An Analytic Study of Mulla Sadra’s Final View on Divine Knowledge of Immaterial Things

Mulla Sadra has adopted different standpoints regarding the acceptance of material forms as a level of divine knowledge in his various works. He has sometimes explicitly agreed with this idea, sometimes remained neutral, and sometimes denied it. This paper is intended to shed some light on Mulla Sadra’s final view in this regard based on his different standpoints in his works. In doing so, the author has investigated his various descriptions of God’s knowledge of material things and his justifications and arguments for each of them. One of the justifications for such a variety of ideas is rooted in his shift from the divine Ishraqi knowledge to transcendent knowledge, while another one sees the root of this diversity in separating the receptacles of perpetual duration and time from each other. Here, the author demonstrates that both of the justifications are defective and argues that the only acceptable explanation for Mulla Sadra’s final view of the knowledge of material things is the relative nature of the division of beings into material and immaterial ones. This solution conforms to the two fundamental approaches which Mulla Sadra has adopted regarding the necessity of gradation in existence and its perfections as well as the same-as-relation identity of possible things.