INTENTIONAL APPROACH TO THE INTERPRETATION OF EXISTENTIAL CATEGORIES IN THE “KHIKMETS” OF AKHMET YASSAWI AHMET YESEVİ’NİN HİKMETLERİNDEKİ VAROLUŞ KATEGORİLERİ YORUMUNA YÖNELİMSEL YAKLAŞIM

In the article helped by conceptual and phenomenological research methods, existential categories in the “Diwani Khikmets” by Akhmet Yassawi are studied. The aim of the article is to analyze human existence problems, the meaning of life, the relationship of being and time, true love for the Creator, and the phenomenon of life and death. Although Akhmet Yassawi does not belong to the existentialists, existential categories can be clearly distinguished in the “Khikmets”. The concepts of “The Book of Wisdom” are a storehouse of answers to transcendental questions for people in existential crisis. The main purpose of the “Khikmets” is religious, and Akhmet Yassawi presents “intentional” advice on vital issues such as world creation and human nature (being), using existential categories. When we talk about the intentional meaning of existential categories, we mean the understanding of intentionality in Husserl's phenomenology, which considers the act of orientation as the inclusion of the subject in the analysis of an exclusively given object of philosophizing without distraction to other cognitive constructs. It is this subjective experience and living of the act of contemplation that is vividly expressed in “Khikmets” by Akhmet Yassawi. Akhmet Yassawi talks about such deep and exclusively existential categories as life and death. In modern philosophy, it was existentialism that revived attention to these concepts. From the point of view of existentialists, life, even in a situation of absurdity, is of the highest value. But this is life, always “borderline” with death. Life on the verge of death, loss and the search for the meaning of life are situations that Akhmet Yassawi raised long before the existentialism of the twentieth century.
Keywords: Akhmet Yasawi, “Khikmets”, Existential Motives in Intentionality, Transcendental Experiences.