A Critical Study of Haeri Yazdi’s View of the Sadrian Semantic Function of “Possibility” in Explaining the Sinan Argument of the Righteous

The argument of the righteous (Burhān al-Ṣiddīqīn) demonstrates the essence of the Necessary Being without resorting to an intermediary. This title was chosen for the first time by Ibn Sīnā in order to provide a new interpretation of an argument that Fārābī had previously adduced. The argument of the righteous is one of the best and most concise philosophical and rational arguments on demonstrating the existence of God.This argument reasons from “being” to the “Necessary Being” so that none of God’s acts, such as motion or origination, functions as the middle term. Haeri Yazdi has tried to respond to the problems of this argument by explaining the meaning of possibility in the Peripatetic and Transcendent Schools of philosophy. Given his accurate analysis of the meaning of possibility, he believes that it can be used as a basis for proving the existence of the Necessary Being; therefore, it is not necessary to resort to the impossibility of infinite regression. Following an analytic comparative method and based on Mullā Ṣadrā’s valid criteria for the truth of the argument of the righteous, the present paper analyzes and examines Haeri Yazdi’s interpretation and shows that his view is not immune to criticism.