"Practice of Death": The Thematic and Stylistic Agreement Between Suhrawardi and Plato in Respect of Disengagement with Worldliness (Tajrid)

According to Suhrawardi, there is a remarkable agreement between Plato's philosophy and Oriental Wisdom in general. This agreement, which is rooted in the Perennial Substance of Wisdom, not in purely historical influences, can be considered in 3 aspects: first, in terms of the main content of this wisdom; second, in terms of the method of its realization; and third, in terms of its mode of expression. The reason that Plato is highly esteemed by Suhrawardi seems, in addition to thematic agreement and unity, to be agreement in terms of method, which is something beyond philosophical arguments or, in other words, something beyond discursive wisdom, constituting the spiritual and initiatic dimension of Plato's philosophy that ultimately leading to the contemplation or vision of divine truths.In this research, we set out to further explore the thematic and especially the methodological agreement or rather the unity between Suhrawardi’s philosophy and Plato’s philosophy. Through this, we tried to clarify and verify the validity of Suhrawardi's claim about the close connection between Illuminationist Wisdom and Platonic philosophy. To achieve this goal, our focus was on the issue of Disengagement with Worldliness (Tajrid), or in Plato's words, the "practice of death," as well as its consequent goal -- "Godlikeness".The method used was refering to the original texts of these two philosophers to compare the concepts concerning the issue of Disengagement with Worldliness (Tajrid). In Suhrawardi and Plato’s works, in addition to discursive and argumentative expressions, symbolic expression had a very important place in conveying spiritual meanings and transcendent truths. The idea of symbolic expression, therefore, afforded a common fundamental element that enabled us to understand the agreement between Suhrawardi and Plato. Thus, the current research focused on the symbolic-allegorical expression of the issue of Tajrid.This paper has two main parts. First, there is a detailed discussion of the issue of Tajrid in the works of these two philosophers regatding the issue of Tajrid accounted as the central idea in the "method" of Illuminationist Wisdom and Platonic philosophy as a kind of "spiritual initiation". Then, the goal of Tajrid and the idea of Godlikeness is examined.It should be noted that the concept of ​​philosophy or wisdom as a spiritual practice whose ultimate goal is to become Godlike relies on the homogeneity between human truth and divine truths. In other words, according to this concept, Man has a divine essence and thus, the capacity to achieve such a transcendent goal lies in his nature. Therefore, the beginning of spiritual practice is remembrance of Man’s divine essence, which is veiled by the constraints and contingencies of the natural and physical world in his present terrestrial state. By paying attention to the true self, the main stage of spiritual practice begins, that is the gradual withdrawal of ego immersed in worldly life and its concomitants through Tajrid or the practice of death.In both Suhrawardi and Plato's philosophies, Tajrid has two stages: (1) turning the soul away from the natural world by means of refinement and purification of the soul and (2) turning the soul towards the transcendent and divine truths. In the first stage, Man realizes that his soul is bound by the natural faculties of the soul on all sides; therefore, he strives to control the external and internal sense faculties as well as the two faculties of lust (concupiscence) and anger (irascibility). In the second stage, by acquiring certain knowledge, thinking about divine signs and benefactions, saying prayers and doing spiritual meditation, and refining the faculties of sensation and imagination by means of beautiful audiovisual forms, Man directs the whole soul to his own world -- the world of divine truths. In this second stage, love of beauty causes Man to die from his human-created qualities and become a mirror for all the divine attributes he has loved as transcendent truths. Hence, the goal of such a philosophy, which relies on the educative principle of Tajrid or voluntary death, is to become Godlike. This likeness to or reflection of the divine attributes, particularly according to Plato, is represented as the birth of true virtues, which, in principle, belongs to Divinity.Commensurate with the expressions of such lofty themes and meanings, symbols could be found in the works of these two philosophers, which despite their apparent differences, has a fundamental similarity and agreement with the expression of one and the same meaning. Symbols, such as trap, snare, leather, armor, tomb, and well, in Suhrawardi’s texts and shackles, chains, tomb, and coffin in Plato’s texts refer to the body and its faculties. Correlated with these symbols were the ones like liberation, cutting, and tearing, which refer to voluntary death.