mind and body in mulla sadra’s philosophy: a psychological

The International Journal of Indian Psychology ISSN 2348-5396 (e) | ISSN: 2349-3429 (p) Volume 2, Issue 4, DIP: B00316V2I42015 http://www.ijip.in | July – September, 2015

© 2015 I H Handel; licensee IJIP. This is an Open Access Research distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any Medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Mind and Body in Mulla Sadra’s Philosophy: A Psychological

Relationship

Hossien Kohandel1

ABSTRACT

Mind body problem is the old philosophical debate many philosophers in all ages have engaged

to solve the problem. Despite the efforts have been done by many philosophers of mind but still

they are not able to provide a reasonable explanation of the problem, however, Islamic

philosophers before MullaSadra also could not solve this problem. But MullaSadra introduced

one new philosophical principle, such as principality of existence, intensity of being and

substance in motion that succeeded to justify mind-body problem. This paper deals with the

historical background of this issue and then goes through the psychological idea of MullaSadra

on the relationship between mind and body.

Keywords: Mind-Body Problem, Mulla Sadra, Psychological Relationship.

Greek and Muslim philosophers discussed the question of the nature of soul and its relation with

body. Before we come to discuss the views of Mulla Sadra on this issue it may be related to

briefly introduce the ideas of two great philosophers, Aristotle and Plato. According to Plato,

soul is a simple substance that is unlimited and generates all things and, while bodies it is

immortal. Plato also believed but the soul and body are distinct from each other and this made

his position dualistic in an ordinary senses. The soul is known as a simple substance but body is

compounded or composite. The body consists of four elements of fire, water, earth, and air but

soul is indivisible. The soul, more ever is of three kinds namely spirit, appetite, and intellect.

Intellect is close to soul and appetite is close to body. When Plato spoke about the intellect or

wisdom, he took wisdom to mean remembering rather than learning. Wisdom was exact opposite

of ignorance and as such was closed to the intellect of soul. The idea of Aristotle about soul on

the other hand is based on the concept of form which can be known as soul of body. According

to him Soul is the perfection position for natural body. Soul and body are related to each other.

1Ph.D student of Philosophy, Department of Philosophy, Aligarh Muslim University, India.

Mind and Body in MullaSadra’s Philosophy: A Psychological Relationship

© The International Journal of Indian Psychology | 167

Soul is the form of body and body is the matter of soul. Soul is also the function of body. It was

like the knife and its function of slicing something. The knife in the case was the matter and the

function of slicing its form. Aristotle opposes the idea of Plato who that the soul and body can be

separated from each other. According to Aristotle, soul is the emulative actions of body and soul

cannot be separate from body. The soul also represented actuality while matter was potentiality.

Potentiality meant matter which has not yet become actuality. Actuality was the form of matter.

There could not be separation between from and matter just as the wax could not be separated

from the impression imprinted in it. Aristotle thus rejects Plato‟stheory of dualism. He believed

that body and soul are made at the same time and there is no priority of one over the others.

MullaSadra‟s position is close to the above idea of Aristotle. But Aristotle doesn‟t believe in the

eternality and immortality of soul. Since soul is not able to exist without body. There is no other

world and there is no life after death. But Mulla Sadra and Avicenna rejected this idea while

accepting the co-existence of soul and body as held by Aristotle. Avicenna says that the

intellectual part of soul will not die after body‟s death. Sadra held the same view of the

immortality of soul following the doctrine of Quran. Another philosopher who is concerned with

this subject is Plotinus who approached it from perspective of mysticism. He says that soul is

sent from a spiritual realm to body. Body is the recipient and confinement of soul in this world.

In opposition of Aristotle, he believed soul and body are two different beings that connect be

integrated into a whole.(Fazlul Rahman, 1975).

Plotinus divided souls to in three kinds: the intellectual soul, the animal, and the plant

soul. Plotinus accepted the existence of souls in world and he recognized them as individual

souls that admit modifications. The Muslim philosophers like Ibn Sina and MullaSadra who

followed Plotinus held more or less similar views. Avicenna being also the follower of Aristotle

prefers to call soul as perfection that takes into account both the material and spiritual view. It is

perfection because matter doesn‟t have the ability to become perfect without soul. The concept

of perfection is preferred over potentiality for the definition of soul, because potentiality has two

powers of perception and motivation that are in the category of passivity and actuality but such a

concept cannot define soul perfectly. Perfection itself is of two types. First type of perfection is

where the soul is integrated with its matter and show latter in its completed formatter. It is like in

the care of bed which made by wood. The wood is the matter of which the bed is the completed

form. The second type of perfection is seen for example in the case of knife slicing on object. in

this case; knife is the matter which slicing is the form and the function. The soul represents the



first kind of perfection in regard to soul because the soul is not a function of the body but is its

perfected state and integrated with it. Mulla Sadra says:

“The soul is the first entelechy for natural body, but not for all natural bodies since the

soul is not entelechy for fire or land, rather in the natural world it is first entelechy for natural

body that can make second entelechies via some tools which help it to do life actions, like feeling

and volitional motion”(Mullà Sadrà, Asfar, 1981, v, 8, p. 17).

Mind-body relationship in philosophy of Mulla Sadra

Since Mulla Sadra believes motion in substance, he talks of movement of soul starting from

material soul to eternal soul. The body gives from childhood to become old but the truth and

reality of a person remain stable. Man has awareness of his being and such awareness shows the

separation of soul from matter which is not eternal. Mullasadra is in the category of philosophers

who believes the spirituality and eternality of soul. Soul remains after death and the destinations

of soul and body are different. But when the soul is still in the generative stage (Takvin)it needs

matter and as long as it needs matter its destination same as matter but when soul get free of

matter, it finds its own destination which is different from matter. Thus the motion which is in

substance is a process of growing from lower stages to the stage of perfection. Soul and body are

created at the same time and at that time they are of same level. But after some time soul develop

itself toward intellect and then it becomes simple and eternal.

Mulla Sadra have two main explanation about soul that as follow;

“I call every active faculty (quwwafā„iliyya) which produces traces not in a univocal (or:

one and the same) way “the soul”. This expression names this faculty not in the respect of its

simple (non-compound) essence, but in the aspect of its being the principle (or: source) of such-

like acts; i.e., acts that occur not in a univocal manner–J.E” (MullàSadrà, Asfar, 1981, v, 8, p. 5).

The second one also defines the soul in respect to its actions, but in this case–by stating

that they are carried out through one or more intermediaries, not directly:“We treat as the soul

the faculty of the natural body whose rank is such that it performs its acts by employing

(literally: “by making serve to itself”) (istikhdām) other faculties [that are] under it”

(MullàSadrà, Asfar, 1981, v, 8, p. 17).

This second definition cannot be properly understood if considered without connection

with Sadrā‟s famous principle “the soul is all faculties” (al-nafskull al-quwa), which (principle)

is a branch and an instance of the more general principle, mentioned above, namely “a thing



which is simple is all things” (basīt al-haqīqakull al-ashyā‟), which is to be understood to the

effect that a more intense degree of existence contains in itself all weaker ones.

“As the soul grows up in its existence, body will be more delicate and more limpid and its

connection with the soul will become more intensive. Then the unity of the two will be more

powerful so that it can reach the degree of intellectual existence which means being a single

entity with no distinction”(Tūsī and qutb al-din Rāzī,1996).As to the question whether soul is

existed from eternality or it originated in time, different Islamic philosophers gave different

answers some of them believed soul to be originated in time while others are had the contrary

idea. Mulla Sadra himself believed that, the soul originated in time and won created along with

matter. Before him Avicenna and Al-Ghazali also believed in the originated soul. The critical

question was what wins the time of creation of soul? Some philosophers believed that the soul is

created before the creation of body while others said it is created after body. But Mulla Sadra

says that the soul is created simultaneously with the creation of body. The soul of man didn‟t

exist before body but come into existence alongside the body and is the state of any action that it

reaches to perfection and become simple with the help of substance in motion. In time with other

Greek and Muslim thinkers, Sadra also spoke of three types of soul. i.e. the plant soul, the

animal soul and human soul. The plant soul is related to liver, animal soul is related to heart and

the soul of man to brain (Intellect). These three types of soul are together in creation. The plant

soul is created first and next the animal soul and finally the human soul that is highest is created.

There is no any life for the souls of plants and animals after death. When the bodies of plants and

animals are annihilated, their souls are destroyed, too. But the soul of man remains after death

because it is connected to intellect which is eternal, (Mosleh, Javad,1973).

The classification of soul in philosophy of Mulla Sadra is as follow;

Further, Mulla Sadra says; 1. The soul of plant consists of faculty of feeding, growing and

reproduction. 2. The soul of animal consists of two parts of motive power, perceptual faculty. 3.

The soul of human being is also divided into two parts of theoretical faculty and practical faculty

or practical intellect. Theoretical faculty of intellect has four parts of material intellect, habitual

intellect, actual intellect, and acquired intellect. Against the general view that the soul is spiritual

and eternal and mortality belongs to the realm of matter. Mulla Sadra says that, it is not

reasonable to say that soul is immaterial and completely different from matter that the soul as

intellect in itself is added to a body. Basically, indeed, there is no difference between soul and

body. Originally, the soul wasn‟t immaterial but as substance in motion, it moves itself to the



state of perfection. It is a contradiction to think that man can be made from a corporeal matter

with an intellectual form added to it unless some intermediary would be there to connect the two.

The humans have two parts of body and soul and these represent the existence of him at two

different levels. But, ultimately they are one entity which is both changeable and stable. Mulla

Sadra says:

So we say–and from God is the succor-that their saying: “the soul is in movement

because it is the first mover” is a sound view which has been demonstrated. From that [view] it

does not entail that the soul is one of the bodies. As for its movements by itself [or by its

essence] according to the intensity, its explanation [by us] has been established by the

demonstration. It has already been mentioned clearly and in allusion that it has continuous

substantial developments and [continuous] essential metamorphosis from the level of sensation

to the level of intellection. At times it unites with the [external] sense [organ], and that is at the

beginning of its creation and generation; [at times] it advances and reaches the level of

imagination, then it unites with the faculty of imagination if it reaches a station when the

intelligible forms are present before it and it witnesses [them], then it becomes an immaterial

intellect, purified in its essence from the bodies and corporeality, (MullàSadrà, al-Asfàr, 1981, v.

8, p. 244-245).The connection of soul and body are necessary and this soul necessary related to

corporeal body so the truth of soul is related to body, it is not accidental to the body,(Ibid, vol. 8,

p. 12.).

The soul and body are not independent of each other. They are interdependent and the relations

between them are essential. They are one reality or one being which is seen from two different

perspectives. According to Mulla Sadra:

The human soul exists before the creation of body, without needing the reincarnation

(tanāsokh) or the eternality (qidam) of the soul–which Plato believed in-...and there is no

problem with the division of the united soul into multiple souls or to say that the soul has been

doing nothing before the creation of body...as if the existence of the spirits (arwāḥ) before bodies

is one of the requisites of the Imamite Shi‟ as. Āhanī, G.H. (1962).Mulla Sadar separated soul

from the realm of spirit although according to Quran, soul is spirit which is created before the

matter and body. According to Mulla Sadra, the soul of man consists of three kinds; material,

ideal and intellectual. The material soul is pertains to potential state like seed before growing into

a tree. The ideal soul of man is also potentiality but in the animal mode. The intellectual soul of

man represents him complete actuality where the intellectual human soul stays with body and has



movement. But after getting free of body it causes to have any motion and becomes stable. The

consciousness or awareness which humans have is because of this intellectual soul. In the self-

awareness knowledge is the same as knower and when we receive knowledge, the substance of

soul starts moving. While the soul is in body, it has such a motion but as said, after getting free

of body, it doesn‟t have motion.

“The five perceived ones (i.e., things perceived by five external faculties of the soul –

J.E.)…Are hidden (ghaybiyya) (i.e., not perceived externally–J.E.) luminous likenesses that exist

in another world, not the qualities that are called “the sensible ones” (mahsūsāt) [which are not

perceived] otherwise than accidentally, and they (the qualities essentially perceived by the soul–

J.E.). Are psychic qualities (kayfiyyātnafsāniyya), and if you want to learn the truth, [you must

know that] these faculties do not subsist by the bodily parts, but rather the bodily parts subsist by

their command, because the demonstration shows unshakably that if something inheres in some

other thing and the existence of this inherent thing in itself is its very existence in its locus, [then]

it is impossible that it would exist in one world and its locus–in another. Hence, the inherent

thing and that in which it inheres [both] are in one [and the same] world, and the perceiver and

the perceived are of one kind”. (MULLA SADRA, 1962).Mulla Sadra believed in the materiality

of soul. He brought some arguments in Asfar to prove materiality of soul. He said there is

movement in material or external world and in soul, too. This argument obviously follows the

theory of substance in motion which is an exclusive theory of Mulla Sadra. As said before, soul

can find its own way and get free of material body with the help of motion which is essential in

substance. The soul has motion too because soul will reach perfection with the help of body.

According to him: He says about materiality or immateriality of soul as follow:

“In truth, the human soul is corporeal in existence and disposal, and spiritual in

subsistence and intellection. Hence, its disposal in the body is corporeal, whereas its intellection

of its essence and of the essence of its maker is spiritual. As for the immaterial intellects, they are

both spiritual in essence and in act; the natures are both corporeal in essence and in act. So each

of those [two] substance has a known station, which is not the case with human soul. That is why

we judge its development at different levels. Because its disposal in the body is not like the

disposal of the immaterial intellect in the body, for by its essence it is the direct agent of

inducing particular movement and particular perceptions in the way of passivity and seeking for

perfection, and not in the manner of emanating and originating [I.e., creating], (Mullà Sadrà,

1981, Al-Asfar, v. 8, p. 348).He says in another place:



“You must know that the soul, which is the form of the human being, is corporeal by

its[temporal] origination (jismāniyyat al-hudūth) and spiritual by its subsistence

(rūhāniyyatalbaqā‟),because, as it was established earlier, the passive intellect is the last of the

corporeal meanings and the first of the spiritual ones. The human being is a road stretched

between the two worlds, and he is simple by his spirit, but compound by his body. The nature of

his body is the purest of the earthly natures, and his soul is the first of the levels of the noble

souls. He has a rank that permits him to assume an angelic form. When he turns away from what

befits him best, [then] he deserves that [to which he has turned himself] rather than ascent to the

ranks of the noble ones. He takes off the human form, and the angelic form eludes him, and

through his actions he assumes either devilish, or [predatory] beastly, or brutish form, and

remains in the flame of fires, without ascending to the degrees of gardens”(Mulla Sadra, (1987),

Al-Shavahid Al- Rububiyyah, p. 311).

In conclusion, the philosophers who followed of Aristotle such Avicenna, believed that,

soul is stable and there is no motion in it but Mulla Sadra believed that since soul needs body, it

has motion though when it gets free of body and reaches perfection, it becomes stable and

without motion. In other words Mulla Sadra accepts the motion of soul in this world and also

accepts the stability of soul after life of this world. In Asfar he says:“The soul is created by time

at the same time that perfect bodies are created, since the vegetal soul is tempered to body and is

the form of body. Therefore origination of the foetus body is for the soul that is the form of

body.”(Al-Asfar, vol. 8, p.330).

