Subtleties and Allusions

The Non-Exclusivity of the Path of Epistemology and Ontology

Two extreme groups, namely the “imitators” (muqallida) and the “instructionists” (taʿlīmiyya)(384), have imposed their desires on the verse under discussion. The first group, which considers preserving the ancient ignorance of ancestors as cultural heritage and deems it permissible to maintain the false beliefs of predecessors, believing that everything must be learned from transmitted evidence, clung to the words of Jacob’s children and to Jacob himself, who was the prophet of the time_—_the invalidity of which has already been discussed. The second group, who are traditionalists and avoid rational arguments, believe that the only way to know truths is through transmission from the infallibles, while this very claim is based on reason.

Reason recognizes three valid paths: rational demonstration with specific conditions, reliable transmitted evidence, and the path of intuition. Of course, for demonstration and mysticism, like the path of transmission, there are numerous conditions in terms of issuance, direction of issuance, completeness of indication, absence of contradiction, and so on. Indeed, both the definitive demonstration of philosophers and the unambiguous intuition of mystics are present in the sacred realm of prophetic revelation, considering it necessary, and recognizing the sovereignty of the realm of knowing truths exclusively to it, submitting to its exalted presence.

The point is that the verse under discussion is not intended to restrict the path of epistemology on one hand and ontology on the other. Abraham, who himself is the progenitor of Abrahamic prophets, followed the path of rational argumentation and opened it to others, becoming its herald in the marketplace of knowledge. What constitutes the main axis of the verse under discussion is free from confirming the notion of “the imitator” and the belief of “the instructionist,” and what is outside this verse is what was previously mentioned; that is, the invalidity of imitation and the validity of instruction, in part but not in whole, and that reliable transmission is one of the paths of epistemology, not the only path.