abas javareshkian

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.

According to the view of Sadr al-Muta'allehin, the condition of being a soul is its belonging to a body, and thus, a soul without a body is not a soul. The question now is whether the human existence in its descending intrinsic transition from the divine world to the worlds of intellects, ideas, and matters, and in its ascending return to its final end, has a body or not. Is it possible to find a stage in which man does not have a body? In other words, does the soul become bodyless when it enters the world of intellects or even higher levels? This article, based on Sadra's ontological foundations, examines the nature of the body and points to two theories on the subject of the intellectual body. In the first theory, the nature of the body originates from the representative faculty, and due to the obvious or common presence of this faculty in all levels of existence, Man does have always a body, and by his or her intellectual or nominal body within the appropriate quantitative forms, is present in those levels. But according to the second theory, in the ascent to the world of intellects, forms become meanings, whereas the intellectual body, as one of the determinations of the soul, is still acceptable.

The analysis of how multiple divine names and attributes issued from One Simple Essence and how they are compatible, for the first time, have been precisely explained in transcendent theosophy. However, is the celebrated interpretation of Mulla Sadra’s word his final view that multiple concepts have been abstracted from One Essence and whether those divine names are real?
The examination of foundations of transcendent theosophy helps draw the conclusion that we cannot embrace the abstraction of multiple concepts from Divine Essence once we have already acknowledged that He is truly One and His Essence is thoroughly simple; nor can we consider divine names separately as real entities once we have already acknowledged that the Essence and attributes are identical and that He encompasses all perfections and the doctrine that equates Allah with all what there is. The solution to this contradiction is the theory of “analytic multiplicity of divine names and attributes”, according to which those perfections -construed as attributes- are obtained from the “analysis of existence” and are thus applicable to existence, because existence and existent are inclusive to One Essence Who encompasses all infinite perfections of existence.
Contrary to the abstraction theory in terms of which both the abstracted and the origin of abstraction are genuine, in this approach the abstracted is mentally-constructed but the origin of abstraction is genuine and real. The logic working at the tie between the Essence and attributes is to negate identity (sameness) once negating alterity (otherness).

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.