A Breath of Philosophy 8: Does the expression "Hikmetü'l-Meşrikiyye" correspond to "Eastern Philosophy"?

Are you going to contribute to the "East-West" dichotomy that has been going on for decades, create a "necessary other" and adopt a defensive stance, or are you going to do the same? Because there is always the risk of contributing, albeit indirectly, to the theoretical background of the clash of civilizations thesis by positioning the terms East and West as a necessary other to reinforce the dominance of the Western world, beyond merely corresponding to geographical regions or by identifying Islamic and Eastern cultures. 

Namely; it is well known that Orientalism / Orientalism and sociology, which emerged as disciplines that examine the classification based on the East-West distinction, have turned into disciplines that form the infrastructure for the West to dominate other societies. More precisely, this distinction means that Orientalism, which is defined as the exploration arm of colonialism, refers to accessing the energy in the regions where Westerners live in non-Western societies that they marginalize and transforming them into pure consumption centers.

- The East-West Dilemma: Orientalism-Oxideentalism

In this context, identifying the Islamic religion and Confucian doctrine/tradition with the term "East", presenting the West as the ultimate socio-political reality as the center of democracy and progress, and making fictions that there are conflicts between them has no other function than to find a cover for the West's eco-political war. 

Of course, there has to be a counter to this, doesn't there, Occidentalism, the conceptualization put forward by Hassan Hanafi, a theorist of Yesaru'l-Islami, a kind of Islamic leftist theorist, and nowadays some universities in Turkey have opened units on this subject. It sounds like the opposite of Orientalism, doesn't it? 

Some people say that it is not, that it is a process of trying to understand the West with its own arguments and trying to produce a counter-discourse. According to them, it is a discipline that rejects the image of the East defined by the West and focuses on what the real image of the East is.  

So what is the East here, Asia, Eurasia or Islamic Occidentalism? Well, we were not going to carry wood for this opposition, so let's leave all this and return to the concept of Hikmat al-Mashrikyiye despite all its risks. 

We are aware of the universalization of ancient cultures under the name of "Hellenistic Philosophy" in the process of examining the course of human knowledge in different regions and understanding the cultural codes of the knowledge produced in these regions, and we attach importance to the efforts of Muslim philosophers to establish a unique philosophical system with Hikmat al-Mashrikiyya in the context of the Peripatetic doctrine.  

More precisely, we are far away from the orientalist discourse that considers philosophizing with Muslim philosophers based on the Peripatetic tradition, their conception of wisdom knowledge, i.e. "Islamic philosophy" as a historical phenomenon, or as the interpreters and transmitters of Ancient Greek philosophy, which was the dominant view until recently, and the defensive attitudes of the occidentalist, i.e. garbiyatist readings that are being developed against it. Because there is no point in claiming that Eastern and Western geographies have created holistic and uniform intellectual and scientific models, and that they have produced them without being influenced by one another, and that one of them is true, good, approved, and the other is the opposite. Therefore, this is not an article that examines the cultural changes and transformations of Ancient Greek philosophy, which you call Western Philosophy, in Europe, and says that it is a world philosophy, especially in Europe in the 19th century, and reminds us of the emphasis on Eastern Philosophy, which he has already ignored. Okay, okay, we get it, what is this article about, tell us what is wrong with it, without further ado, here you go. 

- The Universalization of Greek (particular) Philosophy: Hellenistic Philosophy

Like Analytic Philosophy, which states that the main function of philosophy is analysis, the term Western Philosophy is also fuzzy despite all impositions. You know that the term Hellenistic Philosophy is also a modern term, based on the interpretations of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, the leading philosophers of ancient Greek philosophy, and the philosophical accumulation of the Middle East, the Near East and the Far East after Alexander the Great conquered the Middle East, the Near East and the Far East, which is called the "Hellenistic Period" in modern terms. 

For us, the importance of this term is that it refers to the fact that the categorical distinction between East and West was first demonstrated culturally and philosophically by Alexander and his teacher Aristotle. 

It is well known that by the time Alexander arrived on Indus, the religions of these three cultures - Chinese, Indian, classical - had been merged into a large, undated form of Taoism, Buddhism and Stoicism. Hellenistic culture had combined the Greco-Latin tradition with the Eastern tradition to form a new world culture.  

In other words, there is a thematization of what the ancient cultures offered about social life in the Hellenic term "universal truth". In a way, this means presenting the universal by identifying it with the particular. 

