kheradnameh28

Mulla Sadra's Life, works, and Philosophy

Prof.S.M.Khamenei

Fayd Kashani

Fayd Kashani was Mulla Sadra's most famous student. He was an almost unique scholar in the fields othadith, exegesis, and ethics, as well as in gnosis and intellectual intuition. He was born in a family in which all the members before and after him were considered religious learned men and provided vast and invaluable service to Islamic knowledge and teachings. Fayd's father, who was one of the well-known jurispridents and scholars of his time, was called Mulla Murtada, known as Shah Murtada. He was honored by being the son-in-law to Zia al-Oraphay-e Razi, who was a man of taste and gnosis and possessed high spiritual stations. The fruit of

Shah Murtada's marriage to Razi's daughter was the birth of such brave,-j knowledgable and efficient children as Fayd Kashani .

Fayd's first name was Muhammad. Then he was nickamed as Muhsen, and later he was given the title of Fayd by Mulla Sadra. Therefore, he called himself sometimes as "Muhammad ibn Murtada, entitled Muhsen" and sometimes as "al-mushtahar bi-Fayd" (famous as Fayd).

Because of having access to a short biography of Fayd's scientific life, which he wrote himself, we have a clear idea of the most prominent points of his life, while this is not the case with most of our other scientists. In this biography he does not refer to his birth date and only says that he learned literary sciences, Arabic, logic,..., and religious sciences, as well as the preliminaries for being a student under his father and uncle during the first twenty years of his life.

Since his father (Shah Murtada) passed away in 1009 H.G in Kashan, Fayd must have only learned the preliminaries, that is, literature and Arabic, under him and acquired most of his Knowledge under his uncle, the son of Zia al-Orafaye-Razi. At that time, Isfahan was the capital city of Safavids and the scientific center for jurisprudence, philosophy and other current fields of study of that time. When he was twenty years old, Fayd left Kashan and went to Isfahan. He says:

I went to Isfahan when I was twenty years old and found that city a gathering place for all learned people. I learned mathematics and other sciences from the professors there. When I heard that Sayyed Majed-Fayd had four brothers called Zia al-Din Mohammad (b. 986 H.G) Sadr al-Din Mohammad (b.998 H.G), Abdul Ghafur (b.1008), and Murtada (1010), and some sisters (probably three).

Bohrani (d.1028 H.G) had arrived in Shiraz, I went there and studied the science of hadith through audition and recitation under him and succeeded in obtaining the permission from that Shaykh to narrate hadith. I attained such an insight is his presence that I became needless of imitation...

Such words indicate that, first, he did not stay in Isfahan for a long time. This is because if we believe that, as it is said, he was born in 1007 H.G (or as we believe, in 1005 H.G or 1006 H.G ), he went to Isfahan at the age of twenty five or twenty six, and since Sayyed Majed Bohrani passed away in 1026 H.G, and Fayd stayed with him for two years, he went to Shiraz at most in 1026 H.G. Therefore, his stay in Isfahan was a little more or less than one year.

Second, from his saying that he studied mathematics and other sciences, which regularly included old medicine, astronomy and astrolable, and the so-called modern basic sciences in Isfahan, we understand that he did not feel the need to study jurisprudence, hadith, theology, philosophy and gnosis there anymore. That is why in spite of the presence of so many prominent professors, such as Mir Damad, Shaykh Baha, Mir Fendereski, and tens of other famous jurisprudents, philosophers and scientists, Fayd did not attend any of their classes.

One of His reasons for choosing the class of Sayyed Majed Bohrani, who had just come to Shiraz, was his great reputation in hadith and in being a spiritual leader, whose journey or emigration from the suburbs of Iraq and Bahrain had made a great uproar in the seminaries of those days and attracted Fayd, like many other enthusiasts for hadith, towards him. His other reason was his so-called tendency for hadith and being a scholar of hadith (traditionist) which can be inferred from his urgent and fast journey from Isfahan's Dar al-Ilm (house of sciences) to Shiraz, and also from his extensive writings and works on hadith.

According to this report, he went to Shiraz and took part in Bohrani's hadith classes at least two years before his death. If we believe that Sayyed Majed died shortly after Fayd's leaving Shiraz, the year of his arrival in Shiraz will be 1026 H.G -or even earlier-that is, 1025 H.G and maybe earlier.

However, he was involved in the learning of hadith, or in his own words, "ilm-al-hadith", in two ways: audition (listening to the scholar of hadith) and recitation (reading the hadith from the book for the teacher so that he confirms and edits his reading and grants the reader the permission to narrate or criticize it).

