On the Other: A Muslim View

Authors

Mile Babić

Abstract

The original Bosnian title of Rusmir Mahmutćehajić's book, Malo znanja, means “Little Knowledge” and comes from the Qur’an (17:85). It encapsulates the author’s fundamental insight and the fundamental thesis of the book, a thesis that places him securely in a current of thinkers conscious of their own ignorance that runs from Socrates to Nicholas of Cusa, from Socrates’ “I know that I know nothing” to Cusanus’ docta ingnorantia (learned ignorance). It is not accidental that I mention no thinkers of the modern period, caught up as they were by modernity's will for power, carried off into the realms of absolute knowledge, as fatal for individual human lives as for all life on the planet we know as Earth. Socrates had already said that God alone is wise, that God alone enjoys absolute knowledge. In this, he was followed by the entire Platonic and Neoplatonic tradition down to Nicholas of Cusa.

Recommended Citation

Babić, Mile (2012) "On the Other: A Muslim View," International Dialogue: Vol. 2, Article 12.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.32873/uno.dc.ID.2.1.1047
Available at: https://digitalcommons.unomaha.edu/id-journal/vol2/iss1/12