Why do we need Islamic Philosophy? | Professor Sajjad Rizvi

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Presented during the 2014 Muslim Group Conference

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[0:12]Alum welcome to this session in the evening um I actually won't

[0:21]directly address the question which has been set to me um quite

[0:28]simply because um scientists should recognize their limitations just as we recognize

[0:32]our limitations in other areas of inquiry such as the humanities and

[0:41]so forth so um you know we basically don't talk the same

[0:44]language um so I'm not particularly interested or worried about what someone

[0:50]like Steven Hawking may or may not say um what I want

[0:55]to say is something about what we should think about uh philosophy

[0:59]why why we should actually be interested in philosophy even before we

[1:03]get to the question of philosophy in the Islamic traditions and uh

[1:08]something about how um philosophy to a certain extent has been instrumentalized

[1:13]in the modern Islamic tradition for very important reasons and then come

[1:20]back to a more um older existing notion of philosophy which uh

[1:27]I think we do need to recover which represents a much more

[1:30]holistic approach to how we understand reality and how that reality binds

[1:39]us and ties us to the Transcendent and to the U the

[1:42]newal so starting off with you know why we should be interested

[1:47]in philosophy um of course I would say that everyone should be

[1:50]interested in philosophy because if we go back to someone like Plato

[1:53]you know if we're not engaging with an examination of who we

[1:59]are where we are where we came from where are we going

[2:01]then it kind of begs a question of why we bother claiming

[2:05]to be human uh the other day I said if you don't

[2:09]read you're not human now I'm kind of saying if you don't

[2:12]do philosophy you're not human um so deliberate provocation and it'll be

[2:17]interesting to see how you know people might want to come back

[2:22]to me at that um but fundamentally there are a number of

[2:25]aspects of how we might understand philosophy as a particular type of

[2:29]inquiry which I think are absolutely essential um to how we live

[2:33]and how we understand the reality that we live first of all

[2:39]is the nature of a Critical examination of where we are who

[2:43]we are and link to that how that Critical examination will in

[2:50]inform the way in which we read texts I said this before

[2:53]reading texts is partly about how we make sense of Revelation such

[2:59]as scripture but also about how how we read the world around

[3:02]us how we read each other uh we do this all the

[3:06]time um you know in basic communication when we are speaking to

[3:09]each other there's this constant uh no process of evaluation which is

[3:14]sometimes not very conscious but uh in way we in which we

[3:20]interpret what people say so you know people say certain things to

[3:22]us and we understand what that means perhaps at a straightforwardly linguistic

[3:27]level but we understand from what they say and how they say

[3:30]it and how they pose it and perhaps through their body language

[3:36]a whole set of other things as well and um philosophy actually

[3:39]provides a number of tools which allow us to make sense of

[3:43]how we might read that alongside that um regardless of what people

[3:50]like Hawking think the European um intellectual tradition and there is absolutely

[3:58]no doubt about that going back at least to Plato if not

[4:01]to Aristotle well certainly to Aristotle um privileges philosophy as the Supreme

[4:06]form of inquiry there are various types of Sciences and inquiry which

[4:12]AR the philosophy is the Supreme one quite simply because it's through

[4:16]philosophy engaging with an examination of existence as it is that we

[4:27]are provided with the tools and the subjects that we use um

[4:30]in the inquiry of pretty much all other um Sciences whether those

[4:36]are sort of physical or exact Sciences whether those are um things

[4:41]like ethics and so forth Aristotle is very keen um to to

[4:45]emphasize this and this notion of of philosophy as the Apex of

[4:51]a particular hierarchy of Sciences is something that was very much um

[4:56]embraced by the Islamic Traditions as well but the two other elements

[5:01]which I think are very important about why we should be interested

[5:03]in philosophy and I haven't actually of course given you a definition

[5:05]yet I'm going to come to definitions later one is that and

[5:12]I indicated this in our discussion uh panel discussion yesterday is that

[5:17]philosophy to a certain extent can provide us with the sorts of

[5:22]arguments perhaps even questions which can constitute a consolation of faith um

[5:32]Faith as I was trying to suggest is not straightforwardly rational but

[5:36]there's no reason in a sense why one might not produce rational

[5:44]arguments for why one should have faith and in this sense um

[5:49]philosophy then provides certain ways of corroborating and cons and consoling individuals

