The Impact of Philosophy on Islamic Mysticism

Despite the fact that there are many existing differences between philosophers and mystics in terms of principles, objectives, and methodologies, Islamic philosophy has been greatly impressive on Islamic mysticism. The scope of impression extends to three areas of ontology; methods of evidencing and conveying mystical findings; and the relation between man and God. In ontology, the main subject and object of Islamic mysticism is recognizing God regarding his names and attributes in order to link His Almighty, and since it relies on personal monism and deems the created world to be a sign of Him and never assumes them to have an independent existence, but it never ignores ontology and provides a philosophical ontological system through philosophical terms. 2- in the field of evidencing and conveying mystical findings, since the mystic's understanding had been intuitive, personal, unable to be conveyed or evidenced, they were usually condemned. But the strives of Ibn Arabi and later mystics by means of evidential reasoning and rational explanation helped Islamic mystics to impersonalize their spiritual and inner findings and could convey to others in a safe way, and as a result address mysticism as a science. By rational explanation of intuitive realities and using philosophical jargon and expressions, the mystic has been inspired by philosophy in a totally mystical content via rational reasoning on mystical findings. 3- regarding human relation with God, there is a lovely relation between creator and creature that causes an aspirational movement toward affinity of the absolute perfection (God) in the inferior level. The theoretical explanation of such a perfection movement and its stages are affected by the philosophical notions of Aristotle, Flotin, and Sohrevardi.