral Theory (Oxford, 1977)) and on
Aristotle’s metaphysical and epistemological theses (Aris-
totle’s First Principles (Oxford, 1988)). His work is marked
by a strong current of active philosophical questioning.
Irwin’s task has been not only scholarly, but one of under-
standing and evaluating the theses under examination as
significant and living ideas. He has done the bulk of his
mature work in America, where he stands alongside a
number of other North American classical philosophers in
demonstrating the continued power of the intellectual
inheritance of Plato and Aristotle. n.j.h.d.
‘is’: see ‘to be’; being; real; subject and predicate.
‘is’ and ‘ought’. Moral philosophy has to give an account
of how, if at all, we can legitimately move from is to ought,
from describing how things do in fact stand, to expressing
an urgent concern either that they be changed or that they
be respected, preserved as they are. If the is–ought gap is
over-dramatized, value is detached altogether from the
world and becomes a function of sheer decision. But
moral deliberation does not and cannot work in a factual
vacuum. To underplay the gap is to suggest, no less
implausibly, that an ought can be simply read off from
an is.
A satisfactory account must start from the idea that
ought and is interpenetrate. We may grasp a situation as
demanding action: conversely, reflection on values and
obligations powerfully affects our understanding of
human nature and its potentialities.

The classical formulation of the ‘is’–‘ought’ issue is
David Hume’s, in A Treatise of Human Nature, iii. i. 1.
r.w.h.
*fact–value distinction.
W. D. Hudson (ed.), The Is/Ought Question (London, 1969).
Islamic aesthetics. Much Islamic aesthetics, like Islamic
philosophy as a whole, is thoroughly Neoplatonic. This
replaced the earlier theories of thinkers like al-Kindı¯, for
whom beauty is taken to be derived from perfection, and
since God is the most perfect being in the universe, he is
also the most beautiful. He is constantly aware of his
beauty, while we are only occasionally able to come close
to experiencing it, since it is an essential feature of the
deity, but its perception is merely an accidental human
attribute. This version of Pythagoreanism was replaced by
the argument that we operate on the level of imagination,
so our ideas of beauty are limited to what we can experi-
ence and abstract from those experiences. On the other
hand, we can use our material ideas and experiences to
construct more abstract and perfect concepts of beauty,
and so come closer to the range of completely pure beauty
which exists far from the material world.
The area of aesthetics which came in for much discus-
sion was poetry, and the ways in which poetry works logic-
ally. Many of the Islamic philosophers such as al-Fa¯ra¯bı¯,
Avicenna, and Ibn Rushd were convinced that poetry fol-
lows a syllogistic pattern of proof, albeit with far weaker
premisses than most such reasoning processes, and with
the conclusion that the audience should be moved to
action or emotion. Imagination is again crucial here,

blending our ability to be both spiritual and material. Our
material ideas reflect our experiences, yet they can be
made more abstract, and thereby extend those experi-
ences in novel and exciting ways.Were we to be entirely
rational, we would not need imagination, and could be
spoken to entirely in terms of what we regard as logical;
but since we are emotional creatures, we require to be
addressed at least partially through our emotions, and this
is where poetry and other art-forms come in. They appeal
to us both intellectually and emotionally, and persuade
us that we should adopt a certain attitude or share a
particular feeling. o.l.
S. Kemal, ‘Aesthetics’, in S. Nasr and O. Leaman (eds.), A History
of Islamic Philosophy (London, 1996).
Islamic ethics. Ethics in Islamic philosophy is a surpris-
ingly uncontroversial area, since most thinkers agreed
on the general principles of ethics. There was an early
446 irrationalism
theological dispute as to how objective the principles of
ethics are, but this did not really become part of the debate
in philosophy. The latter took off when the views of Plato
and Aristotle became familiar to Islamic philosophers,
especially the notion of the just society in the Republic of
Plato and virtue as a mean in Aristotle’s Nicomachean
Ethics. One of the issues which the Islamic thinkers had to
address was how to discuss happiness in such a way that it
would be available to all who were prepared to behave
well, as opposed to just those who were intelligent. The
Aristotelian debate about how far the moral and social life
is important, as compared to the life of the mind, was of

