Agreement of the two Perspectives of Principality of Essence and Principality of Existence in the Theory of Phenomenology of Meaning

Despite the fact that in classical Islamic philosophy, the discussions concerning the principality and mentally-positedness of existence and essence and epistemology have so far been regarded as two divergent and separate discourses, it is tried in this paper to stress the quite pivotal role of the epistemological viewpoint in adopting any of the two perspectives of the principality of existence or principality of essence through elucidating the fundamental and authentic relatedness of these two areas. In the first part of the paper, after unveiling the correlation between the supposition of essentialism and the conventional inference from science – i.e., belief in essential tautology – and statement of the incompatibility of the supposition of principality of essence with such inference and belief, especially the explication of the futility of the presented solutions in solving the doubts (shubhas) of mental existence, it is proven that adopting a new inference and pattern in knowledge (ma‘rifa) is necessary. In the next part, then, with a deliberation on the meaning of essence (māhiyya) and the essence of meaning, the dual, relational, and apparent reality of science is rationally explicated and analyzed. According to this new approach to the reality of science, which is rubricated as the theory of phenomenology of meaning, the divergence supposed to exist between principality of essence and principality of existence is refuted and admission to the principality of both is accepted. In the final part of the paper, the age-old problem of unity and multiplicity is dealt with and it is attempted, based on the theory of phenomenology of meaning, to uncover the hidden mystery of the horizontal multiplicity and semantic contradictions and to give befitting answers to the problems of mental existence.