According to him soul is one part of material body and it is the form of body at the level

of plant soul and he develops to become rational soul that is free of matter. MullaSadra tries to

justify his intuition that the soul did not exist before body and that it existed only with body at

the same time. He wrote:“Remember the story of the human soul‟s fall from the sacred world to

this world, the location of corporeal nature which is like the cradle and the homeland and the

mother of the animal soul. This has been stated in the prophets‟ words and the great sages and

holy men‟s allusions, (Asfar, Vol. 8, p. 355).In this context he also quoted the following verse

from Quran: “When the God drew forth from the children of Adam- from their loins–their

descendants and made them testify concerning themselves (saying) am I not your lord (who

cherishes and sustain you)? They said; yes we do testify (this lest yea should say on the day of

judgment of this we were never mindful” (QURAN, Al- Araf, 7, verse, 172).This verse of Quran

makes clear that man existed before he comes to his body. The soul didn‟t exist before body. If



the soul was created before material world then the separation of soul and body should be there

but he didn‟t believe this Platonic idea because if the soul is something apart from body, then

how could the soul renew itself to perfection. Thus if we accept the progress of the soul to

perfection then we have to accept the creation of it at the time of body; otherwise there will be

contradiction in it,(Sadra, Al-Asfar, vol. 8, p. 330).The Islamic philosophers like Avicenna also

believed that there is only one soul for one man and it is the origin of action. Mulla Sadra on the

other hand says that, soul is all of the powers in its unity. All the actions which are caused by a

soul are done in itself. According to mulla sadra that Soul or self is simple intellectual existence

which is known as one of the form in divine knowledge (Seyed Mohamad Khamenei, 2004); the

important question here is if the soul is the intellectual form in divine love how can it connect to

body? Before discussing this question, we must first clear the idea of Mulla Sadra about matter.

According to him matter is the lowest level of existence and because of this low existence; it has

low consciousness, too. We cannot say matter is nothing. Matter is potentiality ever striving to

become the actual form. The relation between soul and body is the relation between form and

matter. It means both of them need each other and such a dependency is necessary. The soul is

not simple and eternal at first but it has ability to become immaterial and simple after getting

perfection. Therefore Mulla Sadra says:

Body or matter is the lowest level and intellect is the highest level of existence. Body is

in soul and soul is in intellect. It means the existence of man comprise of three steps: first the

bodily existence, the second the soul with body and the third the intellectual being. As body and

body with soul, human being has organic existence and is not stable but the intellectual is

spiritual and stable.“The carrier (or: subject) (hāmil) of all faculties of the human soul and its

vicegerent is the vaporous animal spirit, which emanates from the pure and subtle part of the

mixtures (ikhlāt) in the same way as the [bodily] members emanate from their (mixtures‟–J.E.)

impure and dense part, its (animal spirit‟s–J.E.) locus of origin being the conically shaped heart”

(Sadr al-Dīn al-Shīrāzī, 1979).“These elements and pillars continue to mix perpetually, until

finally [their mixing] results in[giving existence to (?)] the human body. The human body [, in

turn,] continues to refine and unify itself, and to purify and to change itself, until this results in

its [animal] spirit – the one which is a subtle body that emanates from the heart, from its left

cavity. In respect to its purity and refinement, its light and luminosity, and its distance from the

opposites (closeness to which causes corruption), this animal spirit resembles the body of the

celestial sphere. Therefore it becomes the mirror for the rational soul, through which it perceives

existence in its entirety” (Mulla Sadra, 1987. Al-Shavahid Al- Rububiyyah, p. 311).



CONCLUSION

Psychosomatic is the idea that is common both in abnormal psychology and in medicine. It is

also known as holistic view to the mind-body problem that is based on the some questions

regarding to the etiology of disease. The point is that there are some diseases and mental disorder

that is based on organic problem but these problems can be studied in psychological matter. But

there are another problems like behavioral disorder and mental problems that we are able to find

a perfect defined organic cause; such a problems like stress, and anxiety etc., have psychological

causes. The above mentioned indicates to the intimate relationship between psycho and soma and

form the basis for the psychosomatic or holistic viewpoint. Thus, it is the result that every

disease, organic or mental, is the disease of the whole organism so we should not study organism

as two entities that are separated from each other but they should be known as one unified. This

psycho-somatic idea can be close to the theory of mind-body relation in philosophy of Mulla

Sadra. He is concerning to the mind body problem that is based on his existential philosophy in

which both mind and matter hold the intensity of existence. According to him mind and matter

are not two strange things that are separated from each other but in intensity of being. Then both

of them are different levels of human being. It means that mind and matter are same nature but

only the intensity of being is there. There is no non-existence in the world. The higher in

existential intensity affects the lower in existential intensity. The whole cosmos is connected,

interactive and alive due to existence. However, Mulla Sadra has brought together medicine,

philosophy, physics and spiritual science in his thought and created a new picture of highly

connected and interactive universe.

REFERENCE

Āhanī, G.H. (1962).SH, p. 239). Dhurham chapter 5.

Fazlul Rahman. (1975). The Philosophy of MullaSadra, State University of New York Press, p. 247.

Mosleh, Javad. (1973). ravanshenasiesadrolmotahelin or elmonafs, published by university of

Tehran, P.174).

MullàSadrà, (1981). al-Asfàr. al-Hikmat al-muta„àliyah fi al-asfàr al-arba„a, Beirut: DàrIhyà al-

Turàth al-Arabi).

MullaSadra, (1987). Al-Shavahid Al- Rububiyyah, Tehran,.

MULLA SADRA. (1962). Arshīyya, 236, translation and Edited by, Golam Hussein Āhanī,

Isfahan: Shahriar Publications, SH. P. 236).

(QURAN, Al- Araf, 7, verse, 172).

Sadr al-Dīn al-Shīrāzī, (1979).al-Wāridāt al-qalbiyyafīma„rifat al-rubūbiyya, ed. A.Shafī„īhā,

Tehrān: Iranian,Academy of Philosophy, 83–84).

Seyed Mohamad Khamenei, (2004). Al-Asfar, v 8, Tehran, entesharatsadra, p. 428.

Tūsī and qutb al-din Rāzī. (1996).Al-IshārātwalTanbīhāt, commentary of Tūsī and qutb al-din

Rāzī. Isharat, v, 9, p. 112-113. Qom:Nashr Al-balāgha Publications.

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Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) andMulla Sadra Shirazi (980/1572–1050/1640)and the Primacy of esse/wujûd inPhilosophical Theology

PRIMACY OF ESSE/WUJÛD IN PHILOSOPHICAL THEOLOGYDAVID B. BURRE LL

DAVID B. BURRELL, C.S.C.

University of Notre Dame

As an exercise in comparative philosophical theology, our approach ismore concerned with conceptual strategies than with historical “influ-ences,” although the animadversions of those versed in the history of eachperiod will assist in reading the texts of each thinker. We need historiansto make us aware of the questions to which thinkers of other ages andcultures were directing their energies, as well as the forms of thoughtavailable to them in making their response; but we philosophers hope tobe able to proceed without having to arm ourselves with extensive knowl-edge of the surrounding milieu, trusting that others more knowledgeablewill correct and extend our efforts. Our contribution should then be oneof offering perspectives within which further discourse may profitably pro-ceed, suitably challenged and amended in the course of a common inquiry.Since my familiarity is with Aquinas, and since he comes chronologicallyfirst, I shall begin with him, though there is no discernible connectionbetween the two thinkers other than their preoccupation with establishingthe primacy of existing in a metaphysical discourse which had hithertoobscured its significance.

One of Aquinas’s earliest writings is a short piece designed to clarify themaze of philosophical terminology which had come to characterize earlymedieval attempts to assimilate the thought of Aristotle. Its title, De ente etessentia, is regularly translated “On Being and Essence,” yet the text featuresan expression which does not appear in its title: esse, a Latin infinitive lexicallyrendered ‘to be’ yet virtually untranslatable, as we shall see, for it attempts tocapture the subject of our inquiry: the very existing of things, including theuniverse itself.1 A recent edition of an arguably earlier treatment of these

1. The best edition is that of M.-D. Roland-Gosselin, Le “De ente et essentia” de s.Thomas d-Aquin, 2d ed. (Paris: Vrin, 1948); English translation by Armand Maurer,On Being and Essence, 2d rev. ed. (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies,1968). Citation from Aquinas’s later Summa Theologiae will be prefaced by (ST).

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Medieval Philosophy and Theology 8 (1999), 207–219. Printed in the United States of America.Copyright © 2000 Cambridge University Press 1057-0608

issues, in Aquinas’s commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard, showshow crucially the primacy of esse figured in his understanding of the relationof creator to creation from the very beginning of his reflections on thematter. The Latin language itself will invite Peter Lombard to cite Augustineto remind us that “essence is named from ‘esse’,” with an authoritativereference to the One “who said to his servant Moses: I AM WHO AM and Youshall tell the sons of Israel: HE WHO IS sent me to you” (Exodus 3:14), and go on toinsist that “He is truly and properly called Essence whose essence knowsneither past nor future.”2 (Since the English ‘being’ is ambiguous as regardsthe Latin ens [‘a being’] and esse [literally, ‘to be’], in what follows ‘being’ willrender the Latin esse, which in my own translations I prefer to render by‘existing’.)

Aquinas begins his commentary on Lombard’s text by asking “Is beingproperly said of God?” He answers that it is indeed

the most proper name of God among the other names . . . accordingto the perfection of the divine being. . . . For in the divine being nothinghas gone past nor is anything to come; and so it has its whole beingperfect[ly], and for this reason being belongs to it properly.

Indeed,

among all the other participations of the divine goodness, such asliving, understanding, and the like, being is the first and, as it were, theprinciple of the others, . . . and so too God is the divine principle andall things are one in Him. (M 39–41)

He then addresses the citation from Exodus, citing Maimonides’s wit-ness, and interprets “the name ‘He who is’ [as] imposed by the very act ofbeing, [and since] in God . . . His very being is His quiddity, . . . the name thatis taken from being properly names Him” (M 43). The following articlebrings out the explicit role creation plays in this act of naming, by asking“Is God the being of all things?” and responding: “Nothing has being exceptinasmuch as it participates divine being, since it is the first being (ens); hence,it is the cause of every being (entis).” Noting how that causality must actneither univocally nor equivocally, but analogously, he details “that thedivine being produces the being of a creature in an imperfect likeness ofitself: and so the divine being is called the being of all things ,for. allcreated being emanates effectively and paradigmatically from it” (M 47).

This pregnant passage adumbrates all of Aquinas’s subsequent devel-opment of the primacy of esse and the role which creation plays in bringing

2. E. M. Macierowski, trans. and ed. Thomas Aquinas’s Earliest Treatment of theDivine Essence: Scriptum super libros Sententiarum Book 1, Distinction 8 (BinghamtonN.Y.: Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 1998), citation at p. 23. Furtherreferences will be cited as M in the text.

208 DAVID B. BURRELL

us to recognize that primacy. Moreover, those familiar with Mulla Sadra,notably his summary text Kitâb al-Mashâ’ir, will be struck by the manifestsimilarities.3 Everything turns on the role which esse plays as the vehicle, onemight say, of God’s creating activity. (Aquinas will later identify esse as the“proper effect of the first and most universal cause, which is God,” whoneeds no intermediaries to bestow it since “God alone is his own existence”[ST 1.45.5].) Moreover, we will find that the mediating notion of participa-tion that Aquinas introduces in this early text will play a central role in MullaSadra’s account of the way in which wujûd comes forth from the One to allbeings, even though he will not employ a corresponding Arabic term for it.4We shall also see how their concerns mirror one another: to find a way tohighlight the metaphysical primacy of individual existing things—a goalthat Aristotle had set for himself in the face of Plato, but was never able tocomplete satisfactorily; as well as finding a strategy to capitalize upon IbnSina’s celebrated distinction of essence from existing while neutralizing thecharacterization of being as “accidental” to essence.5

ESSE/WUJÛD AS ACCIDENTAL TO ESSENCE?

In his opusculum, De ente et essentia, Aquinas cites the Liber de Causis in supportof his argument to distinguish esse from essentia, and explicitly utilizesAvicenna’s insistence that “the quiddity of a simple substance is the simpleentity itself” in assembling the components of his demonstration, yet he iscareful not to remark on the infelicity of his Islamic predecessor’s identifyingthe ensuing relation as “accidental.”6 Instead, he offers a prescient correc-tion, presenting esse as the act of essentia, thereby using Aristotle’s moregeneral potency/act distinction to enrich his metaphysics of matter/form, inwhich essence would invariably prevail, to one in which essence itself wouldbe in potency to the “act of existing” [actus essendi].7 At the same time,however, he fails to correct the language whereby esse “comes to” and is“received by” essentia, so perpetuating the impression of accidentality that left

3. The Arabic text has been published by Henry Corbin under the title of hisaccompanying translation: Le Livre des Pénétrations métaphysiques (Teheran: InstitutFranco-Iranien/Paris: Adrien-Maisonneuve, 1964).

4. For a recent account of the role that participation plays in Aquinas’s thought,see Rudi teVelde, Participation and Substantiality in Thomas Aquinas (Leiden: E.J. Brill,1996). The author reprises and refines the earlier treatments of Fabro and Geiger.

5. For a comprehensive and illuminating treatment of the reception of Aris-totle’s unfinished project, see Edward Booth, Aristotelian Aporetic Ontology in Islamicand Christian Writers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983).

6. De ente 4.2, 4.4.7. See De ente 4.8–9. Many have translated esse as ‘act of existing’, not only to

emphasize the existential character of this reality, but also because Aquinas himselfuses the expression actus essendi synonymously with esse, see M 42.

PRIMACY OF ESSE/WUJÛD IN PHILOSOPHICAL THEOLOGY 209

Avicenna vulnerable to the searing critique of Averroës.8 Nevertheless, thetransposition from accident to act was accomplished so clearly and unequivo-cally that the lingering language could hardly threaten it, though what hasproved far more elusive has been the proper way to characterize this new-found “act of existing.” Aquinas will invoke it steadily in terms suggestive ofthe pinnacle of created reality: “the proper effect” of the creator, as we haveseen; that which is “most interior and profound in anything” (ST 1.8.2.1), the“most formal” (ST 1.7.1) dimension of things—an infelicitous expressionconnoting an act in the direction of form yet exceeding it. His reticenceabout further explicating it, of course, may be traced back to Aristole’sinsistence in the Metaphysics that act cannot be spelled out except by way ofexamples, perhaps as a sidelong bow to Plato’s Seventh Letter, where thenoblest of realities will finally outstrip our language.9

In any case, Mulla Sadra will confirm and complete Aquinas’s movehere, as he explicitly locates wujûd as that which links the universe to itsoriginating cause:

Now contingent beings, [that is, those not necessary in themselves],need something proper to them [thuwât] constituting what they are inthemselves [huwiyyât], for should one consider them apart from theOne who originates them by that very fact they must be considered tobe empty and impossible. [That factor proper to them, then, must be]the act constituted by the One who originates them, much as thequiddity of a composite species is constituted by its difference. For theratio [ma’ana] of being an existence which is necessary is that it belongsto it properly to exist, without needing to be united with an originatornor have any receptacle to receive it; while the ratio of being an exist-ence which exists [that is, contingent] is that it is something attained,either by itself or by an originator. What it does not need, however, inorder to realize its own being, is that another existence be achieved init. This is what differentiates it from what lacks existence [viz., es-sences]: in order for them to exist, one needs to consider existence andits connection to them. (par 42)

Mulla Sadra’s central disclaimer here represents an acute polemic againstconsidering the wujûd, which constitutes the very being of individual things,to be something apart from them, with its own proper existence, as it were,for this [wujûd] is precisely what makes individual things to be themselves:

indeed, the very being of existence is identical with the quiddity as itexists outside the mind, for once we remove accidental existence fromthe rest, the entire set of existent things must exist in a way that is notaccidental. (par 73)

8. Esp. De ente 4.8–9. Averroës’s critique of Ibn Sina’s understanding of existenceas an “accident” can be found in the eighth discussion in his Tahafut al-Tahafut, trans.Simon van den Bergh (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1954), 235 sq.

