Qayṣarī and Mullā Ṣadrā on How God's Attributes Are Established in His Essence

Through a descriptive-analytical method, this article tries to analyze the meaning and reasons of identity between the Divine Essence and His Attributes, the viewpoint of Qayṣarī and how it differs from other mystics' views, and the viewpoint of Mullā Ṣadrā and how it differs from or shares with that of mystics including Qayṣarī. Qayṣarī believes in the identity between attributes and essence both in the status of Essence and in Divine Abode. According to Qayṣarī, the entification (ta‘ayyun) other mystics take as first is in fact the same as the state of oneness (wāḥidiyya), and the state of unicity (aḥadiyya) is the same as the state of the Essence. Attributes in the status of Essence have unity in an absolute and integrated way; on the other hand, in Divine Abode, which is the manifestation of Essence, the unity is considered as an aspect in the form of an illuminative relation, rather than a categorical relation which is of quiddity and necessitates multiplicity in Essence. To understand this problem, we can take help from the concept of philosophical secondary intelligibles in Mullā Ṣadrā's philosophical system in which the multiplicity of intelligibles does not necessitate the multiplicity of reality. In this philosophical system, the relationship between essence and its attributes is the same as the relationship between existence and quiddity, where existence has priority in terms of reality, and quiddity has posteriority in the metaphorical sense. In other words, in context of understanding, the attributes and aspects of the Real are hierarchically posterior to Essence.