Muḥaqqiq Iṣfahānī (Kumpānī) s Account of Bodily Resurrection and its Ambiguities

The problem of resurrection and the quality of post-mortem life has always been a concern for intellectuals, with Muslim theologians and philosophers providing various accounts thereof. Some of them restrict the resurrection to the human soul, while others believe in its corporeality, and still others take it to be both bodily and spiritual. With regard to the bodily resurrection, there is a dispute over the body with which the soul will be resurrected. Some theologians suggest that the soul will return to the natural elemental body, while others believe that the soul will be resurrected with an imaginal (mithālī) body. According to the Transcendent Wisdom (al-ḥikmat al-muta’ālīya), the soul will be resurrected with an imaginal body arising from the soul itself. The philosopher, Aqā ‘Alī Mudarris Zunnūzī has offered a novel view within the framework of the Transcendent Wisdom, followed by prominent philosophers such as his pupils Mīrzā Muḥammad Bāqir Iṣṭahbānātī and Muḥammad Ḥusayn Iṣfahānī (Muḥaqqiq Kumpānī), as well as others including Rafī’ī Qazvīnī. According to Zunnūzī, resurrection does not consist in the return of the soul to the body; instead, it is the body that returns to the soul in the Afterlife. In a short posthumous essay, published recently, Kumpānī has elaborated this theory in terms of five principles and premises. In this paper, I elaborate his own view of bodily resurrection and then point to some of its ambiguities.