Suhrawardi’s Self-Awareness Argument: A New Path to Proving the Existence of God

Author
Mahdi Saatchi
Shahid Motahari University
Abstract
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Traditionally, proofs for the existence of God have been classified into three categories: ontological, cosmological, and teleological arguments. The Iranian-Islamic philosopher Shihab al-Din Suhrawardi, in his most important work, Ḥikmat al-Ishrāq (The Philosophy of Illumination), presents a proof for the existence of God that may be described as a self-awareness argument. This argument introduces a new category of proofs, namely, epistemological proofs, alongside the three traditional classifications. Whereas ontological arguments proceed from the concept of being, cosmological arguments from the contingency or origination of the universe, and teleological arguments from the order and purposiveness of the cosmos, epistemological arguments begin from the reality of consciousness itself. At first glance, Suhrawardi’s proof resembles the well-known argument from necessity and contingency and therefore appears similar to cosmological arguments. However, a closer examination within the framework of Suhrawardi’s metaphysics of light (ʿilm al-anwār) reveals that the point of departure is not merely existent being, but rather self-aware being. Moreover, the movement of the argument does not proceed from an external, third-person perspective; instead, it arises from an inward and first-person mode of awareness. In this sense, the proof is discovered through introspection and only later expressed propositionally.
Suhrawardi demonstrates how the human encounter with one’s own self-awareness necessarily leads to the recognition of a higher self-awareness beyond which nothing greater can be conceived. Thus, he opens a new path for proving the existence of God, one that may be summarized in the following form: “I am self-aware; therefore, God exists.”
Keywords
Self-awareness Argument
Epistemological Proof
consci-ousness
Proving the Existence of God
Suhrawardi
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