Orientational Metaphors of Encompassing-Encompassed in Mulla Sadra's Philosophy

Geographical orientations are one of the important cognitive tools of human beings that in their literal meaning refer to relations between physical objects in the natural world. Encompassing-encompassed orientation refers to a relation between two object that external boundary of the encompassed object corresponds to internal boundary of the encompassing object. This orientation has been used in everyday language as well as in the philosophical systems to conceptualize philosophical principles and rules. With acceptance of literal meaning of this orientation in physics, Mulla Sadra uses widely this for description and explanation of philosophical concepts in metaphysics. Using the of encompassing-encompassed orientation to describe abstract concepts is made possible by conceptual metaphors. Conceptual metaphors related to this orientation in Mulla Sadra's philosophy are: " having perfect knowledge as encompassing", "having active knowledge as encompassing", " being perfect cause as encompassing", "being basic as encompassing", " Maximum attribution to an adjective as encompassing", " exercising power and will as encompassing". Although at first glance, the container-content orientation is equal with the encompassing-encompassed orientation, but they have completely different metaphorical functions. " Knowledge as container" and " time as container" metaphors can be seen in Mulla Sadra's philosophy