Contents
Introduction
1. A Vanishing Heritage
Ijtihād
The Role of the Intellectual Tradition
The Current Situation
The Gods of Modernity
The Goal of Intellectual Understanding
The Rejection of Tradition
2. Intellectual Knowledge
Verifiable Knowledge
Intellect
Basic Findings
A Visitor from the Past
3. The Rehabilitation of Thought
Thought
The Intellectual Tradition
Taqlīd and Taḥqīq
Premodern Science
The Reign of Takthīr
The Goal of Thought
4. Beyond Ideology
The Omnipresence of Transmission
Breaking the Shell of Dogmatism
Asserting Absoluteness
Mythic Imagination
Self-Understanding
5. The Unseen Men
Sufism
Cosmos and Soul
Naming Reality
The One and the Many
The Living Universe
Islamic Science
The Efficacy of Names
Inadequate Names
The Myth of the Unseen Men
6. The Anthropocosmic Vision
Ahistorical and Historical Knowledge
The Philosophical Quest
The Methodology of Taḥqīq
Understanding the Soul
Origin and Return
Omniscience
7. The Search for Meaning
Two Modes of Knowing
Subject and Object
The Worldview
The Self
Meaning
Notes
Index