Hikmah

Hikmah (also Hikmat, حكمة, ) is an Arabic word that means wisdom, sagacity, philosophy, rationale or underlying reason. The Quran mentions "hikmah" in various places, where it is understood as knowledge and understanding of the Quran, fear of God, and a means of nourishing the spirit or intellect. Hikmah is sometimes associated with prophethood, faith, intelligence ('aql), comprehension (fahm), or the power of rational demonstration. In the Quran, God bestows wisdom upon whomever He chooses, and various individuals including the House of Abraham, David, Joseph, Moses, Jesus, Muhammad and Luqman are said to have received wisdom. The Quran also uses the term hikmah in connection with the Book or the scripture in general. The Quran also refers to itself as the Wise Book, and refers to God as The Wise in several places. Hadith literature also emphasizes the importance of acquiring hikmah, which is believed to have been reflected in the sunnah of the Prophet. Ibn Sina believed that the concept of "hikmah" is intricately related to the actualization and refinement of the human soul. He described it as the process of achieving perfection of the human soul through the understanding of things and the assessment of both theoretical and practical truths according to human capacity. Mulla Sadra characterized hikmah as a means by which humans can attain a level of understanding that makes them resemble the objective world and align with the order of the universe. He categorized hikmah into two types - theoretical and practical. Theoretical hikmah pertains to faith, while practical hikmah pertains to good deeds. Fakhr al-Din al-Razi equated hikmah with kalam, while Seyyed Hossein Nasr linked it to sapiential knowledge. Hikmah has also been linked to intellectual sciences, particularly traditional philosophy. On a more practical level, hikmah has been explained in several ways, such as acquiring knowledge through best of sciences, combining knowledge with action, having practical experience, applying fair judgment, understanding the true nature of things, avoiding ignorance, placing things in their proper context and assigning them their rightful status, and doing good deeds.