Suhrawardī's Stance on Modalities and the Logic of Presence
Résumé
The present study on al-Dīn Suhrawardī's Ḥikmat al-Ishrāq, develops some preliminary explorations on his logic under the background of his remarkable epistemology of presence. The paper paves the way for responding to the challenges of Tony Street on the compatibility of Suhrawardī's critique of Ibn Sīnā with the development of a temporal and modal syllogism that at first sight seems quite close to that of Ibn Sīnā. In fact, Suhrawardī's modalities are to be understood as the different ways a predicate relates to its subject rather than as propositional operators. Accordingly, necessarily necessary modality relates actual instances (presences) of the Subject-Term with actual (presences) of the Predicate-Term; in contrast, necessarily contingent modality relates these terms conditionally, notably involving states of the Subject-Term within time intervals. Suhrawardī's main innovation, so we claim, is the explicit dialectical role presences or actual instances have in his modal-temporal logic, and particularly so in shaping his notion of contingency that admits both a generic and an individual or de re form of plenitude.
Domaines
Sciences de l'Homme et SociétéOrigine | Fichiers produits par l'(les) auteur(s) |
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