چکیده:
Avicenna is a renowned peripatetic philosopher whose rationality continuously draws the attention of many scholars. In many of his works, he resorts to the hierarchy of intellects (angels) to explain the process of the emanation of the multiplicity from the One, as well as the emergence of beings. As these intellects are among the ontological causes of the human soul in the arc of descent, they also guide human individuals through the arc of ascent. Angels are of two types according to Avicenna: (1) the intellects who reveal themselves to human beings via mystical experience and endow them with all the necessary means of intellectual and spiritual transcendence and (2) the celestial or heavenly souls who serve them as an examples of vision and intuition. The manifestation of intellects plays a key role in the explanation of mystical experience, because they account for the rationality of mystical experience, on the one hand, and provide a typology of mystical experiences, on the other hand, based on human existential status. Moreover, one can recognize and tackle the existing obstacles before pure vision and intuition via a study of Avicenna's ideas.
خلاصه ماشینی:
Angels are of two types according to Avicenna: (1) the intellects who reveal themselves to human beings via mystical experience and endow them with all the necessary means of intellectual and spiritual transcendence and (2) the celestial or heavenly souls who serve them as an examples of vision and intuition.
Furthermore, what makes the role of angels more fundamental in mystical experience is their, particularly the Active Intellect’s, essential similarities with the human rational soul, on whom relies the very possibility of such intuition and experience as a whole.
It is indeed the Active Intellect or Arch Angel who leads the human soul through these quadruple intellectual levels as the superhuman treasure of intelligibles (Avicenna 1400 AH, 57).
The Active Intellect, according to Avicenna, has a higher existential status than human beings and is a supersensible and unempirical source for acquiring knowledge and intuiting the intelligibles.
As we mentioned before, Avicenna believes that intuition is beyond perception, and one can reach intelligible forms with utmost certainty through connecting oneself to the sphere of universals and incorporeal intellects or angels.
According to Avicenna, intellectual vision or intuition is a way that leads us to the knowledge of intelligible forms via the light of the Active Intellect.
He believes that "the human soul in fact has its particular perfection in becoming an intellectual world that contains all the intelligible forms of beings, and its comprehension of these beings from transcendent intellects to incorporeal angels is seamless and perfect" (Avicenna 1362a Sh, 425).