9. Metaphysics 9.6 (1048a25–b36).


This assertion concludes an extended argument proving that wujûd cannotbe accidental to an existing thing, for were that the case, the thing wouldhave first to exist in order to exist, since accidents demand existing subjects.

Yet while it is simple enough to refute the impression with which IbnSina left us, it is not as easy to employ the mode of discourse proper tophilosophy to articulate what is neither essence nor accident. We could,however, shift to the linguistic mode to put more simply what Mulla Sadrastruggles to articulate here, by insisting (with Aquinas) that propositionsalways refer to the existing individual. Living individuals, which served asAristotle’s paradigms for individual substances, offer the test cases here:when friends die—be they dogs or persons—we can no longer name whatwe encounter—the body—with the person’s or dog’s name, but only referto the corpse. Anything else sounds strange because it is philosophicallyincoherent: whatever kind of thing it may be figures only obliquely into ourreferences, which are always to this individual; and since the esse of livingthings is to be alive (as Aquinas never tired of quoting Aristotle), when theydie we no longer confront the same thing. Unlike accidental features, wereexistence able to be removed, the thing itself could hardly perdure. MullaSadra indeed comes close to this manner of articulating things when helater expands on the contention that “existing itself is the quiddity in itsindividuality, [to insist] as well that existence itself is the very affirmation ofthe thing rather than something affirmed of the thing” (par 80).

The unique case that forces Aquinas to greater precision in this matteris, of course, the incarnation of the Word of God in Jesus, notably as definedby the Council of Chalcedon in 451 in terms of “two natures in one person.”In this case alone, one must specify, when speaking of the person of Jesus,which operative principle (or nature) one has in mind: is he acting qua divineor qua human? Here and only here does this essential specification becomeall-important; otherwise, the statements we make envisage the individualexisting thing, where its kind can simply be presupposed. Notice, however,how we can only call attention to the reality of existing by stepping outside oflanguage itself (langue) to consider how we use it (parole) to make assertions,for if we inquire about it directly, we invariably find ourselves asking whatkind of thing it is. Yet that is precisely what both Aquinas and Mulla Sadradeny of existing: that it is a kind of thing! For a more positive account, then, wemust move to its source, and what it tells us about that source.

ESSE/WUJÛD AS THE LINK TO THECREATOR/ORIGINATOR

To move beyond the abstract analysis that appeared to find two “things” inacknowledging the real distinction between essence and existing, MullaSadra shifts his attention to things


as they obtain outside the mind: the principle of an existing thing isexistence, for it properly belongs to existence to emanate from the Onewho originates, with the quiddity united to it and predicated of it [asstatements are made of individuals]. Not, however, as accidents arepredicated of what they are joined to; for the quiddity is predicated ofexistence and united with it in the measure that it is itself the veryindividuality proper to this existence. (par 77)

So wujûd becomes the trace that the cause leaves in the caused, as MullaSadra makes clear when responding to one who objects that “we cannotconceive the existence of something caused while neglecting the existenceof the cause which necessitates it, for then that cause would cease to beconstitutive of the thing caused.” Indeed, but that is an impertinent objec-tion to our argument, he retorts,

since we say that it is not possible to attain to knowledge of the preciseparticularity of a mode of existence unless its very individuality beunveiled [moshâhada], and that cannot be realized without some kindof unveiling of the cause of its emanation. That is why they say thatknowing what possesses a cause is only attained by knowing its cause.Ponder this well! (par 92)

The “unveiling” required to capture the uniqueness of wujûd signalsthat we are in the logical domain of a creator/creation relation. For tospeak of things as created implies some knowledge, however imperfect, oftheir being created and hence of a creator. So it would follow that even toperceive the uniquely non-conceptual character of wujûd/esse would requirea sort of “unveiling” analogous to the Sufi “knowing” [ma’arifa] of God asal-Haqq [the True Reality]. Here Mulla Sadra helps us to appreciate theimport of the subsequent accolades Aquinas gives to esse, expanding as theydo the spare yet quite explicit assertion of the De ente: “the quiddity . . . mustbe potential with regard to the being it receives from God, and this being isreceived as an actuality” (4.8). Yet referring to the Avicennian strategy thatAquinas employs in his proof of the distinction of essence from esse, MullaSadra notes how that approach is proper to a purely

intellectual analysis of existing things into essence and existence, ananalysis which yields two complements, so that one of them is judgedto be prior to the other in such a way that the other is attributed to it.(par 77)

This is indeed a fair description of Ibn Sina’s celebrated argument; however,Mulla Sadra goes on to the consideration of “things as they obtain outsidethe mind,” of wujûd as a reality and not a merely analytic component ofexisting things. It is this treatment which brings us closer to Aquinas’sassertion that esse alone provides the only opening allowing us to speak of a


similarity between creator and creation: “things receiving esse from Godresemble him precisely as things possessing esse resemble the primary anduniversal source of all esse” (ST 1.4.3).

Aquinas can make this strong claim because he has already explicitlyidentified esse as an act rather than an accident (as we have seen in Deente)—the central claim in which these two thinkers concur. Mulla Sadrabegins by characterizing wujûd as “the reality [haqîqa] of each thing” (par16), indeed “what pertains to the individual beyond the nature it shares[with others], . . . and unless species were realized in particular individuals,nothing would exist at all” (par 27).

For taken by itself, the quiddity does not have any being from anotherby which it would be derived from that other, so that given its lack ofbeing, it could only be related to the One who originates it and gives itbeing by the very being which we mean by wujûd. (par 30)

This complex statement recalls Ibn Sina’s crucial proposal that the firstconsideration of essences take them simply as essences, prescinding fromtheir being—a proposal that takes the form of an insistence, given theambiguity of ‘being’, for they are certainly essences.10 The very need forsuch insistence helps to explain the contortions of Mulla Sadra’s expositionat this point. He then goes on, however, to concede that this addition toessence “cannot be understood or perceived except through a ‘presencingwitness’ [ash-shuhûd al-hudûrî]” (par 30). The phrase alludes to a mode ofknowing familiar to readers of ishrâqî or “eastern” philosophical theology,such as Mulla Sadra’s predecessor, Suhrawardi. The strong links between“presence” and “act” suggest parallels with Aquinas’s more sober prose,however, and again offer ways in which Mulla Sadra helps to bring out whatmay be obscured by Aquinas’s concern to fit the mold of scientia given tohim.

The point of this elucidation, however, is expressed in a formula whichbrings us closer to seeing wujûd as act: “what is necessary is that wujûd bethat thing by which quiddity exists and is united with it existentially, eventhough they be distinguished analytically in meaning and understanding.Ponder this well!” (par 33). The next step for Mulla Sadra will be to showus how wujûd is “the act constituted by the One who originates it” (par 42).As with Aquinas, it is the identification of wujûd/esse with act which alsobespeaks its direct dependence from the One who originates, the creator.Mulla Sadra makes this point clearly in an extended argument that showsthat quiddities have no way of multiplying themselves; in other words, weneed an objective correlate for the term ‘instantiation’ if it is not to remainan empty expression. He finds that the only coherent candidate for explain-

10. See Armand Maurer’s note on the term precisio [‘prescinding’] in histranslation of the De ente, p. 39, n.15.


ing multiplicity is “that which emanates essentially and is initially originatedin the line of multiplicity, namely, the modes of attainment, that is, thosethings to which it is proper to exist individually. A single quiddity is foundin many by their multiplicity” (par 94). Whence this wujûd which constitutesindividual realities? From “a simple act of a simple nature which is the actof its act: God acts in each thing by eliminating good and breathing thespirit of existing and of life” (par 96).

This allusion to emanation from the One elicits a thesis said to be“inspired by the Throne,” that is to say, the heart (par 97).11 In termsreminiscent of the Kitab al-Khair [Liber de Causis], Mulla Sadra identifies an“authentic initial emanation from the first cause, which is called the ‘truereality created by Him’, which is the source of world and its life and light,penetrating into everything in heaven and on earth” (par 97). This realityhe relates to its divine source as sensible illumination derives from the sun,which offers a pregnant simile as the sun is the source of heat and vitalityas well as light. He renders this figure of speech somewhat more straight-forwardly by characterizing “the relation of what is originated with respectto its originator as that of imperfect to perfect, of weakness to power,”implying that nothing more can be said, because “it has already beenestablished that wujûd is a simple reality” (par 102). Since this discussiontakes place in a chapter preliminary to his exposition of the utterly simplyreality of the One, it may be that he is seeking to differentiate the simplesubstances from one another by the ploy of more or less wujûd, much asAquinas does in De ente: “these substances, moreover, are distinct from oneanother according to their degree of potency and act, a superior intelli-gence, being closer to the primary being, having more act and less potency,and to with the others” (4.10). Otherwise, one would have difficulty differ-entiating the Originator from what is originated.

Aquinas’s commentary on the Liber de Causis, where the author statesthat “the first of created things is being,” and “as a result, then, it came tobe higher than all [other] created things, and to be more powerfullyunited,” is illustrative here.12 After tracing this mode of discourse to “thePlatonists” and to Dionysius, Aquinas clarifies:

it seems that it is not [the author’s] intention to speak about someseparate being, as the Platonists did, nor about the being that allexisting things participate commonly, as Dionysius did, but [rather]about being participated in the first grade of created being, which ishigher being . . . both in intelligence and soul. (Prop. 4, ET 31–32)

11. Corbin offers a number of interpretations of the source, the Throne. HisPersian commentator, sheik Ahmad Ahsâ’î, contends that this refers to the sourceof Mulla Sadra’s inspiration for what follows: that it was given to his heart.

12. Sancti Thomas de Aquino super Librum de Causis Expositio, critical ed. byHenri-Dominique Saffrey, O.P. (Fribourg: Société Philosophique, 1954); Englishtrans. by Vincent Guagliardo, O.P., Charles Hess, O.P., and Richard Taylor (Wash-ington D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1996).


What is at issue here is whether esse/wujûd is a univocal term that spans therealm of being, including originated and originator, or whether it is aparadigmatically analogical term, like its complement, good, which mayindeed be graded from more to less, but with the crucial marker thatdistinguishes “the Good” from all else that is good by the fact that the Goodis its source.

Aquinas introduces the Platonic notion of participation at this point,noting that creation participates in the esse/bonum of the creator, who simplyis bonum/esse. Mulla Sadra never quite states it so succinctly in the Mashâ’ir,but his language strains toward the notion that Aquinas adopts.

HOW TO CHARACTERIZE “THE DISTINCTION”OF CREATOR FROM CREATION

To speak of “the distinction” of originator from everything else is also tospeak of the intrinsic dependence of everything that is on the One, whosevery essence is esse/wujûd, and hence from whom all-that-is comes to be.13

So the being of everything other than the creator is a coming-to-be, evenfor those beings whose ontological status is to be not generated, but alwaysto be. For esse/wujûd does not announce a status but the reality of things.This is the essential modification that both Aquinas and Mulla Sadra mustwork in Aristotle’s account of “necessary beings,” as well as any Neoplatonicemanation scheme that would construe creation as a descending orderingof the universe, in which each higher order has a share in the coming-to-beof the lower ones. Esse/wujûd must emanate wholly from the One; if itdoes so in an ordered fashion, which the canonical “emanation scheme”attempts to outline, that scheme itself must be wholly a product of theOne. What this entails, then, is that there be a trace of the originator ineverything originated, which both Aquinas and Mulla Sadra identify withesse/wujûd. Yet because esse/wujûd is neither an accident nor an essentialfeature of things, “it” will not be identifiable except as the very act ofthings, what allows them to “stand out” and to be agents themselves.14 Sowhat is most significant about things, their individual reality, will escapethe conceptualization proper to an essence/accident frame. Yet that veryinconceivable act will also link existing things to their source, and inher-ently so, since (as Aquinas puts it) their very esse is esse-ad, their being isto-be-related (ST 1.45.3). Such is the mark of being a creature, and what

13. “The distinction” is Robert Sokolowski’s prescient way of summarizing themetaphysical implications of creation, in his God of Faith and Reason (Notre DameInd.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981).

14. Joseph deFinance, S.J., Etre et Agir dans la Philosophie de S. Thomas 3d. ed.(Roma: Gregoriana, 1965) offers a classic treatment of Aquinas on this matter.


both Aquinas and Mulla Sadra bring to philosophy is the demand thatcreatureliness be incorporated into a Christian or Muslim metaphysics.

There is only one way to do this: to find a way of articulating both thesimilarity and the difference which obtains between creator and creatures.Aquinas will have recourse here to the Neoplatonic strategy of participationto encapsulate “the distinction” which at once links the One with all thatemanates from it as well as differentiating their modes of being: the Onewhose very essence is esse must differ from everything else which has it.Mulla Sadra’s way of characterizing this similarity-cum-difference by way ofan ordered emanation could be regarded as a commentary illuminatingAquinas’s use of the notion of participation, which forms the centerpiece ofhis argument for origination. As Rudi teVelde explicates it: “the point ofThomas’s argument is that subsisting being itself implies the existence ofother beings, in such a way that no being can be conceived to exist unlessas distinguished from the one who is being itself.” Since these modalitiesare so different, there is a negation involved, yet it proves to be a productiveone:

it constitutes all other beings as distinguished from and related to Godwho alone is subsisting being itself. The positive side of the negation isexpressed by the term participation: that which is as distinguished fromGod is not its being but participates in being which it has received fromGod.15

Yet that participation sees to it that

the first cause operates [in all creatures] from within, in a most intimateand immediate way [so that God is] more interior to the creature thanthat creature is to itself. This well-known Augustinian phrase formu-lates rather aptly what it means to say that God’s transcendence is nota transcendence outside and separated from the world, but a transcen-dence-in-immanence. . . . Even if one might say that God gives being toa creature which exists outside God, still God cannot properly be saidto be outside the creatures.16

Sara Grant’s Teape lectures comparing Aquinas’s metaphysics of cre-ated being with Sankara’s nonduality focus on that feature of participationwhich identifies created esse as esse-ad—a relation that Aquinas insists is a

15. teVelde, Participation and Substantiality, p. 128.16. teVelde, Participation and Substantiality, p. 181; for a parallel construction in

a more properly linguistic mode, see Kathryn Tanner, God and Creation in ChristianTheology (Oxford: Blackwell, 1987), where she distinguishes “contrastive” from “non-contrastive” ways of articulating the relation. A further illuminating parallel can befound in Sara Grant’s Teape lectures: Towards an Alternative Theology (Bangalore:Asian Trading Corporation, 1991)


“non-reciprocal relation of dependence.”17 That is, the very existence ofcreatures involves the creator: since their being can only be from the Onewho simply is, creatures have no being apart from God. Yet, as teVelde notes,“participation enables Aquinas to conceive a domain of finite causality(secondary causes), a natural order of cause and effect [whereby] Godworks immanently in nature . . . by setting nature free in its own non-divineoperation.” All the while, however,

no particular cause can by its own power account for the being as suchof its effect, so no cause is capable of making its (particular) effect bein act unless it acts by the power of the first one whose power alone issufficient ground of the being of any determinate effect.18

So what teVelde calls “the specific structure of participation which underliesthe relationship between God and nature,” Sara Grant identifies with non-duality, utilizing Aquinas’s “non-reciprocal relation of dependence” to offeran interpretation of Sankara’s thought that removes it from western carica-tures of “monism.” We can do the same with similar caricatures of MullaSadra (and of his mentor, Ibn al-’Arabi) as propounding something called“existential monism.” It seems, rather, that he and Aquinas were engagedin a similar strategy, one for which Aquinas borrowed the Neoplatonicdevice of participation, using it to his own ends: to show how creatures areinternally related to their creator. For if they are not, then the creator is acause like other causes, rather than a cause of being; and if they are, thenany account of their mode of being must attempt to show how they are.

