The Comparative Study of Lacanian and Sadraian Perspectives on Human and Love

Human has been uninterruptedly studied from different mystical, theosophical, philosophical, and psychological angles; and from these points of view, it is the only creature that in spite of having wisdom and knowledge to recognize and choose, has a lot of spiritual and psychological turbulences, specifically when the matter of love is the main issue. Therefore, here the attitudes of Jacque Lacan, French psychoanalytic theorist, and Mulla Sadra Shirazi, Iranian mystic and philosopher, would be investigated through a comparative approach. The former believes that the experience of a true love occurs only in the imaginary order after passing which one will continually experience the sense of lack and otherness, as everything symbolizes lack, and also every process of perception takes place in the signifying circle of language. Therefore, he looks at human being as a pack of unsatisfied desires which induce an everlasting pain. On the other hand, Mulla Sadra claims that love is a cosmic and ontological phenomenon which is inherent in human nature that tends towards interaction and unity with the cosmos. Considering Lacan’s theories about human’s instinctive life, the permanent sense of pain induced by lack and otherness in human is displayed, while besides depicting this pain, Sadra expresses an eternal innate motion of love in human that generates a deep feeling of joy. On one hand, Sadra goes beyond instinctive love defined by Lacan, and consequently experiences a kind of sublime as the result of the alternative sense of pain and joy through experiencing death and birth of lack in different times.