particular interest, since the idea that salvation was
restricted to those who are intellectually gifted is hardly
compatible with Islam. Al-Fa¯ra¯bı¯ and Ibn Sı¯na¯ (Avicenna)
imply that the masses’ route to salvation is through
religion and morality, while the philosophers’ route is
through philosophy.
Ibn Miskawayh (d. 1030) and Nas
.
ı¯r al-Dı¯n al-T
.
u¯sı¯
(d. 1274) produced very elaborate discussions of ethics,
and the philosophical psychology which accompanies
them displays considerable acuity. God is taken to be the
epitome of the religious law which incorporates both
spiritual and physical goods. We should obey not only
God, but also his representatives on earth, and all those
who are superior to us morally. The view of human beings
being the representatives of God is particularly attractive
to Shı¯‘ite thinkers, who can relate the imam or spiritual
leader with the deity in this way.
A particular interesting debate arose in the work of
al-Ghaza¯lı¯ (d. 1111) and is his response to an argument
produced by Ibn Miskawayh. The latter argues that the
religious and moral law is based on what is in our interest,
and that we can see what the point of the law is by asking
what its point is. Al-Ghaza¯lı¯ replies that the point of the
moral and religious law is that it has no point; it is entirely
arbitrary and rests on nothing but the will of God. Some
people may follow the principles of morality out of some

confused idea that they are the right principles, but unless
they follow those principles because they believe they are
commanded by God to do so, their action is without
value. Here al-Ghaza¯lı¯ is using the ideas of an earlier theo-
logical debate between the Mu‘tazila and the Ash‘ariyya
on the basis of morality. For the former, morality can be
derived from reason, and that is why God establishes it,
since he acts in accordance with reason. The Ash‘arites
argued, by contrast, that morality means nothing more
than what God demands of us, and it has no basis apart
from that.
It was the Ash‘arite view that prevailed in Islamic
philosophy. The objectivist account of ethics of the
Mu‘tazilites was held to suffer from a number of prob-
lems. It places huge reliance on the ability of human rea-
son to determine our moral duty. It also implies that
religion plays no significant role in determining morality,
and that religious law is not an essential part of that moral-
ity. Yet the Qur’a¯n itself points frequently to the signifi-
cance of guidance for human beings, and although reason
is clearly important in assessing what form of guidance is
valid, it cannot replace the authority of God as revealed to
his representatives on earth. This notion of human beings
being divine representatives is often taken to be important
morally, and has implications for how we can behave and
what our relationships should be with each other and with
our environment in general. It is worth pointing out that
the starting-point for working out what our duties as
God’s representatives on earth are is Scripture, and with-
out divine guidance we would have no idea how to

behave. o.l.
O. Leaman, Brief Introduction to Islamic Philosophy (Oxford,
1999).
—— Introduction to Classical Islamic Philosophy (Cambridge, 2002).
Islamic philosophy. Originally based on Arabic transla-
tions of Greek texts, developed as a syncretic yet system-
atic body of thought in the Islamic world, from Andalusia
to India, from the ninth century to the present. Most
works were originally written in Arabic, many in Persian.
Though marked during its formative period by Mu‘tazila
theologians, who were influenced by issues of revelation
and reason in Christian theology (e.g. Origen, John of
Damascus), Islamic philosophy does not constitute a reli-
gion; nor was it the ‘handmaiden of theology’. Most prac-
titioners were Muslims of various cultural, social, and
linguistic backgrounds; some were notable members of
other religions.
The Formative Period: The Late Eighth to Mid-Ninth Century.
Philosophical activity at this time centred in Baghdad’s
new Academy (‘House of Wisdom’). Supported by the
caliphs, notably al-Ma’mu¯n (reigned 813–33), the school
was known for its academic tolerance and freedom of sci-
entific inquiry. Learned representatives of all subject
nations participated in the state-endowed centres where a
universal world-view was sought to sustain the Empire.
Some extremist groups questioned the caliphs’ authority,
introducing critical political issues (later addressed by theo-
logians such as Ba¯qilla¯nı¯ and Baghda¯dı¯) and theoretical
problems (later picked up by Fa¯ra¯bı¯ and Avicenna).
Others, drawing upon older traditions (materialist,

