The Status of Imagination in the Epistemological System of Sadr al-Muta’allehin

Imagination in the epistemology of Sadr al-Muta’allehin has sometimes tended to Ibn Arabi and its great and superior role, and sometimes it has a tendency towards the peripatetic school and its sub-rational status. Although the special place in the philosophical system of Sadr al-Muta’allehin belongs to the intellect, but where the intellect has failed to understand, it has turned to imagination and through the movement of substance he considers the abstract and soul-based human imagination as the solution to many problems including understanding the affirmative and immanent divine attributes, the revelatory teachings of the prophet and solving the problem of bodily resurrection. Using a descriptive-analytical method this paper seeks to study the challenges of this theologian in facing the mystical and philosophical approaches with imagination. Sadr al-Muta’allehin considers imagination to be a hierarchical essence, and according to the equivocal levels of imagination, he considers the imagination attributed to the senses as the source of image and allegory and the imagination attributed to the realm of the kingdom as the entrance of inspiration and revelation. His commitment to philosophical reason has led him to use the transcendental dimension of imagination only where reason is incapable of comprehending it.