نشریه خردنامه صدرا
پیاپی 113 (پاییز 1402)

Mullā Ṣadrā has discussed the levels of faith based on the principles of the Transcendent Philosophy, particularly the trans-substantial motion and gradation of the levels of existence, Man, and knowledge. He divides faith sometimes into imitative, demonstrative, and obvious types and sometimes into external and true, verbal, semantic, real (demonstrative or unveiled) and drowning into the light of oneness types. In his view, the highest level of faith belongs to masters of theoretical and practical intellect, only a few of whom reach the level of divine vicegerency and the perfect Man. James Fowler, the contemporary theologist and psychologist, explains the growth of faith at six stages: 1) intuitive projective faith, 2) mythic-literal faith, 3) synthetic-conventional, 4) individuative reflective faith, 5) conjunctive faith, and global faith. He does so under the influence of certain modern Christian theologians, such as Tillich, and psychologists, such as Piaget, Kohlberg, and Erikson. Fowler believes that figures like Mahatma Gandhi and Mother Teresa exemplify the sixth level of faith in the light of their cognitive and moral breadth of insight. Here, following a descriptive analytic method, the authors initially explain Mullā Ṣadrā’s view regarding the levels of faith and Fowler’s view of the stages of the growth of faith and then compare, contrast, and evaluate the two views.

The meaning of life is one of the most important concerns of modern Man and one of the fate-making problems among contemporary philosophers, psychotherapists, and moral philosophers. The present study investigates the meaning of life in the view of Mullā Ṣadrā, as a Muslim philosopher, and Irvin Yalom, as a contemporary Western existentialist psychotherapist. The focal question of this paper is what the cosmological and anthropological foundations of the meaning of life in the views of Mullā Ṣadrā and Yalom are. The findings of this study indicate that God appears with beautiful and glorious manifestations as the end of being, which grants meaning to being, and Man is present with their ontological gradedness, immateriality, and plurality. By contrast, in Yalom’s philosophy, the centrality of God is denied; the world is void of meaning, and it is Man who must grant meaning to life. Therefore, it can be said that one deals with the unveiling of meaning in Mullā Ṣadrā’s philosophy and the creation of meaning in Yalom’s philosophy. Regarding the problem of the meaning of life, Mullā Ṣadrā’s approach is teleological and divine, while Yalom’s approach is non-teleological and atheistic.

Ignorance and dogmatism have always existed in various historical periods of epistemological disciplines and revealed their faces in their opposition to knowledge. Ignorance appears through separation from the necessities of knowledge. The spread of ignorance in the culture of social relationships threatens the place of scientific resources and epistemological cradles. Through breaking the idols of ignorance, Mullā Ṣadrā writes about the objective manifestations of such idols in society. He believes that the promotion of social relationships demands the creation of cradles for knowledge, and any kind of ignorance in this regard will result in the dominance of epistemological inefficiency. Through a semantic analysis of ignorance, Mullā Ṣadrā talks about one of its most obvious manifestations, which is dogmatism. He maintains that moral norms and epistemological necessities fade away in a dogmatism rooted in ignorance. The criticism of ignorance and reproach of ignorants in Mullā Ṣadrā’s portrayal of this phenomenon is manifested based on four elements: 1) lack of verification of mental understanding in conformity to reality, 2) lack of derivation of comparative elements particularly in the light of its functional dimensions such as unjust evaluation, 3) mental stagnation, and 4) defective social competition, which refers to the wrong quality of efficiency. When criticizing the culture of his time, Mullā Ṣadrā refers to the rise of ignorance behind the guise of knowledge as an important epistemological pest. In all his criticisms of this stagnant process, he introduces the weakness of true knowledge in society, spread of social foolishness, corruption of social justice, and frailty of the epistemological foundations of society as its most important outcomes. He propounds the treatment of ignorance in the light of a wise method of living while attending to its necessary elements.

