A Comparison of Human Nature in the East and the West Through a Work of Necip Fazıl Kısakürek

Abstract

Civilizations' understanding of human beings is the most fundamental determinant of other assumptions of that civilization. For this reason, in order to comprehend a civilization, it is important and necessary to first understand where that civilization positions human beings. Eastern and Western civilizations are two comprehensive civilizations that can be considered as larger and more influential than others among the civilizations that have existed throughout history. There are numerous ways in which these two cultures are different from one another in how they see life, existence, people, and knowledge. Under these two broad civilizations, this study focuses on the Islamic Sufism's conception of the human being in Eastern Civilization and the humanist thought in Western Civilization. The approach of humanist thought and Sufi thought to human beings is analyzed on the basis of Necip Fazıl Kısakürek's work titled Western Contemplation and Islamic Sufism. The study has also been supported with data from other sources to support the idea here. The study is concluded by interpreting the information obtained from the relevant sources in a comparative manner. In this book, Kısakürek discussed philosophy, which is the basis of Western civilization, and Islamic Sufism, which is accepted from Eastern civilization. According to Kısakürek, the most important characteristic of the West is that it attaches great importance to the love of matter and the pleasure of nature in order to overcome its current situation and progress. For this reason, the West has remained alien and distant from the inner realm, that is, the bâtın. In Sufism, on the contrary, all the effort is made to beautify the interior, not the exterior. The meaning and responsibility that these two perspectives, which have such a fundamental difference, attribute to human beings are also different from each other.