The Comparison of Ibn Sina and Molla Sadra's Views Concerning the Immateriality of the Imagination and its Relation to Bodily Resurrection

One of the important issues which has differentiated Ibn Sina’s views from Sadra’s on psychology is the immateriality of imagination. Although Ibn Sina dealt with immateriality of imagination by scepticism in some of his writings such as al- Mobahesat, but on the basis of his philosophy, which considers intellect as simply perceiving general notions and ascribes any partial perception to material faculty, he dosenot belive in the immateriality of imagination. Hence, he states implicitly in his al-Najat that imaginative perception is material and not immaterial. In his booKs. al-Nafs men-al-Shefa he presents three different arguments for the materiality of imagination. In contrast, Sadra believes in the immateriality of imagination and argues for the immateriality of imagination in his varied writings. In his book. al-Shavahed al-Robobiyeh Sadra argues metaphysically for the bodily resurrection through the immateriality of imagination. He contends that nobody could argue metaphysically for bodily resurrection. The purpose of this paper is firstly, the comparision of Ibn Sina and Molla Sadra’s views concerning the immateriality of imagination and then to assess their arguments, and secondly, to assess Sadra’s arguments for the bodily resurrection through the immateriality of imagination. It is show that the truth of some of the arguments he presented are doubtfull.