Shahid Mutahhari on Existence and Quiddity

According to the primacy of existence and that quiddity is mentally constructed, the reality of what is there in the world is of existence, rather than of quiddity. Philosophers before Mulla Sadra were used to argue that quiddity was of objective reality, but after him it left its place to existence reducing itself to the mentally constructed concepts. Different interpretations of the concepts “Asalat”  (primacy) and “I’tibariyyat” (mentally constructed) have a decisive role in our approaches to the objective things. Shahid Mutahari’s interpretation has a real significance for the issue. He argues that it is existence that makes the outside world and comprises the objective things. Contrariwise, quiddity is a mentally constructed concept as an answer to the question “what is it in its essence?” whose location is merely in the mind having no concrete reality in the outside world. That is to say, existence comprises the real outside world but quiddity makes the mental world. It seems from among all those interpretations that Mutahari’s is correct. Here the author has come to examine this interpretation through description analysis and explanation.