Rationality and autonomy from the Enlightenment and Islamic perspectives

Abstract

Rationality and autonomy are foundational concepts in anglophone or ‘Western’ countries that originated primarily from the Enlightenment period. When compared with ‘Western’ ideologies, non-Western belief systems such as Islam may not appear, at first glance, to place as much emphasis on the value and attainment of rationality and autonomy. This may lead some people to conclude that Islam necessarily marginalises or even suppresses its believers’ development of rationality and autonomy. This article compares the concepts of rationality and autonomy from the Enlightenment and Islamic perspectives. It is argued that there exist Islamic traditions that promote the inculcation of ‘normal rationality’ and ‘normal autonomy’ within a convictional community from which beliefs develop. However, the extent to which Muslims are encouraged to cultivate and exercise their rationality and autonomy would depend, among other factors, on the specific interpretations of rationality and autonomy privileged by the Islamic tradition they belong to.

Keywords:

• autonomy
• Enlightenment
• Islam
• liberal democracy
• rationality

Acknowledgements

I thank two reviewers for their helpful comments to an earlier draft.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflicts of interest have been reported by the author.

Notes

1. Jonathan (1997) observes that the sociological subdivision of liberal democracies into corporate-statist, social democratic, and liberal only allocates the term ‘liberal’ to the last type of regime. However, she notes that ‘although this typology usefully represents different clusterings of political and social characteristics, each of the three types are overlapping clusters of features of the same phenomenon: it is that phenomenon I am referring to as “liberal democracy”’ (28, fn 7).

2. It is important to clarify that the references to ‘the Enlightenment concepts of rationality and autonomy’ and ‘the Islamic concepts of rationality and autonomy’ in this article do not imply that there is only one understanding of rationality and autonomy from both the Enlightenment and Islamic perspectives. On the contrary, there exist multiple and even competing definitions and interpretations of rationality and autonomy in both the Enlightenment and Islamic conceptions. In the midst of such plurality of meanings, this article focuses on a particular albeit dominant understanding of rationality and autonomy in both the Enlightenment and Islamic thought.

3. The renouncement of Enlightenment rationality is not equivalent to the repudiation of liberal democracy as an ideology. While the Enlightenment rationality has been dominant in the liberal democratic traditions, it is not the only formulation of rationality. Galston (1995) distinguishes two historical strands of liberalism, namely Enlightenment and Reformation liberalism. The first type emphasises individual rationality, autonomy and diversity between voluntary groups while the second focuses on group autonomy and diversity among involuntary or non-voluntary groups, usually religious ones. While Enlightenment liberalism expects students to be taught a sense of independence and to make rational choices, the other version is committed to see the individual’s wants and needs as embedded within communal forces. Also see Callan (1998) who differentiates ‘moral reason’ from ‘hyper-rationalism’ in the liberal tradition.

4. This article does not assume that White and Steutel are in full agreement about their respective concepts on autonomy. But for the purpose of our discussion, it suffices to note the convergence between their views.

5. The term ‘Islam’ is understood in this article as not just a religious system but also a cultural system. The two senses highlight different aspects of the faith although they are mutually exclusive. The former underscores Islam as essentially comprising shared foundational doctrines held by Muslims; the very word ‘Islam’ comes from the Arabic word al-Islam that means ‘surrender’ as well as the peace that issues from one’s surrender to God (Nasr 2002). Islam as a cultural system, on the other hand, encompasses complex networks of cognitive and behavioural dispositions that are political, religious, moral, epistemological and aesthetic in nature (Hanan 2005).

6. Nasr (2006) explains that there is a fundamental distinction between ‘reason’ and ‘intellect’: ‘In Arabic and other Islamic languages a single term, al-‘aql, is used to denote both reason and intellect, but the distinction between the two as well as their interpretation and the dependence of reason upon the intellect is always kept in mind. ‘Al-‘aql’ in Arabic is related to the root ‘ql, which means basically to bind, It is that faculty that binds man to the Truth, to God, to his Origin. … But ‘al-‘aql is also used as reason, intelligence, keenness of perception, foresight, common sense and many other concepts of a related order’ (94). In this article, I use the words ‘reason’ and ‘intellect’ interchangeably to refer to both meanings.

7. The term ‘Islamic tradition’ in this article does not refer to the Sunnah (normative practice of the Prophet Muhammad) or hadith (report on the sayings and deeds of the Prophet Muhammad). Instead, it is a social process of constructing and transmitting shared meanings for a community of Muslims in a locality (Tan 2011a). That ‘tradition’ and ‘transmission’ are etymologically related is highlighted by Nasr (1989) who points out that the word ‘tradition’ implies the oral and written transference of knowledge, practices, techniques, laws and other related forms.