It would be good to remember at this point that a similar political development took place when the Turks, with the Western Hun empire, reached Northern Europe, present-day England, France and Scotland. As is well known, at that time there was the Western Roman Empire in the south and the Eastern Roman Empire in Anatolia (174 B.C. / 450-550 A.D.). When the Turks, under the name of the Ottoman Empire, captured the capital of Eastern Rome in 1453 and named it "Istanbul", please remember that for the second time after Alexander the Great, politically and culturally, East-West gained a new form under the umbrella of Islamic thought. But was there no philosophical theoretical basis for this?

- Universalization of Islamic Wisdom/Philosophy

From this point, we can say the following in terms of Hikmat al-Mashrikiyya: The reading of Kindi, Farabi and Ibn Sina in the context of the new system brought by the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) by confronting this wisdom tradition that blends ancient cultures is what we call Islamic philosophy, which is also a modern term. We claim that the universalization of the particular/singular and its presentation as Islamic philosophy was initiated in the East by the meşshai philosophers and carried to its peak in the West, that is, in Andalusia, thus embodying an Islamic philosophy as "universal truth" without falling into the East-West dichotomy. 

In the context of the principle of the Unity of Truth, Farabi's statement that he brought philosophy back to its original homeland of Horsan-Mesopatamia is important in this respect. When we consider that the wise people called "Mughan" taught philosophy in Mesopotamia before Ancient Greece and Egypt, we can see how consistent Farabi's statement is. To summarize, Islamic Philosophy was formed by utilizing Christian philosophy produced in Latin, Byzantine Philosophy produced in Greek within the Christian Byzantine Empire and Jewish philosophy produced in Hebrew. The doctrine of Peripateticism, derived from the Greek term Peripatetic, is in this sense the first original doctrine of Islamic philosophy. The transformation of this into an Eastern Enlightenment philosophy, the "Philosophy of Illumination", occurred with Ibn Sina and Ibn Tufayl and especially with his work Hayy b. Yakzan, in which he explained the secrets of Hikmat al-Mashrikkiye.  

- Ibn Sina and Hikmat al-Mashrikiyya

Ibn Sina states that he wrote such a work and explained philosophy in its natural form and as required by the correct view. There is no partisanship of philosophy here, nor is it avoided to contradict them. This is the book that one who wants to obtain the truth in a clear and unambiguous way without any obscuration should look at. In our opinion, just as Aristotle's ancient Greek philosophy, with Alexander's contribution, became a world-wide philosophy called Hellenistic philosophy, the doctrine of meşshai was transformed into a hikmat al-mashrikyya. In our opinion, Ibn Sina was an effort to "systematize" the chronological reading of philosophy; in other words, it was an effort to create an "Eastern/Enlightenment Philosophy" as a way of thinking and a doctrine rather than a book title.  

The philosopher, jurist and physician Ibn Rushd, who criticizes Farabi and Ibn Sina, is the one who takes this doctrine to its peak, and emphasizes the key concept of "ittisal" as seen below. We have already mentioned that Shahābed al-Dīn al-Suhrawardī al-Maktūl founded the school of Isrāqiyya as a new philosophical system by criticizing the doctrine of Peripateticism from within, and that his most important work, Hikmat al-Ishraq, was an eastern philosophy of enlightenment. 

Ibn Rushd, a philosopher, jurist and physician, criticizes Farabi and Ibn Sina and emphasizes the key concept of "ittisal". We have already mentioned that Shahābed al-Dīn al-Suhrawardī al-Maktūl founded the school of Isrāqiyya as a new philosophical system by criticizing the doctrine of Peripateticism from within, and that his most important work, Hikmat al-Ishraq, was an eastern philosophy of enlightenment. 

In our opinion, it is an internal criticism of the doctrine that was founded in the East, and the thesis that the East developed a mystical and even gnostic philosophy while the West, Andalusia, developed a rationalist philosophy is inconsistent. It is important in this respect that Farabi and Ibn Sina explain the access to the dimension of timelessness and spacelessness with the term "ittisal" and ground it in the theory of intellects, and do not use the gnostic term "ittihat" and the state of "fena".  The active intellect basically has a divine/divine dimension, as in Aristotle. In this respect, the theoretical intellect is concerned with immutable, eternal objects and searches for the first principles of existence and knowledge, which is what is meant by wisdom/sophia. 

