Humanity, Knowledge, and Consciousness
Formulation of the claim
For Shahrur, the human being is a free creature whose knowledge begins with hearing, reason, and abstraction, and it is not permissible to judge the inner self, but rather the outward act.
Why are these elements grouped together?
These atoms address the epistemic and anthropological structure of the human being: reason, heart, fu’ād, hearing, sight, truth, injustice, and falsehood. They also connect action and responsibility, the outward and the inward, and freedom and accountability. This is consistent with Shahrur’s conception of the human being as a responsible, evolving creature that cannot be reduced to a direct supernatural explanation. For that reason, his discussion of progress, abstraction, and decision also appears here.
Elements of the collection
- The human being is a free creature with working hands
- Abstraction is the basis of human thinking
- Reason is analysis and synthesis
- Reason comes from tying and binding
- Reason is the linking of phenomena
- The Arab reason reproduces itself
- Hearing comes before sight - the priority of hearing in knowledge
- The senses provide raw material
- The fu’ād is a cognitive function, not an organ
- The heart is the center of decision
- The hearts that are in the breasts = outward human consciousness
- Sight is not the eye
- Truth = objective reality outside consciousness
- Truth is objective existence outside consciousness
- Falsehood is illusion, not merely error
- Injustice is making a wrong decision while persisting in it
- Sin = backwardness
- Reverent humility is knowledge, not ignorance
- True experience is practice, not hearing
- Accountability concerns the act, not merely the idea
- There is no judgment of the human inner self
- Will is the making of a decision after knowledge
- Permission is one thing, will is another
- Decree in what exists
- The material world is not an illusion
- Natural phenomena are governed by cosmic numbers
- Mathematics precedes physics
Position of the collection in the episodes
In episodes 2, 3, 5, 7, 9, 10, 11, 12
Summary
Shahrur links knowledge to action and decision, and makes the human being responsible for outward practice, not for an inner self that cannot be judged.