“Perfection” here does not mean flawlessness. Kamāl is the fulfilment or developed actuality proper to a thing — a capacity or state belonging to its nature becoming actual. A thing can be perfect in this sense while being, in the ordinary sense, quite imperfect.
غاية · ghāya
the end or goal toward which a development tends. Kamāl is the realized perfection itself, not the end it aims at.
تمام · tamām
the completeness a thing needs in order to be itself. Kamāl is a perfection reached through or beyond that completeness.
Preferred translation
perfection
Grammatical variants
perfections
perfect
more complete
Technical sense
the realized actuality a thing attains beyond merely being complete
Distinguish from
tamām (completeness) — tamām is completeness, a thing’s reaching what it needs in order to be itself; kamāl is a perfection beyond that completeness.
General Technical Meaning
Perfection is either primary, through which a species becomes that species in actuality, or secondary, consisting in the acts and passive states that follow from that species.
In ʿAllāmah Ṭabāṭabāʾī’s Works
Risālat al-Manāmāt wa-l-Nubuwwāt
perfection — explanation
Here, kamāl is the perfection proper to a real species—the actuality toward which its gradual development is ordered. The passage coordinates that perfection with an end and a completion without treating those terms as interchangeable.
al-Mīzān fī Tafsīr al-Qurʾān
Perfection and completion
At Q 5:3, al-Mīzān first quotes al-Rāghib’s lexical formulations: kamāl is the attainment of a thing’s intended purpose, while tamām is its reaching a limit that needs nothing external. ʿAllāmah then says the distinction may be obtained ‘by another route’ and analyzes how effects depend on a thing’s parts: tamām requires all constitutive parts or conditions, whereas kamāl can accrue through the effects of the parts. Other passages refine the distinction and allow metaphorical overlap, so it remains contextual rather than absolute.
Limits of this account
It does not make tamām and kamāl absolutely disjoint, since it expressly allows metaphorical substitution, and it does not by itself settle how al-Manāmāt uses the two terms.
Nihāyat al-Ḥikmah
Perfection and the end of motion
Nihāya describes the end attained by a moving thing as the ‘second perfection’ toward which its motion is directed. The moving thing is perfected by reaching that end; in the same account, tamām names the completion sought for its own sake. This relates kamāl to the actuality attained through motion without making kamāl and tamām interchangeable.
Limits of this account
It does not make perfection and completeness interchangeable labels.
Read in context
Open a passage in the edition where this term is linked.