A Semantic Study of the Description of God as the Simple Intellect in Sinan Wisdom (with Reference to Three Different Interpretations by Fakhr al-Din Razi, Mir Damad and Mulla Sadra)

Ibn Sina referred to God as the Simple Intellect; however, his intended meaning of this term has been interpreted differently by Fakhr al-Din Razi, Mir Damad, and Mulla Sadra. Fakhr al-Din Razi believes that the Sinan Simple Intellect depends on the suddenness and non-temporality of God’s acquired and differentiated knowledge of existents prior to their creation. According to Mir Damad, this term denotes that God’s knowledge of existents is at the level of essence and identical with essence. He believes that this kind of knowledge is in contrast to His presential knowledge of existents and argues that the attribution of acquired knowledge to Ibn Sina is among Suhrawardi’s mistakes. Finally, Mulla Sadra states that, by the Simple Intellect, Ibn Sina means a general rather than differentiated type of acquired knowledge. In this paper, the author examines each of these interpretations along with their related proofs and, at the end, demonstrates that the correct interpretation of this term is a combination of those provided by Mulla Sadra and Fakhr al-Din Razi.