The origins of the aesthetic studies can be traced back to the early stages of the human civilization in Egypt, Babylon, India, China and Greece. Maybe the best of what was found in these civilizations is what was formulated by Greeks, especially Aristotle and Plato. Socrates (470-399 BC) was the first to anticipate the coming of a fundamental stage among the aesthetics stages, his point of view was far away from the naïve materialism, and he found a link between the concept of incredible and the concept of useful, and he considered that art is the simulation of nature. Plato was the student of Socrates and came after him, and then Aristotle who reached with his writings the climax of Greek aesthetic thought. Then came Plotinus the outstanding representative of the new Platonic approach (204 – 270 CE), whereas he viewed the world as an outcome of the divine perfection where he says: “The purpose of man is to return to God.”
In fact, aesthetics was not differentiated from Philosophy until the second half of the eighteenth century when the European culture separated the applied science from humanities. Arabs must have recognized aesthetic studies and aesthetic concept of their own related to their culture, which is based on Islamic faith, and included all the cultures of other nations at that time. However, today we could only find a few references to the aesthetic studies Arab Muslims had, in Western literature, because Arabs in the twentieth century totally neglected these studies.
Arabs nowadays have their own aesthetic studies, an extension of their culture that covers up to thousands of years in history, but still this culture had a new orientation that connected it to the divine thought at the rise of Islam.
However, this concept lives only in non-scientific culture, especially the social one including its customs, traditions, system of living and values represented in everyday behavior and attitudes in life. We must explain the concept of non-scientific culture, it means human’s way in living, especially in the primary physical issues as they are the same for all people, but they are different depending on the civilization and community.
Everyone knows marriage, divorce, birth, death, food, drink, sex, sleeping and waking up; however, the way of living these matters, considering and understanding them is different depending on the civilization. Marriage in the West European civilization doesn’t represent the values that exist in the Arab Islamic East; this applies to death as well as other issues. So we came to the conclusion of the necessity and inevitability of differences in concepts and ways of living because of the difference in beliefs and laws of life, which rule the relation between humans and universe, God, and other human beings.
By taking a look at aesthetics in contemporary Arabic literature we can see that there are two types, the first is books translated from European languages, the second is books written by Arabs who depended in their writings on the first translated books, and we rarely find books written about the concept of contemporary Arab aesthetics, or Arab-Islamic aesthetics. One of these books was written by Dr. Saad Al-Deen Kaleeb entitled: Aesthetic Structure In The Arab-Islamic Culture. Another book was written by Dr. Hussain Al-Sedeeq entitled: The Philosophy Of Aesthetics And Art Issues For Unifier.
Our sources of Arab heritage are too numerous to be counted, and they can all give us the material that can be classified under aesthetics label, or aesthetic concepts can be developed out of them. These materials are available in all the sources regardless of their type: jurisprudence, otophone, Sufism, philosophy, literature, and art. Most of these texts were not noticed and were not studied based on an integrated and scientific approach that links between the text and cognitive, cultural, and historical frameworks, which surrounded that text when it was written.
We find these texts widespread among philosophers, Sufis, speakers, writers, and scholars, in addition to other texts that belong to the non-scientific culture, and they are worthy of a special study based on the historical difference between the scientific culture and non-scientific culture. It’s also essential to study all types of industries known in the Arab-Islamic civilization, and how their culture was reflected in their industrial creativity. These are some of these sources, books and texts:
- Overwhelming Lights In The Hearts And The Keys To The Secrets Of The Unseen “Ibn Al-Dabbagh”
- Introduction To The Virtuous Love “Lisan Al-Din Ibn Al-Khatib”
- Ibn Sabeen’s Messages
- Ibn Arabi’s Messages
- Avicenna’s Books (Guidance And Alerts, Theology, Beginning And Resurrection, And Music Science Collection)
- Al-Farabi (In The Views Of Utopia – The Night Ascents Of Jerusalem In The Way To Know One’s Soul)
- Abu Hamed Al-Ghazali (Revival Of Religious Sciences)
Man is not the son of the present; rather, he’s the son of the past. He sees present, deals with it and judges it through the experience he acquired in the past, which is present in his memory and a part of the memory of his community, and its roots go deep down in the memory of civilization where he belongs. Therefore, man is the son of the culture of his civilization, which forms his character and identity, as well as his actions, and it often rules his unconscious.
………. To be continued
Writing By: Ekhlas Kassar
Translated By: Yasmeen Jaby Al-Haramein
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