Maʿrifa

Knowledge arrived at by direct realisation rather than by argument - and the claim that some things can be reached no other way.

Theme: Knowledge, truth and reason
Tradition: Islamic
Term: معرفة · maʿrifa
Term fixed: c. 1100

In plain terms

Islamic thought distinguishes two kinds of knowing. ʿIlm is what you can be taught, argue for and write down. Maʿrifa is what you know by having undergone it.

The distinction is not mystical hand-waving; it is a claim about the limits of a method. You can be given a complete description of swimming and still not be able to swim, and no amount of further description closes that gap. The tradition's claim is that some of the most important things are like that.

What makes it philosophically serious rather than merely edifying is that its best-known defender arrived at it by demolishing the alternative first. He was the leading theologian of his day, he took apart the philosophers' arguments in detail, and only then concluded that argument was not the instrument he needed.

As a philosopher would put it

Maʿrifa is standardly contrasted with ʿilm: acquired, transmissible, propositional knowledge against knowledge by presence and direct acquaintance. Suhrawardī's Illuminationism gives this a technical epistemology - al-ʿilm al-ḥuḍūrī, knowledge by presence, in which knower and known are not separated by a representation, as in one's knowledge of one's own existence.

Al-Ghazālī's route to it is the argument that matters. In the Incoherence he shows, by the philosophers' own standards, that demonstration does not establish what they claim it establishes; his autobiography then records abandoning his chair in Baghdad in 1095 and concluding that the certainty he wanted came only through dhawq, tasting.

Ibn Rushd's reply in the Incoherence of the Incoherence defends demonstration and treats the retreat from it as a failure of nerve. Ibn ʿArabī takes the other direction entirely, building a metaphysics in which maʿrifa is the highest human attainment. The structural parallel with Advaita's anubhava and with Buddhist prajñā is close enough to be worth noting and not close enough to be identity.

Where you meet it

Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī was the most eminent teacher in the Islamic world. He held the chair at the Niẓāmiyya in Baghdad, had written the definitive refutation of the philosophers, and was consulted by the caliphate.

In 1095 he stopped being able to lecture. His own account describes a physical inability to speak, lasting months, brought on by a crisis about whether anything he taught was known rather than merely inherited. He left the city, gave away his position, and spent about eleven years in retreat and travel.

The conclusion he came back with is recorded in al-Munqidh min al-Ḍalāl: that he had examined theology, philosophy and the authoritative teaching of the Ismāʿīlis, found each unable to deliver what he wanted, and found it instead in the practice of the Sufis - which had to be undergone rather than studied. It is one of the few cases in the history of philosophy where a first-rank thinker documented rejecting his own method and said exactly why.

What is actually disputed

Whether direct realisation is knowledge at all.

The objection is straightforward: a claim that cannot be argued for, assessed by anyone who has not had the experience, or distinguished from sincere self-deception has none of the marks by which knowledge is normally identified. Ibn Rushd made a version of it in the twelfth century and it has not weakened.

The reply is that the objection assumes what is in question - that all knowledge must be propositional and transmissible - and that knowing by acquaintance is not obviously a defective case of knowing by description. Suhrawardī's example, one's knowledge of one's own existence, is genuinely hard to fit into the propositional model.

What remains unresolved is the criterion. Every tradition that recognises maʿrifa also recognises that people are mistaken about having attained it, which means an internal test is needed and none has been produced that does not itself require the state.

Commonly confused with

Faith c. 1270 Faith is commitment where proof is absent. Maʿrifa claims to be a form of knowing, with its own kind of certainty.
Intuition 1641 Intuition delivers a judgement quickly. Maʿrifa is a transformation of the knower, and the tradition insists the difference is not one of speed.
mysticism generally Maʿrifa is a specific epistemological category in a specific tradition, with a technical contrast term. Using it as a synonym for mystical experience loses the argument it is part of.

Defined against

Reason Not a rejection of reason but a claim about its limits, argued by someone who had used it as well as anyone alive

Philosophers

Al-Ghazali The argument against demonstration, from inside it
Averroes The defence of demonstration against exactly that argument
Al-Farabi The philosophical tradition maʿrifa is set against
Avicenna Whose demonstrative metaphysics is the target
Shankara The structurally similar Indian position

Works

The Incoherence of the Philosophers The demolition that precedes the turn
The Incoherence of the Incoherence Ibn Rushd's reply
The Philosophy of Illumination Knowledge by presence, given a technical account
The Book of Healing The demonstrative system being rejected
Brahmasutra Bhasya The Indian parallel

Schools

Ibn Arabi School Where maʿrifa is the highest attainment
Illuminationism (Ishraqism) Where knowledge by presence is formalised
Falsafa The demonstrative tradition it is contrasted with
Ash’arism The theological setting of al-Ghazālī's argument
Advaita Vedanta The nearest structural parallel outside Islam

Related concepts

Knowledge c. 369 BC · Pramāṇa c. 200 · Intuition 1641 · Wisdom c. 340 BC · Mysticism 1902

The term is older and central to Sufi writing well before al-Ghazālī; what he supplied was an argument, from inside falsafa, for why demonstrative reason cannot reach where maʿrifa goes.