Manichaean, Jewish, Christian, Zoroastrian, Arabian, and
Indian), challenged Islamic philosophy’s fundamental
doctrine of revealed truths by identifying its supposed
contradictions and inconsistencies. The Mu‘tazila thus
established a set of doctrines regarding anthropo-
morphism and God’s knowledge, creation, prophecy,
human free will, and immortality. Greek thought became
the most attractive tool for the construction of a defined
Islamic theology, providing a rational defence for revealed
teachings.
One major thinker of this period was al-Kindı¯, who
was interested in philosophical investigation per se.
Although upholding the validity of revealed truth, he also
proposed its recovery by demonstration. He did not
attempt a systematic ‘harmonization’ of prophecy with
philosophy, however, one of the primary goals of the
Islamic philosophy 447
following period. His main contribution was identifying
Greek texts and refining their Arabic translations, some of
which he commissioned. They include extensive para-
phrases of Pre-Socratic authors; Plato’s Laws,Timaeus, and
Republic, plus paraphrases of Phaedo, and other Platonic
texts; most of the Aristotelian corpus except the Politics;
selected Neoplatonic texts, some incorrectly identified
(notably parts of Plotinus’ Enneads iv–vi, thought to be
‘Aristotle’s theology’), as well as works by Porphyry (espe-
cially the Isagoge) and Proclus; plus many other texts and
fragments, including elements of Stoic logic and physics
associated with the late antiquity schools of Alexandria
and Athens; and significant Aristotelian commentaries,

notably those of Alexander of Aphrodisias, along with
their Neoplatonist interpretations.
Al-Kindı¯’s syncretic approach is based on Neoplatonist
theories of emanation and the concept of the One, Aris-
totelian metaphysics of causality and intellectual know-
ledge, and Platonic doctrines of the soul and dialectic
method. Aristotelian logic was used to investigate Hel-
lenic-defined problems as well as the ‘new’ set of issues
fundamental to Islamic revelation. Al-Kindı¯ argued for
creation ex nihilo as a type of emanation, but not natural
causation where the First Being is created simply by God’s
eternal will. He also argued for immortality of the individ-
ual soul as the rational explanation for resurrection. His
arguments as well as some of their corollaries were later
rejected or revised, but his writings, especially in theoreti-
cal philosophy, represent the foundations of Islamic
philosophy.
The Creative Period: The Ninth to the Eleventh Century. The
rise of anti-rationalist sentiments proclaimed by
al-‘Ash‘arı¯ (912), along with political events and populist
movements, curtailed Islam’s spirit of scientific discovery,
while radical advancements were taking place in areas
such as computational mathematics and astronomy. Two
notable philosophers of this period, al-Fa¯ra¯bı¯ and Avi-
cenna, met the challenge by harmonizing reason with
revelation, introducing innovations, and refining philoso-
phical technique and analysis. There are three seminal
innovations of this period:
1. Al-Fa¯ra¯bı¯’s commentaries on Aristotelian texts of
the Organon define a standard Arabic logical terminology

and improve formal techniques. His independent techni-
cal works, such as Utterances Employed in Logic and the Book
of Letters, describe a new linguistic structure and examine
‘how many ways a thing is said’.
2. Al-Fa¯ra¯bı¯ creates the first works on Islamic political
philosophy within the context of Islamic religion. His
Attainment of Happiness and the Political Regime are novel in
their technical discussions of prophecy and creation, and
the roles of the lawgiver and divine law in the city.
Redefined metaphysically as the ‘science of politics’, these
philosophical domains are promoted as the means for
attaining happiness and the establishment of just rule, stipu-
lated to be the ultimate purpose of philosophy. Fa¯ra¯bı¯’s
most popular work, The Ideas of the Inhabitants of the
Virtuous City, furthered the doctrine of just rule by encour-
aging philosophical discourse on prophecy and law, which
affected the beliefs and actions of the entire Muslim com-
munity. The text describes an epistemology based on Aris-
totelian theories of intellectual knowledge and active
intellect wherein human prophetic knowledge is not
restricted by God’s will. Thus any person devoted to
philosophical inquiry may gain access to unrestricted,
objective knowledge, or union with the active intellect.
This theory of knowledge, later refined and reformulated
by Avicenna into a unified theory of prophecy, is one of
the most significant components of Islamic philosophy. It
informs the Shı¯‘a political doctrine in the sixteenth cen-
tury and its later refinements, where the ‘Virtuous City’ is
invoked to describe divinely inspired just rule by the
philosopher-ruler, then called ‘jurist-guardian’.