[5:56]who may already have certain views or beliefs or faith or practic

[6:00]is for all sorts of reasons and it acts as a reinforcement

[6:04]for that and this is precisely where I would Place some of

[6:09]the classical um proofs for the existence of God in this category

[6:13]they consolations fundamental fundamentally their consolations uh and this is um again

[6:19]very much within the philosophical tradition uh a classic example is um

[6:24]beas's constellation of philosophy which um he wrote um basically in prison

[6:33]uh when he h was having sort of an existential crisis of

[6:37]faith and uh he wrote a work which was trying to ex

[6:41]Express and and work out in detail philosophical Arguments for the existence

[6:47]of God Scripture and so forth um and this was a way

[6:53]of perhaps keeping him sane or certainly keeping him rooted uh in

[6:57]these difficult times and we see lots of examples of this in

[7:02]the Islamic tradition as well and associated with this is another reason

[7:06]why we might be interested in philosophy which is uh directly assed

[7:09]to this which is this notion that philosophy can be a handmaiden

[7:13]to theology again very well known in the uh European uh Scholastic

[7:19]tradition where if you wanted to make sense of theological truths about

[7:25]the nature of God about how God interacts with humans how humans

[7:31]reciprocate then you utilize the tools that uh philosophical inquiry and categories

[7:39]um um provide for you now having said all that and there

[7:44]are a number of other I think senses in which you could

[7:49]take uh philosophy um I just want to say a few things

[7:52]about how uh philosophy has been promoted particularly in a seminary hak

[7:59]cont text which I think is quite significant and and the the

[8:05]classical figure of course is um and his two works and also

[8:14]his which are all products of this period from roughly the 50s

[8:20]to the 70s where he was producing his major work and if

[8:24]you look at those structures um the structures of those texts you

[8:28]really see what he's trying to do he is basically and he

[8:34]and he says this in um uh a famous account which has

[8:36]been repeated again and again about how he uh when he first

[8:43]moved to back in 46 he started teaching a circle of students

[8:48]philosophy and the reason why he thought it was essential to study

[8:52]philosophy and also actually interestingly why he thought exegesis was important um

[8:58]was because uh in this period immediate period after the second world

[9:04]war there were lots of intellectual challenges out there and the these

[9:09]were challenges which were being posed in Iran in Iraq and various

[9:11]other places and there were challenges coming from atheism from different types

[9:15]of materialism from different types of skepticism and he felt that what

[9:23]the Seminary students needed more than say the study of Hadith or

[9:28]the study of or whatever was airm philosophical grounding which could allow

[9:34]them to formulate arguments in defense of their faith and this was

[9:42]absolutely essential so he um he says this uh uh when he's

[9:46]reflecting on what happened uh when he moved to 46 and you

[9:52]see this then expressed in his texts so his texts are concerned

[9:55]with um a number of um things which will then reinforce or

[10:04]refute uh elements of the intellectual challenges which were present uh to

[10:15]the Seminary um with a goal to establishing both that God exists

[10:19]and also that humans have a relationship of reciprocation to God so

[10:26]for example um if we take three um classic uh challenges um

[10:32]one say is uh skepticism that perhaps we cannot really know anything

[10:39]uh one which is materialism that uh there is nothing uh in

[10:47]existence beyond that which is material uh and of course if you

[10:51]say that then it raises the whole sort of question about well

[10:54]what might the nature of the Soul be and of course what

[10:57]might God be if everything is materal aterial either God is also

[11:01]material or God does not exist uh significantly um and the um

[11:10]the third type of uh uh uh problem that he was dealing

[11:19]with was whether a skepticism about whether anything exists external to the

[11:23]human um which I guess you might call the problem of metaphysical

[11:27]realism and so he to counter these three types of um intellectual

[11:35]challenges which are very much present and and primarily were expressed through

