This week will introduce the key ideas in the text and set the stage for our inquiry into the questions it raises. How can we view the modern predicament through the lens of the Islamic intellectual and spiritual tradition? If a great philosopher, mystic or sage from the golden age of Islam was to visit our world, what would he say? How is our way of looking at the world different from his? How is our conception of ourselves and the cosmos different? How do our conceptions of knowledge, the intellect and the intellectual differ from his? Would he say that we have become godless or would he in fact see that we have come to worship many gods that we do not even acknowledge ourselves? 

In this section we will dive deeper into the meaning of intellectual knowledge and what distinguishes it from the transmitted. We will examine the four broad domains of intellectual inquiry: metaphysics, cosmology, spiritual psychology, and ethics. We will consider the definition of the intellect itself and will look at ten basic findings of the intellectual tradition. With all that in mind we will revisit our thought experiment of the time traveling sage who surveys the situation of the modern world.  

This chapter looks at the goal of thought and the perspectives of the Islamic tradition on how to transform our thought, awareness, and consciousness. We will consider ways in which pre-modern science in the Muslim world differed in important ways from modern science. We will look at key terms Tawhid and Takthir and explore ways that our age has become one of Takthir and dispersion. 

We will look at three important goals of this tradition: breaking the shell of dogmatism, asserting the absoluteness of the Real, and resuscitating mythic imagination. Special focus will be given to the fact that the modern emphasis on instrumental rationality has altered how we see ourselves and our world in ways that hinder us from grasping the coherence of pre-modern worldviews and the insights they may offer. We will look at the ways that reconnection with symbol, myth, and imagination can lead to self-understanding. 

This week we will look at traditional Islamic cosmology and the ways that it differs from modern conception. We will consider the importance of naming and the way that the Islamic intellectual tradition centered the importance of the Divine Names. We will look at the implications of inadequate names and the philosophical underpinnings of modern science. Lastly, we will look at the myth of the unseen men and what it tells us about an Islamic conception of the human being’s role in the cosmos. 

In week six we will look at Tu Weiming’s definition of anthropocosmic in comparison to theocentric and anthropocentric.  We will contrast historical and ahistorical knowledge by looking at definitions of Islam, not as a religion but as a reality and the shahada as a statement about the nature of existence. With this in mind we will consider how the Islamic intellectual tradition considered the search for knowledge in the cosmos as inextricably linked to the quest for self-knowledge and spiritual awakening. 

In the final week we will revisit the major themes and questions of the course considering what we have discovered. Having laid out the contours of the worldview of the Islamic intellectual tradition we will consider what it has taught us about our own worldviews. We will bid our ancient sage farewell but perhaps we will find that he has taught us about our world as much as, if not more, than he has learned about ours.