Secular and Sacred Rationality in the Realm of Knowing, Running and Ornamenting the World

The main question of the present article is how sacred understanding and secular of rationality reflect in three dimensions of world-view, world-government and world-ornamentation. Using comparative method and a pattern centered on knowledge in distinguishing two versions of rationality in the thoughts of two social thinkers of the East and West the author believes that Max Weber as the exponent of secular rationality introduces effectiveness, i.e. choosing the best means to obtain the aim as its criterion. This sort of rationality found expression in terms of formal rationality in the western civilization and appeared as result of particular world-view of modern man who stripped the natural and social world from sacred meaning and decorated it with secularism and democracy. Allame Tabatabae, by contrast, as the exponent of sacred version of rationality identifies the coherence with innate and sound nature of human being as its criterion. Innate (fitri) rationality holds the world of being to be meaningful and man to be obliged to govern the world and ornament it on the basis his innate and primordial nature (fitra).