Shared Model of the Body-Centered Arguments of the Immateriality of the Soul in Ibn Sina and Mulla Sadra

Some Islamic philosophers, such as Ibn Sina and Mulla Sadra, have dealt with the characteristics of the soul, including the demonstration of its immateriality, in their anthropological discussions. A study of the works of these two philosophers indicates that the positive arguments of the immateriality of the soul are all based on the negation of the characteristics of the body and bodily matter. In other words, they denote that the soul lacks bodily features and, hence, demonstrates that it is immaterial. For example, bodily matter enjoys quantity, position, change, divisibility, and finitude of acts; it is vulnerable to weakness, aging, and tiredness. Moreover, the knowledge of the body and its acts is of the acquired type and is conditioned by place and position. These two philosophers demonstrate the immateriality of the soul by negating and denying the above characteristics to it. Thus the knowledge of the soul and demonstration of its immaterial nature would be impossible without the knowledge of the body and disallowing any bodily features for it. In this paper, in addition to revising the arguments of the demonstration of the immateriality of the soul and determining the key place of the body therein, it has been tried to design and provide a general model entailing all such arguments.