A Study of Jalal al-Din Davani’s View Regarding the Relationship between Possible Beings and the Necessary Being: Dependency or Relationality?

 According to Sadra, the relationship between possible beings and the Necessary Being is dependency. He believes that all other Muslim philosophers before him, including Jalal al-Din Davani understood this relationship to be relational. However, Davani, who in his works holds that the relation between the cause and the effect is a kind of “attribution”, explains this relation in two different forms, the first of which is known as the theory of Zawq al-Ta'alluh (Inclination to Divinity); from his views in this regard one can mostly conclude the relationality of possible beings. In the second form he uses the concept of emanation instead of causality and the notion of the source of attributions (Um al-Nisab) to more precisely explain the concept of “attribution” and considers it to be synonymous with manifestation and emanation in a way that one can say Davani's view corresponds to that of Sadra concerning personal unity. In this paper, firstly it is shown that the second approach to Davani's view is a more complete and precise one and secondly, it is concluded that two matters caused Sadra to believe that Davani considered possible beings to be relational beings:  Davani’s unsuccessful explanation of his intended meaning and Sadra’s inattention to the second form of the explanation of “attribution”.