Similarly, their study of ethics and politics—indeed, the study of all rational people—is grounded in justice. For that reason they defined man’s practical perfection as four things: the reform of appetite, the reform of anger, the establishment of justice between the two, and the knowledge that enables this balance. What they have set forth is only a portion of the qualities of perfection for which Allah sent His messengers and revealed His scriptures. To limit oneself to what they mention does not bring about the felicity that is man’s true perfection, though it is one element that contributes to it.
We have elsewhere treated these questions in detail, showing how their philosophy falls short of securing happiness and perfection, and that it is, in fact, more deficient than the religion of the Jews and Christians after its abrogation and alteration. Whatever truth their system contains—if extracted and the falsehood discarded—constitutes only one part of the total that leads to felicity; alongside it are many false notions and other notions that are true yet insufficient to secure happiness and perfection.
Tenth Consideration:
They possess no sound proof for rejecting the prophets’ reports that lie outside their syllogisms.
The prophets and the awliyāʾ (friends of Allah) have, by revelation and inspiration, knowledge that transcends the syllogism these philosophers describe; even firāsa (spiritual insight) and the like belong to this realm. Should the philosophers include such knowledge among the sensory and rational data they acknowledge, they would no longer be able to deny what they themselves have not perceived, and they would be left without a standard. This is a point that deserves careful investigation.
By “they” I mean Ibn Sīnā and his followers. They divided propositions, in terms of the truth they convey and as employed by logicians and their ilk, into four categories. The first—whose acceptance is obligatory and which forms the material of demonstration—comprises the primary intuitions, the sensibles, the experiential, the conjectural (ḥadsiyyāt), and the mass-transmitted (mutawātir) reports. Sometimes they add further propositions together with their definitions, yet they have provided no proof for confining the categories to this list. Hence even their own defenders admit that this division is diffuse and non-exhaustive, and that it is impossible to furnish evidence for its precise limits.
If this is the case, it does not follow that everything that fails to fall within their syllogism is therefore unknowable, and thus…