The Reconstruction of Jurjani’s Argument for the simplicity of Derivatives(A Critical Study)

The simplicity of derivatives that began as a controversy between Razi and Jurjani served Mulla Sadra somehow as one principle to understand his groundwork of the real primacy of existence and the relation between existence and what exists. Jurjani’s argument for the simplicity of derivatives has met many objections, but later scholars came to reconstruct the argument in order to get rid of those objections. This paper goes to examine those reconstructions.  To demonstration that a derivative is simple and has only one single part of meaning owes to the proving of two claims negative (that the subject -or agent- and relation to the subject are external to the concept of a derivative) and positive (the explanation that derivatives are different from their roots). The examination of those reconstructions is, indeed, the study whether those arguments succeed or fail in their attempts to prove the two above claims. In his attempt to defend Jurjani’s position, Sabziwari has embarked upon the reconstruction seemingly successful in proving that “the subject is external to the concept of the derivative”, like Jurjani’s argument does. Nonetheless, the reconstructions made by Ha’iri  Yazdi, and Gharawi  Isfahani are open to criticism due to their neglect of some aspects.      The negative claim comprises two parts, that the subject and relation to the subject are external to the concept of the derivatives. However, Jurjani’s argument and Sabziwari’s reconstruction can only work in proving that the subject is external to the concept of the derivatives, but the relation to the subject is not. Moreover, the two accounts fail to prove the positive claim, i.e. the relation of “negatively conditioned and none-conditioned” between the root and the subject. Other reconstructions even fail to prove that the subject is external as one of the two parts of the negative claim. Evidently they have failed to prove the other part of the negative claim (that the relation to subject is external) and the positive claim, either