According to the scholars of hadith, aucition is the best way, since the teacher makes fewer mistakes in speaking in comparison to listening. In spite of its relative perfection, reciting hadith and presenting it to the teacher is not equal to audition in efficiency. Nevertheless, these two methods, or the so-called tahammal al-hadith (that is, obtaining and preserving hadith), are considered the.best methods for learning hadith and creating a relationship with the teacher of hadith.

It is from here that the degree of the growth and capabilities of the student of hadith and even the teacher's methodology and his closeness to the student can be figured out.

Fayd succeeded in getting to the stage of obtaining the "permission" for hadith (obtaining the permission for narrating that hadith from the teacher and the chain of narrators before him). As Fayd himself said, he became not only a narrator of hadith, but also a religious jurist in inferring the divine laws. His book of "al-Vafiⁿtestifies to the truth of this claim. In his own words, he composed this book in order to remove the defects of the four books of hadith (Kafi, Man la yahzar, Tahzib, Istibsar) and valued it higher than them. Authorities, too, confirm this fact.

Fayd's quitting Sayyed Majed's classes and returning from Shiraz to Isfahan can be considered as a sign of completion of his knowledge of hadith; however, immediately after his arrival in Isfahan, as he himself says, he went to the seminary of Shaykh Baha Ameli. Fayd writes: "At the time I returned to Isfahan, enjoyed the presence of Shaykh Baha Ameli, and obtained the permission for narration from him".

Obtaining the permission for narration directly indicates that he also studied hadith under Shaykh Baha. If he had not written this sentence, we would be most likely to assume that considering the needlessness he felt in himself concerning the acquisition of hadith, he might have learned the science of exegesis or jurisprudence or the like under the Shaykh.

Such lack of satiety for those who are thirsty for hadith and sunna (tradition) and go towards every source of hadith and teachings of the People of the Prophet's House like a dropsic and drink a drop from every spring of knowledge is a method and tradition among seminary students and enthusiasts of hadith. The narrators of hadith sometimes for hearing even a single direct hadith from the Holy Prophet or his descendants took the great pains of travelling long ways. It has been quoted from one of the recent thinkers (from Abaqat al-Anvaf) that, in addition to his countless journeys, the writer of this book had walked about one thousand leagues in order to listen to a hadith.

Evidence suggests that during this journey, Fayd was acquainted with Shaykh Bahai for the first time, since, although he had been in Isfahan three years before that, for some unknown reason, he did not have the chance to see the Shaykh; otherwise, due to the siginficanec of the event, he would have referred to it somewhere and obtained the permission for narration from him. Moreover, Fayd has not referred to any other sources of jurisprudence and hadith, such as Mulla Sadra (as we will discuss later) or Mir Damad, with whose teachings he was later acquainted and wrote a commentary on his "al-Ravashih al-Samaviyeh".

This could also be due to his not having the honor of being in their presence and enjoying their lessons for some reasons.

The "world of images" or the "intermediate world" (isthmus) exists in the middle of the world of the matter and the world of absolute immaterials (the world of intellects). Some philosophers believe that there are three types of perception associated with these three-fold worlds: sense perception, imaginal perception, and intellectual perception.

Suhrawardi's "world of sustaining ideas" is related to this very intermediate world or the world of ideas. Of course, he also agrees with Plato's ideas which consist of the world of latitudinal intellects and the world of archetypes. However, the commonality between these two ideas is mainly related to the words they use rather than their interal meanings.

Suhrawardi also believes in the existence of three types of man: corporeal man, mental man, and intellectual man. The relationship among the faculties and perceptions of these three man consist of the following in an ascending order: the relation of the shadow to the owner of the shadow or the relation of the low to the high.

What is more, the psychological perceptions' description of the aspects of and considerations in intellectual perceptions confirms the principle of "nothing is emanated from the one but one".

In Suhrawardi's view, imaginal forms are not the product of man's imagination; rather, the faculty of imagination is the manifestation of imaginal forms.

Moreover, the solutions to the problem of calling the material body and sustaining forms as the intermediate world, and the complexities of appearance and concealing lie in the fact that the concealment of the material body is not in contradiction with its being the manifestation of sustaining forms.

An Ovreview of the Imaginal World(mundus imaginalis)

By: Dr .R. Davari

Paying attention to the faculty of imagination or the imaginal world is one of the distinctive features of Islamic philosophy. In the words of the prominent Islamic philosophers, the principle of the existence of the imaginal world has remained completely secure against criticisms, however, its results and consequences have been open to development, interpretation, or sometimes, modification.

