Reason and Emotions in the Islamic Philosophical and Mystical Tradition

Harvard HDS

Over the past century, influential philosophers such as Emmanuel Levinas and Jacques Derrida, together with feminist thinkers, have criticized the divide between reason and emotion as one of the conceptual foundations of conflict and violence in practice. They argue that the elevation of reason over emotion has contributed to deeper structures of exclusion, repression, and violence. In their reading of intellectual history, this hierarchy begins with the passage from mythos to logos and the…