Certainty
“yaqīn”
idea · 2 works · 3 mentions · 4 anchored passages
certainty · اليقين · certain assent · confidence · the certain · true belief · yaqīn · الاعتقاد الصادق · التصديق اليقيني · الثقة
in the texts
Kitāb mīzān al-ḥaqq fī al-manṭiq
Certain assent, the highest grade of cognition, from which doubt and probability must be distinguished
And errors often occur in the picturing and the conceiving, and in the seeking of assent and its attainment, so that no distinction is drawn between the complete conception and the one falling short of it, nor between certain assent and what is near to it, and doubt, and mere probability;
men's cognitions, in summary statement and approximately, divide in their roots into opinion (*ẓann*), estimation, intuition (*ḥads*), intellect, certainty (*yaqīn*), doubt, the prevailing first presumption, inspiration (*ilhām*), foreboding (*ījās*), the passing thought (*khāṭir*), the thought that comes unbidden (*sāniḥ*), and the thought that gleams (*lāʼiḥ*).
But since these yield no certainty (yaqīn), and are arts (ṣināʻāt) proper to themselves and standing on their own, I have passed them over in this treatise
al-Saʻādah fī falsafat al-akhlāq
Unfailing assent, the aim of the theoretical art and the mark of demonstration, attainable only by direct intellectual sight and not by report.
And this state of confidence and certainty is not obtained by report without direct sight, and is not completed by narration without beholding, and the soul does not come to rest in it save after speculation upon the truth.
As for the art whose end is knowledge alone, its aim is the apprehension of the truth and true belief and certainty without fail, and this is preferred for its own sake and not for another's;
either they are all of them true and certain, with no obscurity in them;