In his book on the Socratic tradition in Medieval Arabic literature, Israeli scholar Ilai Alon traces the various routes by which Socratic material found its way into the Islamic tradition. The most direct route runs as follows: Socrates > Cynics; Stoics; Gnostics > Diogenes Laertius; Plutarch > Islam. Indirect routes involve Plato, the School of Alexandria (presumably Neo-Platonism), Christian tradition, Syriac literature, as well as Porphyry, Iamblichus, and Persia.
Abu Bakr ar-Razi, Al-Kindi, Ibn Sina [Avicenna], various Sufis and anti-Sufi Sufis ("God's Unruly Friends") all bear the marks of the Socratic imamate.
Abu Bakr ar-Razi (10th century CE physician of the soul) referred to Socrates as "our Imam" and would perhaps have been most comfortable with the title "Socratic Muslim" or even "Muslim Socrates."
In this way he anticipated Kierkegaard by nearly 1000 years. In the last of his works written for publication during his lifetime, SK wrote that "the only analogy I have for what I am doing is Socrates. My task is the Socratic task of revising the definition of what it means to be a Christian. Therefore I do not call myself a Christian (keeping the ideal free), but I can make it plain that nobody else is either" (from The Moment, published September 1855).
Those Muslims who honor Socrates tend to regard him as a prophet, a wise man, an "imam," or some combination of the three.
Whatever one calls him, he is a symbol of the subversive activity of inquiry that refuses to conflate credulity with faith.
Religious institutions cultivate the former; Socratic religiosity, the latter.
Among 20th century thinkers, perhaps no one was more Socratic than Ludwig Wittgenstein when he defined philosophy as a "battle against the bewitchment of the intelligence by means of language."
The Socratic elenchus is the manhaj (Arabic term meaning something close to "methodology") by which the ideological roots of presumptions are exposed to critical examination.
No comments:
Post a Comment