A New Exploration into Religion as a Determinate and Supernatural Essence with Reliance on Mulla Sadra’s Opinions along with a Critique of Freud’s Viewpoint

Belief in religion plays a meaningful role in human life. Thus, many thinkers have undertaken to study the origin of religion, in a way that a group of scientists believe that this significant element of life has a Divine and supernatural origin and others view it as humanistic and originated from human illusions. Mulla Sadra represents the former group and Freud is a proponent of the latter viewpoint. With an exploration into religion and Divine commands and by relying on Mulla Sadra’s opinion, the present article clarifies that apart from the fundamental differences of the views of Sadra and Freud, the central core of the differences of Sadra’s ontological viewpoint and Freudian psychology concerning religion lies in answering to the question as to “whether or not religion has a determinate essence independent from human mind?” From Sadra’s ontological viewpoint the answer to this question is positive and from Freudian humanistic psychology it is negative. This writing presents a philosophical analysis of the origin of religion and its commands and admonishments through explaining Divine knowledge and explicating the conformity of religion and the “best possible order” (niẓām al-aḥsan) to Divine knowledge with reliance on Mulla Sadra’s opinion and proves that religion has a determinate essence independent from human illusions, and then, on the same basis, it criticizes Freud’s viewing religion and its obligations as illusionistic.