A Response from Sohrawardi to Sadr al Motaallehin’s Theory of Priority of Exis tence

The famous dispute between Illumination Philosophy of Sohrawardi and Transcendental Philosophy of Sadr al Motaallehin is on the denotation of the term “wojud” (exis tence). While Sohrawardi says nothing is denoted by this term so “there is nothing in reality the nature of which is exis tence”, Sadr al Motallehin says “the only genuine reality is exis tence”, so, the term denotes. Among Sadr al Motaallehin’s replies to Sohrawadi s tands out his new analysis of the predicate “mowjud” (exis tent) in terms of “ that which exis ts” rather than “an entity possessing exis tence”. Through this new analysis, he tries to retain the traditional belief that “wojud” is a univocal term, count the term among denoting ones and at the same time, block the infinite regress. We can take issue with him on behalf of Sohrawadi: the new analysis is either applicable to all derivations of words that share the form “mowjud” or is peculiar to this word alone. The firs t option faces numerous counter examples. The second amounts to begging the ques tion. Consequently, we can defend Sohrawardi’s position: the term “mowjud” is either equivocal or fails to denote anything objective and refers only to a subjective conventional concept. This difference of opinion s tems from a more profound one about the semantic theory of general terms or predicates.