Abstract

Philosophical study of human being can be undertaken both ontologically and epistemologically. By analyzing religious texts about anthropological issues, al-Razi has reflected upon the situation of human knowledge. He has addressed multiple topics in human epistemology in his works. Some of his views on human epistemology are as follows: Despite their limitations, human faculties are capable of gaining knowledge; Human knowledge can be both theoretical and practical; Non-epistemic factors such as virtue and sin has influence on human knowledge; With respect to their level of knowledge, human beings can be categorized as incomplete, complete and perfect complement ; God’s saints knowledge is complete and that of the prophets is perfect complement so that their task is to guide incomplete persons towards perfection; It is necessary for incomplete persons to have epistemic trust in the prophets. In this article, by using a descriptive and analytic method we shall show that, according to al-Razi, though human beings are capable of gaining knowledge, they have to trust in the prophets epistemologically to achieve the true knowledge.