CONCLUDING REMARKS

One signal result of this comparative inquiry should be to make us appreciatehow difficult it is to attain a “metaphysical standpoint,” and especially sowhen the “cause of being” is the free and self-revealing creator of the Hebrewscriptures and the Qur’an.19 Since the key reality of wujûd/esse is not itselfconceptualizable, and when conceptualized turns into the common notionof being, something more than philosophical skills will be required to exe-

17. Grant, Towards an Alternative Theology, p. 35; Aquinas (in ST 1.45.3.1) putsthis in a way that has offended those unfamiliar with his quasi-technical language:

In its active sense creation means God’s action, which is his essence witha relationship to the creature. But this in God is not a real relation, butonly conceptual [secundum rationem tantum] The relation of the crea-ture to God, however, is real.

18. teVelde, Participation and Substantiality, p. 182.19. teVelde, Participation and Substantiality, p. 133.


cute the metaphysical strategy which we have identified as crucial to a properunderstanding of both Aquinas and Mulla Sadra. There is a hint of paradoxhere, for we are suggesting that attaining the requisite “metaphysical stand-point” will call for a set of skills beyond what we normally associate withphilosophy. Here is where we may profit from Pierre Hadot’s reflections onthe relevance of spiritual exercises to the practice of philosophy, as conceivedby “the ancients.”20 The difficulty is nicely articulated by Rudi teVelde in hisattempt to parse Aquinas’s characterization of God as ipsum esse subsistens[subsisting being itself]. He notes how the formula cannot capture God, butrather announces that

we have no concept of God. [Indeed,] it is by means of this formula, asexpressing the way the human intellect in its understanding relates toGod, that it is made clear that God is such a reality which defies anydefinition or conceptualization [on] our part.

Yet the formula is not meaningless; it “signifies God as he is knowable to uson the basis of his ‘reflection’ in the world.”21 Yet that reflection, embodiedin wujûd/esse, is not conceptualizable either, so how can it be known—as areflection?

Both Muslim and Christian traditions turn here to practices which canserve to move the understanding beyond formulations, especially when thevery structure of the formulae demonstrates that they will not suffice. AndPierre Hadot reminds us that ancient philosophy did the same. A longtimetranslator of Plotinus, it appears that the very effort of translating—itself aspiritual exercise—alerted him to the difference between a modern and aclassical conception of the virtues required to “do philosophy.” Indeed,modern philosophy seldom alludes to “intellectual virtues,” contentingitself rather with “propositional attitudes”; yet when one presses the attitudepart, something like virtue can in fact emerge. That is to say, modernity’saccount of what philosophy is and how one engages in it may well proveinadequate to the activity itself, which could also explain why philosophycontinues to criticize itself and not merely its findings. The focus of contem-porary philosophers like Stephen Toulmin and Alasdair MacIntyre on prac-tices can help us see how Hadot’s presentation of ancient philosophy is farmore pertinent than an historical exercise, as his recent summary statementin Qu’est-ce que la philosophie antique articulates.22 Mulla Sadra explicitlycontends, as we have seen, that we will need some special “illumination” toattain the appropriate metaphysical standpoint. Lacking something of thatsort, teVelde intimates, Aquinas’s crucial formula cannot but appear un-

20. Exercises spirituels et philosophie antique, 3d ed. (Paris: Gallimard, 1993);Philosophy as a Way of Life, ed. Arnold Davidson (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995)

21. teVelde, Participation and Substantiality, p. 120.22. Qu’est-ce que la philosophie antique (Paris: Gallimard, 1995).


grammatical. Yet those who are attuned to what it displays rather than whatit (cannot) say will be able to make connections with Plotinus’s pointing toa One “beyond being,” and find Aquinas and Plotinus engaged in a similarstruggle to attain the requisite “metaphysical standpoint”—beyond thecommon conception of being.23 And it was his own engagement withPlotinus’s intellectual journey which taught Hadot the need for spiritualexercises to follow his mentor. Indeed, the master/disciple relationship,and all that it portends, offers a useful way of characterizing the exercisesrelevant to attaining this metaphysical standpoint. My own suspicion is thatHadot’s suggestions may offer western philosophers a way to appreciateishrâqi wisdom and the demands it makes on one who would practice it.

23. The work of Lloyd Gerson is illustrative here: see his Plotinus (London:Routledge, 1997).


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e ISSN: 2722-8592

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MODEL OF SOUL IN THE SHADRIAN EPISTEME

Amir Faqihuddin Assafari

State Islamic Institute of Palopo (IAIN Palopo), Indonesia

*e-mail: [email protected]

ABSTRACT

Among critical concepts in Mulla Sadra's thought, which, of course, cannot be discussed

separately between the parts. It is because the basic rules in philosophical discourse are

universal traits that make it approached from various directions as a unified form of reality. One

of Sadra's famous thoughts is the concept of the soul, which is related to the roots of his

philosophical doctrine of being. The significance of the discussion of the soul by Mulla Sadra

becomes increasingly crucial given the discourse about the soul, especially in the debate of

modern European philosophy in such a way that are absurd forms in Islamic religious doctrine.

Therefore, seeing the relationship between the two models of approach to the soul is not only the

only way to understand the universal message of the Islamic treatise about the soul but also

creates a model of dialogue volume two of Ibn Rusyd-Ghazali becoming Mulla Sadra versus

Modern Europe.

Keywords: soul mode, mullah shadra

INTRODUCTION

Mulla Sadra was born in 571/2 AD in the southern part of Iran's Siradj region of a pious

and famous family. This birth period has proven that the intellectual historiography must be

severely criticized given the general assumption that after Ibn Rushd, the Islamic mental

world was dead. Moreover, the momentum of Ibn Rushd's death coincided with the rise of Al

Ghazali's intellectual supremacy, which was anti-Rusydian in the East. The mental battle of Al

Ghazali vs. Ibn Rusyd is a fantastic event from the world's most prestigious rational stage that

is remembered by history. This is evidenced not only by the intellectual influence of the two

figures in various regions but also the meaning of "ulema" in the theological perspective of

Islam as the heirs of the prophetic treatise. We also need not hesitate to use the term "battle"

given the emergence of both tendentious works in the context of conflicting ideas and the fact

that the followers of the two often confront at least socially-religion-intellectually.

But the development of the battle precisely took another historical path. After Ghazali

declared himself included in Asay'ari's theological scheme and patronage, which subsequently

"moved up the class" to become a formal model of al Mutawakkil's political theology, Al

Ghazali's influence finally echoed widely in the Islamic world. It was preserved by various

Islamic political models that emerged. This is because the theological construction contains a

fairly balanced cohesion pattern with the existing political model and geneology. Hassan

Hanafi even sharply called this theology a history of offerings to the ruler, devotion to the

sultans. Praising the Sultan means the same as thanking God. Conversely, opposing the Sultan

is the same as opposing God.

The assumption of the intellectual death of Islam after Ibn Rushd was also reinforced by

the European imperialism and colonialism program in the Islamic world which systematically

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INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ASIAN EDUCATION, Vol. 1, No. 1, June 2020

IJAE Page 10

drained the scientific potential and ethos of the Islamic world to the lowest nadir so that this

period of the empire became a lousy face in Islamic historical memories—called systematic

because the practice of colonialism was from the beginning a model of illegal cooperation

between the private sector and the state to take all practical actions in the colony for business

interests in the name of nationalism. Later, religious groups became so "flirty" and "jealous"

that they also took part in the colonialism project. Strangely, European intellectuals and

academics were precisely the ones who were active in formulating scientific justifications for

this civilization defiance model, so that this colonialization project intensively collaborated

with European scholars in the colonies. In another part of this paper, Mulla Sadra's

significance for the meaning and role of Islamic philosophers who construct the epistemic

criteria of Islamic scholarship will be seen, so that it becomes a stronghold in guarding the

ethos of liberation and the plan of finding the authentic meaning of humanity against existing

political patterns.

Because intellectual work and thought, large and small, are always born out of

interrelation and environmental dynamics and other mental stimuli, it is undeniable that the

birth of Mulla Sadra shows that the dynamic and systematic model of intellectual transmission

is maintained in the Islamic world, especially in the Shiite theological matrix. In other words,

Mulla Sadra became a critical bridge that displays the continuity of Islamic thought to the

times back, even to the era of Ancient Greece, as evidenced by Sadra's extensive quotations of

Greek sources in his work. Sadra's teachers are eloquent speakers of Islamic scientific

heritage, and active activists on the main themes contained in the work of peripatetic and

Isyraqiyyah Suhrawardian groups. This depiction of the philosophical background represents

the identity of Mulla Sadra's thought, which is connected to the original roots of Islam while

explaining the position of various other ideas in the spectrum of Islamic intellectualism.

CONCEPTS ABOUT SOUL

Among some critical concepts in Mulla Sadra, though, which of course, cannot be

discussed separately between the parts is the idea of the soul, which is related to the root of

its philosophical doctrine of being. The significance of the discussion of the soul by Mulla

Sadra becomes increasingly crucial given the discourse about the soul, especially in the debate

of modern European philosophy in such a way that are absurd forms in Islamic religious

doctrine. Therefore, seeing the relationship between the two models of approach to the soul is

not only the only way to understand the universal message of the Islamic treatise about the

soul but also creates a model of volume dialogue Ibn Rusyd-Ghazali became Mulla Sadra Vs. of

Modern Europe.

The greatest gift inherited from Sadra in the discourse related to psychiatric form is that

Sadra has succeeded in transforming the Aristotelian Theoretical Metaphysics into Practical

Metaphysics. The impact of this concept is tremendous and overturns many things, which so

far tend to be accepted without problems, even in Islam itself. If, in the pre-Mulla Sadra qds

discussion, especially Ghazalian, the soul is another realm that is far apart and has no

connection mode with sensory sensibility, Sadra expressly states that the soul is a substance

that moves at once fixed, with a unique philosophical explanation system. It is said to be

unique because of the integration between various major scientific disciplines in its analysis

that combines Sufism, mysticism, thoughtful, as well as rational. Based on five main themes

which include: the rudeness of existence of essence, the ambiguity of reality that enables

gradation, the unity of knowledge subjects and objects of knowledge, the doctrine of

substantial motion as a category, and the independent entity of the world of imagination,

Sadra's discussion of the soul in total involves all five the central theme is hooked.


International Journal of Asian Education, Vol. 1, No. 1, June 2020

IJAE Page 11

In Asfar volume 9 pages 6-10, Sadra argues that the soul is a substance which is not

material, but behaviorally is material. It is born from three main modes of being, which are

possible forms, impossible forms, and pure forms. The relationship between the three is

gradual, starting from the perfect human, becoming the source of the reason nature, for the

idea of the perfection of the first being, but in a lower level of quality. So gradually to the

extent of the potential actualization that gave rise to material forms of life. This is what is

called the Gradation of Being.

Next is the appearance of material effects (Sudr al Atsr an al Ajsam). Since the lowest

matter is passive, everything that happens to it must come from a perfect being entity above it

as something outside of the subject. A concrete example of this is the ability of humans to

perceive objects as being impossible from external objects or human material sensibility. This

is evidenced by the loss of all human perception after his death, even though the mechanics of

sensitivity are still intact. Third is that, in connection with the second, only the soul gives life

to human materiality. (Al hayah hiya a Nafs). Categorically, there are three possible meanings

of social actuality concerning their vitality: soul, physical soul, and physicality. Strictly

speaking, only the soul can perceive, so it is said that the soul has the physical and not the

physical that has the soul. The entire material universe requires other forms besides matter to

be able to produce an effect.

ONTOLOGICAL VALUE OF SOUL

Soul is ontological, according to Sadra, which is substance and not an accident. The

meaning of material according to Sadra is a description of an external existence that does not

need a corpus in its form that can be distinguished from an accident that requires a corpus in

its form Substance is the highest genus that can no longer be defined, because it is the corpus

of all accidents. The substance of the soul is evidenced by the existence of unspecified human

physical effects experienced by external subjects. Everything that happens on the physical like

heat, cold, and injury is identified as the experience of the subject concerned and does not lead

to other issues. The issue in question is the soul as the corpus of various effects of the

sensibility.

This also leads to the critical meaning of Al Ittihad baina al Aqil wal alma'qul, where

awareness of oneself will never escape someone. At the same time, perceptions of

consciousness may be held back or forgotten. This proves the existence of a model of

knowledge that is distant from the primordial human form, that is, perceptional knowledge.

On the contrary, Chaudhuri's philosophy explains that the self-form exerts existing knowledge

about the self and does not provide any distance with the perfect entity of its being, so besides

being free from deviation, Chaudhuri knowledge also explains the unity between the object

and subject of expertise.

On the other hand, the concept of unity between the knowing and the known also

explains the meaning of change at the level of the natural human form when not knowing and

after knowing something. Every type of existential human knowledge and experience directly

constructs its mental reality and shapes its soul substantially. This is what is meant by al

harakah al farariyyah or transubstantial motion.

The soul does not come from the spirit. Similarly, the material does not give birth to the

mind. The vision is universal and knows no particularity. This view is, at the same time,

contradicting the idea of the soul's prioritization of matter in the discourse of Plato and

Muslim philosophers. Moreover, the independence of designs, according to Plato, seems

absurd, given the lack of evidence and rational reasons for the independent form of ideas

without being connected to a particular medium. Looking at the existence of the soul

independently without seeing the meaning of potentiality in humans will be a justification for



IJAE Page 12

the logic of reincarnation, which assumes determinism in the relationship between the

independent soul and the separate physical. The idea of reincarnation is fragile and

inconsistent, given the impossibility of the independence of material existence, and the

judge's relationship between the world of ideas and the material world.

When the universal spirit joins with physicality and temporality, then the physical

moves make sense of this union and form a stable form of the soul. So the soul is a human

form that can be identified based on sensory sensibility but develops into a spiritual being as

an active intellect (Jasmaniyah al Huduts was ruhaniyah al baqa). This phase is the end of

human material meaning and the beginning of its spiritual significance. Thus, humans have a

locus connection between the material realm and the spiritual realm. Spiritually he is simple

without differentiation, but materially he has multiple and compositional structures.

The physical touch of the soul enables the plurality and particularity of the soul, and vice

versa, the characteristics of spiritual immateriality in the soul, make it eternal and universal.

In the trans-substantial movement, matter turns into the spirit and releases the mental bond

of concern over things in the realm of the barzakh as a form but with no burden. Furthermore,

he developed to reach the afterlife as the peak of soul development. Thus, Sadra emphasizes

the emergence of the soul as an entity that is preceded by physical matter, and the physical

issue is the effect of the perfect nature of spiritual beings.

