Islamic philosophical thought and its extensions to postmodern concepts

Abstract

Oriental Islam's philosophical thinking reached its consolidation, then expanded in the Western way of thinking through Andalusian civilization. Andalusia was the center of Islam's theological, mystical, and philosophical development thinking. The leading personality in this period, undoubtedly, was grand mystic Muhyiddin ibn Arabi, whose point of view is widespread in the thoughts of two philosophers regarding the period of postmodernism, respectively Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault. The paper will be further developed in two directions: Hermeneutic criticism of Derrida in relationship with criticism that Ibn Arabi gives to "the Nadhar" (reflective thinking) while concerning Foucault: Deconstruction of History by Foucault comes to view in the line of prophets' history, as an intrinsic history of attributes or transcendental divine active and perpetual archetypes discussed by Ibn Arabi. Deconstruction is the common thing of these three authors. Ibn Arabi was well known as a 'rebel' by his contemporaries because he criticized classical theological thinking. He insists that no scholar could percept the Being through reasoning, for a reason (akl) is precisely a barrier for capturing it because even in the semantic perspective of the Arabic language, it derives from the same root of the word "aklal." meaning chain. Ibn Arabi aims to simultaneously look at God as transcendental and immanent, thinking to achieve it through spiritual evocation. The liberation of Ibn Arabi is spiritual in contrast with Derrida's deliverance, which is semantic. Hermeneutic intends to create new meanings in compliance with the first meaning, while the deconstructionism of Derrida aims to look at what the eye can't see, which remains in the shade and untold from the first meaning. According to Derrida, western metaphysics has never problematized the word "meaning" appropriately, thus disagreeing that signs do not lead us in meanings but simply to other signs. The mutual of Ibn Arabi and Derrida is the rejection of metaphysics, each in his way. Foucault dividesglobal history from a general specific history when each completes its mosaic. Also, this kind of separation reads between the lines at Ibn Arabi. The history of the prophet Muhammed is like an actual story, and the history of other prophets is like a global history.