An Explanation and Analysis of Types of Relationship between Substance and Accident in Sadrian System and a simple Comparison with It Avicenna's View

The question of "substance and accident" is one of the important philosophical issues because all the creatures or all possible creatures are classified under these two categories. This issue has different dimensions including the quality of relationship between substance and its accidents which enjoyed special importance. Using a descriptive-analytical method, the present paper seeks to specify Mulla Sadra's view about demonstrating the nature of this relationship and briefly compare it with Avicenna's view by reviewing and comparing Mulla Sadra's different words. Avicenna holds that the relationship between substance and its accidents is a causal relationship and believes in the existential duality of substance and accident, while Mulla Sadra proposes, in addition to causal relationship, two other kinds of relationship between substance and accident: the relationship between condition and place or subordinate and subordinated and the relationship between dignity and the dignified. In fact, Mulla Sadra originally considers that substance and accident are two separate things and each of them is related to the other. However, he gradually reduces the distance between substance and its accidents so that in his third view, influenced by his final view on causality, he excludes the existential duality of substance and accident and defines accidents as states of substance. In Mulla Sadra's final analysis, the external type of accident changes into an analytical type of accident.