[11:38]different types of marxist thought um in the postwar uh period and

[11:45]he presents them as I said both in and he discusses them

[11:53]in this circle which was then um published uh by uh as

[12:02]and he does this in a number of ways uh the skepticism

[12:07]is responded to by saying well actually we can know certain types

[12:11]of things and those types of knowledge which I'll say perhaps a

[12:18]bit more about tomorrow um have to be rooted in a basic

[12:20]innate notion that we are self-aware and we have self- knowledge so

[12:26]everything then arises out of the self and movees forward secondly that

[12:29]has to be much more than the purely material because of the

[12:34]ways in which we might deal with issues around um human experiences

[12:40]how we might deal with issues around the nature of Consciousness um

[12:45]how we might issue with uh deal with issues around um ethical

[12:50]evaluations um of um uh issues around Justice around goodness um around

[12:59]evil and so forth and of course we we can say that

[13:04]to a certain extent the idea that materialism in itself is insufficient

[13:10]is increasingly um you know things are turning around even in philosophy

[13:16]where we might have said that in a earli generation uh materialism

[13:20]was becoming quite dominant at the very least since the 70s with

[13:25]um significant articles such as Tom Nagel's um what does it mean

[13:28]to be a bat which actually is quite a a cool title

[13:32]for an article um it's a very important article uh really suggests

[13:40]why it is not good enough to look at The Human Experience

[13:42]and what it means to be human purely in terms of what

[13:47]is material because ultimately with the examination of any type of organism

[13:51]you need to really make sense of what it means for one

[13:55]to see the perspective of that particular organism and it's it's much

[14:00]more than just the the physicality of that now as I said

[14:08]you find the these types of responses happening or um taking place

[14:15]within um Al's work and sometimes it's said that um compared to

[14:22]some other Tendencies even among some of his students his work tends

[14:28]to be bit more dry and I guess his work is a

[14:31]bit more dry quite simply because of the sort of challenges he's

[14:34]facing and the conceptions of philosophy which are working so you know

[14:39]if if you're faced with um philosophers who are basically saying look

[14:43]it's nonsense to talk about a notion of existence um you know

[14:49]we can't really be sure about whether we can know anything um

[14:53]really philosophy has to be about the analysis of language and not

[14:57]much else then your your response is going to be very much

[15:03]in that particular type of vein very precise um very clipped um

[15:07]very aysen in a sense but I think we're now in this

[15:16]uh period where that sort of response to a certain extent is

[15:20]not good enough and we do actually have other works of his

[15:23]which I think are far more interesting uh such as the um

[15:31]uh and others which try to take us in slightly different directions

[15:37]and they do this by really kind of bringing us back to

[15:43]I think far older and ultimately I think some of these are

[15:47]are pre-islamic at least in the kind of historical sense of what

[15:53]we might mean by Islam uh Notions of what philosophy is really

[15:56]about and Central to this is this notion um which I'm quite

[16:00]keen on which is philosophy as a particular way of life and

[16:07]philosophy as a an inquiry which is geared towards acquiring wisdom and

[16:12]acquiring wisdom is associated with being becoming Godlike uh it's absolutely Central

[16:19]to the platonic tradition and I would argue it's absolutely Central to

[16:23]the later Islamic tradition as well because it sees this recovery of

[16:29]wisdom as being essential to something which is revealed it's prophetic it's

[16:35]hikma wisdom in the quranic sense of it's something which is um

[16:42]given uh provided by God it's then transmitted from prophetic lines and

[16:49]in the handout I give you a particular type of genealogy of

[16:52]philosophy which becomes very much standard in the Islamic tradition of how

[16:58]philosophy basically starts with Seth she and goes all the way through

[17:01]to the Greeks and then in effect returns to the Muslims later

[17:08]um it has a prophetic origin and it comes back to the

[17:12]prophetic uh tradition uh so it's it's something which is not just

[17:20]a I guess what you might call a secular or a neutral

[17:22]engagement but it's rather an understanding of reality which is deeply sacred

[17:28]or sacral and so in that sense doing philosophy understanding reality um

[17:40]engaging in demonstrations about the nature of reality um is directly related

[17:46]to certain types of exeresis whether it's of the Quran or whether

[17:52]it's of um prophetic and imic sayings and uh again I would

[18:00]I would argue that one of the best examples of this is

[18:03]someone like mad so let let me just deal a bit more

[18:10]with the question of godlikeness um before I I move on to

[18:13]this definition of philosophy and wisdom so the classic the locus classicus

