The Hi, I'm Peter Adamson, and you're listening to the History of Philosophy podcast, brought to you with the support of Kings College London and the

LMU in Munich, online at www. History of Philosophy.net. Today's episode, Eyes Wide Shut, Rumi and Philosophical Suvism.

As you may have noticed, I like a good etymology, about the only thing I enjoy more is an almond quasant. The word quasant of course comes from the French for crescent and that derives from the Latin crescaree meaning to, because the growing or waxing moon is crescent-shaped.

Hungry for more?

How about the word mysticism?

It derives ultimately from the Greek verb mooane meaning to shut one's eyes or lips a reference to the secrecy of Greek mystery religion

Appropriately enough mysticism makes many historians of philosophy want to shut their eyes and block their ears for good measure.

After all, philosophy is devoted to rational discourse, whereas mysticism tries to reach beyond the limits of reason to what cannot be said or even thought.

Yet we've seen before that mysticism has both drawn on and contributed to the history of philosophy.

Neoplatinism is often considered a kind of mysticism.

That is less true than often supposed.

Platinus, for instance, is far less mystical than his reputation would suggest, but it certainly

applies to a figure like the Pseudodionysius.

We saw mysticism blooming in the soil of Spain, and France too in the case of the Jewish tradition of Cabalah,

and of course with the greatest of the Muslim mystics the Sufi thinker Ibn Arabi.

Now I'd like to turn our gaze to some other thinkers whose eyes were

wide shut, Sufi authors of the Eastern tradition. As with Cabala, the full history of Sufism would burst the seams of this podcast series just as surely as too many quasants will burst the seams of your trousers.

The Sufis contributed to the literary traditions of Persia, the Ottoman Empire, India, and even China.

So we'll have further opportunities to note their influence in future episodes.

But in this episode, I'm going to focus on just two men, men who knew each other well,

who died a year apart and who both lived in Konia in Central Anatolia during the 13th century.

Probably you will have heard of one of them, but not the other.

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