RE: Muslim students less likely to be awarded top class degrees.
March 19, 2020 at 7:44 pm
(This post was last modified: March 19, 2020 at 7:47 pm by Belacqua.)
Interesting article here about parallels between Spinoza and his near-contemporary Mulla Sadra. It's no surprise that in any age, there are similar ideas in the air like this.
http://muslimphilosophy.com/ip/kni.htm
No doubt there are many differences as well as similarities.
I don't know how well known Mulla Sadra is among Muslims now. No doubt somebody like Nader El-Bizri knows his work. Whether his ideas have percolated into people with less specialized knowledge I have no idea. There are English speakers today who have taken on Spinoza's ideas without knowing they came from Spinoza.
Fake, is Sadra known at all among the Muslims you discuss theology with? Would you say he's less well known than Spinoza is among contemporary Jewish scientists?
I confess I had never heard of him before today. Islamic thought has never been my specialty, and I'm not going to pass judgment until I know a lot more.
Given the historical errors in the first episode of Tyson's Cosmos series, I would want to double check anything he says outside of his own field before I accepted it.
http://muslimphilosophy.com/ip/kni.htm
Quote:Sadra:
In general, the more powerful and the more intense the being becomes, the more perfect it is in essence, the more completely comprehensive of all notions and quiddities, and the more (capable) in its activities and efforts.
Spinoza:
…[T]he power of any thing, or the conatus with which it acts or endeavours to act…, that is, the power or conatus by which it perseveres in its own being, is nothing but the given or actual essence of the thing.
There is a difference of emphasis in the passages. Sadra asserts of a thing that is increasing in power that it is becoming more perfect in its essence; Spinoza asserts of essences that they confers the power of action and perseverence. Yet both writers are making an equation that is not dissimilar. They might not have agreed with each others’s precise formulations of the identity, but there is no doubt they would have understood them as meaningful and important assertions.
No doubt there are many differences as well as similarities.
I don't know how well known Mulla Sadra is among Muslims now. No doubt somebody like Nader El-Bizri knows his work. Whether his ideas have percolated into people with less specialized knowledge I have no idea. There are English speakers today who have taken on Spinoza's ideas without knowing they came from Spinoza.
Fake, is Sadra known at all among the Muslims you discuss theology with? Would you say he's less well known than Spinoza is among contemporary Jewish scientists?
I confess I had never heard of him before today. Islamic thought has never been my specialty, and I'm not going to pass judgment until I know a lot more.
Given the historical errors in the first episode of Tyson's Cosmos series, I would want to double check anything he says outside of his own field before I accepted it.
