The Hidden Realm: Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī’s Infallible Realism
Fallible realists - i.e., those realists who believe it possible to make mistakes in perception - are faced with a serious dilemma regarding sensory propositions. Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī (d. 1210) explains that they will be forced to accept either that sensory propositions are in principle unknowable o...
| Authors: | ; |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Interlibrary Loan: | Interlibrary Loan for the Fachinformationsdienste (Specialized Information Services in Germany) |
| Published: |
2025
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| In: |
Oriens
Year: 2025, Volume: 53, Issue: 3/4, Pages: 289-324 |
| Further subjects: | B
infallibilism
B Epistemology B Realism B Perception B Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | Fallible realists - i.e., those realists who believe it possible to make mistakes in perception - are faced with a serious dilemma regarding sensory propositions. Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī (d. 1210) explains that they will be forced to accept either that sensory propositions are in principle unknowable or that they are not immediate. Since, in the Islamic world, fallible realists are, so far as we now know, all representationalists, they believe there will always be an intermediary, viz., the mental representation, between the perceiver and perceived. As a result, the threat of skepticism will loom over every sensation: How could one know one’s sensory perceptions correspond to reality? If, in response, one attempts to devise some criterion for distinguishing veridical from non-veridical perception, one will have to concede that sensory propositions, which are traditionally considered immediate, are no such thing. Rāzī’s method for evading the dilemma is to undermine and reject its starting premise, namely, that error in perception is possible at all. He even widens the scope of infallibility to include all knowledge, not only sensory perception. Naturally, this counterintuitive position itself suffers from various difficulties. In order to allay some of them, Rāzī hypothesizes that there could be a ‘hidden realm’ housing various non-existent objects of knowledge, a sort of ‘Active Imagination’ (khayāl faʿʿāl) that accounts for how one can know something that appears not to exist externally. |
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| ISSN: | 1877-8372 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Oriens
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1163/18778372-12340047 |