[18:19]of what it means to do philosophy as a way of becoming

[18:27]like God is platus Theus I've given you the um passage here

[18:30]uh and this is uh of necessity it is Mortal nature and

[18:36]our vicinity that are haunted by evils and that is why we

[18:38]should also try to escape from here to there as quickly as

[18:42]we can to escape is to become like God in so far

[18:44]as is possible and to become like God is to become just

[18:50]and holy together with wisdom so the idea is that we're we're

[18:53]kind of um imprisoned in this world of vicissitudes and evils and

[18:59]we need to flee from it and fleeing from it is partly

[19:01]about understanding where we fit in with this world and what the

[19:04]Ultimate Reality of this world is and that fleeing from is moving

[19:11]towards God as a sanctuary which I mentioned in my first talk

[19:14]you know the idea of the sanctury of God um and once

[19:19]we move towards God God we're moving towards Justice and Holiness and

[19:24]wisdom these are sort of ultimate virtues which are associated with the

[19:28]Divine and of course this is is very much um related to

[19:35]a mystical practical mystical tradition uh which would argue that a key

[19:40]aspect of wisdom or acquiring or being on the path of wisdom

[19:43]is uh to as the famous saying or um exaltation is acquire

[19:52]the virtues of the Divine acquire the virtues of God and of

[19:57]course there various ways in which you acquire it you very um

[20:01]you acquire them uh you move towards God you move through the

[20:05]mediation of the Divine names invocation of the Divine names contemplation of

[20:13]the names contemplation of course on the um the reality of the

[20:16]imams as Divine names and so forth but also to recognize that

[20:23]this moving towards and to become Godlike has certain limitations in so

[20:27]far as it is humanly possible because our very human form then

[20:33]has certain limitations within that um I've given you another quotation which

[20:39]is from aunus dasas calos which is a very important late antique

[20:47]Handbook of what philosophy is and it become it begins with this

[20:52]um expression of uh the the goal of philosophy this this notion

[20:57]that we we uh ATT attain um a likeness to the Divine

[21:03]uh and this attainment of likeness is is much more than just

[21:07]a certain type of contemplation it's not just an internal um reflection

[21:11]upon who we are and where we are but actually require certain

[21:15]types of ritual practice certain types of Ceremonies certain types of what

[21:19]I would call spiritual practices which are absolutely essential and the spiritual

[21:24]practices I would argue are not necessarily um divorced from uh the

[21:33]standard ritual practices that one might find in religion and this is

[21:37]something that certainly the Nate antique philosophers um understood well was that

[21:42]an indication that I'm almost up no okay you should know better

[21:49]um so coming on to uh the question of how we Define

[21:55]philosophy and I'll give you a a quick definition which is again

[21:57]from from my chat madra incidentally um just because I talk a

[22:03]lot about mulad doesn't think I doesn't mean that I think he's

[22:07]perfect and it's certainly not um and you should never ever think

[22:12]anyone is infallible when they're not um and you should always take

[22:18]with a barrel of salt anything that anyone says including what I

[22:22]say to you so be critical if anything if if an engagement

[22:26]philosophy tells you anything it is precisely that you have to be

[22:31]critical with what people say to you or what you read um

[22:34]do it it's basically um It's a Wonderful rule of thumb um

[22:41]accept people expect people to have good intentions but expect them often

[22:45]to be wrong as well and that's perfectly fine the definition that

[22:51]M gives is an important one which kind of sums up what

[22:53]the entirety of the Islamic philosophical tradition is and this is from

[22:59]his major work um and it's this know that philosophy the word

[23:07]here of course is hikma wisdom is a perfecting of the human

[23:17]soul note the process perfecting um it kind of depends on how

[23:24]seriously you take a must in Arabic but I I take it

[23:26]fairly seriously to mean that we're talking about a process a master

[23:30]of course is a verbal well at least can be translated as

[23:35]a verbal noun um of the human soul insia the human soul

[23:39]being the very bearer of our identity and who we are and

[23:44]it's something which is in the constant process of flux and change

[23:50]and perfecting and becoming from our very Inception this is something that

[23:55]mul sadra has it's um he discusses how it is that you

[23:57]know we we develop from being an embryo to our old age

[24:02]and even Beyond we're constantly changing even when we die that process

[24:07]never ends uh we're we're constantly developing and becoming even in the

[24:12]afterlife then of course he would argue even uh assuming one uh

[24:16]attains Paradise one continues this process because it's in the very nature

[24:21]of human existence for this to be the case and this perfecting

[24:27]is through cognition of realities of existence so understanding what the nature

[24:32]of existence is which goes back to Aristotle as they truly are

[24:36]so not just being deceived by appearances but really kind of investigating

[24:41]what is the undying reality of something and through judgments made through

