Islamic Philosophy and Occidental Phenomenology on the Perennial Issue of Microcosm and Macrocosm

By proposing the Microcosm and Macrocosm analogy for dialogue between Islamic Philosophy and Occidental Phenomenology, the authors of this volume are reviving the perennial positioning of the human condition in the play of forces within and without the human being. This theme has run from Plato through the Middle Ages, Renaissance and Modernity, and has been ignored by contemporaries. It now acquires a new pertinence and striking significance due to the scientific discoveries into the "infinitely small" in life, on the one hand, and the prodigious technological discoveries of the "infinitely great" on the other. Both open up undreamt-of prospects for the continuing conquest of cosmic forces. The human person - thrown into turmoil by the new approaches to life and needing to acquire new habits of mind, having lost security of all beliefs - desperately seeks a new clarification of the Human Condition within the unity of everything-there-is, of cosmic forces, and of his destiny. The dialogue between Islamic Philosophy and phenomenology of life can show the way.

Papers by: Gholam-Reza A'awani, Mehdi Aminrazavi, Roza Davari Ardakani, Mohammad Azadpur, Gary Backhaus, Marina Banchetti-Robino, William Chittick, Seyed Mostafa Muhaghghegh Damad, Golamhossein Ebrahimi Dinani, Nader El-Bizri, Kathleen Haney, Salahaddin Khalilov, Sayyid Mohammad Khamenei, Mahmoud Khatami, Mieczyslaw Pawel Migon, Nikolay Milkov, Sachiko Murata, Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, Daniela Verducci.

Inhalt

Some Approaches to the Great Analogy.- The Microcosm/Macrocosm Analogy: A Tentative Encounter Between Graeco-Arabic Philosophy and Phenomenology.- The Microcosm/Macrocosm Analogy in Ibn Sînâ and Husserl.- Hermann Lotze's Microcosm.- Connection of Microcosm with Macrocosm in Max Scheler's Philosophy: Man, Logos and Ethos.- Improvisation in the Dance of Life: the Microcosm and Macrocosm.- The Uncovering of the Microcosmic-Macrocosmic Setting of Life's Process: The Cosmological Expansion of Phenomenology's Notion of Evidence.- Creativity as the Principle of Differentiation.- Soul and its Creations.- The Creative Transformation in Liu Chih's "Philosophy of Islam".- "Man's Creativity/Vicegerency" in Islamic Philosophy and Mysticism.- The Sadrean Theory of the World of Divine Command.- Imagination and its Worlds.- A Glance at the World of Image.- The World of Imagination.- The Sublime Visions of Philosophy: Fundamental Ontology and the Imaginal World.- The Circle of Life in its Ramificationsto the Divine.- The Circle of Life in Islamic Thought.- Between Microcosm and Macrocosm: Man at Work.- The Illuminative Notion of Man in Persian Thought: A Response to an Original Quest.- Metaphysics, Ontology, Cosmology.- Being and Necessity: A Phenomenological Investigation of Avicenna's Metaphysics and Cosmology.- Al-Suhrawardi's Doctrine and Phenomenology.- Martin Heidegger and Omar Khayyam on the Question of "Thereness" (Dasein).