فصلنامه معرفت فلسفی
سال نوزدهم شماره 1 (پیاپی 73، پاییز 1400)

Due to specific innovations such as essential motion and the physical origination of the soul, Mulla Sadra's study of the soul has explained the creation of the soul and its relationship with the body as well as the survival of the soul after the body in a distinctive manner. Besides, it goes beyond many challenges of the dualist philosophical study of the soul. In Mulla Sadra's transcendental philosophical study of soul, looking at the soul is both from the viewpoint of the essence and from the viewpoint of its belonging to the body. The definition pertaining to the soul's belonging to the body has been completely explained; however, it cannot be considered for the study of soul from the viewpoint of the essence. The definition originated from the study of soul based on the essence is something like the 'limits of things'. The extent of distancing from the matter means lacking, and the extent of realization of perception in any being defines the soul of that being and the distinctive features of that type, which includes all beings of the universe and is based on flow of life and knowledge in all particles of the universe. This type of giving identity to the soul is quite in harmony with the content of gradational unity of existence, the non-physical identity of soul and body, and evidences from the Quranic verse and human experience in various sciences.

One of the important books written by philosophers of mind and translated in Iran is Keith Maslin's An Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind. Somewhere in the book, four reasons have been presented for negating the possibility of arguments for incorporeity of the soul. The Islamic philosophers have considered the incorporeity of the soul as a resolved issue and tried to prove it. These arguments go back one step and attempt to deny the possibility of the soul's incorporeity, considering it as having a corrupt unacceptable sequence and regarding the acceptance of the soul's incorporeity irrational. This article states four reasons for Keith Maslin's book and tries to criticize them to prove the possibility of the soul's incorporeity in a rational way. It proves the mind is not all or nothing; by accepting the soul's incorporeity, the brain still functions, there would be no problem of the idiot fallacy, and it would be possible to enumerate the souls.

Numerous ambiguities surround the issue of 'principality of existence' in the contemporary Islamic philosophy in a way that some have considered it a verbal or fruitless conflict. On the contrary, some adherents of the principality of existence (such as Ayatollah Fayyazi and Mr. Ubudiyyat) have offered new interpretations and challenged the contemporary understandings of the issue. Ayatollah Fayyazi maintains that Mulla Sadra's principality of existence is consistent with true realization of quiddity. He has proceeded to prove his claim by offering detailed premises and discussions. Similarly, Mr. Ubudiyyat has prepared new insights in this issue by finding the roots of the issue in Suhrawardi's view. He maintains that although Mulla Sadra believes in principality of existence, he accepts the true existence of quiddity in another sense. In this article, the defects and drawbacks of these two interpretations are shown and then, by relying on the historical evolution of the arguments, a clearer and less defective image of the issue as well as the view of principality of existence is offered.

Mulla Sadra has experienced, in his works, three stages of philosophical journey: principality of quiddity, the principality of existence of gradational unity, and the principality of existence of personal unity. There must have been changes in the dependent discussions in proportion to these three stages of journey. Considering this change would resolve many issues related to Mulla Sadra's true view and the consistency or inconsistency of the doctrines inside Mulla Sadra's system. According to the present study, some views have been offered on 'time' based on the three journeys of Mulla Sadra, and in line with each journey, some evolutions have occurred regarding the time and the related discussions. These evolutions have been studied in the following spheres in three stages in the form of an intra-system comparative study. These spheres are as follows: definition of time; the essential or existential being of the time; the argument for proving the existence of time; the univocal or gradational nature of time; the direct cause of time; the running sphere of time, and their common and different points.

Regarding the necessity or non-necessity of the ultimate cause, there are two views: the first view is that in generation of the material beings, the existence of the four types of causes is necessary; and in generation of immaterial beings, just the existence of agentive and ultimate cause is sufficient. The second view, while distinguishes the aware and unaware agents, just considers the existence of ultimate cause in the action of the aware agent as necessary. Thus, the existence of the ultimate cause is not necessary in generation of possible beings; rather, the existence of material, formal and agentive causes are necessary for generation of material beings, and the presence of the agentive cause is enough in generation of immaterial beings. Since the right worldview is based on proving the cause and effect relationship, it is necessary to discuss the causality. Discussing the necessity and non-necessity of the causes and the ultimate cause for the effect is one of related discussion on causality. The present article explains the two aforementioned views, and investigates and reviews the arguments of the two parties to conclude that the third view, i.e. non-necessity of the ultimate cause, is right. In this study, we have used the descriptive-analytical method.

The divine knowledge is among the important issues in the sphere of theology, whose analysis has been disagreed upon by various thinkers and numerous views have been presented in explaining it. In this regard, Abul-Barakat Baghdadi – in his famous book entitled al-Muʿtabar fil-Ḥikma – has reviewed and analyzed Avicenna's view. From this inquiry, it becomes clear that these two thinkers share the view of accepting God's intuitive knowledge of His own essence as well as His knowledge of existing immaterial things; however, they disagree on the divine knowledge of non-existent things (knowledge before generation) as well as knowledge of material mutable things. Here, we have dealt with explanation and evaluation of both views.

The role and effect of 'love' in the volitional action of the free-willed agent is an undeniable fact. However, the precise understanding of this fact is dependent on going through some stages including the philosophical analysis of the truth of love. Allamah Tabatabaei is one of the few philosophers who have sought to analyze love. In this article, our goal is to explain and investigate Allamah's view about love using an analytical-critical approach. In Allamah's view, "love is an existential relationship between the lover and the beloved, and such a relationship is dependent on the two parties". From this, he concludes that love is not, due to its nature, dependent on conscience and awareness, and that in some instances, its existence depends on the existence of conscience is the feature of the aforementioned instances. Similarly, Allamah maintains that love is a gradational truth that is running in all beings. He also believes that every 'thing' loves itself. The idea that the truth of love is not dependent on conscience and awareness is defective. Love is something dependent on the lover, and is sometimes the same as him. Allamah's definition of love does not apply to love of 'self', and his analysis is unable to explain love of 'self'. Rather, such an image of love necessitates the denial of love of 'self'. Of course, love is a truth added to self, and in those cases wherein the beloved is existentially contrary to the lover, the existence of love is not dependent on the objective existence of the beloved; rather, acquisition of some sort of awareness of the beloved is enough for acquisition of love.

The most important pillar of existentialist philosophy is human and his free will. In Islamic philosophy, Allamah Tabatabaei proposes some valuable points, according to Islamic doctrines and under the influence of Mulla Sadra's philosophy, about human being. Since recognizing human being and perceiving his characteristics plays a considerable role in generation of intellectual schools, investigating the anthropological foundations is one of the pillars of philosophical thinking. In existentialist philosophy, even in its theist faction, the man is an abandoned being around him everything is formed and his nature is constantly formed in complete freedom, while in Allamah's view, the man is the subject of recognition, everything is formed around God, and the man can achieve the highest degree of transcendence at his own discretion. The present article attempts to do a comparative study of the anthropological foundations of the theist existentialism and Allamah Tabatabaei's anthropological foundations through a descriptive-analytical method.