[24:48]demonstrations demonstrations classical Aristotelian syllogisms forms of deduction uh which are considered

[24:54]to be um which are considered to yield certainty and that's the

[25:01]key thing that through um logical reasoning you achieve certainty and the

[25:06]truth about things and these are not to be understood through conjecture

[25:11]or through adherence to Authority one of the things that that m

[25:16]is very keen on and I think it's kind of ironic that

[25:22]then people don't really take this seriously is that he's really against

[25:27]of ideas he's really against the against the notion that if you

[25:34]just hear from someone or if you read from IB CA or

[25:36]whatever that this is the nature of something or this is the

[25:41]argument it's not good enough just for you to rehearse it but

[25:43]rather you have to make sense of what that argument is for

[25:47]yourself and you might actually find that you come up with a

[25:50]better version of it or you come up with a version which

[25:54]makes more sense for you in your particular type of context to

[26:00]the measure of human capacity again noticing that there are certain elements

[26:04]of our embodied nature which will uh constitute limits of what one

[26:15]can do there's elements of what it is that we are in

[26:19]you know within this physical body that cause us to perhaps be

[26:24]shielded or constrained from understanding why issues you have a very um

[26:32]extensive uh I guess mystical uh tradition of texts um which argue

[26:41]for example that the body is a hijab it's a hijab from

[26:44]true knowledge um it's uh an expression of our material attachment it's

[26:50]an expression of our passions our loves our desires um and some

[26:57]of these you know we think are perfectly Norm normal sort of

[27:00]a desire for um love that we have for our family for

[27:06]our friends um for our homes and so forth but these are

[27:08]all things which actually potentially take you away from understanding your rootedness

[27:14]in a reality which is beyond that which ultimately is about the

[27:20]um relationship with God and one of course thinks about this notion

[27:24]that comes up in the Quran a number of times that it's

[27:30]precisely those sorts of attachments that we have which constitute um trials

[27:36]and tribulations which afflict us which we then have to kind of

[27:40]overcome and the the end of this and I I just realize

[27:45]I forgot to put the punch line in the quotation in the

[27:51]handout is that by doing this you attain of similitude to the

[28:00]Creator and what this means is that once one has that similitude

[28:03]to the great I completely forgot the second par paragraph I do

[28:08]apologize um you can then ascribe a rational order to the universe

[28:13]you kind of see how things fit in together you you see

[28:18]where you are what your relationship is with the cosmos and what

[28:21]then the relationship of those two uh features the microcosm and the

[28:26]macrocosm are um with God as this kind of triangulated set of

[28:36]realities which are inter um uh um interconnected but ultimately come from

[28:41]God so that's kind of the the final uh end is um

[28:49]acquiring similitude to God um so that you can ascribe a rational

[28:58]order to things and understand how um things fit together now in

[29:05]um other texts he then uh sad makes it clearer how this

[29:09]constitutes a particular way of life that this is not just a

[29:17]theoretical um form of understanding um and I've given you one small

[29:25]quotation here which um is from his and this is on uh

[29:28]the if I remember correctly it's the introduction the to his on

[29:34]um which actually is one of the more interesting um sections of

[29:39]his T where he's talking about the Perfection of the human um

[29:44]again I realize I've just written down man here that's bad it

[29:47]should be say human um the word is definitely insan insan does

[29:54]not mean man uh lies in the perception of universal realities and

[29:58]the idea is that if you understand universals if you understand um

[30:05]basic realities which or categories which are constitutive of various types of

[30:08]individuals then you can understand the particulars which follow from that and

[30:16]a disposition to understanding things uh in the way God understands in

[30:21]Divine cognition and understanding that there is um there is something or

[30:27]there a phenomena which trans realities which transcend material things that we

[30:32]sense um and that there is a process of self-purification from the

[30:39]restraints of carnal and passionate appetites that again is about the kind

[30:46]of um the the locating where we are as embodied individuals and

[30:50]then trying to overcome some of those attachments or at least to

[30:54]to understand where they fit and he says that this can only

[30:59]be acquired through and and this this four-fold thing I I think

[31:02]I mentioned it the other day as well um comes up again

[31:06]and again that these forms of perfection are acquired through guidance through

[31:12]teaching through discipline and the formation of righteous character and this is

[31:15]precisely this notion that you do need teachers who can guide you

[31:22]along these sorts of understanding and they sometimes that the teacher does

