نشریه خردنامه صدرا
پیاپی 106 (زمستان 1400)

A study of the discussions of the book Sharḥ uṣūl al-kāfī reveals that Mullā Ṣadrā has tried in this book to interpret Imāmah (leadership) and its nature – as a position appointed by God – based on the truths in the words of the Infallible Imams. In spite of the rational and shar‘ī nature of the concept of Imāmah and the different approaches to it, Mullā Ṣadrā has never provided a human-oriented and non-divine interpretation of this position. Rather, through granting principliality and attending to the narrative and Kalāmi beliefs in Shi‘ism, he emphasizes the ultra-human and divine status of this position when explaining the narrations in kitāb al-ḥujjah as a section of al-Kāfī. When discussing the concept of Imāmah and while posing and criticizing the views of various Islamic sects regarding the problem of appointment, Mullā Ṣadrā acknowledges that the existence of Imam is necessary based on the principle of the noblest possibility. Moreover, he refers to certain features and privileges in order to demonstrate that Imām is the proof of God.

The discussion of the relationship between the soul and body has always been a challenging problem. The most important problem with this discussion is the quality of the relationship between the soul as an immaterial existence with the body as a material existence. Many thinkers have presented some theories in response to this problem. Following a descriptive-analytic approach, the present study examines and compares behaviorism, which provides some of the important theories in the philosophy of the mind, with the view of Mullā Ṣadrā as the most prominent Islamic Philosopher. The findings of the study indicate that both behaviorist and Mullā Ṣadrā believe in the oneness of the soul and body. However, behaviorists conceive of the soul and mental states as nothing but external human behavior. This approach in fact rejects the immateriality of the soul and its mental states, while Mullā Ṣadrā considers the relationship between the body and the soul as integration through unification based on some of his own principles including the graded trans-substantial motion and the soul’s corporeal origination. In his view, the soul, while being a single substance, enjoys both a material and corporeal level and different levels of immateriality – including Ideal and rational types – because of its graded nature. In other words, there is a single conjunctive truth that appears in the form of the body at lower levels and as the soul at higher levels.

The basis of education, in general, and Islamic education, in particular, is the human soul (psyche). In order to educate the soul and psyche, there are some principles that are employed to achieve the predetermined goals and objectives. Given the religious approach of this study and the potentials of the Transcendent Philosophy in this regard, the author has tried to identify and examine the applications of the principles of educating the soul (psyche) based on Mullā Ṣadrā’s philosophical thoughts. Some of these principles include the substance of the soul’s immateriality, the corporeal origination and spiritual subsistence of the soul, and its graded trans-substantial motion in its process of development. Following this, he has dealt with the educational principles inferred from the mentioned principles and the purposes of this study, such as graded transcendence and graduation and transformationalism, reform, and recreation in the process of educating the soul (psyche). This study was conducted following a combination of descriptive-analytic and inferential methods while using library resources in order to describe the concepts and analyze and clarify the problem. The author has specifically referred to Mullā Ṣadrā’s books (particularly al-Asfār, VIII and IX) and the works of some of his commentators in order to extract and infer the related principles employed in the education of the soul.

By doubting the materiality of perceptions based on the problem of explanatory gap, a rational basis is provided for criticizing Ibn Sīnā’s arguments regarding the impossibility of the immateriality of particular perceptions, the demonstration of possibility, and also the necessity of the immateriality of different types of perception. The material interpretation of particular perceptions – whether sensory or imaginal – is among Ibn Sīnā’s views in the ontology of perception. Through providing some arguments on the impossibility of the immateriality of particular perceptive experiences, he believes that the only possible state with respect to such experiences is their immateriality. On the other hand, hypothesizing the existence of a possible world in which a metaphysical state such as pain can be imagined in the absence of a neural process makes the distinction between mental state and neural process possible. This explanatory gap between them makes the immateriality of perception possible through negating the identity of these two phenomena. Given the distinction between physical and metaphysical states and the necessity of the immateriality of perception based on various philosophical arguments, the materiality of particular perception is debatable. Therefore, Mullā Ṣadrā’s idea of the immateriality of sensory and imaginal perception, similar to rational perceptions, presents a more comprehensive explanation of perception and the soul. This paper focus on a study of the whatness and ontology of particular perceptions, the discussion of which is subcategorized under the problem of the soul-body relation in the process of perception.

Mullā Ṣadrā states in his works that the employment of the intellect and intellectual reasoning is efficient in the independent demonstration and understanding of divine attributes. By explaining Mullā Ṣadrā’s method of using the intellect, it becomes clear that he has formulated his discussion based on proof and has presented some extensive and cohesive discussions about divine attributes so that the most important of which have been clearly explained and demonstrated. Based on the present study, the most important philosophical arguments and principles which Mullā Ṣadrā has explained and demonstrated in this field include ontological proof, principle of “Truth in its simplicity contains everything”, principle of “The giver of something cannot lack it”, and principle of “The Necessary Being is necessary by essence from all aspects, and providence. Mullā Ṣadrā’s extensive discussions on divine attributes, which are based on rational arguments, indicate his belief in the truth of the intellect’s independent function in this field, on the one hand, and confirm its capability in the field of epistemology of divine attributes in an independent form, on the other hand. The result of this study is the development of an approach based on distinguishing the two independent and instrumental functions of the intellect, which has not been considered in other studies previously. Not distinguishing between these two functions has resulted in attributing an irrational and unverifiable or even eclectic nature to the methodology of the Transcendent Philosophy. As a case study on divine attributes, the present study explains the rational, verifiable, and philosophical dimensions to the Sadrian Transcendent Philosophy.

This study investigates voluntary death and its different types in the view of Seyyed Ḥaydar Āmulī and aims to provide a gnostic, psychological, and philosophical analysis of the issue. The authors believe that each type of voluntary death is a kind of practical wayfaring. The main question of this study is how one can provide a gnostic and psychological analysis of different types of death as viewed by Seyyed Ḥaydar Āmulī. The findings of this study indicate that the common feature of all types of death is detaching oneself from worldly belongings and moving away from them. Examples are different and could include moving away from hunger, wearing specific clothes, etc. As mentioned before, this study provides a gnostic and psychological analysis of voluntary death; for example, green death means wearing cheap clothes. Therefore, by avoiding expensive and luxurious clothes, the wayfarer dies a voluntary death. Green is the symbol of balance and subsistence, and the wayfarer attains balance and immortality through voluntary death and keeping away from worldly whims and desires.

One of the most comprehensive studies in the Sadrian philosophical system pertains to the field of anthropology. Moreover, one of the manifestations of the comprehensiveness of this discussion is dealing with the nature and place of the perfect Man in the order of being and its referents and worldly and other-worldly functions, which have been explored in several studies. However, what they have all neglected is the attention to the reasons of the specific nature of this station and its consequences in this school of philosophy. It seems that the attention to this point can grant more depth to anthropological discussions in the Transcendent Philosophy and Islamic philosophy. Accordingly, this study aims to provide an analytic account of the reason for the uniqueness of this station in Mullā Ṣadrā’s works. Here, while analyzing the factors affecting the emergence and perfection of human beings through difference of souls within the framework of apriori and aposteriori multiplicity, the authors explain the restriction of this station to quite a few people. The findings of this study indicate that the station of the perfect Man can be attained through the prophet’s invitation, obligation, courtesy, etc. Nevertheless, developing the highest levels of this station is not possible for all, which justifies the quality of the voluntary perfection of the Infallible Imāms (‘a) and the prophets (ṣ).