3. Avicenna defines Islamic Peripatetic philosophy in
the first independent, comprehensive corpus on the sub-
ject. Most of his texts were later translated into Latin, and
their arguments used by scholastic authors from Bacon to
Ockham. Avicenna is distinguished from previous
thinkers by his recomposition of the entire range of philo-
sophical subjects, adding fresh arguments and refining
earlier ones. He incorporates political theory into a recon-
structed metaphysics, describing prophecy as a general-
ized theory of intellectual knowledge capable of
describing mystical experience. His ontological distinc-
tion between contingent and necessary being became
accepted doctrine. He is the first thinker to state the psy-
chological theory that an individual suspended with no
spatial or temporal referents will necessarily affirm his
soul as an act of self-identification and that the soul’s active
imagination is responsible for the feeling of pain or pleas-
ure after separation from the body. These novel concepts
were considered by Sohravardı¯, the founder of Illumin-
ationist philosophy, as essential components in the chain of
being. Avicenna’s theories of prophetic knowledge, based
on notions of ‘holy intellect’ as well as Koranic exegesis,
were accepted by religious scholars, especially in the post-
medieval period. Avicenna’s students, including Gorga¯nı¯
and Bahmanya¯r, become identified as Peripatetics, consti-
tuting Islam’s first ‘school’ of philosophy, as such.
The Period of Reconstruction and Reaction: The Twelfth to the
Fifteenth Century
. Several political and intellectual currents
run through this period, which is also marked by the rise of

al-Ghaza¯lı¯’s ‘Ash‘arite theology. After the Abba¯sid
caliphate was overthrown by Mongol conquests (thir-
teenth century), Islamic philosophy subsisted in multiple
intellectual centres, which had also spread to the West. In
the fourteenth century, fundamentalist traditionalism
was promulgated through the eclectic polemics of Ibn
Taymiyya, who called for believers to rid Islam of all
forms of innovation.
Two main types of philosophical writing emerged in
Andalusian centres such as Cordoba and Seville in the
twelfth century: the philosophical writings of Ibn Ba¯jja
(d. 1138), Ibn T
.
ufayl (d. 1185), and others extend al-Fa¯ra¯bı¯’s
448 Islamic philosophy
political doctrine; and the Aristotelian commentaries of
Averroës, called ‘the Commentator’ in Latin texts.
Ibn Ba¯jja interprets al-Fa¯ra¯bı¯’s political doctrine in a pes-
simistic light. Although upholding the virtues of the ideal
city, he considers it non-existent, emphasizing the dark
aspect of actual cities in which the populace lives in the
cave (after Plato) but perceives only shadows. Unlike
al-Fa¯ra¯bı¯, he considers the city incompatible with the
philosopher’s need for solitude. He supports Avicenna’s
idea of experiential knowledge, or ‘enlightenment’,
through conjunction with the active intellect (Directives
and Remarks, ix, x), but considers the value of ‘prophetic’
knowledge to be individual not collective.
Ibn T
.

ufayl also extends al-Fa¯ra¯bı¯’s political doctrine in a
pessimistic direction. Inspired by Avicenna’s philosoph-
ical allegories and mention of an ‘Eastern Philosophy’
with non-Peripatetic ‘wisdom’, he created an allegory in
which a wise hermit from a deserted island comes to civi-
lization with the gift of theoretical knowledge but fails to
save the multitudes (translated in English as The Improve-
ment of Reason (London, 1708)).
In the East, the philosophy of illumination, constructed
by Sohravardı¯, represents Islamic philosophy’s most suc-
cessful response to this period’s reactionary stance. Com-
mentaries by Molla¯S
.
adra¯ and others extend its political
doctrine to other areas. Sohravardı¯ offered a clear and
accessible system, calling for the enlightened rule of the
divinely inspired, appearing in every age, who manifest
signs indicating knowledge and power, and thus become
authorities who serve as rulers or ‘hidden’ guardians of
justice. The sixteenth-century Shı¯‘a scholars readily
identified with the philosophy of illumination and used it
in the formulation of Shı¯‘ite political doctrine. It remains
one of the three accepted schools of Islamic philosophy
to date.
The philosophy of illumination includes many tech-
nical innovations. In logic these include definition of an
independent modal operator ‘necessarily/it is necessary
that’ in defining a superiterated modal proposition as the
form to which all other propositions are reduced; the
impossibility of the ‘necessary and always true’ validity of

