Mulla Sadra and Suhrawardi on the Nature of Vision (Ibṣār)

Suhrawardi believes that the visual perception is the greatest perception. He begins the illuminative epistemology with the vision (Ibṣār) and develops the illuminative principle of vision to the extent that it includes the higher-order perceptions. So, in order to understand the nature of intuitive knowledge in the illuminative epistemology, one should begin by exploring the notion of vision. On the other hand, Mulla Sadra, whose philosophy is based on the notion of principality and simplicity of existence, traces the soul vision back to its simplicity, detachment and existential encompassment. According to Mulla Sadra, what soul perceives is immaterial and of its natural affairs which is emanated by divine power. So, what soul perceives is its essential object of perception. In other words, self-knowledge is in fact the manifestation of soul’s internal objects of perception which manifests in the material world in the form of faculty perception which prepares soul perception. Thus, self-knowledge stems from its unity in the ascending arc and its creativity in the descending one.