The Nature of Thinking from the Perspective of Islamic Theologians and Philosophers

It has been dealt in this paper with the fact that “thinking” is the act of human “mind”. “Mind” is also one of the faculties of the human soul. Mind is different from intellect and soul. Both intellect and mind are the faculties of the soul. Everything that can be invoked to the faculties of the mind and intellect, it can be invoked to the soul too, weather we believe that the soul has many individual faculties or they are its modes. There are different interpretations in the words of theologians and philosophers about the definition of “thinking”. But all of the philosophers typically agree that “thinking” is both moving from the subject of thinking to the principles and turning again to the subject of thinking. Those who only have confined themselves with the second move, perhaps because the second movement has the first movement in itself, so there is no need to its mentioning. The reason of disagreement in citation of “thinking” to the intellect, mind, or soul, is perhaps for this reason that the attention of the mind is sometimes to the immaterial things, so thinking will be the act of rational soul, and sometimes to the material, so it will be the act of animal soul, that is not to fact that it is the direct act of animal soul, but because the faculties of animal soul help the rational soul in reaching a conclusion.