A Review on "Mulla Sadra's Principiality of Existence in Avicenna Philosophy"

The paperentitled as “A Study on Mulla Sadra’sExistentialism in Avicenna’s Thoughts”,
published in spring-summer 2016 issue of journalof “Mulla Sadra’s Transcendent Theosophystudies, traces the priority of existence, discussedin the Transcendent Theosophy, in the philosophyof Avicenna. Although we agree with theauthor’s approachand know Avicenna to be anexistentialist, we believe that some positionsadopted in that paper have to be reconsidered.That paper is analyzed and criticized from twoperspectives of ‘methodology’ and ‘content’. Interms of content, addition to not being capableof describing accurately Mulla Sadra’s approachtoexistentialism, what that paper says aboutAvicenna’s thought is controversial as well; forexample, despite of the fact that there are manyessentialist approaches in Avicenna’s thought,that paper introduces him surely as anexistentialist without any concrete proofs. Also, itconsiders “heterogeny of existence” and “externalattribution of existence to essence” to be the firmbeliefs of Avicenna. The authors believe that
according to the existing texts, there are noevidences of believing in “heterogeny ofexistence” and “external attribution of existenceto essence” in Avicenna’s thoughts; and remarkinaccuracies and mistakes noted in the said paper.