Ontology and Perceptual Role of Imagination in Islamic Philosophy (from Avicenna to Mulla Sadrā)

The present study was conducted analytically and inferentially aiming at investigating the ontology and the perceptual role of imagination in the opinion of Avicenna, Suhrawardī and Mulla Sadra. Avicenna knows the imagination faculty and imaginative forms as a material issue, and has no belief and care to the separate ideas world. Suhrawardī knows the imagination faculty material, while he sees the imaginative forms substantive (existing in the separate ideas world) and from the Avicenna point of view, the separate imagination world in emphasized. Mulla Sadra belives in the abstraction of imagination faculty and imaginative forms and like Suhrawardī, he knows the separate imagination world as a degree of “the Degrees of Existence”. Avicenna views the imagination as the perceived and imaginative and also as the main stage in concepts’ abstraction process. Suhrawardī believes that the imagination is the perception of absent and place of appearance of ideas world’s forms. Mulla Sadra knows the imagination and imaginative forms as the factor for mind formation, basics of epistemic activities and the interface of perception transformation. Avicenna believes in impression and incarnation of forms in self resulting from his belief in materiality of imagination and imaginative forms. But, via proving the imagination abstraction and imaginative forms, as denied by Avicenna, and also proof of joined imagination, as posed by Suhrawardī, Mulla Sadra succeeded to elaborate the imagination activity and emanative imaginative forms which led to important consequences in self-knowledge, alliance of self to perceptual forms and nature of identification process.