Ibn Ṭufayl's Hayy b. Yaqẓān from Essentialist and Constructivist Points of View

There are two views, in the philosophy of religion, on whether or not there is a co mon core to religious experiences: essentialism and constructivism. Essentialists e phasize there being one or more common cores to all religious experiences in all rel gions. In contrast, constructivists hold that there is not any pure experience, all sorts of religious experiences being formed by the complicated process of the system of beliefs or conceptual structures. In Islamic philosophy after Ibn Sina, however, there is a kind of tradition of writing a story of 'Hayy b. Yaq version of the story, if a human infant grows in an island isolated from other human beings, he might be able to develop monotheistic thoughts on the basis of his divine nature and his inner experiences. In this paper, we seek to show that the story of Hayy b. Yaqẓān has an essentialist color. Finally we criticize the story from a constructivist point of view.