Impact of Sadrian Eschatological-Philosophical Principles on Rectifying the Theories on Corporeal Resurrection

Corporeal resurrection has been a controversial issue among Islamic mutakallimūn and philosophers since long ago. Mutakallimūn have demonstrated corporeal resurrection in a different way from philosophers based on their own fundamental principles and approach to the truth of Man. Among philosophers, the Peripatetics employed specific ontological and anthropological principles in order to explain spiritual resurrection and, in the light of such principles, Illuminationists developed their idea of Ideal resurrection. Moreover, based on a series of specific eschatological principles in his own philosophy, Mullā Ṣadrā explained the nature of corporeal-spiritual resurrection. This study aims to examine the role of eschatological principles in the reconstruction of the theory of corporeal resurrection and concludes that the failure of mutakallimūn and Peripatetic and Illuminationist philosophers in demonstrating corporeal-spiritual resurrection originates in their lack of access to certain eschatological principles, which is the reason why Mullā Ṣadrā did not agree with their theory of resurrection. Because of their lack of access to such principles as “gradation of existence”, “the soul as the reason for the thingness of human being and body, and “immateriality of the soul and the faculty of imagination”, mutakallimūn granted a material nature to human resurrection and their joys and pains in this process. Similarly, not having access to some principles such as “immateriality of the faculty of imagination”; “external effects of concepts, dispositions, and habits, and “nature of vision and the soul’s invention of immaterial forms similar to external forms”, Ibn Sīnā and Suhrawardī encountered some difficulties in their demonstration of corporeal resurrection.