Contradiction and Paradox in the Mystical Hermeneutics of Ibn ‘Arabī’s Fuṣūṣ al-Ḥikam: The Chapters of Ya‘qūb, Hūd, Ṣāliḥ and Luqmān

Abstract

This article examines four chapters of Muḥyī al-Dīn ibn ‘Arabī’s (d. 638/1240) Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam. Although the contradiction and paradox between ostensible reality and the divine reality that underpins it, or the outer reality (ẓāhir) of the divine Wish (mashī’a) and the inner reality (bāṭin) intimated by the divine Will (irāda), forms the subject of Ibn ‘Arabī’s mystical reflections in many other chapters of this work, it is most conspicuously and succinctly highlighted in the chapters of Ya‘qūb, Hūd, Ṣāliḥ and Luqmān. In the chapter of Ya‘qūb, the Andalusian mystagogue overtly addresses the contradiction between the divine Will of God that is always carried out, and His divine Wish, which may not be. In the other three chapters that this article considers, Ibn ‘Arabī approaches the issue from different vantage points and investigates the results of it in different ways. His commitment to these two simultaneous versions of reality, these ‘two religions’ as he dubs them, resolves many of the perceived inconsistencies in his works.