The “Greek Identity” and “Dialectical Wisdom” for Ṣadr al-Mutaʾallihīn

Since its introduction to the Islamic world, “Greek thinking” was always acknowledged by Muslim intellectuals. Some intellectuals entered the Greek thinking after having accepted the possibility of gaining self-sufficient rational knowledge, trying to offer their own speculative interpretation of the Greek thought. Some others believed that there is an essential distinction between Aristotelian self-sufficient rational knowledge and intuitive knowledge based on revelatory doctrines. Mullā Ṣadrā Shīrāzī, as a major philosopher in the Islamic world, insisted on the genuineness of revelatory wisdom, and yet offered certain ontological principles and dew upon the philosophical heritage from his predecessors to show the significant of knowledge coming from demonstrative syllogism, and in a unique reading, he presented a graded unity between knowledge from dialectical wisdom and illuminative wisdom. The present article uses the analytical method to study the place of the “Greek identity” for Mullā Ṣadrā, which is might be helpful for an understanding of the nature of philosophy in the Islamic period and the relation between reason and revelation in the Islamic world.