فصلنامه معرفت فلسفی
سال هشتم شماره 4 (پیاپی 32، تابستان 1390)

There are two major theories, in the Islamic philosophy, regarding the reality of the soul and its origination. On the one hand, the Peripatetics believe in its incorporeal origination and survival, while the Sadraians consider it as being corporeal in its origination, and incorporeal in its survival. Normally, people think of Farabi, as a Peripatetic, to belong in the first camp, but it is not true. The authors of is article tries to show that Farabi considers human being as one of the bodies, comprised of matter and form. It remains corporeal before reaching the state of intellect. Only those who can comprehend rational concepts and intelligibles, attain immateriality and posses incorporeal souls. They resemble immortal intellects. Other souls, however, will perish with the corruption of their bodies and annihilate like other animals (and therefore, have no heaven or hell).

Qāḍi Sa‘īd, a post-Sadraian philosopher, has developed philosophical ideas opposite to those of Mulla Sadra and Ibn Sina. In the realm of knowledge, he does not consider knowledge to be by representation (huṣūli), nor by presence (huḍūri), rather does he suggest a new meaning for presence without further explaination. In the field of human soul, he follows Ibn Sina in considering its origination to be incorporeal, and on the issue of resurrection, he rejects both Ibn Sina and Mulla Sarda and suggests a new solution.This article reviews the three issues in Qāḍi Sa‘īd’s ideas, and shows some of the antagonisms that exist in his thought. For instance, all his stances on these issues are based on substantial motion and the principality of existence. This is while, he accepts the union of the intellect with the intelligible, and the union of the subject of the perception with its object, and at the same time, he rejects substantial motion. He also bluntly rejects the principality of existence, and accepts the principality of quiddity.

Although Farabi has not engaged in the issue of the critique of imagination, one can understand his stance by putting such questions to his works. The issue of the critique of imagination belongs to the realm of the philosophy of arts, and it is of strategic import for the development of the philosophy of Islamic arts to design such problems and try to find their solutions through the works of Muslim philosophers. Farabi has theories about evaluating imagination on the basis of truth and falsity, beauty and ugliness, goodness and badness. He eventually appraises them by the criterion of human beatitude (sa‘ādat). The notion of truth and falsehood in imaginal forms differ from those in the realm of propositions. However, the arbitrator who judges about the beauty and truth of an imaginal form is the intellectual faculty, even in the sphere of imagination.

There are different criteria and standards for classifying various branches of science. One criterion belongs to the relation between the subject matter of a discipline to the predicate of its problems, which is known as “essential accident”. There are disagreements about the definition and criteria of essential accidents. The author in this article accepts its definition as “predicates whose ascriptions to the subject matter of the discipline or the subject of its problems are real”. He criticizes other ideas on the basis of such approach.

In the Islamic Philosophical tradition, the two important theories about God’s knowledge of things (before and after creation) are those of Ibn Sina and Mulla Sadra. Ibn Sina, based on his philosophical system, interprets God’s knowledge through representational forms, while Mulla Sadra suggests the theory of “non-detailed knowledge and detailed unveiling” on the basis of the principle of “Simple Reality”, and other foundations of his Hikmat Muta‘āliyah, especillay the principality of existence.This article, first and foremost, wants to explain, and semantically analyze, Mulla Sadra’s theory in this regard. Then it tries to review the foundations and principles that have led him to this stance. And finally, it compares Mulla Sadra’s theory to that of Allamah Tabataba’i in order to show that there is still room for discussion on this important issue.

The problem of world’s origination has been a hot issue throughout the history of philosophy and theology, including Islamic philosophy and theology. One of the major factors that led thinkers to take different stances on this question was the debate over the principality of existence/quiddity.This article is an attempt to assess the role of this debate on the issue of the origination of the world in the Islamic milieu. It will study Allamah Davāni, as a representative of Shiraz School in 9th and 10th centuries A.H, who based his theory of “eternal creation” on the principality of quiddity and “theosophical tasting”. According to this theory, the world of eternity (dahr) is changeless and encompasses the temporal world, and therefore, its entities lack time, flux, and quantity. The article will study an opposite theory belonging to Mulla Sadra, as an eminent representative of Isfahan School, who establishes his theory of temporally perpetual creation on the principality of existence. His idea of essential origination is based on “existential poverty” and “contingency by poverty” which is different from other philosophers. And finally, it comes to Sabzevāri, from the School of Khorāsān, who suggests the theory of “nominal origination” with a mystical approach.

The term, “ja‘l” (creation) has a number of meanings, but it is consensual among Muslim philosophers that its object is reality itself. But what exactly is reality itself? Is it existence, or quiddity, or becoming which is created? This article examines three major theories in this regard: those of Peripatetics, Ishrāqis, and the Transcendental Philosophy of Mulla Sadra. There is a dispute about the exact ideas of the Peripatetic and the Ishraqi schools; some ascribe to them the idea of the creation of quiddity, while others interpret their theories in a way that the creation of becoming could be understood, and still others believe that they meant existence was the object of creation. Mulla Sadra’s final theory in analyzing the cause-effect relation comes to the point that there is only one real and self-subsistence existence, and it is God’s essence, and others are His self-disclosures. On this basis, there will remain no room for createdness, because God’s existence is real which is beyond creation, and others have no real existence and stop short of creation.