In contrast, in modern schools of philosophy, the principle of the existence of such a world, and naturally, the bases or concomitants of believing in it, are rejected and even denied. Generally speaking, "imagination" has achieved a psychological aspect or meaning in modern philosophy. Here, imaginal forms are considered the product of psychological powers.

Nevertheless, the author believes that in spite of such a rejection, the idea of the new world, which is the product of the Utopianist writers of the Renaissance period, has been primarily developed in their imagination. Besides, in the present world, which is engaged in a crisis of thoughts and ideas, there is a place for a second introduction of the world of imagination, particularly from the view point of phenomenologist philosophers.

The Soul and its Creative Acts

By : Dr. S. M . Mohaqqeq Damad

According to Islamic philosophers, the soul performs two kinds of activily. The first type is the direct act, which is caulled the self-dependent act in the terminology of Islamic philosophy, and which can be put versus Emanation. In this kind of activity, the act is emanated from the soul, so that there is no intermediary between the source of emanation (the soul) and the emanated (the product of the act). The source of emanation is always present and is absolutely annihilated immediately after the disappearance of the emanated.

When man imagines the shape of a one hundred-storey tower in his mind, the mental tower is emanated from the soul, which is present in the reseptacle of its

existence, and immadiately after any kind of negligence or lack of attantion, there would remain no trace of the tower.

The second type of the activities of the soul include those matters which are realized outside the mind, such as a plan that an engineer draws for a building. In fact, the essence of the plan is of the type of the first group of activities: i.e, the direct acts of the soul, and has been developed in the engineer's mind.

However, the form reflected in the outside as the plan belongs to the second class of activities, in the sense that the soul of the engineet would play no role in its subsistence and even if the engineer himself dies out, his plan will subsist.

With respect to the two types of the soul's acts, logical considerations force us to agree with two types of objects, namely, Subjective Object and Objective Object. Mulla Sadra refers to this classification as "Known by essence" and "Known by accident".

Two of the other creative acts of the soul are perceiving universals and creating artistic works. Art is one of the beautiful manifestations of the creative nature of man's soul and has attracted the attention of the philosophers of Ancient Greece since long ago. Islamic teachings, too, have extensively dealt with this issue.

Conditionals and the Conditions for their Truth from the Viewpoint of Moslem Logicians after Ibn-Sina

By : M.Haj Hoseini

After Ibn-sina, Moslem logicians started to develop and expand the Sinan logic. In discussing the conditionals they have come closer to the field of logic by avoiding some of the ontological views in the Sinan logic. However they have tried to clarity the conditionals the conditions for their truth and the quality of the validity of universality and particularity and to determine the place of affirmation and negation in conditional propositions through using an ordinary language. For the first time they divided contingent (coincidental) propositions in to general and particular types and in explaining the conditions for their truth they made a distinction between the universal and particular conjunctive implications. With respect to the issue of the criteria for universality they distinguished between general and necessary contingents and referred to a separate criterion for each. They have also considered such criteria on the basis of the time and quality of the state of the proposition as it is stated and not as it is assumed.

In addition to explaining the views of Moslem logicians this paper also undertakes to prove that Islamic logic didn't die after Ibn-Rushd; rather, alongside with the growth of Islamic philosophy it has continued its life up to the present time.

The Problem of the Existence of Souls before Bodies in Mulla Sadra's Philosophy

By: Dr.Yans Eshuts

How does the philosophical principle of "the soul is corporeal in origination, but spiritual in subsistence" comes into agreement with the teachings of Divine Law refering to the existence of human soul prior to the origination of the material body and the general principle of "all things return to their origin?" Mulla Sadra solves this problem by resorting to three principles: "the principiality of being", "the gradation of existence", and "the simple truth is all things".

In Mulla Sadra's view, such an existence of the soul is based on the issue of causality, or as he explains, the existence of the truth before the descended being, which not only conforms to the existence of the cause before the effect and the existence of the archetype before the ectypc, but is also the same as it. Such priority is essential and possesses at least two existential aspects: the rational aspect and the imaginal aspect. Moreover, by the corporeal origination of the soul and its spiritual subsistence, the writer does not mean the origination of the reality of human soul, the fixed entities of particular souls, or the source and resurrection of the soul. Rather, he means the two prior (worldly) and posterior (otherworldly) aspects of the soul.

What is more, on the basis of the parallelism and proportion among the stages of the descent and ascent arcs, each of the levels of the soul in the arc of descent has an equivalent in the arc of ascend.

