Allame Tabatabaei's Views on the Unity of Divine Attributes and God's Simplicity

Muslim philosophers, including Mulla Sadra, commonly advocate the theory of “the conceptual difference and existential identity of Divine attributes”. Muslim mystics, however, hold that the attribution of Divine attributes is posterior to His essence and that the very essence transcends any attribute or name. Allame Tabatabaei supports the former theory in his Nahaya al-Hikmah but in some other works like Al-Mizan, sees the latter as the correct one. In this paper, we argue that the first view leads to an implausible result, namely the composition of the Divine attributes from existence and non-existence. Then, appealing to the dichotomy of haqiqah/raqiqah predication we propose a way to reconcile between the two apparently incompatible views of Tabatabaei.