Mullā Ṣadrā and the Problem of Death

Philosophers, including Mullā Ṣadrā, have always been concerned to provide an explanation and an analysis of death. Sadra tried to give a philosophical account of death. A philosopher’s intellectual principles will indubitably affect their philosophical analysis of the problem of death and will have certain consequences and implications. In this paper, I seek to delineate what, why and how death happens from Mulla Sadra’s point of view, and I shall then elucidate the consequences of his analysis of death in terms of his philosophical principles, such as substantial motion and the soul-body relation. There are some religious doctrines, such as the naturalness, necessity, truth and existentiality of death and human survival after death, that can be better accounted for in terms of Sadraean principles. however, there are religious doctrines that seem incompatible with the Sadraean account. This paper ends with an examination of two such doctrines: that of raj’a (return of certain people after Imam Mahdi’s reappearance) and perfection in barzakh (the world after death and before the resurrection).