Document Type : Research Paper
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Abstract
Analysis of the epistemological system of Shahab-o-din Sohrewardi (1155-1195 A.D.), the founder of the second field of philosophical thought in the history of Islamic philosophy, is of significant importance. His epistemology analyzes the logical contrast of Peripatetic philosophical system. Sohrewardi's theory of science has two parts: in the first part, Sohrewardi criticizes traditional theories of science, specially those that deal with science through definition, sensual perception and primary or basic concepts that precede experience. First he criticizes the structure of Aristotelian "definition" so that this criticism is the first important attempt to indicate the contrast of Aristotelian structure, and it is the first step of formulating Illumination (or Oriental Theosophy). Sohrewardi shows the defects and constraints of "definition" in achieving certainty. According to him, the proposed theories of science, while leading us to an aspect of truth and are not absolutely unreliable, cannot direct us to certainty, nor express the possibility of the reality of science. Sohrewardi not only tries to invent a formal standard for "definition", different from that of the Peripatetic, but also proposes an aspect of "definition" that is the basic constituent of his Illumination theory on the rational structure of science. This fundamental difference states the entirely different perspectives of logical and epistemological principles in philosophy and sets the second part of Sohrewardi's theory, so that in Illumination, supremacy is with intuition and is on the basis of the theory of Observation-Illumination and is formulated according to the knowledge of presence.
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