In the perspective of hudhuri science, the soul perceives itself and produces authentic

and compatible knowledge between perceived objects and perceiving subjects. This proves

that the soul is an independent subject that epistemologically can know as other modes of

experience mechanically apply the same, even with different levels of precision and validity.

Another thing concerning the substantiality of the soul is the fact that distinguishes the shift in

the object of knowledge according to the law of particularity of space and time from the

nature of the soul that does not recognize the burden of space and time. As a result, the soul

cannot be called old and young or large or small in centimeters and minutes, but rather moves

in the sense of pure perfection and simplicity.

Concerning the body, the soul needs the organization as its identity and receptacle and

not as its absolute rational essence. The soul is impossible to destroy because the potential for

destruction is not the substance of the soul. Thus, the removal of the body does not result in

the death of the soul, but rather a form of substantial improvement of the soul. The soul lives

through its substance and lives on the other side. Something that lives because its material is

impossible to touch by death forever.

DISTRIBUTION OF POTENTIAL AND MENTAL POWER

Sadra followed Ibn Sina in the discussion of division of soul force, namely the vegetable

soul, animal soul, and human soul. The Vegetable Soul is characterized by the behavior of

consuming, developing, and reproducing. Animal souls are characterized by a driving force

and a perception. The driving force is divided into longing power related to imagination, lust

power, and emotional power, while the power of knowledge includes partial perception and

general perception.

In relation to humans, the soul power is not divided and disaggregated, but is generally

covered and forms certain dominant features. That is, the human mind contains all power and

is never lost but transformed by gathering levels below. Some of them are animals, wild

animals, devils, or angels. The nature of animals in humans is lust, and its ugliness is greed

and lies. From a wild animal is the purpose of envy and hatred. Of Satan is the nature of

treason, trickery, cunning and arrogant, and love of power. From angels are knowledge and

holiness. These four characters are contained in the composition of the human mind.


International Journal of Asian Education, Vol. 1, No. 1, June 2020

IJAE Page 13

Sadrian's composition at the same time shows the absurdity of psychology language

interpreters in the style of Skinner, Pavlov to Freud, and Watson, who are symptomatic of the

construction of European modernism. They are trapped not only in the epistemic confusion of

knowledge but also in the uncertainty of establishing the ontological meaning of the soul

concerning the intellectual mode and reality of consciousness. Various studies involving rats,

monkeys, pigeons, rabbits, rats, chimpanzees, dogs, and different other animals, not only

decide the existential meaning of knowledge in the human context but also imprison

themselves in the mechanical trap of expertise that is passive and narrow, which cannot be

beyond the locus of human biological sensibility.

The most important consequence is the emergence of a European intellectual model that

was constructed not in the main moral matrix of humanity and stopped limited to servitude to

the prevailing hegemony of power, as religious teachings. Ignoring any one of these

intellectual modes will distort the solid human form and keep it away from the perfection of

self-realization.

For Sadra Qds, when the human soul develops towards a rational soul, it contains the

souls of plants and animals, on a passive level. That is, the form of the soul is colored by the

level at which the soul becomes very active. For the person who focuses the soul on the level

of the animal's soul, it is the animal form that acts as a new identity when the soul is separated

from the body in the process of death. This is what is linked by Sadra with the meaning of

Surah Al Tiin:

By the fig and the olive

And [by] Mount Sinai

And [by] this secure city [Makkah],

We have certainly created man in the best of stature;

Then We return him to the lowest of the low

In another verse, Allah describes the resurrection of the human form in various forms in

the hereafter, which is connected with the traces of his actions and models of physical

behavior in the world:

"The day when humans are raised in various circumstances to show them the deeds of

their deeds."

CONCLUSION

The soul is a substance which is not material, but the behavior is material. It is born from

three main modes of being, which are possible forms, impossible forms, and simple forms. The

relationship between the three is gradual, starting from the perfect person, becoming the

source of the reason being, for purposes of perfection of the foremost nature, but in a lower

level of quality. So gradually to the extent of the potential actualization that gave rise to

material forms of life. This is what is called the Gradation of Being.

In the perspective of hudhuri science, the soul perceives itself and produces authentic

and compatible knowledge between perceived objects and perceiving subjects. This proves

that the soul is an independent subject that epistemologically can know as other modes of

experience mechanically apply the same, even with different levels of precision and validity.

Another thing concerning the substantiality of the soul is the fact that distinguishes the shift in

the object of knowledge according to the law of particularity of space and time from the

nature of the soul that does not recognize the burden of space and time.



IJAE Page 14

In relation to humans, the soul power is not divided and disaggregated, but is generally

covered and forms certain dominant features. That is, the human mind contains all power and

is never lost but transformed by gathering levels below. Some of them are animals, wild

animals, devils, or angels. The nature of animals in humans is lust, and its ugliness is greed

and lies. From a wild animal is the life of envy and hatred. Of Satan is the nature of treason,

trickery, cunning and arrogant, and love of power. From angels are knowledge and holiness.

These four characters are contained in the composition of the human mind.

REFERENCES

Attas, Syed Muhammad Naquib, 1995, Prolegomena to the metaphysics of Islam: An

Exposition of the Fundamental Element of the Worldview of Islam, Kuala Lumpur,

ISTAC (International Institute of Islamic Thought and Civilization).

Bahtiar, Amsal, 2005, Filsafat Ilmu, Cet II, Jakarta, Rajawali Press.

Bakar, Osman, 2003, Reformulating a Comprehensive Relationship Between Religion and

Science: An Islamic Perspective, Islam & Science: Journal of Islamic Perspective on

Science, Volume 1,No. 1.

---------------- 1998, Hirarki Ilmu Membangun Rangka Pikir Islamisasi Ilmu menurut Al-Farabi,

Al-Ghazali, Quthb al-Din al-Syirazi (terj) Bandung, Mizan.

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16/ Comparative Theology, Vol: 7, No: 16, Autumn & Winter 2016

A Study of the Relationship between Mulla Sadra's " Extra-Intellectual Order"

and Kierkegaard's "Sphere of Religion"

Mahmoud Reza Sadraei

Abbas Hajiha

Akbar Goli Malekabadi

Seyyed ali Alamolhoda

Abstract

Is there a domain beyond the illogical intellect whose statements are antirational? This

question has always called gnosticism to encounter rationalism. Thus, gnostics,

gnosticologists, and religionologists in both Christian west and Islamic east have always paid

attention to intellect and the extraintellectual order, and to the possible relationthip between

them. Mulla Sadra believed that neither the statements of the intellect are invalid in the

extraintellectual order, nor the statements of the latter in the former. Kierkegaard, on the other

hand, in his notion of human life stages, has labeled them as esthetic, ethical, and religious. In

his view, the religious domain is extra-rational and extra-ethical. In an analytic process, Mulla

Sadra has classified the implications and applications of the word "intellect". In his view,

intellect is present in overall human domains and no order of humanity is void of the power of

reason. Additionally, in epistemological terms, intellect cannot be in conflict with other

components when opining within the domain of its own and its cognitive findings; and does

not proscribe its ulterior. In other words, errors emerge in the stage of intellect's decreeing,

not in the stage of senses' and intuition's reporting . Now the intellect itself is able to

recognize its limits, admit ignorance, and lead the humanity to the boundaries of extra-

rational matters. In Mulla Sadra's view, the epistemological and cognitive domain of

extraintellectual order and the complexity of knowledge within this domain are not accessible

to the intellect, being otherwise (e.g., through heart or revelation) achievable by humans. In

Kierkegaard's view, intellect as human capacity of thought is annexative; and experiences and

attitudes acquired in relation to the existence have formed human intellect; and the boundary

sought by the intellect is, in a sense, the very purpose or objective of the intellect. With his

partiality toward faith, Kierkegaard is a known to be a harsh critic of rationalism. He wants to

remind his readers of limitations of human reason. Placing faith in the center of Christian

thinking, he believed that intellect has no role in religious creed; and that the object of faith

has to be paradoxical. Without submission to the paradoxical, the necessary passion and the

Ph.D. Student of Theology, payame Noor University,Tehran, Iran (Responsible author)

[email protected].

Assistant Professor, Department of Theology, payame Noor University,Sari, Iran,

[email protected]

Associate Professor, Department of Theology, payame Noor University,Isfahan, Iran

[email protected]

Associate Professor, Department of Theology, payame Noor University, Tehran, Iran

[email protected]

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ground for decision would not be peovided. Submitting to the paradoxical, a passionate

human being displays his/her exyreme passion and commitment to the object of his/her faith,

which is a paradox, and paradoxical as much as the paradox itself. In Kierkegaard's view, the

void arising from the inconsistency of two discrete, and at the same time, subsequent issues

(ethical and religious life) is filled by an existential issue, namely deapair. Such a despair, he

argues, is an existential process swallowing the entire individual existence and is the result of

paradoxes and substantial impasses that an individual faces within the extant conditions of

his/her own life, becoming the turning point where a human being is detached fron morality

and adjoins religion. Such a despair is deliberaye and chosen. Humans cannot be desperate

without spliciting despair. When resolving it correctly, an individual would go beyond it

righteously. In Islamic view, however, faith is not an anti rational category. In Mulla Sadra's

view, faith is inclusive of instinctive knowledge and intuitive knowledge. Faith has various

grades, one being intuitive. Another grade is the knowledge of God through argumentative

comparison. Although faith is a matter of heart/instinct, the heartfelt/instinctive faith is not

exclusive to exploratory knowledge; and knowledge of God through reasoning and arguments

could be considered heartfelt/inatinctive faith. He tries to reconcile intellect and religion; or in

other words, gnosticism and argumentation. In his specific semantic analytic method, Mulla

Sadra links elements seemingly not directly related to the concept of faith to it, even calling

them equivalents. He restructures other concepts such as light, science, wisdom, and intellect

into a new superior framework, renarrating the theological concept of faith using Koranic,

gnostic, and philosophical literature. That's why he tries to make an aperure between intellect

and heart when reaching the topic of extraintellectual order. Kierkegaard, on the other hand,

raises the issue of paradox when reaching the third stage of life or the sphere of religion in his

methodological model. He concludes that the sphere of religion, and entry to the stage of faith

is based on existenz and has no relevance to the conceptual existence and the concept of

existence, but some sort of unity is realized between it an the authentic exterior existence; and

even, one has to say, faith is the same as the existenz; and what he refers to as "extra-religion"

is an extraintellectual order. In his view, the process of faith requires detention of intellect,

which, of course, does not imply the omission and negation of intellect. Nulla Sadra,

however, with his interpretation of extra intellectual order, accepts the fact that it's

statements are not accessible to the intellect and the latter is incapable of fathoming then does

not imply that if a human being reaches an understanding of extra intellectual order using

other means than rationality, logics, and conceptual, influential methods, the intellect will

be deaf and blind toward such an understanding. He believes that the statements of the extra

intellectual order are not within the intellect's domain of comprehension but in another

domain are known as heartfelt /instinctive knowledge. In fact, he denies the alienation of

heart and mind because in his view, psyche has a transcendental essence and a collective

unity. Therefore, he does not consider heart and mind as mutually exclusive; and that

intellect does not deem impossible the heart's intuitions. His interpretations of extra

intellectual order are based on his specific view of intellect and Islamic anthropology.

However, when Kierkegaard considers the sphere of religion as irrational, he provides a

specific conception of humanity contradicting that of Nulla Sadra because he portrays human

beings as completely separate and aliens to one another as an archipelago. In fact, he closes

all windows between intellect and heart when stating that in the extra intellectual order, the

plunge is relevant, not rationalization. Hence the separation between Mulla Sadra's and

Kierkegaard's thoughts. They both accept that intellect is not a complete source of knowledge

for fathoming the truth. Faced with the paradox in the sphere of religion, Kierkegaard

prescribed the detention of intellect. Mulla Sadra's, on the other hand, considers coordinated

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18/ Comparative Theology, Vol: 7, No: 16, Autumn & Winter 2016

and consistent the perceptual realms and knowledge domains in both areas of intellect and the

extra intellectual order beyond it. Kierkegaard is a life thinker who has considered the sphere

of religion to beyond beyond ethics, intellect, and esthetics in his categorization of life

stages. In both their views, the sphere of religion and extra intellectual order have a

mysterious and allegorical identity; an allegory which is not a poetic, literary lingo, but a

specific way of thinking and a specific method for achieving knowledge. This paper tries to

examine the similarities and dissimilarities of those two ways of living, namely, the sphere

of religion and the extra intellectual order in the views of the two great thinkers who have

developed them.

Keywords:Beyond Intellect؛ Intellect؛ Paradox

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Comparative Theology, Vol: 7, No: 16, Autumn & Winter 2016 /19

19- Evans, Stephen, C. (2006). Kierkegaard on Faith and the Self, Baylor University

Press.

20- Ferreira, Jamie (1998). The Cambridge Companion to Kierkegaard, Alstair Hannay &

CordonD. Marina (eds.), Cambridge University Press.

21- Gardiner, Patrick. (1988). Kierkegaard, Oxford University Press.

22- Green ,Ronald Michael. (1992). Kierkegaard and Kant: the hidden debt, SUNY Press.

23- Kierkegaard, Either/ Or, Vol 2, 1971, Translated By Walter Lowrie, New Jersey,

Princeton University Press.

24- Id.(1974)Fear and Trembling and the Sickness, Unto Death, trans. With introd. and

notes by W. Lowrie, Princeton University.

25- Id. (1983). Kierkegaard’s Fragments and Postscript, by Hummanities Press

International Inc.

26- Id.(1983b).Fear and trembling andrepetition , ed and tr. Howard v. Hong and Edna

Hong Princeton, Princeton, Princeton, University Press.

27- Id. ) 1987). philosophical fragments, Ed and trans by: Howard v Hong Edna H. Hong

(Princeton university press, second edition,)

28- Id.(1992). Concluding uniscientific postscript ,ed and tran by: Howard v Hong Edna

H. Hong (Princeton university press).

29- O’Hara, Shelley. (2004). Kierkegaard within your grasp, Wiley Publishing, Inc.

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Ṣadr ad-Dīn MuḥammadShīrāzī (Mulla Sadra)

Born c. 1571/2 Shiraz

Died 1640 Basra

Era Post-Classical Islamicphilosophy

Region Iranian Philosophy,Islamic Philosophy Shi'aIslam

Maininterests

Illuminationism,Transcendent theosophy

Shahab al-Din Suhrawardi, MirDamad, Avicenna, Bahāʾ al-dīn al-

ʿĀmilī/Sheykh Baha'i

Hadi Sabzavari, Muhammad HusaynTabatabaei, Ruhollah Khomeini,

Morteza Motahhari, Abul A'laMaududi, Ruhollah Khomeini,

Gholamhossein Ebrahimi Dinani,Hossein Nasr

Mulla SadraṢadr ad-Dīn Muḥammad Shīrāzī, also called Mulla Sadrā (Persian: ملا صدرا ;also spelled Molla Sadra, Mollasadra or Sadr-ol-Mote'allehin; Arabic: صدر,was an Iranian Twelver Shi'a Islamic philosopher ,(c. 1571/2 – 1640) ( المتألهینtheologian and ‘Ālim who led the Iranian cultural renaissance in the 17thcentury. According to Oliver Leaman, Mulla Sadra is arguably the single mostimportant and influential philosopher in the Muslim world in the last fourhundred years.[1][2]

Though not its founder, he is considered the master of the Illuminationist (or,Ishraghi or Ishraqi) school of Philosophy, a seminal figure who synthesized themany tracts of the Islamic Golden Age philosophies into what he called theTranscendent Theosophy or al-hikmah al-muta’āliyah.

