The Comparative Study of Epistemology in Feminism and MullaSadra

Feminists believe that there is a difference between female and male knowledge. They oppose individualism in epistemology. For them, gender and social circumstances have a significant role in acquiring knowledge, subject cannot know anything through introspection, but, knowledge has a social character and conditioned by relationships among the members of a society. It is through these social relations that knowledge is produced. Mulla Sadra pays attention to the social circumstances. He regards the subject’s gender, social factors as preparatory causes. Feminist epistemology instead of distinguishing between the subject and object, insists on the relationship of the two. Mulla Sadra insists on the relation within the non-presential knowledge too, the relation that immaterial soul establishes with architypes. Thus, Mulla Sadra maintain the deeper level of relation between than feminists do, namely relation to the architypes. The subject in Mulla Sadra's epistemology, contrary to feminists, who regard the subject as the body, is essentially immaterial but material in act. Moreover, Mulla Sadra and feminists believe that emotional and intellectual relation to object of cognition cannot be overlooked.