The Status of Goodness and Beauty in the Logic of Flight in Suhrawardi

Although aesthetics and philosophy of arts are the fruits of the modern age and the new approach followed by science and truth, the question of “beauty” and “arts” are among those that have involved human being’s mind since very long time ago. As one of the greatest Iranian-Islamic philosophers of the sixth AH century, Sheikh Shahab al-Din Suhrawardi, known as Sheikh of Illuminationism, has discussed about arts and beauty, under cosmology and the science of mystic lights, as well as about goodness and beauty concepts in the Illuminationism philosophy. According to the Suhrawardi’s illuminationistic viewpoints, “goodness” is a celestial truth which has headed down the arc of descend while maintaining its celestial identity and has been manifested in the visible world, as this-worldly and visible beauties are just a sign of the reasonable and that-worldly beauties. According to the Illuminationism perspective, the science that forms the foundation of the Illuminationist arts, will not be achieved but through intuition and this sort of intuition is realized only when the illuminationist ascetic or artist can recreate ascension in his soul through understanding “rules of spiritual elation”. Both the illuminationist philosophy and arts are expressed through the “symbolic” language. Therefore, "hermeneutic" is crucially important in the understanding and explanation of the symbolic language through which Illuminative wisdom and art are expressed. Thus, it can be said that “rules of the spiritual elation”, “symbol” and “hermeneutic” are three wings of a triangle which is considered as a fundamental basis either in illuminationist philosophy or in illuminationist arts. The illuminationist philosophy and arts will be emerged and established when all three wings of the mentioned collection are considered collectively.