Health and Sickness in the Transcendent Philosophy

The nature of health and sickness and their relationship with each other is the first and most necessary theoretical issue in medical philosophy, upon which all other discussions in this field depend, and which has provoked several theoretical and practical controversies. Similar to some Islamic philosophers, Mullā Ṣadrā has also dealt with this problem. In his discussions, he explains Ibn Sīnā’s standpoint in this regard and defends him against his critics, the most prominent of whom is Fakhr al-Din Razi. In doing so, Mullā Ṣadrā follows the common wisdom of his own time and defines health as a state or condition of the soul through which mental acts are properly issued from their own specific sources and emphasizes the psychological nature of both health and sickness. Being more straightforward than Ibn Sīnā, Mullā Ṣadrā corresponds the relationship between health and sickness to that between habit and non-habit. However, he does not clearly refer to his position as to what comes between health and sickness. A study of Mullā Ṣadrā’s works indicates that, apart from his direct references to the nature of health and sickness, one can define health as “a mode of the existence of the soul which enables it to perform its acts properly at the level of physical and elemental body” based on the principles of the Transcendent Philosophy. In the same vein, through emphasizing the ontological nature of health and non-being nature of sickness and, accordingly, their being graded, one can refute the existence of any boundary or intermediary between them and, as a result, portray a distinct picture of health and sickness.