| Abstract [eng] |
The article focuses on a specific concept of imaginative eschatology in Suhrawardi’ philosophy - ʿālamu l-mithāl, better known in the West under the name mundus imaginalis, popularized by the French scholar Henry Corbin. The imaginal world, gener- ated by the imaginatio vera, which is different from the ordinary imagination and lies between the earthly and the heavenly, can be reached during sleep, meditation or after death. The article discusses the terminological and semantic problems of ʿālamu l-mithāl in order to clarify and propose the most accurate Lithuanian equivalent. Knowing the syncretic origins of Sufism, the philosophical traditions of ancient Egypt, Platonism and the Neoplatonists are considered as possible sources of the concept of ʿālamu l-mithāl, developed in the Islamic Golden Age. The conceptually closest paradigms of earlier civilizations are used: the Egypttian Fields of Reed, Plato’s “true earth”, the Theory of Forms and Plotinus’ Hypostasis of the Soul. The ideological origins of the Suhrawardic ʿālamu l-mithāl are presumed to lie in these traditions. Specifically transformed and integrated into the early world of Islamic philosophy based on the Word of God (the Qur’ān), in Suhrawardi’s philosophy they are finally transformed into the Sufi concept of ʿālamu l-mithāl and become one of the main constants of Išrāqi philosophy. Drawing on Suhrawardi’s original work Ḥikmatu l-išrāq (The Philosophy of Illumination), I will show that by introducing epistemological innovations, Suhrawardi is the first to give ʿālamu l-mithāl a separate ontological level: a fourth world, that of Image, appears in addition to the worlds of the Intellect, the Soul, and the Matter, thus resolving the long-standing religious and philosophical antagonism concerning the Afterworld. |
