The Reality of Man’s Freewill According to Mulla Sandra

Freewill is one of the main pillars of a human being’s voluntary actions and the explanation of its reality plays an important role in the description, commentary and interpretation of human actions. Mulla Sadra has mentioned his views regarding the reality of the human freewill in numerous places in his works; but his discussions are scattered, disordered and sometimes mixed with others views. This article explains Mulla Sadra’s view regarding the human free will in his philosophical system through citing and collecting the different expressions in relation to this topic from his works, analyzing them and presenting logical arguments for them; and the article shows how the changing of foundations in Mulla Sadra’s philosophy has resulted in an innovative explanation for the human freewill. The conclusion that has been drawn in this article is that according to Mulla Sadra freewill possesses a “material-immaterial” pervasive existential essence and that which is known as the decisive decision is only one of the immaterial levels of this pervasive essence; this article also concludes that based on Mulla Sandra’s foundations and due to a logical argument, it seems that a part of Mulla Sandra’s view can and should be amended; in a way that decisive decision can have a material essence.