نشریه جستارهایی در فلسفه و کلام
سال چهل و چهارم شماره 2 (پیاپی 89، پاییز و زمستان 1391)

Principality of existence, which is one of the most fundamental issues in primary philosophy, is one of the main branches of Ṣadr al-Muti’allihīn's philosophy and nearly all discourses of transcendental philosophy are considered to be based on it, to the extent that the transcendence of Mullā Ṣadrā’s philosophy is considered due to the transcendence of existence and the “existence” as his first and last word in this philosophical system. Mullā Ṣadrā is considered to be innovative and pioneering in exploring or applying demonstrative reasoning to different philosophical issues such as modulation of existence, indigence possibility, substantial motion, permeation of science and power in beings and many of the issues relating to faculty and action, and creation and innovation. Examining the status of the principality of existence in transcendental philosophy, the present paper explains the outcomes and blessings that belief in principality of existence has provided for this school of thought and prompted some innovations in it.

In the history of philosophy, the basic role of imagination in human perception as an intermediary between sensation and intellect has been left unnoticed. Imagination has often been regarded as subjective and illusory. Although imagination is one of the initial faculties of the soul that has been known, its duty is described only as preservation and ideation of sensible objects in the time of their absence. Ṣadr al-Muti’allihīn (ra) has proved the purgatorial incorporeity of imagination by means of providing various definite proofs and has enunciated a basic and important role for imagination in the three degrees of perception. Therefore, imagination is not just a reservoir that archives sensible forms or undertakes a series of illusory and false fantasies; rather, it undertakes the perception of real and true matters in the world of imagination. Although Avicenna has stressed on the materiality of imagination and mentioned some definite proofs to prove it, a careful inspection of his words would lead us to the fact that he seeks to deny the complete rational incorporeity of imagination, which is agreed upon. In addition to that, some of his statements concern the incorporeity of imagination.

In classical philosophy, a collection of suppositions that man attempts to discover and explains their truth on the basis of conformity criterion is called ma‘rifa (intuitive knowledge). The desirable ma‘rifa is one which possesses the two qualities of objectivity and necessity. Such ma‘rifa should undoubtedly be conceived in a process that both guarantees the reflection of the realities of matters and enjoys a high power of resistance against skeptical attacks. In this case, the acquired ma‘rifa would hold the desirable excellences, i.e., objectivity and necessity. In order to achieve such ma‘rifa, the Muslim philosophers have brought up the discourses of evident attestations and the criterion for their self-evidence; and while believing in the objectivity and necessity of the self-evident, they have figured the reference of the theoretical to the self-evident as a condition for the objectivity and necessity of the theoretical.The main purpose of this article is to present a critical review of the Muslim philosophers concerning evident attestations and the criterion for their self-evidence, to explain and critically review the supplementary approaches in contemporary era, to discuss the degree to which each has succeeded in explaining the truthfulness of the evident attestations and the guarantee of the objective and necessary ma‘rifa. The article concludes by suggesting the ontological approach as a new approach, which, by relying on the notion of existence and the ontological analysis of basic attestations and the primary evident principles, solves the problem.

Relying on and refuting some viewpoints of the theosophists concerning God as being Creator, Ghazālī contravenes the similitude between the Exalted God and the creatures, since he believes that according to these arguments and the analysis he makes on the causality and the causal necessity, the world cannot be Divinely made. He examines this contravention in terms of action, actor, and the common mode between the action and the actor. According to Avicenna and given that his argument about qā‘ida al-Wāhid (principle of onenessPKPCleaned= the principle that from one, no more than one can issue forth) is based on similitude, it can be said that he accepts this principle as the rational rule by the way of qā‘ida al-wāhid; however, considering his viewpoint concerning the heterogeneousness of existences, he cannot be viewed as believing in similitude between the Creator and the created.

Department of Islamic Philosophy and Wisdom, Zanjan University Bringing up the ancients’ views and asking about their ultimate condition in Mullā Ṣadrā’s thinking and that of his disciples has had a significant impact on the formation and development of the motion theory. Mentioning the names and bringing up the views of the ancient Greek Philosophers, as evidences for truthfulness in the discourse of substantial motion and the createdness of the world, indicates his possible familiarity with or impressionability from their opinions. The present research maintains that Mullā Ṣadrā’s inaccessibility to the ancient Greek’s works and the limited historical sources caused problems in quoting historical statements concerning substantial motion. Quoting the Wise Heraclius and Zeno the Great in discourses of motion bears witness to this claim. Mullā Ṣadrā quotes few of the Wise Heraclius and does not claim any familiarity with Heraclitus. Due to the apparent similarity in the names of the Wise Heraclius (the 5th century philosopher) and Heraclitus (the philosopher contemporary to Socrates), some contemporaries have assumed that the Wise Heraclius is the same as Heraclitus (the philosopher contemporary to Socrates). Mullā Ṣadrā brings up the Zeno of Elea’s theory in his discourses of substantial motion. He seeks to justify the Zeno of Elea’s statements (denying motion). As this research maintains, the opinions brought up by Ṣadrā and Fayḍ Kāshānī, are not ascribed to Zeno of Elea. While historically recognizing these two theosophists (Heraclitus and Zeno the Great), this article repudiates both above-mentioned assumptions.

One of the most important philosophical consequences that have left an enormous impact on some philosophical issues is the substantial motion theory. It is a comprehensive theory, which opens new perspectives to many of the philosophical problems, including movement of the soul (nafs) that Mullā Ṣadrā, contrary to the earlier philosophers, viewed as of substantial (essential) movement kind. The substantial movement of the soul is important in that it has consequences that mostly explicate the issues concerning the grave and the Resurrection. What is carried out in this article is the extraction of the important consequences of this movement such as: corporeality of the soul at the beginning of creation (ḥudūth), conjunction of creation and eternity of the soul, solving the problem of the duality of the soul and body, gradual generation of the soul, typical difference of human beings in terms of inner aspect (bāṭin), union of the soul with the active intellect, natural death and its truthfulness, impossibility of reincarnation, various types of purgatorial and rational incorporeity of the soul, persistence of the souls after death, bodily Resurrection, the Gathering (ḥashr), Path (ṣirāṭ), immortality of the disbelievers in perdition.