Freedom: Sphere and Cube

Always, day and night, I find a strong temptation in myself to claim that Islam, indeed in its cultural feature, is morphologically a Platonic stream. And always, day and night, conservatively I suppress this temptation and try to satisfy myself merely considering the symbologic aspects. For example it seems meaningful to trace the Platonic symbolism of freedom in Islamic architecture which found its universal typical, as is known world-widely in the present, centuries after its early blooming. It’s meaningful because the chained man in the Platonic Cave who had been expected to get redemption through Hellenistic Neo-Platonic liturgy, having sought for his salvation on Jesus’ adequately Platonically interpreted cross, finally became promised by the Muslim missioners to find freedom through the Mohammedan faith which is expected by them to “drop their burden and their yokes which were upon them.” (Koran, 7: 157)

In order to start such a symbologic study I prefer to consider the most primary sense of freedom which is understood as a state of absence of obstacles with regard to an object of which ability of motion is a natural property. Likewise, ‘setting something free’ normally means to remove the obstacles against its expected motion.

If the mind is an entity which is essentially cognitive, its motion is nothing apart from cognition. Objectively, freedom of the mind to move towards an object is expressed by ‘intelligibility’ of the object. The preceding consideration takes a step from freedom as a property of the subject to freedom as a property of the object, just as in the common interpretation of freedom mentioned above, the objective concept of absence of obstacle, undertook the whole expression.

The Pythagorean School granted a potentially absolute freedom to mind while stating that “the elements of numbers are the elements of all entities.” (Metaphysics, A: 5 [986a]) Here, by numbers, they meant ‘Natural Numbers’ which seemed to them the most intelligible concept. Therefore as they meant that every thing is expressible by the means of Natural Numbers to an absolute mind, they granted the absolute freedom to mind. They were happy with their freedom only until they discovered the irrational quantities like the square root of 2 which can be expressed by no finite numerical formula. The explorer of these quantities has been said to have sunk in a shipwreck committed through a conspiracy by the Pythagoreans.

Plato took this fact as a justification to show how the material world which necessarily reflects the orthogonal dimensions of the space produces elements of unintelligibility: such a space consists of right triangles with legs of length 1 of which the hypotenuses are equal to the square root of 2. This hypotenuse is a length which visually can be sensed but rationally cannot be measured by the Natural numbers. It means the dimensional world consists of elements which are sensible but not intelligible. It’s an obstacle for the freedom of mind. (Republic [546c]; Timeaus [22]; also see Copleston’s A History of Philosophy, vol.1, part I, p. 220)


Therefore in the history of western symbology, it’s expectable to find the geometrical figures like square and cross which reflect the dimensionality of the space to symbolize bondage and its consequential suffering. Especially the latter, the cross, has an important place in the Christian iconography. There have been some Christian schools of mysticism taking the Christ on the cross as a metaphor standing for the man’s soul trapped by the material world for which the cross stands.


If square on the plane symbolizes mental bondage, in the space it will be expressed by cube. On the other hand, if there is a geometrical figure symbolizing freedom, it should express no-dimensionality. Such a figure cannot be any thing apart from circle and its spatial expression ‘Sphere’. This consideration led Plato’s Timeaus to suggest the sphere as the most complete figure, to be assumed as the shape of the whole unique universe and the cube as the most solid figure to be assumed as the shape of the innumerable particles of soil. Thus, indirectly he assigned oneness which is a formal property to sphere and plurality which is a material property to cube.

One may think these are nothing but the mere mathematical symbols; but for Plato no symbol is merely a symbol. A symbol is not able to connote an idea unless it makes the idea recollected and it cannot make the idea recollected unless it participates in the idea. For example, if there is any idea of freedom and if something symbolizes that idea, somehow it should be free by itself. The position in the case of mathematical symbols is even graver. Because they are located as media transferring the forms from the Ideal world to the material world, therefore the idea should been seen clearer and stronger in them. It means, if cube and sphere are the proper symbols for bondage and freedom, they should be respectively bonded and free by themselves. This fact was known by the first man who composed a cubic wagon with wheels and invented the first chariot. But the issue deserves more considerations: a footballer kicks the ball. Ball runs easily and it may stop in infinite positions while it maintains its formal balance. Somewhere else, a gambler casts a dice. It stops much earlier than the ball; but it has only six possible positions to sit for maintaining a balance. It means while in the case of sphere there is no formal differentiation, in the case of cube there is. A Platonic conclusion may be like this: the sphere is formally the most stable and materially the freest while the cube is formally variable and materially more solid. The statement which has been issued in the case of sphere shows that the sphere is formally more pure because it’s closer to the description which Plato gives of forms: an invariable idea free from material variation. Plato might allege that if cube formally were as pure as sphere, its definition should be as simple as sphere while its definition is much more synthetic than the definition of sphere. These evidences might seem enough to Plato to acknowledge the sphere and the cube as the proper symbols for freedom and bondage.

Now let’s shift our attention to the Islamic architecture which I think widely -much more widely than I mention in this paper- is influenced by Platonism. The typical structure in the Islamic architecture is a cubic hall placed under a semi-spherical dome.


The Islamic spiritual topography is a bi-dimensional system expecting godliness to come from the above to the below and directing its believers to the above as it is firmly accepted by the orthodox Muslims that their Prophet received his complete knowledge, purity, and prophecy during a journey to the skies.


This prophecy, as I mentioned previously, is believed to have gifted salvation to human being. Even in the daily rituals, a Muslim physically is directed to the above. These rituals usually are performed in the Mosque: a building which normally follows the typical structural pattern of the Islamic architecture.

It’s very important to know that in Islamic spiritual architecture, the interior is much more important than the façade or any other external features. Unlike Indo-Islamic buildings, in the main lands of the Islamic world, the Mosque is usually covered by a tick urban tissue so that a stranger visiting a bazaar suddenly may find himself in front of the entrance of the main Mosque of the city. Therefore, any structural symbolism should be viewed from the interior. Thus, a praying Muslim surrounded by a cubic-planed hall which usually has no view to outside, facing a spherical ceiling seeks for a kind of salvation which is expressed by the Arabic word ‘fath’ (ﻓﺘﺢ) which means ‘opening’ or ‘to remove the block’.


An elaborated explanation of this concept can be found at the beginning of the forty eighth chapter of Koran (48: 1-3). So I think it is meaningful to interpret this structure as a symbol of the path of salvation: a path from dimension to no-dimension; though I need another opportunity to explain philologically how this symbolism has been taken from the historical streams of Platonism.