A Comparative Study of Immateriality of the Soul from Ibn Sina's and Mulla Sadra's Viewpoints

The question whether soul is material or immaterial has been one of the most important questions for Muslim philosophers, since if the soul were not an immaterial subject, discussing of resurrection could not have a meaning. In this paper we will try to have a critical review of Ibn Sina's and Mulla Sadra's viewpoints on this subject. First we will describe their views then we will analyze them. We will show that Ibn Sina tried to prove the immateriality of rational faculty of the soul, but Mulla Sadra, evaluating Ibn Sina's arguments, declares that not only rational faculty is immaterial but also we can distinguish between three levels of immateriality: imaginal immateriality, rational immateriality and the complete immateriality.