Sense perception and Innate ideas in the philosophy of illumination

A. Difficulty of Suhrawardi’s view on “sense perception”
Suhrawardi’s view on of sense perception is difficult to formulate in that his views in this regard are scattered throughout his various writings. Qutb al- Din Shirazi, the famous Avicennan commentator of Suhrawardi’s, in his work Sharh-i hikmat al-ishraq, argues that Suhrawardi’s, believes in five senses external ones. Qutb al- Din Shirazi maintains that Suhrawardi not only believes that the five senses are for the attainment of knowledge of the outside world but also that there is a hierarchy of senses that begins with the sense of touch and end with sight.

The internal senses for Suhrawardi are if five types and their existence helps to synthesize the information that the external senses has attained. If these did not exist, then all the knowledge acquired through the senses could not have been interpreted in our mind.

B. Critique of Peripatetic’s views on the senses Perception in “the philosophy of illumination”
In a section he entitles “On the Evidence that Peripatetic Principles Necessitate that Nothing be Known or Defined ,” in the Hikmat al-ishraq, Suhrawardi criticizes the Peripatetics in regard to their views on sense perception. His argument as presented in this chapter can be summarized in the following points:
1. “ Substance has unknown differentia”.
2. “ Essences are defined by negation”.
3. “The Soul and other mental concepts have unknown differentia.”
4. “Accident, e. g, blackness, has been defined as a color that is observable to the eye, and the totality of sight is an accidental concept, and how that you know color, it becomes necessary that accidents cannot even be conceived of.”
5. ‘Of course, the concept of being, that for them (Peripatetic) is the axiomatic principle, is now known.”
6. “If it is perceived that knowledge of things is through their non- essential attributes and that those attributes have attributes and the same continues, then this becomes problematic since according to this assumption it becomes necessary that in the world nothing can be known.

C. Analyzing the above principles and views
The first three principles have been discussed in the previous section and they only demonstrate the inadequacy of the Peripatetics insofar as they rely on definition for the attainment of truth. In the fourth principle, Suhrawardi argues that there are objects in the external would which can only be perceived but not defined, i.e. colors. These types of phenomena he calls “simple truths” (haqa’iq basitah) which neither can be known through knowledge by definition , nor be grasped by sense perception.

As to the ‘compound truth” (haqa’iq murakkabah), Suhrawardi argues that this category of things can be reduced to its essential components, which are the simple truths, and to know them one has to see them. For instance, a building or a tree can be reduced to a number of forms and colors can only be the objects of perception.

The above view is part of the response that Suhrawardi provides in his sixth principle against the Peripatetics, who maintain that a thing can be known be through its attributes and accidents. The problem is that an attribute has to be defined by another can be known, which is absurd.

D. Exclusivity of sense perception
Suhrawardi’s view of the function of sense perception can be better understood if we examine some of the consequence of his argument. Suhrawardi further argues that the data attained through sense perception is non-verifiable in that one can never know if others are experiencing the same data. Therefore, he concludes that the nature of the knowledge attained through sense perception is private and exclusive. As Suhrawardi states:

It should be known that your ideas and others are not the same as long as your ideas and those of others are not attained through the same means of cognition.

So far, from the first two arguments of Suhrawardi the following conclusions can be drawn:
1. Only the simple truth can be known through sense perception.
2. Knowledge of the simple truth is private, exclusive and non-verifiable by outsiders.

E. The condition of knowledge and making known of matters
What Suhrawardi has not made clear yet are the sources of these concepts. In the The Philosophy of Illumination, we find an argument which is the key to the understanding of this problem. There Suhrawardi argues that there are those who maintain that in order to know something one has to have prior knowledge of it, otherwise, how would one know it even if he came across it? This problem was first raised by Plato himself and has since been repeated by many philosophers. The implication of Suhrawardi’s response to this objection also provides the key to solving the problem regarding the sources of knowledge. Suhrawardi states that this problem can only be raised in a circumstance under which something is unknown. If something is completely unknown or completely known in all its aspects, it cannot be known. Something can be known if it is partially known and partially unknown. It is only then the unknown part can be known through an inference from to the unknown.

If the desired entity is completely unknown, then it cannot be known, and it is the same if something is completely known but that it has to be known in same aspect and not known in others so the unknown can become known through it.

Now, since simple truths exist only in their pure form, i.e. colors, and are not made up of several parts as forms and shapes are, they can be either completely unknown or entirely known. If the former is the case, then we can never come to know of colors, which is not the case. If it is the latter, the question then arises as to how it is that we know them in their entirety since neither definition nor sense perception can tell us what a color or simple form or shape is.

F. Axiomatic and Innate concepts, as the condition of knowledge
While Suhrawardi alludes to this in various places, he does not treat the subject in detail. What he does say is that we have a pre-knowledge of certain thing, which are axiomatic in nature. These axiomatic phenomena, resembling Kant’s a priori concepts, are what Suhrawardi refers to as fitriyyah. These are the concepts that allow us to recognize something when we see it. For example, recognizing that one line is shorter than another one without measuring it is to the presence of these innate ideas although the act of cognition begins with our senses.

To recapitulate on Suhrawardi’s view of knowledge by sense perception, the following can be said: Existent being for Suhrawardi are either or compound. If single, then they have no differentia and therefore we cannot know them by their accidents (lavasim). Sense perception can be helpful to decipher the simple from the compound and further to realize and reduce the compound to its essential elements which are simple. The knowledge of the simple can neither be defined nor be grasped through the senses without the aid of innate ideas.

E. Knowledge through innate ideas
Suhrawardi, both in his critique of the Peripatetic view of definition and in the problems associated with sense perception, argued for the necessity of an innate knowledge that can serve as the foundation for various modes of cognition.

In The Philosophy of Illumination, he discusses the notion of innate ideas by mentioning four modes of cognition and the place of innate ideas among them. His argument, briefly stated, is as follows: Some types of knowledge are either innate or not. In order for one to know a thing, one has to rely on that which is already known to him, and this process can go ad infinitum, a process Suhrawardi maintains is impossible. Therefore, attainment of knowledge, at least partially, requires having pre-knowledge of that which one seeks to know, and this knowledge can only be innate. As Suhrawardi states:

Human knowledge is either innate (fitriyyah) or it is not, whenever in recognizing an unknown, if focusing one’s attention [i.e. sense perception] and referring to one’s heart is not sufficient, and if it is not an affair that can be known trough the vision (mushaidah) that is a characteristic of the great hakims, then necessarily in knowing we need pre-given knowledge …and the process, if carried out in certain order will lead to the innate ideas.

Suhrawardi seems to be suggesting that innate ideas are a necessary condition if senses perception and even definition is to be possible. In other words, if knowledge by sense perception is not going to lead to an infinite succession of beings, each of which makes the other object known, then innate ideas have to exist. It is, therefore, reasonable to conclude that innate ideas for Suhrawardi are the necessary condition if some knowledge is to be attained through definition or perception.