Mulla Sadra brought "a new philosophical insight in dealing with the nature ofreality" and created "a major transition from essentialism to existentialism" inIslamic philosophy,[3] although his existentialism should not be too readilycompared to Western existentialism. His was a question of existentialistcosmology as it pertained to God, and thus differs considerably from theindividual, moral, and/or social, questions at the heart of Russian, French,German, or American Existentialism.

Mulla Sadra's philosophy ambitiously synthesized Avicennism, Shahab al-DinSuhrawardi's Illuminationist philosophy, Ibn Arabi's Sufi metaphysics, and thetheology of the Ash'ari school and Twelvers.

His main work is The Transcendent Philosophy of the Four Journeys of theIntellect, or simply Four Journeys.

BiographyInfantTeachers

Philosophical ideasExistentialismSubstantial motionExistence as realityCausationTruthMethodology

List of known works

See also

Notes

References

Influences

Influenced

Contents

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shiraz

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basra

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_philosophy#Post-classical_Islamic_philiosophy

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iranian_Philosophy

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_Philosophy

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shi%27a_Islam

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illuminationist_philosophy

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcendent_theosophy

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shahab_al-Din_Suhrawardi

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mir_Damad

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avicenna

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bah%C4%81%CA%BE_al-d%C4%ABn_al-%CA%BF%C4%80mil%C4%AB

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheykh_Baha%27i

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hadi_Sabzavari

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad_Husayn_Tabatabaei

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruhollah_Khomeini

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morteza_Motahhari

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abul_A%27la_Maududi

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruhollah_Khomeini

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gholamhossein_Ebrahimi_Dinani

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hossein_Nasr

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persian_language

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_language

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iranian_philosophy

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_philosophy

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalam

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulema

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Leaman


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_Golden_Age

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcendent_Theosophy

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essentialism

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Existentialism

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Existentialism

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avicennism



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibn_Arabi

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sufi_metaphysics

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalam

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ash%27ari

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twelvers

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Transcendent_Philosophy_of_the_Four_Journeys_of_the_Intellect

Further reading

External links

Born in Shiraz, in what is now Iran, to a notable family of court officials in 1571or 1572,[4] In Mulla Sadra's time, the Safavid dynasty governed on Iran. Safavidkings granted independence to Fars Province which was ruled by the king'sbrother. Mulla Sadara's father, khwajah Ibrahim Qavami, was a knowledgeableand extremely faithful politician. His father was a rich man and held a highposition, but had no children. However, after a lot of prayers and supplications todivine portal, God gave him a son whom they named Muhammad but calledSadra. Later he was nicknamed as Mulla, that is, great scientist. He was the onlychild of the minister of the ruler of the vast region of Fars Province. In that timeit was prevalent that aristocrats' children were educated by private teachers intheir own palace. Sadra was a very intelligent, strict, energetic, studious andcurious boy and mastered all the lessons related to Persian and Arabic literatureas well as the art of calligraphy, during a very short time. Following to oldtraditions of his time, he had to learn horse riding, hunting and fightingtechniques, mathematics, astronomy, medicine to some extent, jurisprudence,Islamic law. The young Sadra, who had not reached the age of puberty, hadacquired some of all those fields of knowledge however, he was mainly attractedon philosophy and particularly gnosis.[5]

Mulla Sadra moved first to Qazvin in 1591 and then to Isfahan 1597 to pursue atraditional and institutional education in philosophy, theology, Hadith, andhermeneutics. Each city was a successive capital of the Safavid dynasty andcenters of Twelver Shi'ite seminaries at that time. His teachers included MirDamad and Baha' ad-Din al-Àmili.[6]

Mulla Sadra was a master of all science of his time. In his own view, the mostimportant of these was philosophy. In Qazvin, Sadra studied under twoprominent teachers, namely Baha' ad-Din al-Àmili and Mir Damad. Heaccompanied them when the capital transmitted from Qazvin to Isfahan in 1006A.H/1596. Mulla sadra acquired most of his scholarly knowledge from Baha' ad-Din al-Àmili and Mir Damad.[7] Shaykh Baha was not only an expert in Islamicsciences but also a master of astronomy, theoretical mathematics, engineering, architecture, medicine and some secretsupernatural fields of knowledge; it seems that Ameli for his sophis Ideas, didn't deal with philosophy more. also Miradamad asgenius of his time, although knew the all science of his time but limited his domain to jurisprudence, hadith and mainlyphilosophy. Mir Damad was a master of both Peripatetic and illuminationist schools of Islamic philosophy. Also, Mulla Sadraobtained most of his knowledge of philosophy and gnosis from Mir Damad and always introduced him as his true teacher andspiritual guide.[8]

Biography

The house of Mulla Sadra in Kahak(a small village near the city of Qom,in Iran) where Mulla Sadra used tolive in when he was exiled due tosome of his ideas.

The entrance door of the house,where Mulla Sadra used to liveduring his exile in Kahak. There is asentence above of the door written inPersian which says "The house ofthe wise, Mulla Sadra".

Infant

Teachers

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shiraz



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safavid

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fars_Province

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fars_Province

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qazvin

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isfahan

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hadith

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safavid_dynasty

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twelver

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shi%27ite


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baha%27_ad-Din_al-%60Amili

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qazvin






https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:The_House_of_Mulla_Sadra_in_Kahak_Qom.jpg

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Entrance_of_Mulla_Sadra%27s_House_in_Kahak_Qom.jpg


After he had finished his studies Sadra began to explore unorthodox doctrinesand as a result was both condemned and excommunicated by some Shi'i ʿulamāʾ.He then retired for a lengthy period of time to a village named Kahak near Qom,where he engaged in contemplative exercises. While in Kahak, he wrote anumber of minor works, including the Risāla fi 'l-ḥashr and the Risāla fī ḥudūthal-ʿālam .[9]

In 1612, Mulla Sadra was asked to abandon his exile by the powerful governorof Fārs "Ali Quli Khan", Allāhwirdī Ḵhān[9] and invited back to Shiraz to teachand run a new madrasa devoted to the intellectual sciences.[4] He died in Basraafter the Hajj and was buried in present-day Iraq. He is buried in the city ofNajaf, Iraq.

During this time in Shīrāz, Ṣadrā began writing treatises that synthesized wide-ranging strands of existing Islamic systems of thought. The ideas of this school,which may be seen as a continuation of the School of Iṣfahān of Mīr Dāmād andShaykh-i Bahāʾī, were promulgated after Sadrā's death by his pupils, several ofwhom would become sought-after thinkers in their own right, such as, Mullā Muḥsin Fayḍ Kāshānī (the Mulla Sadra's son inlaw), and ʿAbd Razzāḳ Lāhidjī. Although Ṣadrā's influence remained limited in the generations after his death, it increasedmarkedly during the 19th century, when his ideas helped inspire a renewed Akhbārī tendency within Twelver Shīʿism. In recenttimes, his works have been studied in Iran, Europe, and America.[9]

According to Mulla Sadra, "existence precedes the essence and is thus principal since something has to exist first and then havean essence." It is notable that for Mulla Sadra this was a question that specifically applied to God and God's position in theuniverse, especially in the context of reconciling God's position in the Qur'an versus cosmological philosophies of Islam's GoldenEra.[10]

Mulla Sadra metaphysics gave priority "Ab initio" to existence, over quiddity. That is to say, essences are determined andvariable according to existential "intensity", (to use Henry Corbin's definition), and as such essences are not immutable.[11] Theadvantage to this schema is that it is acceptable to the fundamental statements of the Qur'an, even as it does not necessarilydebilitate any previous Islamic philosopher's Aristotelian or Platonic foundations.

Indeed, Mulla Sadra provides immutability only to God, while intrinsically linking essence and existence to each other, and God'spower over existence. In so doing, Mulla Sadra simultaneously provided for God's authority over all things, while also solving theproblem of God's knowledge of particulars, including those that are evil, without being inherently responsible for them — even asGod's authority over the existence of existences that provide the framework for evil to exist. This clever solution provides forFreedom of Will, God's Supremacy, the Infiniteness of God's Knowledge, the existence of Evil, and a definition of existence andessence which leaves two inextricably linked insofar as Man is concerned, but fundamentally separate insofar as God isconcerned.[12]

Perhaps most importantly, the Primacy of Existence solution provides the capacity for God's Judgement without God beingdirectly, or indirectly, affected by the evil being judged. God does not need to possess Sin to know Sin: God is able to judge theintensity of Sin as God perceives Existence.[12]

This is a view of the inside of thehouse of Mulla Sadra in Kahak. Acopy of the painted portrait of him ishanged on the wall.

Philosophical ideas

Existentialism

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Son_of_Allahverdi_Khan&action=edit&redlink=1

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madrasa

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basra

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hajj

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Najaf

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohsen_Fayz_Kashani

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abd_al-Razzaq_Lahiji

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ab_initio

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quiddity

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Inside_of_the_House_of_Mulla_Sadra_in_Kahan_Qom.jpg

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kahak,_Qom

One result of this Existentialism is "The unity of the intellect and the intelligible" (Arabic: Ittihad al-Aaqil wa l-Maqul. As HenryCorbin describes:

All the levels of the modes of being and perception are governed by the same law of unity, which at the level ofthe intelligible world is the unity of intellection, of the intelligizing subject, and of the Form intelligized — thesame unity as that of love, lover and beloved. Within this perspective we can perceive what Sadra meant by theunitive union of the human soul, in the supreme awareness of its acts of knowledge, with the active Intelligencewhich is the Holy Spirit. It is never a question of an arithmetical unity, but of an intelligible unity permitting thereciprocity which allows us to understand that, in the soul which it metamorphoses, the Form—or Idea—intelligized by the active Intelligence is a Form which intelligizes itself, and that as a result the active Intelligenceor Holy Spirit intelligizes itself in the soul's act of intellection. Reciprocally, the soul, as a Form intelligizingitself, intelligizes itself as a Form intelligized by the active Intelligence.[13]

Another central concept of Mulla Sadra's philosophy is the theory of "substantial motion" (Arabic:al-harakat al-jawhariyyah),which is "based on the premise that everything in the order of nature, including celestial spheres, undergoes substantial changeand transformation as a result of the self-flow (fayd) and penetration of being (sarayan al-wujud) which gives every concreteindividual entity its share of being. In contrast to Aristotle and Avicenna who had accepted change only in four categories, i.e.,quantity (kamm), quality (kayf), position (wad’) and place (‘ayn), Sadra defines change as an all-pervasive reality running throughthe entire cosmos including the category of substance (jawhar)."[14]

Mulla Sadra held the view that Reality is Existence. He believed that an essence was by itself a general notion, and therefore anddoes not, in reality, exist.[15]

To paraphrase Fazlur Rahman on Mulla Sadra's Existential Cosmology: Existence is the one and only reality. Existence andreality are therefore identical. Existence is the all-comprehensive reality and there is nothing outside of it. Essences which arenegative require some sort of reality and therefore exist. Existence therefore cannot be denied. Therefore, existence cannot benegated. As Existence cannot be negated, it is self-evident that it Existence is God. God should not be searched for in the realm ofexistence but is the basis of all existence.[16] Reality in Arabic is "Al-Haq", and is stated in the Qur'an as one of the Names ofGod.

To paraphrase Mulla Sadra's Logical Proof for God:[17]

1. There is a being2. This being is a perfection beyond all perfection3. God is Perfect and Perfection in existence4. Existence is a singular and simple reality5. That singular reality is graded in intensity in a scale of perfection6. That scale must have a limit point, a point of greatest intensity and of greatest existence7. Therefore, God exists

Sadra argued that all contingent beings require a cause which puts their balance between existence and non-existence in favor ofthe former; nothing can come into existence without a cause. Since the world is therefore contingent upon this First Act, not onlymust God exist, but God must also be responsible for this First Act of creation.

Substantial motion

Existence as reality

Causation

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Corbin

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Substance_theory

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_(physics)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nature

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celestial_spheres

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(psychology)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Being

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristotle


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categorization

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantity

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quality_(philosophy)

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/position

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/place

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Substance_theory

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_of_God

Sadra also believed that a causal regress was impossible because the causal chain could only work in the matter that had abeginning, middle, and end:

1) a pure cause at the beginning 2) a pure effect at the end 3) a nexus of cause and effect

The Causal Nexus of Mulla Sadra was a form of Existential Ontology within a Cosmological Framework that Islam supported.For Mulla Sadra the Causal "End" is as pure as its corresponding "Beginning", which instructively places God at both thebeginning and the end of the creative act. God's capacity to measure the intensity of Existential Reality by measuring CausalDynamics' and their Relationship to their Origin, as opposed to knowing their effects, provided the Islamically-acceptableframework for God's Judgement of Reality without being tainted by its Particulars. This was an ingenious solution to a questionthat had haunted Islamic philosophy for almost one thousand years: How is God able to judge sin without knowing sin?[12]

For Mulla Sadra a true statement is a statement that is true to the concrete facts in existence. He held a metaphysical and not aformal idea of truth, claiming that the world consists of mind-independent objects that are always true and truth is not what isrationally acceptable within a certain theory of description. In Mulla Sadra's view one cannot have access to the reality of being:only linguistic analysis is available. This theory of Truth has two levels: the claim that a proposition is true if it corresponds tothings in reality; and that a proposition can be true if it conforms with the actual thing itself.[18]

Janan Izadi believes that Hikmat Muta’aliyah is of a metalanguage according to Mehdi Haeri Yazdi. That approach could evaluatethe power of epistemology in Mulla Sadra's philosophical views. However, there are two primarily groups on Mulla Sadra'smethodology. One group basically disagreed with any kind of systematizing of knowledge and methodological approach inHekmat Muta’aliyyah. The other group believe in being structured of Mulla Sadra's view. They maintain that there is aconsistency and methodological approach for Mulla Sadra. In fact, the metalanguage approach could be considered in latter notthe former.[19]

Sharh Usool Al-Kafi شرح اصول الکافي Exegesis of one of the most Important Hadith collection in Shi'a school ofthought, Al-Kafi contains Narrations from Twelve Divinely appointed Imams from Household of ProphetMuhammadHikmat Al Muta'alyahfi-l-asfar al-‘aqliyya al-arba‘a [The Transcendent theosophy in the Four Journeys of theIntellect], a philosophical encyclopedia and a collection of important issues discussed in Islamic philosophy,enriched by the ideas of preceding philosophers, from Pythagoras to those living at the same time with MullaSadra, and containing the related responses on the basis of new and strong arguments. In four large volumes;also published several times in nine smaller volumes. He composed this book gradually, starting in about 1015A.H. (1605 A.D.); its completion took almost 25 years, until some years after 1040 A.H. (1630 A.D.). Book is alsotranslated in Urdu by Indian scholar Abul Ala Maududi by the name of Asfar e Arba[20].al-Tafsir (A commentary upon the Qur'an)Diwan Shi’r (Collection of Poems), a number of scholarly and mystic poems in Persian.Si Asl, Mulla Sadra's only extant book of philosophy in Persian. Here, by resorting to the main three moralprinciples, he has dealt with moral and educative subjects related to scientists, and advised his contemporaryphilosophers.Sharh al-hidayah, a commentary on a book called Hidayah, which had been written on the basis of Peripateticphilosophy.‘Arshiyyah, also called al-Hikmat al-‘arshiyyah, a referential book about Mulla Sadra's philosophy. As in al-Mazahir, he has tried to demonstrate the Beginning and the End concisely but precisely. This book has beentranslated by Professor James Winston Morris into English with an informative introduction.al-Mabda‘ wa’l-ma‘ad, also called al-Hikmat al-muta‘aliyyah, considered to be a summary of the second half ofAsfar. He called this book the Beginning and the End, since he believed at heart that philosophy means the

