Dervish Falsafa

Dervish falsafa is primarily ethical and concerns itself with how one ought to understand the human condition and relate to it. It is, therefore, a humanistic philosophy that is heir to the Hellenistic wisdom traditions which took root in the Eastern Mediterranean, Asia Minor, and throughout the Persianate cultural sphere in Late Antiquity. Its own roots, however, go further back in time to the early speculations on the nature of human life that found poetic expression in the Gilgamesh epic, Biblical literature, and the songs of Zarathustra (to name but a few examples). By the year one thousand of the Common Era, Dervish falsafa was widespread throughout Islamicate societies; it even penetrated elite circles (surreptitiously) and provided the critical "undersong" to Ferdowsi's epic Book of Kings.

Technically speaking, Dervish falsafa is a mode of philology--that is, it attempts to articulate logos in its many manifestations. Two main categories of Dervish "logology" are the Heraklitean and Ayoubian.

Heraklitus of Ephesus (Asia Minor, ca. 500 BCE) theorized what today we might term a "zero-sum" regulatory principle for the universe (a "law of nature") that he named logos. Analogous to Sir Isaac Newton's third law of motion (for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction) or Ralph Waldo Emerson's notion of "compensation," Heraklitus posited a universe kept in balance by "a harmony of opposed tensions as in the bow and the lyre" (DK22B51). From the Heraklitean macrocosmic perspective, the universe is fundamentally "just" in the sense that, in the final analysis, the effect of the logos is a kind of cancelling out of all events. In another fragment he averred, "The way up and the way down are the same." As Ralph Waldo Emerson suggested, conclusions of this sort yield an ethical indifference (as we find, for example, in Krishna's advice to Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita). Emerson, schooled as he was in Biblical traditions, could not abide such a conclusion, and neither can the Dervish faylasufs. So, while they accept the Heraklitean macrocosmos, they turn to another tradition to supply the microcosmic dimension of lived experience: the Ayoubian (Jobian).

The anonymous author (or, more properly, playwright) of the Book of Job created a character (regarded in the Islamic tradition as a prophetic figure) who represents the proper comportment of the Dervish in the face of the tragic circumstances that often attend life on earth. Under such conditions, the Dervish emerges as one who bridles at the injustice on the microcosmic level of the "justice" meted out by the logos principle on the macrocosmic level. Job's assertion of the righteousness of his ways in the face of suffering and of his calling on God to account for that suffering provides Dervish falsafa with the mythological touchstone characteristic of what Hellmut Ritter named the "Muslim mystics' strife with God." The assertion of individual integrity and dignity in Dervish discourse and practice distinguishes it from its counterpart in traditional Muslim ethics: a resigned acceptance to one's fate. Of course, in the end, Dervishes, too, must acquiesce to the brute facts of mortal existence--and every Dervish understands and accepts these facts. But by refusing to "go quietly," they strike a blow--however Quixotic it may appear from a macrocosmic perspective--for anarchistic individuality and the sacrality of every living soul.