نشریه خردنامه صدرا
پیاپی 83 (بهار 1395)

Corporeal resurrection is one of the necessary principles of Islam, and all Muslims, based on the explicit text of Qur’anic verses, believe in the Day of Resurrection. Accordingly, Islamic philosophers have tried to demonstrate this religious principle by means of philosophical reasons. Some of them, such as Ibn Sina, have expressed their failure in demonstrating the corporeality of resurrection. However, Mulla Sadra has accomplished this task drawing on the principles of the Transcendent Philosophy, such as the principiality of existence, the trans-substantial motion, and the immateriality of imagination. He has explained his theory of corporeal resurrection not only in his various books but also in an independent treatise entitled al-Hashr al-‘ashya’, which is specifically on this theme. The esteemed corrector of this treatise has questioned some of Mulla Sadra’s statements, which the writer of this paper finds unfounded. Here, he has critically examined these conflicts.

One of the questions regarding the discussion of the three implicit modes, necessity, possibility, and impossibility, is whether there is any concomitance, whether by itself or through the other, between the possible and the impossible. Some philosophers are for this problem, and some of them are against it. A number of them reject the concomitance of the two by reasoning that their implication leads to the realization of the implicant without the implicate. Still, there are some philosophers who, do not reject concomitance by referring to certain violating cases, such as the concomitance of the possibility of the non-existence of the first emanation with the impossibility of the non-existence of the essence of the truth. In this case, the validity of the syllogism per impossible will be challenged because here the impossibility of the premise and the affirmation of the desirable is deduced from the falsity of the consequent. The writer of this paper believes that we can solve this problem based on the principles of the Transcendent Philosophy and a correct analysis of the problem itself.

Gnosis is a familiar term which is frequently used in oral and written culture and has a wide range of meanings. This has resulted in some ambiguity in its various applications, particularly, in its recent usage including “pseudo-gnosis” and “newly developed schools of gnosis”, as well as in discussions such as “the relationship between religion and gnosis”, “the relationship between the intellect and gnosis”, and “the relationship between philosophy and gnosis”. This paper is intended to determine the approximate borderline between gnosis (the science of theoretical gnosis) and philosophy as well as the difference between gnosis (the science of practical gnosis) and ethics through clarifying the meaning and concept of gnosis, distinguishing between practical and theoretical types of wisdom, and explaining the differences between them and the sciences of practical and theoretical types of gnosis.

One of the main problems of the philosophy of act is the explanation of the quality of the realization of human voluntary acts. A study of the ideas of Mulla Sadra, who has dealt with the whatness and functions of imagination following a new approach in his school of philosophy, reveals that, given the diffusion of the final cause and causal role of imagination and the imaginal faculty in acts, we can present a causal and rational explanation of voluntary acts and other-worldly bodies. A comparison of Mulla Sadra’s view and Davidson’s theory, known as the dual theory of “belief-desire”, indicates that this theory fails to provide a comprehensive explanation for the human voluntary actions. This is because, through ignoring the causal role of imagination and the imaginal faculty in voluntary acts, it has not provided an all-inclusive account of the acts that are influenced by imagination and imaginal faculty. Moreover, this theory considers belief to be one of the basic elements of all acts while affirmative belief does not have this function for all acts. For Mulla Sadra, philosophical psychology is a general title for the discussions about the accidents and acts of the soul, and what we call the philosophy of act is a sub-category of this discipline. He has tried to present a consistent and well-reasoned theory including the intention-act-agent relation through expanding and promoting the theory of faculties to the theory of the modes of the soul based on his own specific ontological theories, such as “the union of the intellect and the intelligible”, “the union of the object of desire and the willing”, “the union of imagination and the imagined”, “the theory of gradation”, “the trans-substantial motion of the soul”, and the belief in the diffusion of causality, including the spread of the final cause in the world of being.

The principle of the union of the intellect, the intelligible, and the intelligent is one of the most important principles of the Transcendent Philosophy. It was a philosophical problem long before the history of Islamic philosophy, but Muslim philosophers have adopted different approaches in dealing with it. Mulla Sadra, in addition to accepting this principle, made great efforts in order to demonstrate it and, in doing so, benefitted from the divine blessing. Moreover, owing to the fundamental principles of his own system of philosophy, he founded a new approach for explaining this principle at two levels which brought in its wake several important results. The acceptance of the idea that the rational soul wishes to become identical with its own intelligible at the time of absolute intellection initially seems to be impossible, and the human mind hesitates to accept any convincing proof in this regard without some necessary preparation and introductory explanations. That is why the writers have not examined the related proofs and arguments concerning this principle. Rather, they have presented eleven necessary premises before demonstrating it. In doing so, in each section, they have explained the intention of the Sadrian philosophers who believe in the union of the intelligent and the intelligible. After analyzing these premises and necessary conditions, the mind is ready for accepting an argument that can prove the related claim.

In this paper, through examining the meanings of the “simple intellect” in Mulla Sadra’s view, the writers have tried to clarify its specific meaning in relation to the human soul. He maintains that unity and simplicity are among the characteristics of the simple human intellect, and that the general acquisition of intelligible forms by the simple intellect is a particular attribute which distinguishes it from other levels of perception. The simple human intellect is a name coined for the level of acquired intellect in order to, firstly, explain the specific features of this level, that is, simplicity and unity, and secondly, to emphasize the ontological harmony of the acquired intellect with the “Active Intellect”, which is the origin of the emanation of intelligible forms and is in unity with the acquired reason. Mulla Sadra also uses the term “the simple intellect” to clarify the process of the descent of revelation and considers the descent of the Qu’ran to be the product of the union of the simple intellect of the human soul with the Active Intellect or the “Holy Spirit”. It is through this union that the “Divine Pen” or the same Active Intellect portrays intelligible forms on the tablet of the prophet’s rational soul.

This paper investigates Ibn Sina’s method of demonstrating the principle of “nothing proceeds from the one but one”. He is the first philosopher who has proved it based on logical reasoning. His famous reasoning in this regard in the book al-Isharat is based on reductio ad absurdum; however, Fakhr al-Din Razi and the thinkers after him have attributed another argument to Ibn Sina which is based on the principle of the impossibility of the union of two opposites. This argument has proved to be challenging and has given rise to some extensive discussions; moreover, it has not been explicitly mentioned in Ibn Sina’s works. The writer believes that he has referred to a similar argument in the book al-Mubahithat; however, he has logically based it on reductio ad absurdum. He is also of the idea that Ibn Sina has only resorted to the necessity and contradiction arising from the proposition of the first emanated in the analytic structure of the premises of his own argument.