Epistemology, which deals with the possibility, whatness, sources, and realm of knowledge, bases one of its most important principles on discovering Man’s sources of knowledge. Contemporary epistemologists refer to five sources of knowledge for human beings: sense perception, reason, introspection, testimony, and memory. Descartes, as a philosopher of the Western world, and Mullā Ṣadrā, as a philosopher of the world of Islam, have provided some theories regarding the problem of knowledge, particularly its sources. Their views are compatible with the pentagonal model proposed by cotemporary epistemologist in this respect. Mullā Ṣadrā and Descartes believe that knowledge acquisition begins with sense perception and ends in reason. Nevertheless, the difference is that, although reason in the Transcendent Philosophy is the last level of perception, it does not mark the end of the way, and it is intuition-based introspection that ends the acquisition of true knowledge. In the cognitive schools of Mullā Ṣadrā and Descartes, sense perception, intellect, and introspection are responsible for producing knowledge, testifying to its transfer, and functioning as social and general sources of knowledge, and memory is responsible for maintaining and safekeeping of knowledge.

Maslow, as a humanist psychologist, and Mullā Ṣadrā, as one of the greatest thinkers of Islamic tradition, have provided different views regarding the whatness of human beings. Given the fact that both thinkers have paid particular attention to explaining the required features and pre-requisites for Man’s perfection itself and the process of Man’s perfection as well as the characteristics of perfect Man, a comparison of their anthropological principles can yield some valuable results. Some of the shared principles of these two philosophers’ include enjoying essential dignity; free will; the ability to move towards perfection, and pre-mordial nature and accepting spiritual experiences and the infinity of the process of Man’s perfection. However, they have provided various interpretations of these principles. Moreover, they have different views regarding the centrality of God in Man’s life, existential dimensions, fundamental needs, stages of Man’s growth, end of Man’s perfection, and characteristics of Perfect Man. Mullā Ṣadrā has managed to present a system based on cognitive principles through benefitting from religious, gnostic, and philosophical fundamental rules, synthesizing them with each other, and introducing a comprehensive and consistent portray of Man’s truth. An all-inclusive and meticulous analysis of such principles can be of great value to related discussions in modern philosophy. A synthesis of gnosis, religion, and reasoning is one of the most important features of Mullā Ṣadrā’s philosophical thoughts, which affect all the acceptable elements of Man’s Whatness.

One of the most controversial philosophical-kalami issues in the history of Islamic philosophy has always been the analysis of the problem of the origination and pre-eternity of the world. Most Muslim mutikallimūn believe in the temporal origination of the world and consider the pre-universe time to be “imaginary”. As the most supreme philosopher of the Transcendent Philosophy, Mullā Ṣadrā has also discussed imaginary time in different places in his works. He has adopted two different approaches to this theory but does not express his view explicitly. The present study explains Mullā Ṣadrā’s opinions regarding the theory of imaginary time and his two approaches in this respect in order to answer the question of what his ultimate standpoint regarding imaginary time is. In order to accomplish this task, the authors have referred to the scattered discussions in his works and, after studying and explaining the relationships between them and combining them with each other, have provided a description of Mullā Ṣadrā’s ultimate view. Although in some places he tries to justify the theory of imaginary time based on his own principles, given his explicit statements on negating an intermediary between the world of being and Almighty Necessary as well as his demonstration of the existence of time and rejection of the arguments of deniers of time, it can be concluded that his ultimate view here is the negation of imaginary time.

Although the problem of motion has created various challenges in the history of philosophy by itself, the trans-substantial motion as the turning point of the Transcendent philosophy is prone to some additional challenges that can be followed in the manifest of dialetheism. One of these challenges is the loss of the identity of subject in the context of motion and, following this, the realization of borderline-states and the appearance of a paradox known as the problem of ambiguity in philosophical literature. Such debates themselves lead to paradoxes that contemporary dialetheists consider as evidence for the existence of contradiction in the outside world. The manifestation of such challenges and their relationship with the trans-substantial motion is the focal problem of the present paper. Since any change in archetypal forms in the cradle of trans-substantial motion is of the gradual and continuous type rather than the sudden type, the absence of a borderline at various stages of motion paves the way for the truth of two different quiddities at the same time for one subject, which necessitates contradiction by itself. Following a critical descriptive analytic method, this study reveals that Mullā Ṣadrā has responded to both challenges. He has answered the identity challenge based on the idea of “matter with form” and referred the challenge of ambiguity to our perception’s negligence in matching quiddity to all modes of being.