Truth

Methodology

List of known works

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causality

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metalanguage

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mehdi_Haeri_Yazdi

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epistemology

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methodology

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metalanguage

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hikmat_Al_Muta%27alyah_(book)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Tafsir

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Winston_Morris

knowledge of the Origin and the Return.al-Mazahir This book is similar to al-Mabda‘ wa’l-ma‘ad, but is shorter than it. It is, in fact, a handbook forfamiliarizing readers with Mulla Sadra's philosophy.Huduth al-‘alam, on the issue of the origination of the world, which is a complicated and disputable problem formany philosophers. He proved his solid theory through the theory of the trans-substantial motion.Iksir al-‘arifin, a gnostic and educative book.al-Hashr, a theory of the resurrection of animals and objects in the Hereafter.al-Masha‘ir, on existence and its related subjects. Professor Henry Corbin has translated it into French andwritten an introduction to it. This book has recently been translated into English, too.al-waridat al-qalbiyyah, a brief account of important philosophical problems, it seems to be an inventory of theDivine inspirations and illuminations he had received all through his life.Iqad al-na‘imin, on theoretical and actual gnosis, and on the science of monotheism. It presents some guidelinesand instructional points to wake up the sleeping.al-Masa‘il al-qudsiyyah, a booklet deals mainly with issues such as existence in mind and epistemology. Here,Mulla Sadra has combined epistemology and ontology.al-Shawahid al-rububiyyah, a philosophical book, written in the Illuminationist style, and represents Mulla Sadra'sideas during the early periods of his philosophical thoughts.al-Shawahid al-rububiyyah, a treatise not related to Mulla Sadra's book of the same name (see above). It is aninventory of his particular theories and opinions which he had been able to express in philosophical terms.Sharh-i Shafa, a commentary upon some of the issues discussed in the part on theology (Ilahiyyat) in Ibn-Sina'sal-Shifa.Sharh-i Hikmat al-ishraq, a useful and profound commentary or collection of glosses on Suhrawardi's Hikmat al-ishraq and Qutb al-Din Shirazi's commentary upon it.Ittihad al-‘aquil wa’l-ma’qul, a monographic treatise on the demonstration of a complicated philosophical theory,the Union of the Intellect and the Intelligible, which no one could prove and rationalize prior to Mulla Sadra.Ajwibah al-masa’il, consisting of at least three treatises in which Mulla Sadra responds to the philosophicalquestions posed by his contemporary philosophers.Ittisaf al-mahiyyah bi’l wujud, a monographic treatise dealing with the problem of existence and its relation toquiddities.al-Tashakhkhus, explaining the problem of individuation and clarified its relation to existence and its principality,which is one of the most fundamental principles he has propounded.Sarayan nur wujud, a treatise dealing with the quality of the descent or diffusion of existence from the TrueSource to existents (quiddities).Limmi’yya ikhtisas al-mintaqah, A treatise on logic, this work focuses on the cause of the specific form of thesphere.Khalq al-a’mal, a treatise on man's determinism and free will.al-Qada’ wa’l-qadar, on the problem of Divine Decree and Destiny.Zad al-Musafir, demonstrating resurrection and the Hereafter following a philosophical approach.al-Mizaj, a treatise on the reality of man's temperament and its relation to the body and soul.Mutashabihat al-Qur'an, a treatise consists of Mulla Sadra's interpretations of those Qura’nic verses which havesecret and complicated meanings. It is considered as one of the chapters in [Mafatih al-ghayb].Isalat-i Ja’l-i wujud, on existence and its principality as opposed to quiddities.al-Hashriyyah, a treatise on resurrection and people's presence in the Hereafter, it deals with man's beingrewarded in paradise and punished in hell.al-alfazh al-mufradah, an abridged dictionary for interpreting words in the Qur'an.Radd-i shubahat-i iblis, explaining Satan's seven paradoxes and providing the related answers.Kasr al-asnam al-jahiliyyah (Demolishing the idols of the periods of barbarism and man's ignorance). Hisintention here is to condemn and disgrace impious sophists.al-Tanqih, dealing with formal logic.al-Tasawwur wa’l-tasdiq, a treatise dealing with issues of the philosophy of logic and inquiries into concept andjudgment.Diwan Shi’r (Collection of Poems), a number of scholarly and mystic poems in Persian.A Collection of Scientific-Literary Notes, some short notes of his own poetry, the statements of philosophers andgnostics, and scientific issues have been left from his youth, which comprise a precious collection. This book canfamiliarize the readers with subtleties of Mulla Sadra's nature. These notes were compiled in two differentcollections, and it is likely that the smaller collection was compiled on one of his journeys.Letters: except for a few letters exchanged between Mulla Sadra and his master, Mir Damad, none of his lettershas survived. These letters have been presented at the beginning of the 3-volume


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kasr_al-asnam_al-jahiliyyah

List of Iranian scientistsIranian philosophyList of Shi'a MuslimsAl Akbariyya (Sufi school)Hossein Nasr

Razavi, Mehdi Amin (1997), Suhrawardi and the School of Illumination, Routledge, ISBN 0-7007-0412-4Leaman, Oliver (2013). Islamic Philosophy (https://books.google.com.au/books?id=IxHfaMfRkXYC&dq=mulla+sadra+leaman&source=gbs_navlinks_s). John Wiley and Sons. ISBN 0745659071.

1. Leaman 2013, p.146.

2. Mulla Sadra (Sadr al-Din Muhammad al-Shirazi) (1571/2-1640) (http://www.muslimphilosophy.com/ip/rep/H027.htm) by John Cooper

3. Kamal, Muhammad (2006), Mulla Sadra's Transcendent Philosophy, Ashgate Publishing, Ltd., pp. 9 & 39,ISBN 0-7546-5271-8

4. Rizvi, Sajjad (2002), Reconsidering the life of Mulla Sadra Shirazi, Pembroke College, pp. 181

5. (Ayatollahi Hamid Reza, 2005 & p.12)

6. http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/molla-sadra-sirazi

7. (Ayatollahi Hamid Reza, 2005 & p.18)

8. (Ayatollahi, 2005 & p.13)

9. MacEoin, D. "Mullā Ṣadrā S̲H̲īrāzī Ṣadr al-Dīn Muḥammad b. Ibrāhīm Ḳawāmī S̲h̲īrāzī." Encyclopaedia of Islam,Second Edition. Edited by: P. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C.E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel and W.P. Heinrichs. Brill,2010. Brill Online. Augustana. 13 April 2010 <http://www.brillonline.nl/subscriber/entry?entry=islam_SIM-5490>

10. (Razavi 1997, p. 130)

11. Corbin (1993), pp. 342 and 343

12. Sayyed Hussein Nasr, Persian Sufi Literature, Lecture, George Washington University, 2006

13. Corbin (1993), pp. 343 and 344

14. Kalin, Ibrahim (March 2001), "Sadr al-Din Shirazi (Mulla Sadra) (b. 1571-1640)", in Iqbal, Muzaffar; Kalin, Ibrahim(eds.), Resources on Islam & Science (http://www.cis-ca.org/voices/s/sadra.htm), retrieved 2008-02-04

15. Fazlur Rahman, The Philosophy of Mulla Sadra State University of New York Press, 1975, pp 27 and 28

16. Fazlur Rahman, The Philosophy of Mulla Sadra State University of New York Press, 1975, pp 125

17. Rizvi, Sajjad Mulla Sadra and Metaphysics, 2009, pp126

18. Rizvi, Sajjad Mulla Sadra and Metaphysics, 2009, pp59-62

19. Janan Izadi (2007). Meta language as a theory for methodology of Hikmat Muta'aliyeh (http://www.noormags.ir/view/fa/articlepage/588624/%c2%ab%d8%b2%d8%a8%d8%a7%d9%86-%d8%a8%d8%b1%d8%aa%d8%b1%c2%bb--%d9%86%d8%b8%d8%b1%db%8c%d9%87-%d8%a7%db%8c-%d8%af%d8%b1-%d8%b1%d9%88%d8%b4-%d8%b4%d9%86%d8%a7%d8%b3%db%8c-%d8%ad%da%a9%d9%85%d8%aa-%d9%85%d8%aa%d8%b9%d8%a7%d9%84%db%8c%d9%87?q=%D8%AC%D9%86%D8%A7%D9%86%20%D8%A7%DB%8C%D8%B2%D8%AF%DB%8C&score=81.080376&rownumber=4). Kherad nameh Sadra. pp. 21–22.

20. https://quranwahadith.com/product/asfar-e-arba/

See also

Notes

References

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Iranian_scientists


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Shi%27a_Muslims

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Akbariyya_(Sufi_school)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hossein_Nasr

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Routledge

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Standard_Book_Number

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/0-7007-0412-4

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Leaman

https://books.google.com.au/books?id=IxHfaMfRkXYC&dq=mulla+sadra+leaman&source=gbs_navlinks_s


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/0745659071

http://www.muslimphilosophy.com/ip/rep/H027.htm



http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/molla-sadra-sirazi

http://www.brillonline.nl/subscriber/entry?entry=islam_SIM-5490

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muzaffar_Iqbal

http://www.cis-ca.org/voices/s/sadra.htm

http://www.noormags.ir/view/fa/articlepage/588624/%c2%ab%d8%b2%d8%a8%d8%a7%d9%86-%d8%a8%d8%b1%d8%aa%d8%b1%c2%bb--%d9%86%d8%b8%d8%b1%db%8c%d9%87-%d8%a7%db%8c-%d8%af%d8%b1-%d8%b1%d9%88%d8%b4-%d8%b4%d9%86%d8%a7%d8%b3%db%8c-%d8%ad%da%a9%d9%85%d8%aa-%d9%85%d8%aa%d8%b9%d8%a7%d9%84%db%8c%d9%87?q=%D8%AC%D9%86%D8%A7%D9%86%20%D8%A7%DB%8C%D8%B2%D8%AF%DB%8C&score=81.080376&rownumber=4

https://quranwahadith.com/product/asfar-e-arba/

Nasr, Seyyed Hossein, Sadr al-Din Shirazi and his Transcendent Theosophy, Background, Life and Works, 2nded., Tehran: Institute for Humanities and Cultural Studies, 1997.Rahman, Fazlur, The Philosophy of Mulla Sadra, Albany: State University of New York Press, 1975.Morris, James (trans.), The Wisdom of the Throne, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981.Chittick, William (trans.) The Elixir of the Gnostics, Provo: Brigham Young University Press, 2003.Rizvi, Sajjad, Mulla Sadra Shirazi: His Life, Works and Sources for Safavid Philosophy, Oxford: Oxford UniversityPress, 2007.Peerwani, Latimah (trans.), On the Hermeneutics of the Light Verse of the Qur'an. London: ICAS, 2004.Jambet, Christian, The Act of Being: The Philosophy of Revelation in Mulla Sadra, Trans. Jeff Fort, New York:Zone Books, 2006.Kalin, Ibrahim, Knowledge in Later Islamic Philosophy: Mulla Sadra on Existence, Intellect, and Intuition, Oxford:Oxford University Press, 2010Amir Raza, Syed, Wisdom of the Unseen: An Inquiry Into the Reality of Things, Pakistan: Wasila Society, 2008Moris, Zailan, Revelation, Intellectual Intuition and Reason in the Philosophy of Mulla Sadra: An Analysis of theAl-Hikmah Al-'arshiyyah, London: Routledge Curzon, 2003.

MOLLĀṢADRĀ ŠIRĀZI (http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/molla-sadra-sirazi) an article by Sajjad H. Rizvi inEncyclopædia IranicaMulla-Sadra (http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/396809/Mulla-Sadra) an article on EncyclopædiaBritannica OnlineMulla Sadra (http://www.iep.utm.edu/sadra) an article in the Internet Encyclopedia of PhilosophySadra Islamic Philosophy research Institute (http://www.mullasadra.org/)Sadr al-Din Muhammad b. Ibrahim b. Yahya Qawami Shirazi (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mulla-sadra/)Biography (http://www.islamic-studies.org/sadra.biography.htm)Biography (http://www.salaam.co.uk/knowledge/biography/viewentry.php?id=2091)Mulla Sadra (Sadr al-Din Muhammad al-Shirazi) (1571/2-1640) (http://www.muslimphilosophy.com/ip/rep/H027.htm)"Commentary on Mulla Sadra's philosophy" (http://www.muslimphilosophy.com/hmp/XLVIII-Forty-eight.pdf)(PDF). (2.11 MiB) by Allameh TabatabaeiMulla Sadra historical house is in danger (http://www.photoparsi.com/5/523-mulla-sadra-house); PhotosMulla Sadra historical house (http://www.photoparsi.com/5/322-mulla-sadra-historical-house)

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Further reading

External links

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seyyed_Hossein_Nasr

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Chittick

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zailan_Moris

http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/molla-sadra-sirazi

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Iranica

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica_Online

http://www.iep.utm.edu/sadra

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http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mulla-sadra/

http://www.islamic-studies.org/sadra.biography.htm

http://www.salaam.co.uk/knowledge/biography/viewentry.php?id=2091

http://www.muslimphilosophy.com/ip/rep/H027.htm

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Mulla Sadra

First published Tue Jun 9, 2009; substantive revision

Tue Feb 5, 2019

Sadr al-Din Muhammad b. Ibrahim b. Yahya Qawami

Shirazi (ca. 1571–1636) is arguably the most

significant Islamic philosopher after Avicenna. Best

known as Mulla Sadra, he was later given the title of

Sadr al-Muta’allihin (Master of the theosists) for his

approach to philosophy that combined an interest in

theology and drew upon insights from mystical

intuition. He considered philosophy to be a set of

spiritual exercises and a process of theosis, a pursuit of

wisdom whose goal was to acquire wisdom and

become a sage, and hence become godlike. He

championed a radical philosophical method that

attempted to transcend the simple dichotomy between

a discursive, ratiocinative mode of reasoning and

knowing, and a more intuitive, poetic and non-

propositional mode of knowledge. He became famous

as the thinker who revolutionized the doctrine of

existence in Islamic metaphysics.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mulla-sadra/

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mulla-sadra/

Ilkhanate-Mongols besiegingBaghdad under the command ofHulagu Khan, c. 1430.

IlluminationismIlluminationism (Persian حكمت اشراق hikmat-i ishrāq, Arabic: حكمة الإشراق ḥikmat al-ishrāq, bothmeaning "Wisdom of the Rising Light"), also known as Ishrāqiyyun or simply Ishrāqi (Persian اشراق,Arabic: الإشراق, lit. "Rising", as in "Shining of the Rising Sun") is a philosophical and mystical school ofthought introduced by Shahab al-Din Suhrawardi (honorific: Shaikh al-ʿIshraq or Shaikh-i-Ishraq, bothmeaning "Master of Illumination") in the twelfth century, established with his Kitab Hikmat al-Ishraq (lit:"Book of the Wisdom of Illumination"), a fundamental text finished in 1186. Written with influence fromAvicennism, Peripateticism, and Neoplatonism, the philosophy is nevertheless distinct as a novel and holisticaddition to the history of Islamic philosophy.

