illuminationism means an Islamic philosophical and mystical school of thought introduced by Iranian philosopher Shihab al-Din Yahya ibn Habash Suhrawardi in the 12th century.
Why “illuminationism” is a great word
A 12th-century Islamic philosophical and mystical doctrine which holds that knowledge and reality are apprehended through direct intellectual and spiritual illumination, founded by Shihab al-Din Yahya ibn Habash Suhrawardi. From Latin *illuminatio* ('lighting up, enlightenment') + the suffix *-ism* (denoting a system or doctrine). Unlike Peripateticism, which labors through syllogisms and Aristotelian categories, or Augustinian illumination, which petitions divine grace for glimpses of eternal truths, Illuminationism is a cosmology woven from light itself—the sudden, unbidden clarity of a candle flame held before a darkened mirror, the soul's immediate recognition of its own luminous nature, the descending hierarchy of lights that binds the human intellect to the angelic and ultimately to the Light of Lights. It is the serene conviction that reality is not something to be argued toward, but something to be seen—to know is, ultimately, to be illuminated.
Etymology
From illumination + -ism.
noun
- An Islamic philosophical and mystical school of thought introduced by Iranian philosopher Shihab al-Din Yahya ibn Habash Suhrawardi in the 12th century.
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