Afzal the Obscure

In an article published in Sacred Web 5 (Summer 2000), William Chittick offered readers a foretaste of his soon-to-be-published book-length study of the works of Baba Afzal Kashani (The Heart of Islamic Philosophy). Of all of Chittick's contributions to Islamic Studies (and there have been many), his recovery of Baba Afzal may be the most significant. For in this 13th century faylasuf, we do indeed encounter Islamic philosophy's "heart"--the vital center--as it found expression in the life and work of a single (and singular) individual.

Chittick's article ("The Goal of Islamic Philosophy") is worth reading in its entirety--before one moves on to The Heart of Islamic Philosophy (published in 2001 by OUP). It is available in pdf here.

I wish to cite to one passage in particular:

'For Baba Afzal...the basic philosophical question is "Who am I?" Or, in other terms, "What does it mean to be human?" His answer is that the true substance of a human self, or a human soul, is intelligence, and that the proper object of intelligence's scrutiny is itself. Intelligence is fully achieved only when the knower, the known object, and the act of knowing have come to be one. This, for Baba Afzal, is tawhid--the first principle of Islamic faith--a word that is normally understood to mean "asserting the unity of God." In Baba Afzal's view, no one can grasp the unity of God who has not himself achieved the unity of soul. When it is reached, the intellect that knows is identical with the object known. Baba Afzal calls this self-knowing intellect the "radiance" (furugh) of the Divine Essence, and he tells us that this radiance can never cease to shine.' [Chittick, "Goal," 24].

The background of Hellenistic philosophy is quite substantial here: with the necessity for the human microcosm to mirror the extra-human macrocosm if (1) a harmony between the two and (2) the personal integration of the human subject itself are ever to be achieved.

But there is also an anticipation of the Romantic quest for what American philosopher Russell Goodman calls "the marriage of self and world." For Baba Afzal--as for the Romantic thinkers to follow him six centuries later--"intelligence" worthy of the name is not achieved by means of a process of distanciation but through acts of what we might call "communion" or "consummation." Human intelligence involves the whole human being: the brain is part of the nervous system. Thoughts are intimately bound up with feelings. To know oneself is to be in touch with what one feels. And self-knowledge ("Know Thyself") is the goal of falsafa. The faylasuf spends a lifetime exploring the question "Who am I?" with a methodology that comes of age in Europe and North America as Romantic Humanism ("Mazeppism").