HistoryKey concepts

Ishraq

LegacyMulla Sadra

See alsoNotesFurther readingExternal links

While the Ilkhanate-Mongol Siege of Baghdad and the destruction ofthe House of Wisdom (Arabic: بيت الحكمة, romanized: Bayt al-Ḥikmah) effectively ended the Islamic Golden Age in 1258, it alsopaved the way for novel philosophical invention.[1] Such an exampleis the work of philosopher Abu'l-Barakāt al-Baghdādī, specifically hisKitāb al-Muʿtabar ("The Book of What Has Been Established byPersonal Reflection"); the book's challenges to the Aristotelian normin Islamic philosophy along with al-Baghdādī's emphasis on “evidentself-reflection” and his revival of the Platonic use of light as ametaphor for phenomena like inspiration all influenced the philosophyof Suhrawardi.[2] The philosopher and logician Zayn al-Din OmarSavaji further inspired Suhrawardi with his foundational works onmathematics and his creativity in reconstructing the Organon; Savaji's

two-part logic based on "expository propositions" (al-aqwāl al-šāreḥa) and "proof theory" (ḥojaj) served asthe precursory model for Suhrawardi's own "Rules of Thought" (al-Żawābeṭ al-fekr).[3] Among the threeIslamic philosophers mentioned in Suhrawardi's work, al-Baghdādī and Savaji are two of them.

Contents

History

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bagdad1258.jpg

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilkhanate

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Baghdad_(1258)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hulagu_Khan






https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honorific

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avicennism

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peripatetic_school

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoplatonism

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holistic


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilkhanate

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongol_Empire

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Baghdad_(1258)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Wisdom



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu%27l-Barak%C4%81t_al-Baghd%C4%81d%C4%AB

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristotelianism

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plato

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zayn_al-Din_Omar_Savaji

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organon

Upon finishing his Kitab Hikmat al-Ishraq (lit: "Book of the Wisdom of Illumination"), the Persian[4][5][6][7]

philosopher Shahab al-Din Suhrawardi founded Illuminationism in 1186. The Persian and Islamic schooldraws on ancient Iranian philosophical disciplines,[8][9] Avicennism (Ibn Sina’s early Islamic philosophy),Neoplatonic thought (modified by Ibn Sina), and the original ideas of Suhrawardi.

In his Philosophy of Illumination, Suhrawardi argued that light operates at all levels and hierarchies of reality(PI, 97.7–98.11). Light produces immaterial and substantial lights, including immaterial intellects (angels),human and animal souls, and even 'dusky substances', such as bodies.[10]

Suhrawardi's metaphysics is based on two principles. The first is a form of the principle of sufficient reason.The second principle is Aristotle's principle that an actual infinity is impossible.[11]

The essential meaning of ishrāq (Persian اشراق, Arabic: الإشراق) is "rising", specifically referring to thesunrise, though "illumination" is the more common translation. It is used both Arabic and Persianphilosophical texts as means to signify the relation between the “apprehending subject” (al-mawżuʿ al-modrek)and the “apprehensible object” (al-modrak); beyond philosophical discourse, it is a term used in commondiscussion. Suhrawardi utilized the ordinariness of the word in order to encompass the all that is mystical alongwith an array of different kinds of knowledge, including elhām, meaning personal inspiration.[12]

None of Suhrawardi's works was translated into Latin, so he remained unknown in the Latin West, althoughhis work continued to be studied in the Islamic East.[13] According to Hosein Nasr, Suhrawardi was unknownto the west until he was translated to western languages by contemporary thinkers such as Henry Corbin, andhe remains largely unknown even in countries within the Islamic world.[14]

Suhrawardi tried to present a new perspective on questions like those of existence. He not only causedperipatetic philosophers to confront such new questions, but also gave new life to the body of philosophy afterAvicenna.[15] According to John Walbridge, Suhrawardi's critiques of Peripatetic philosophy could be countedas an important turning point for his successors. Although Suhravardi was first a pioneer of Peripateticphilosophy, he later became a Platonist following a mystical experience. He is also counted as one whorevived the ancient wisdom in Persia by his philosophy of illumination. His followers, such as Shahrzouri andQutb al-Din al-Shirazi tried to continue the way of their teacher. Suhrewardi makes a distinction between twoapproaches in the philosophy of illumination: one approach is discursive and another is intuitive.[16]

Illuminationist thinkers in the School of Isfahan played a significant role in revitalizing academic life in the[17]

Safavid Empire under Shah Abbas I. (1588-1629)[18] Avicennan thought continued to inform philosophyduring the reign of the Safavid Empire.[19] Illuminationism was taught in Safavid Madrasas (Place of Study)established by pious shahs.[20]

Mulla Sadra (Ṣadr ad-Dīn Muḥammad Shīrāzī) was a 17th century Iranian philosopher who was considered amaster[21] of illuminationism. He wrote a book titled al-Asfar meaning "The Yellow"[22] or "The Light." Theword Asfar also denotes a journey of the soul back to Allah. He developed his book into an entire School of

Key concepts

Ishraq

Legacy

Mulla Sadra

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persia



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_Islamic_philosophy

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoplatonism

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angel

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_sufficient_reason

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actual_infinity



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunrise

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subject_(philosophy)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object_(philosophy)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin_West

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hosein_Nasr


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peripatetic_philosophy

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qutb_al-Din_al-Shirazi

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_of_Isfahan

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safavid_empire

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abbas_the_Great

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madrasa

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mulla_Sadra

Thought, he did not refer to al-Asfar as a philosophy but as "wisdom." (http://www.mullasadra.org/new_site/English/Mullasadra/Methodology.htm) Sadra taught how one could be illuminated or given wisdom untilbecoming a sage.[23] Al-Asfar was one piece of illuminationism which is still an active part of Islamicphilosophy today. Al-Asfar was representative of Mulla Sadra's entire philosophical worldview.[24] Like manyimportant Arabian works it is difficult for the western world to understand because it has not been translatedinto English. Mulla Sadra eventually became the most significant teacher at the religious school known asMadrasa-yi[25](Royal School.) (https://tspace.library.utoronto.ca/bitstream/1807/29816/11/Moazzen_Maryam_2011_PhD_thesis.pdf) His philosophies are still taught throughout the Islamic East and South Asia.[26]

Al-Asfar is Mulla Sadra's book explaining his view of illuminationism. He views problems starting with aPeripatetic sketch.[27] This Aristotelian style of teaching is reminiscent of Islamic Golden Age PhilosopherAvicenna. Mulla Sadra often refers to the Qur'an when dealing with philosophical problems. He even quotesQur'anic verses while explaining philosophy. He wrote exegeses of the Qur'an such as his explanation of Al-Kursi. (http://en.wikishia.net/view/Mulla_Sadra%27s_Exegesis_of_the_Qur%27an_(book))

Asfar means journey. In al-Asfar you are gaining on a journey to gain wisdom. Mulla Sadra used philosophyas a set spiritual exercises to become more wise. Eventually this as you go through life you continue to gainmore knowledge until you become a sage, hence godlike.[28]

In Mulla Sadra's book The Transcendent Philosophy of the Four Journeys of the Intellect he describes the fourjourneys of

1. A journey from creation to the Truth or Creator2. A journey from the Truth to the Truth3. A journey that stands in relation to the first journey because it is from the Truth to creation with

the Truth4. A journey that stands in relation to the second journey because it is from the Truth to the

creation.[29]

Light (theology)Mulla SadraEnlightenment (spiritual)

1. "ILLUMINATIONISM – Encyclopaedia Iranica" (http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/illuminationism). www.iranicaonline.org. Retrieved 2020-04-10.

2. Langermann, Y. Tzvi (1998), "al-Baghdadi, Abu 'l-Barakat (fl. c.1200-50)", Islamic Philosophy (http://www.muslimphilosophy.com/ip/rep/J008.htm), Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy,archived (https://web.archive.org/web/20080228095111/http://www.muslimphilosophy.com/ip/rep/J008.htm) from the original on 28 February 2008, retrieved 2008-02-03

3. HOSSEIN ZIAI, "EBN SAHLĀN SĀVAJĪ, Qāżī ZAYN-AL-DĪN ʿOMAR " in EncyclopaediaIranica [1] (http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/ebn-sahlan-savaji)

4. John Walbridge, “The leaven of the ancients: Suhrawardī and the heritage of the Greeks”, StateUniversity of New York Press, 1999. Excerpt: “Suhrawardi, a 12th-century Persian philosopher,was a key figure in the transition of Islamic thought from the neo-Aristotelianism of Avicenna tothe mystically oriented philosophy of later centuries.”

See also

Notes

http://www.mullasadra.org/new_site/English/Mullasadra/Methodology.htm


https://tspace.library.utoronto.ca/bitstream/1807/29816/11/Moazzen_Maryam_2011_PhD_thesis.pdf


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peripatetic_school



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tafasir_Al_Quran

http://en.wikishia.net/view/Mulla_Sadra%27s_Exegesis_of_the_Qur%27an_(book)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Transcendent_Philosophy_of_the_Four_Journeys_of_the_Intellect

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allah

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_(theology)


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enlightenment_(spiritual)

http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/illuminationism

http://www.muslimphilosophy.com/ip/rep/J008.htm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Routledge_Encyclopedia_of_Philosophy

https://web.archive.org/web/20080228095111/http://www.muslimphilosophy.com/ip/rep/J008.htm

http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/ebn-sahlan-savaji

5. Seyyed Hossein Nasr, “The need for a sacred science”, SUNY Press, 1993. Pg 158: “Persianphilosopher Suhrawardi refers in fact to this land as na-kuja abad, which in Persian meansliterally utopia.”

6. Matthew Kapstein, University of Chicago Press, 2004, "The presence of light: divine radianceand religious experience", University of Chicago Press, 2004. pg 285:"..the light of lights in thesystem of the Persian philosopher Suhrawardi"

7. Hossein Ziai. Illuminationsim or Illuminationist philosophy, first introduced in the 12th centuryas a complete, reconstructed system distinct both from the Peripatetic philosophy of Avicennaand from theological philosophy. in: Encyclopaedia Iranica. Volumes XII & XIII. 2004.

8. Henry Corbin. The Voyage and the Messenger. Iran and Philosophy. Containing previousunpublished articles and lectures from 1948 to 1976. North Atlantic Books. Berkeley, California.1998. ISBN 1-55643-269-0.

9. Henry Corbin. The Man of Light in Iranian Sufism. Omega Publications, New York. 1994.ISBN 0-930872-48-7.

10. Philosophy of Illumination 77.1–78.911. Philosophy of Illumination 87.1–89.812. "ILLUMINATIONISM – Encyclopaedia Iranica" (http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/illuminatio

nism). www.iranicaonline.org. Retrieved Nov 2, 2020.13. Marcotte, Roxanne, "Suhrawardi" (https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2019/entries/suhrawa

rdi/), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2019 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.).14. Hosein Nasr, 1997 & three muslin sages, p. 5515. Nasr, 2006 & Islamic philosophy from its origin to the present, p. 8616. John Walbridge (2004). "Suhrawardī and Illuminationism". In Adamson, Peter; Taylor, Richard

C. (eds.). The Cambridge Companion to Arabic Philosophy. Cambridge University Press.pp. 201–223. ISBN 9780511999864.

17. "Safavid- Mughal Cultural Interrelations as reflected in Matenadaran's 'Bayaz' ManuscriptIllumination | Association for Iranian Studies (AIS) | انجمن ایران پژوهی" (https://associationforiranianstudies.org/node/149). associationforiranianstudies.org. Retrieved 2020-04-10.

18. "Friends of the SEP Society - Preview of Mulla Sadra PDF" (https://leibniz.stanford.edu/friends/preview/mulla-sadra/). leibniz.stanford.edu. Retrieved 2020-04-10.


20. Moazzen, Maryam (2011). Shi'ite Higher Learning and the Role of the Madrasa-yi Sulṭānī inLate Safavid Iran (Thesis). hdl:1807/29816 (https://hdl.handle.net/1807%2F29816).

21. Aminrazavi, Mehdi Amin Razavi (2014-03-18). Suhrawardi and the School of Illumination (https://books.google.com/books?id=mRsiAwAAQBAJ&q=mulla+sadra+illumination&pg=PA137).Routledge. ISBN 978-1-136-79281-6.

22. Fierro, Maribel (1993). "Al-Aṣfar". Studia Islamica (77): 169–181. doi:10.2307/1595794 (https://doi.org/10.2307%2F1595794). JSTOR 1595794 (https://www.jstor.org/stable/1595794).

23. Rizvi, Sajjad (2019), "Mulla Sadra" (https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2019/entries/mulla-sadra/), in Zalta, Edward N. (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2019 ed.),Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University, retrieved 2020-04-10

24. "Full text of "Mulla Sadra's Transcendent Philosophy" " (https://archive.org/stream/MuhammadKamalMullaSadrasTranscendentPhilosBookZZ.org/%5BMuhammad_Kamal%5D_Mulla_Sadra%27s_Transcendent_Philos(BookZZ.org)_djvu.txt). archive.org. Retrieved 2020-04-09.



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http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/illuminationism

https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2019/entries/suhrawardi/


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/9780511999864

https://associationforiranianstudies.org/node/149

https://leibniz.stanford.edu/friends/preview/mulla-sadra/


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hdl_(identifier)

https://hdl.handle.net/1807%2F29816

https://books.google.com/books?id=mRsiAwAAQBAJ&q=mulla+sadra+illumination&pg=PA137


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/978-1-136-79281-6

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doi_(identifier)

https://doi.org/10.2307%2F1595794

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https://www.jstor.org/stable/1595794

https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2019/entries/mulla-sadra/

https://archive.org/stream/MuhammadKamalMullaSadrasTranscendentPhilosBookZZ.org/%5BMuhammad_Kamal%5D_Mulla_Sadra%27s_Transcendent_Philos(BookZZ.org)_djvu.txt



Suhrawardi and the School of Illumination by Mehdi Amin RazaviIslamic Intellectual Tradition in Persia by Seyyed Hossein Nasr

Hossein Ziai. "Illuminationism" (https://iranicaonline.org/articles/illuminationism).Encyclopaedia Iranica."Divine Illumination" (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/illumination/) entry by Robert Pasnau inthe Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Illuminationism&oldid=997642613"

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27. SIPR. "Methodology" (http://www.mullasadra.org/new_site/English/Mullasadra/Methodology.htm). MullaSadra.org.

28. Rizvi, Sajjad (2019), "Mulla Sadra" (https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2019/entries/mulla-sadra/), in Zalta, Edward N. (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2019 ed.),Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University, retrieved 2020-04-09

29. "Full text of "Mulla Sadra's Transcendent Philosophy" " (https://archive.org/stream/MuhammadKamalMullaSadrasTranscendentPhilosBookZZ.org/%5BMuhammad_Kamal%5D_Mulla_Sadra%27s_Transcendent_Philos(BookZZ.org)_djvu.txt). archive.org. Retrieved 2020-04-09.

Further reading

External links

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seyyed_Hossein_Nasr

https://iranicaonline.org/articles/illuminationism

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/illumination/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_Encyclopedia_of_Philosophy

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Illuminationism&oldid=997642613

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http://www.mullasadra.org/new_site/English/Mullasadra/Methodology.htm

https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2019/entries/mulla-sadra/

https://archive.org/stream/MuhammadKamalMullaSadrasTranscendentPhilosBookZZ.org/%5BMuhammad_Kamal%5D_Mulla_Sadra%27s_Transcendent_Philos(BookZZ.org)_djvu.txt

mind and body in mulla sadra’s philosophy: a psychological

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