A Comparative Study of the Ontological Relationship between Life and Knowledge from the View of Plotinus and Sadr ol-Mote’allehin (Mulla-Sadra)

The relationship between life and knowledge in the view of Plotinus and Sadr ol-Mote’allehin and the comparison between their perspectives are of importance due to the fact that the ontological connection between life and knowledge in the opinion of the two philosophers conveys their intellectual affinity. Contemplation in the view of Plotinus is a sort of general and pervasive knowledge that exists in all the stages of being; the idea or knowledge that is recognized as the sameness of life by Plotinus. In Sadr ol-Mote’allehin’s view, knowledge as well as life are not only subordinate to being but also its exact sameness. Therefore, knowledge and life have unity in existence. Belief in the sameness of life and knowledge as well as the creatures’ living and knowledgeable existence, Reduction of life into knowledge, and the common foundations of the ontological relationship between life and knowledge -sameness of their origin and end, their graded reality, their common source in nature, and the world’s living and knowledgeable existence- in the view of the two above philosophers, have paved the way for a comparison between their perspectives. The result of this comparison is finding intellectual affinity and consensus between the two philosophers about the type of relationship between life and knowledge.