Perfect Person in al-Fakhr al-Rāzī's View

Al-Fakhr al-Rāzī takes human souls to be like a pyramid on top of which is the “Perfect Person” with respect to the substance, the path to God, and practical and theoretical commitment to religious doctrines. He takes the perfection of human persons to depend on two types of affairs: generative (takwīnī) and legislative (tashrī’ī), on the condition that the soul has an essential potentiality for the perfection. The Perfect Human, in al-Fakhr al-Rāzī’s model, is the manifestation of divine lights, aware of the secrets of the creations of the worlds of “amr” and “khalq”, and connected to the lights of the sacred worlds and immaterial spirits. Such a human person has perfected his soul in all aspects (faculties) in light of the doctrines of the revelation (waḥy) and rational development. He believes that it is necessary for the “Perfect Human” to exist at any time, taking him to be the condition for the perfection of other human beings. Al-Rāzī’s view in this regard is so similar to that of the Imamiyya concerning the problem of Imamate that he takes the Infallible Imam of the Imamiyya to be an instance of the “Perfect” Human. In his view, imperfect souls can be places for the manifestation of divine lights via their connections to Perfect Souls. In this paper, we will describe and analyze the place of the Perfect Human in the view of al-Fakhr al-Rāzī.