self-discovery

Van Deurzen, an existential psychotherapist, identifies self-reflection and self-discovery as the core components of existential therapy through her examination of its various aspects. She posits that humans, distinct from other creatures, possess a fluid and dynamic identity. This, according to her, allows individuals to determine their own existence and identity. Mulla Sadra, on the other hand, acknowledging the fluidity and dynamism of human identity, proposes that human existence extends beyond this world, encompassing multiple worlds and levels of existence, and within each world, individuals find a corresponding level of existence, so that through their own free will, humans determine their position in this system of existence. By elevating their existence to the level of rational existence, they can transform themselves into a rational world akin to the objective world. This paper aims to demonstrate, based on the views of these two thinkers on human beings’ fluid and dynamic existence, the self-determining nature of the human self, the place of self-discovery in existential therapy, and Sadra's perspective on self-discovery, that Sadra’s view can potentially serve as the foundation for an existential therapy within Iranian-Islamic culture.

Murtaḍā Muṭaharī is one of the Muslim thinkers who tried to show that the existence and validity of morality depend on God. The central problem in this article is to show how and with what unifying idea Murtaḍā Muṭaharī explains the dependence of morality on theology; to do so, his work has been completely reconsidered and reconstructed. The answer suggested by our understanding of his idea is that the human "self" is an entity that comes in degrees; it displays itself at two levels: its lower level can be called the imaginary “I” and its higher level can be called the real or superior “I”. It is the true “self” that gives rise to morals and it originates from God. Therefore, God is the origin, goal and ground of ethics. Thus, one may say that the true “self” of a human being is the point of connection, in virtue of which the dependence of ethics on theology is justified by Murtaḍā Muṭaharī.