The Influence of Mulla Sadra's Psychological Foundations on his Epistemology

It is universally accepted that the presuppositions, thoughts, and mental foundations of a scholar influences his/her ideas continually. It is, therefore, useful to study the relationship between a thinker’s mentality and thoughts and his/her other academic ideas in order to have a better understanding of their options and discover the delicacies of those ideas. This article attempts to show that Mulla Sadra’s view about the soul has changed his approach towards perception and knowledge, and produced new results. The aim, here, is not to study the whole of Mulla Sadra’s psychology and epistemology, but to consider his specific views concerning knowledge of the soul and to evaluate his attitude about the soul and the effect of such an attitude on the great philosopher’s specific ideas concerning knowledge. In other words, it is attempted to explain and analyze the extent of the influence of Mulla Sadra’s psychological bases on his epistemology.The innovated outcome obtained from this research is Mulla Sadra’s epistemological methodology. A careful look at this methodology leads us to a coherent geometry which clearly shows the relationship between the two domains in a way that one can claim such psychological bases will inevitably result in his specific epistemology. Although epistemology, in its modern sense, was not in the mind of the philosopher, Sadrolmota’allehin, four centuries ago, and his attitude was basically different, it is possible to consider it from today’s point of view and examine it by focusing on his psychological and epistemological foundations. Thus, Mulla Sadra’s view towards knowledge is considered from this angle, too.