Following the tradition of Aristotle, Avicenna says that if the human intellect finds/discovers the middle term, it will also realize ittisal with the active intellect. This state, which provides direct access to the universals and is called ittisal, is nothing other than the attainment of bliss in the true sense, since it provides the key to all knowledge activity. According to Peripatetic philosophers, with the knowledge of universals, man becomes perfect; he understands the transience of the world and the worthlessness of matter.  He attains impermanent happiness by ascending to the One in multiplicity, that is, to the unity of God.  In this sense, Ibn Sina explains in his treatise Maqamat al-Arifin that he becomes an abstract being. Happy people (said-sueda) are those who fully comprehend material and spiritual forms. These are the ones called philosophers. Of course, it is important to remember that this is a deductive syllogism. This is the ittiṣal between "wajib al-wujud bizatihi" and "wajib al-wujud bigayrihi"; there is no ittihad and hulul, i.e. identification, between two separate spheres. 

He knows that the philosophers' conception of prophethood was that there would be no revelation after the prophet, that the wise people who would take on his mission prioritized having his qualities, and that they said that the stage of knowing the truth of things was possible through union with the active intellect, and that this was actually a response to the objections to prophethood at the time. 

He expresses it with the term ittihād, which the Sufis characterize as hads, mashāfah, and observation, and the fact that there is a similarity does not mean that they are the same conceptualization. By linking the source of rational knowledge to the active intellect, Ibn Sina is said to have approached the intuitionist doctrine (al-Ishraq) while grounding the supra-rational Metaphysics of Eastern philosophy, but with the emphasis that it is rational intuition, not mystical as claimed in Sufi constructions. 

Ibn Rushd, in his work Faslu'l-makâl fi-ma beyn-el-hikmati wa'sh-shariati min-el-ittisal ittisal, uses the term ittisal to describe the uninterrupted connection, continuity and harmony between wisdom, which we call the ancient and continuous intellectual accumulation of humanity, and shari'ah, which consists of its application in different times and places. Here, in the technical sense of al-'ishaq, that is, enlightenment, there is a complete "knowledge by inference". In the terminology of the Sufis, it is beyond the light/enlightenment that is thrown into the heart with taqashafah, discovery, intuition. In al-Munkiz, al-Ghazali says that he prefers the Sufi method and avoids the terms ittihad and hulul, but in Mishkat al-Anwar, we find statements that he has experienced the stage of ittihad, and there is no condemnation of the philosophers. As can be understood from this, what the thinkers wrote for the general public (avam) is different from what they wrote for those who deepened in knowledge (havas). (Ibn Sīnā, Kitab al-Shifā/Introduction to Logic, trans., Ömer Türker, Istanbul: Litera Yayınları, 2006, 3, Eyüp Bekiryazıcı, "Did Ibn Sina's Thought Prepare the Ground for Illuminationism? Journal of Religious Sciences, 50,1, (2014),123-138, M.Uyanık-A.Akyol, Islamic Philosophy (Thematic Reading), Elis Yay. Ankara 2020:53, 61, 93, 127, 154, 154, 168, 177, 177, 209, 294, 321, 346, 370, 379-381, 407, 591, 640, 656, 771, 778, Ali Eşlik, Ibn Sīnā'da Hikmetü'l-Meşrikıyye Kavramı, (Istanbul: Marmara University SBE Unpublished Master's Thesis, 2008)

- Being a Bridge between East and West

Cemil Maric says in "Light Comes from the East":  "I would like to be the conscience of an age, an age, or rather a country, I would like to break the chains on our perception, to destroy the lies, to tear down all the walls. I would like to be the bridge that will connect a magnificent past to an even more magnificent future, a bridge of words, of love. Art should be at the command of thought, thought should be at the command of the sacred. Truth is the sacred of the sacred. Truth and love."

We say that this bridge, that is, reading the ancient accumulation of humanity (Greek/Hellenistic, Iranian, Chinese-Indian) in the context of the last system brought by the Prophet Muhammad, without falling into the dichotomy of East and West or the position of a necessary other by putting one in opposition to the other, and that the ideas produced in the Islamic world were produced as "Hikmat al-Mashrikiyya" as geo-philosophy. 

We state that Farabi laid the foundations of Islamic political philosophy as an ethical-political system, that Farabi brought philosophy back to its original home, that he made the concept of Hikmat al-Mashriqiyya the most important philosophical agenda of that period, but that Ibn Sina tried to transform it into a systematic reading, and that Ibn Tufayl carried his readings to Andalusia in the West and went to a conceptualization of his own.