The Doctrine Of Unreason

According to A. J. Arberry, Hafez's mature thought can be best described as a "doctrine of unreason," which was "the poet's final answer to the inscrutability of fate, the utter incapacity of man to master the riddle of the universe." This view served as "his justification for rejecting alike philosophy and theology, mosque and cloister, legalistic righteousness and organized mysticism; it enabled him to profess his solidarity with the 'intoxicated' Sufis like martyred Hallaj, and to revive the dangerous antinomianism of the Malamatis; but above all it provided him with a spiritual stronghold out of which he could view with serene equanimity, if not with indifference, the utterly confused and irrational world in which it was his destiny to live."

Arberry was careful to distinguish this "doctrine" from "the hearty hedonism with which it has sometimes been confounded; the world's tragedy is too profound to be forgotten in unthinking mirth; and man for all his littleness and incapacity need not be unequal to the burden of sorrow and perplexity he is called upon to shoulder. Indeed by abandoning the frail defences of intellectual reason and yielding himself wholly to the overwhelming forces of the spirit that surround him, by giving up the stubborn, intervening 'I' in absolute surrender to the infinite 'thou', man will out of his abject weakness rise to strength unmeasured; in the precious moments of unveiled vision he will perceive the truth that resolves all vexing problems, and win a memory to sustain him when the inevitable shadows close about him once more."

~ from Arberry's Introduction to Fifty Poems of Hafiz.



One must prepare for the Hafezean Doctrine of Unreason. That preparation is best accomplished through the systematic doubt espoused by Imam Ghazali (500 years before Descartes). As Ghazali taught, the limits of Reason must be explored, tested, and finally exhausted before Unreason can be intelligently embraced.