Ibn Arabi's Sufism: Islamic Theoretical Mysticism

Catalog description

Ibn Arabi (1165–1240) is the greatest of all Muslim mystics and the best representative of the 'illuminative phase' of Islamic philosophy. This course explores his methodology (divine speech, deiformity, and names & relations), ontology (wahdat al-wujud, nondelimitation, imagination, and the barzakh), things and realities (fixed entities, the reality of realities, and entification), the return (the circle of existence, stages of ascent, and the two commands), and human perfection (the station of no station, perfect man, and divine presences). It includes a discussion on his most famous work Fusus al-Hikam ('The Bezels of the Wisdoms') which contains the basic principles of his thought.