Self, Other and Nothingness in Western Philosophy and in Islamic Mysticism
Sharing Poetic Expressions: January 1, 2011 Chryssi Sidiropoulou
This chapter sympathetically examines Kenan Gürsoy’s comparison of Islamic mysticism (tasavvuf) and twentieth-century French existentialism. It argues that the Western dichotomy between self and world, found in Descartes and Sartre, undermines the possibility of meaning and freedom. Drawing on İlham Dilman’s “affective solipsism” and Wittgenstein’s “attitude towards a soul,” the chapter contends that the tasavvuf understanding of “nothingness” avoids such a dichotomy, enabling a person’s realization of being through dynamic interaction with the world.