Origin, emanation and return in al-Fayḍ al-Kāshānī’s ʿAyn al-Yaqīn -

Abstract

In this thesis I will explore al-Fayḍ al-Kāshānī’s unique attempt at harmonizing demonstrative proof, mystical unveiling and divine revelation (Burhan, ʿIrfan and Qurʿan) by analyzing the themes of origin, emanation and return in his work ʿAyn al-Yaqīn. Al-Kāshānī is one of the few Twelver Shiʿite scholars who can simultaneously be categorized in two historically opposing scholarly circles; the revelatory camp and reasonable camp. This is evident in his intellectual genealogy for his teachers and his students range from extreme promulgators of the pure revelatory method to the most philosophically inclined. I will argue, through ʿAyn al-Yaqīn, that al-Kāshānī attempts to attain concordance between the revelatory and the reasonable in a distinct fashion. While many of his predecessors and successors would inadvertently lean to either the side of revelation or that of reason al-Kāshānī wants both at once. His scheme of coordination between revelation and reason is one which can be described as being ‘hypostatic’ in nature. The reason the concept of ‘hypostases’ is employed here is to steer clear from reducing al-Kāshānī’s extremely nuanced project to a mere cutting and pasting of the revelatory and the reasonable. By translating and analyzing al-Kāshānī’s ʿAyn al-Yaqin this thesis will attempt to show that al-Kāshānī perceives both reason and revelation to occupy mutually irreducible discursive spheres, each with its own internal dynamics, which must be respected and kept apart, even while they simultaneously participate in a deeper underlying inseparable unity. The thesis will first of all situate al-Kāshānī within his historical context and then explore how al-Kāshānī takes up a Neo-Platonic philosophical mode of reasoning and a Twelver Shiʿite cast of