idrāk (apprehension) — idrāk is apprehension as such, the mind's taking hold of a thing; fikr is the discursive operation of thought, the ordering of what is already known so as to reach what is not yet known.
General Technical Meaning
Fikr is discursive thought: the ordering of matters already known so as to arrive at what is not yet known. Classical definitions describe it as a movement of the mind toward the principles of what is sought and back again to the thing sought, and contrast it with intuition, in which that transition is immediate.
In ʿAllāmah Ṭabāṭabāʾī’s Works
Risālat al-Manāmāt wa-l-Nubuwwāt
discursive thought — explanation
Fikr is the ordering of premises, undertaken by choice and with deliberation, by which the mind moves from what it knows toward what it does not yet know. It is the mode of apprehension proper to the human being, acquired gradually, and it stands over against what a person has by innate nature.
Limits of this account
It does not make every act of apprehension discursive, and it does not claim that discursive thought is immune to error: the treatise says this ordering may go wrong through a hidden mistake.
al-Mīzān fī Tafsīr al-Qurʾān
thought as the foundation of human perfection
In the discussion appended to al-Baqarah 2:63–74 the author states the doctrine al-Manāmāt opens with: the human being reaches his perfection only through volitional acts; volition arises only from thought; so thought is the sole foundation of his existential perfection, which therefore requires practical or theoretical assents — the propositions by which he accounts for what he does.
Limits of this account
It states thought's role in human perfection; it is not a definition of discursive thought as an operation.
al-Mīzān fī Tafsīr al-Qurʾān
thinking and the mental operation of taqdīr
At al-Muddaththir 74:18 the author leaves thinking (tafkīr) as too familiar to define and defines the next step, taqdīr: an ordering of meanings and attributes in the mind, reached through thinking, by setting some before or after others and positing or removing them, so as to reach a sought purpose. This shows an operation that proceeds through thought.
Limits of this account
The definition here belongs to taqdīr, not to fikr; it is context for how thought is put to work, not a definition of thought or of the phrase ‘complete discursive apprehension’.
Read in context
Open a passage in the edition where this term is linked.