Muqaddimat al-Sanusi Presentation

Overview

This presentation introduces the epistemological opening of Sanusi's Muqaddimat: what counts as knowledge, what a judgement is, and how judgements are classified in sacred knowledge.

Structure

• Pages 2–15: Define knowledge by comparing the Western model of “justified true belief” with the kalam definition: firm belief corresponding to reality with what necessitates it. The slides then explain tasdiq as judgement and distinguish it from tasawwur as conceptualization.
• Pages 16–21: Divide judgements into three sources: legal (shar'i), empirical (adi), and rational (aqli), each of which may be non-inferential (daruri) or inferential (nazari).
• Pages 22–35: Explain legal judgements: the morally responsible person (mukallaf), definitive and assumptive transmission/meaning, the five legal rulings, and normative judgements such as cause, condition, and preventive factor.
• Pages 36–42: Explain empirical judgements as observed customary links between phenomena, while denying that one phenomenon independently effects another.
• Pages 43–49: Explain rational judgements as affirmation or negation not dependent on repeated observation or legal convention. These are necessary, impossible, or possible.

How to read it

Read the presentation as a map of key terms. The main aim is not to prove doctrines yet, but to clarify the kinds of knowledge and judgement used in theology. Pay special attention to the difference between:

• Conceptualization (tasawwur): grasping an idea, like “tree” or “black.”
• Judgement (hukm / tasdiq): affirming or negating a relation, like “the tree is black.”
• Rational judgement (hukm aqli): what reason affirms, denies, or allows without relying on observation or revelation. This last category is especially important for Ash'ari theology, because doctrines like God being pre-eternal are treated as rationally inferential judgements.