From Presence to Name:

Essential Knowledge and Divine Self Disclosure in Abū al-Barakāt al-Baghdādī

Abstract

This paper examines whether, and in what sense, God can be known in the thought of the sixth/twelfth-century philosopher Abū al Barakāt al-Baghdādī. Through a close reading of Chapter 22 of the first maqāla of the Metaphysics of his Kitāb al-Muʿtabar fī al-Ḥikma, it argues that his account of knowing God is inseparable from his analysis of time, and in particular of the »now« (al-ān). On this basis, the paper argues that knowledge of God in Himself is neither confined to inference from acts nor reducible to demonstration. It is instead realized in the now, where divine disclosure and human reception coincide. The same distinction governs divine naming: names derived from acts remain inferential, whereas a name signifying the divine essence corresponds to the moment in which that essence is present to the knower.