[31:27]this through an aporetic um process or perhaps a Socratic process so

[31:32]the best way in which you learn things is if I kind

[31:35]of fire questions like I point to you and say tell me

[31:39]what philosophy is or tell me what the soul is or what

[31:40]is a concept of a category what is a concept and then

[31:44]I force you to ver think through and we have a sort

[31:46]of a a debate dialectical discussion about it that's clearly the best

[31:51]way that people understand things unfortunately at times one wonders whether that

[31:56]happens in education anymore um but but certainly this idea that you

[32:01]it's more important to know how to ask questions and perhaps to

[32:07]ask right sorts of questions which is key to guidance and teaching

[32:11]discipline and here we mean disciplining both the body and the Soul

[32:15]this comes back to this notion of spiritual practices um as a

[32:22]an essential part of philosophy as a way of life and the

[32:25]formation of righteous character that this notion of philosophy as a way

[32:30]of life is about inculcating a type of Ethics it's about what

[32:35]sort of person you are so it's not good enough for you

[32:43]to be simply an individual who has a wonderful understanding of metaphysics

[32:49]but frankly you're kind of um serial killer and um you know

[32:54]I guess some sort of casual thief of some sort uh um

[32:58]and uh and you abuse your friends and family or whatever uh

[33:03]there there's this this kind of um I guess cognitive dissonance and

[33:08]practical dissonance just doesn't work um so the formation of righteous characters

[33:15]is is important philosophy as a way of life is partly then

[33:21]about a sort of a therapy of the Soul if you will

[33:26]it's a way in which when you think about um uh underlying

[33:29]realities when you um rehearse and then try and critically engage with

[33:39]arguments you're dealing with a way of of curing certain types of

[33:43]ills within your soul and the the most important ill within your

[33:47]soul of course is ignorance it's not knowing things it's not knowing

[33:51]how to do things uh it's the fundamental the fundamental Vice actually

[33:56]is ignorance is that no doubt about that and that's um something

[34:03]we see for example when you look at Umi where um you

[34:07]know we start off with theab of and of um of intellect

[34:13]understanding and of ignorance but also that once you have trained your

[34:21]yourself in this particular way when you once you have attached yourself

[34:25]uh rooted yourself to the divine once you've understood that ritual practice

[34:31]is of significance then by by doing these things you actually do

[34:36]become a better type of person there's kind of a um an

[34:40]inculcation which um you missed the one in the middle at um

[34:46]where you um you realize that it kind of makes you a

[34:54]better person in so far as you become perhaps a bit more

[34:56]relaxed about things um you know the better you understand things sometimes

[35:01]you um you're less worried about things um ignorance um is is

[35:11]fear as they say you know um you you uh tend to

[35:12]fear things which you just don't know anything about the more you

[35:17]know the less you're fearful of what might happen and in that

[35:21]sense that this um philosophy as a way of life and this

[35:25]is kind of the punchline is also philosophy as a way of

[35:30]death because ultimately living well is also about dying well and by

[35:36]that I mean the death of the body I don't mean the

[35:41]death of the individual because of course um we don't die with

[35:45]the body but rather we we persist beyond that so so part

[35:49]of it is this kind of esesis as it's called the practice

[35:52]of philosophy as a way of life as an Ethics which is

[35:58]then also to a certain extent geared towards um dying well so

[36:04]what I'm saying is forget Steven Hawking um you know it's kind

[36:12]of a waste of time to even engage with that stuff what's

[36:14]more interesting is to think about what sort of resources do we

[36:20]have in the Islamic philosophical traditions which actually do speak to us

[36:24]I mean we have here a model of how philosophy works which

[36:28]is deeply ethical which actually does have very practical implications for the

[36:33]notion of you know we're all concerned with um good living and

[36:37]good dying um I've actually written this another thing which I'll if

[36:42]you're interested and give you reference I I wrote a a piece

[36:44]on on the good death a while ago which was um which

[36:48]I gave in an Interfaith context which kind of freaked people out

[36:53]because most people are scared of death uh and my point is

[36:55]well actually a good philosopher should never be scared of death and

[37:01]certainly a good she should you know Rush towards death in a

[37:03]certain sense not in a bad kind of Dy way but you

[37:07]know kind of in a in in a positive sense that um

[37:11]death is a is a release towards um towards true life um

[37:15]and I really should stop there so thank you for listening

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