The relationship between intellect and ethics in early periods of sufism

In this thesis, the views of Sufis from earlier periods on intellect (aql) were studied within the context of the effect of training the self on a person's knowledge and reasoning. The relationship set by Sufis between intellect and ethics was analyzed based on the works specifically written on this subject and the first Sufi texts in which Sufism is handled as a systematic science. That Sufis were indifferent to prevalent scientific activities and criticized the scholars led to the misinterpretation of their views on intellect and knowledge. When their criticisms were examined, it was understood that they pointed out the scientific methods of the religious sciences and the restrictions of their fields and considered their normative and formal understanding of religion as a problem in comprehending the essence of the religion. In this manner, Sufism was formed as a religious science based on the method of training the self hence complementing the other religious sciences but still preserving its claim on the reality. As a result of their understanding of the self, Sufis regarded the human desires as an obstacle in front of reasoning and drew attention to the various levels of reasoning in terms of getting knowledge such as the ranks of the heart. While defining the intellect, Sufis took the functions of the intellect as basis rather than theoretical discussions. They evaluated a person's mental competence according to their actions. And the value of an action was evaluated according to its correspondence with the revelation. Thereby Sufis put forward an understanding of intellect defined in terms of the revelation as opposed to the rationalist method which saw intellect as an independent source of knowledge. In this study, we adopted a comparative method. In this manner, we tried to show how the issues we handled took shape during the period of formation of Sufism as a science and make references to its equivalent in other religious sciences. The most important conclusion of our study is that in Sufism, training the self is also training the intellect. For this reason, Sufis' criticism of intellect should be considered within the context of maturing the intellect by drawing attention to its weaknesses rather than as an opposition of reasoning.