Search for Truth

The main concern of philosophy was to make a unified picture of the world, including human life. But the long history of philosophy shows that this still remains an unfulfilled dream. The Encyclopaedia Britannica in its 27page article on philosophy and its history, admits that there seems to be no possibility of philosophical unification. The article concludes with this remark: In the contemporary philosophical universe, multiplicity and division still reign. (EB, Vol. 14:274 [1984]) Why this failure? This failure is not of a chance or intermittent nature but seems to be a permanent feature of the philosophical approach to reality. The Quran has drawn our attention to this fact, saying: They put questions to you about the Spirit. Say: “The Spirit is at the command of my Lord and of knowledge you have been given only a little.” (17:85) This means that the problem stems from man’s own shortcomings. The philosophical explanation of the world requires unbounded knowledge, whereas man has had only limited knowledge bestowed upon him. Due to these intellectual constraints man cannot uncover the secrets of the world on his own. So, it is not the lack of research, but the blinkered state of the human mind, that stands as a permanent obstacle in the philosopher’s path to reality. It is this human inadequacy which explains the unexplainable. For example, suppose, in order to unveil reality and the law of life, the enquirer starts from a study of human settlements. After a detailed survey, he comes to the conclusion that since