- Lived:
- 1154–1191 · born in Suhraward, northwest Persia; died in the citadel of Aleppo, Syria
- Tradition:
- Islamic philosophy — founder of the Illuminationist (Ishrāqī) school
- The Big Idea:
- Reality is not made of "stuff" that happens to be knowable; it is made of light in varying degrees of intensity — and the most certain knowledge you will ever have is not a picture in your head but the direct, unmediated presence of the thing itself, starting with you.
- In their words:
- "Whatever needs no definition and no explanation is evident. And nothing in existence is more evident than light. Nothing, therefore, is less in need of definition."
- If you remember one thing:
- A thirty-seven-year-old rebuilt all of metaphysics out of light, insisted that philosophy has prerequisites of the soul as well as the mind — and was executed for it, earning the title al-Maqtūl: the Slain.