Abstract

This article examines the relationship between Ibn Rushd’s demonstrative rationality and the notion of sacred intellect in the thought of Gholamhossein Ebrahimi Dinani through a comparative hermeneutic analysis within the framework of critical social theory. The main problem of the study is to investigate how Dinani rereads Ibn Rushd’s rationalist legacy in the horizon of contemporary thought and how this reinterpretation reflects a transformation in the meaning of rationality within the Islamic philosophical tradition. Ibn Rushd, as a representative of the Peripatetic tradition grounded in Aristotelian logic, defends the autonomy of philosophical reason and formulates the theory of demonstrative interpretation as a way to establish the compatibility of reason and revelation. But, Dinani, drawing on the Illuminationist and Sadraean traditions, reconceives reason not merely as a discursive or logical faculty but as an existential, luminous, and sacred reality intimately connected with revelation. From the perspective of critical social theory, this philosophical encounter is not merely a theoretical comparison, but a reflection of the broader tension between tradition and modernity and of the struggle over the meaning of rationality in the lifeworld of Islamic civilization. The findings suggest that Dinani does not reject Ibn Rushd’s demonstrative rationality; rather, he reinterprets and rearticulates it within an ontological and spiritual framework. The study concludes that this movement from demonstrative interpretation to sacred intellect represents a critical effort to recover epistemic identity and to revive a form of religious and spiritual rationality in response to the dominance of instrumental rationality in the modern world.