the universal proposition because of the necessity of
future contingency; and reduction of the figures of syllo-
gism. The principal epistemological innovation was a uni-
fied theory of knowledge capable of explaining all types of
knowledge—prophetic, inspired, and sensory. In a highly
innovative manner, Sohravardı¯ posits a reformulated
proposition of the sameness of knowing and being as the
foundation for a unified epistemological theory. A most
general concept of ‘knowing’ is assumed, for which the
verb ‘apprehension’ (idra¯k) is used. It is then stated that
any type of ‘knowing’ is that the ‘knower’ and the
‘known’, as the apprehender (mudrik) and the appre-
hended (mudrak), the sensing and the sensed, the intel-
lected and intellect, and so on, form a sameness relation.
Such a relation is identity preserving one-to-one corres-
pondence among each and every member of the set of all
‘knowers’ and the set of all ‘knowns’ in any type of ‘know-
ing’. New ideas in ontology and cosmology involved
cosmological light essences and time-space continuum,
where measured time and Euclidean space apply to the
corporeal realm, and time without measure and non-
Euclidean space define a separate realm called mundus
imaginalis. The notion of an intermediary realm of imagin-
ation, the mundus imaginalis, was a crucial development,
especially as elaborated by illuminationist commentators
Shahraz‘rı¯ (thirteenth century), Ibn Kamm‘na (thirteenth
century), Davva¯nı¯ (d. 1501), Dashtakı¯ (d. 1542), and
others, whose work contributed to the origins of Islamic
religious philosophy.
During the second half of the twelfth century, a new

genre of philosophical works by theologians emerged
which continue to be taught today. The most significant
impetus for these were al-Ghaza¯lı¯’s demands on theolo-
gians to defend the faith against rational philosophy by use
of philosophical technique and language. Two texts by
Athı¯r al-Dı¯n Abharı¯ (d. 1264), Guide on Philosophy and
Commentary on the
Isagoge, established the range of sub-
jects and language, and elucidated the forbidden aspects of
philosophy. These include Avicenna’s cosmic motion and
Sohravardı¯’s time-space ‘will-less’ continuum theories of
the propagation of lights. The Guide on Philosophy is
divided into three parts—logic, physics, and meta-
physics—consisting of metaphysica generalis and meta-
physica specialis. The most popular commentary on this
work, written in 1475 by Mir Husayn Maybudi, is custom-
arily read along with the text. Commentary on the Isagoge, a
primer in logic, is also read with commentaries, such as
that by al-Fana¯rı¯ (d. 1470), often along with glosses, super-
glosses, and versifications.
While numerous works of this genre continue today,
most tend to lack the philosophical depth and creativity
revived in the sixteenth century by Molla¯S
.
adra¯ and
extended by Molla¯ Hadı¯ Sabzeva¯rı¯ (d. 1878). Exceptions
include the treatise Sun-Radiance (Shamsiyya) by Dabı¯ra¯n
Qazvı¯nı¯ (d. 1276), presented in Nicholas Rescher’s
Temporal Modalities in Arabic Logic (Dordrecht, 1967),
which includes one of the most precise pre-modern defin-

itions and comprehensive listing and discussion of simple
and compound modal propositions and modalities, their
contradictories, rules for their conversions, as well as an
intricate analysis of validating modal syllogisms.
Qazvı¯nı¯’s text, together with its commentary by medieval
theologian-philosopher Tafta¯za¯nı¯ (d. 1389), author of
Refinements on Logic and Theology, became a textbook.
The Period of Revival: The Sixteenth to Early Seventeenth Cen-
tury. This period coincides with Safavid rule in Iran, which
established Shı¯‘ism as the state religion, primarily as a
defensive measure against conquests by the Ottoman
Sunnı¯ Empire. A new world-view with rational but wider
appeal was sought to re-establish the ruling Safavid’s
legitimacy and to defend his position against the better-
established theology and judicial doctrine of the Sunnı¯.
Similar to the academies of the formative period, the
Safavid’s well-endowed centres supported scholarship
Islamic philosophy 449