And finally, the soul enters the world of immaterial intellects as a result of the completion of the body.

The Relationship between Epistemology and Ontology

By: N.Arab Momeni

Nowadays epistemology is a familiar term to philosopheers and all of them are acquainted with its problems in proportion to their background knowledge. A few centuries after the birth of this science and with the everincreasing expansion of its related issues in the west, our philosophy has also had some share in this ergard in recent years and taken notice of the discussions related to knowledge in different ways following a new approach. Everyone, has tried to demonstrate the "fact exposing" facet of science. For example in a series of articles written recently, it has been tried to relate epistemology to some ontological issues such as the principiality of being or the principiality of quiddity, the gradation of existence, the principle of the One, the possibility of the noblest etc. This paper is in fact a critique of such a method of demonstration. After explaining and evaluating this method the writer deals with Shaykh Ishraq's theory on vision and sense perception in general. Following a short reference to Mulla Sadra's ideas in this regard, he evaluates Suhrawardi's theory on justifying the "concordance" between the mind and the world of reality as being more powerful and revealing than other theories. However this does not mean that the problem has been solved and in fact there is still a long way to go to come up with a straight forward solution.

After the introduction, this paper covers the following titles: the principiality of existence and concordance, criticism and speculation, Illuminationist ontology and the theory of knowledge a reference to Mulla Sadra's thoughts and the final note. In the last part and after concluding the paper the writer has found it fruitful to discuss one of Mulla Sadra's reasons for refuting the argument ofshabah which could indicate the concordance between the essence and the mind.

The principiality of Existence in the Transcendent Philosophy and in the West

By: T.Kermani

According to Mulla Sadra's theory of the principiality of existence, the concept of existence is a self-evident concept which directly occurs to mind. Confirming the evidence of the concept of existence itslf is also self-evident. This idea is shared by both Mulls Sadra and Heidegger, since this western philosopher ,too, believes that existence is a fundamental concept to which all concepts could be reduced. Their other commonality is the meticulous distinction they make between the two descriptive and actual forms of existence.

In Mulla Sadra's view, unlike the concept of existence,the reality of existence is ultimately hidden and evades direct conceptualization. Therefore, it could not be perceived as anything other than the "direct data of the innersense". Heidegger ,too, believes that in spite of its sell-evidence at the level of a priori perception, existence will remain an ambiguous concept.

Mulla Sadra maintains that it is existence and not quiddity which is principial. In the west ,too, existential philosophies, in spite of their numerous differences, comprise a unitary school of thought, called existentialism. This fact indicates that in both the east and the west, the idea of the principiality of existence is an original

and inclusive one and, particularly in Islamic philosophy, involves confessing the Oneness of The Most High.

"Cause-Effect Detetminism" and the "Free Will"

By : A.Arshad Reiahi

A perfect cause necessitates the existence of an effect, and such a causal determinism provides the grounds for the development of a definite and stable system which, according to a number of thinkers, leaves no place for will. However, Islamic philosophers believe that there is no contradiction between these two issues and one can both accept the causal necessity and conceive of man's acts as being voluntary and optional. This is because the free will is the last component of the perfect cause of voluntary acts; therefore, the apparent inconsistency between the "causal determinism" and "voluntary acts" can be easily removed. Nevertheless, the contradiction between "causal defemininsm" and the "free will" can not be as easily obviated, since if another will is the last component of the perfect cause of the will, the succession of wills will be necessary. Accordingly, philosophers such as Farabi, Ibn Sina and Mulla Sadra believe that man's will is the effect of causes and concommitants outside his will and, in fact, will is imposed on man from the outside. However, this theory is not acceptable, since it leads to nothing but determinism.

Imam Khomeini obviates the contradiction between "causal determinism" and the "free will" by arguing that although will is not the effect of another will, it is free and voluntary. This is because in order for an act to be free, it does not have to be the effect of will, and there are different kinds of free agents which have no will in addition to their essence.

Oriental Wisdom

By : M.Sane Pour

Some people consider Ibn-Sina a Peripatetic philosopher and merely a comentator of Aristotle's works.However even a facile study of the works of this eminent philosopher reveals that this is absolutely wrong.In fact, the differences between Ibn-Sina's theories and those of Aristotle are so great in number that we cannot even enumerate them in this paper.Nevertheless, it seems that towards the end of his short life, Ibn-Sina intended to found a new philosophical system, called "Oriental Wisdom" (versus the Peripatetics' occidental wisdom), but he couldn't achieve this purpose due to his untimely death. Today the only available part of the book of "Oriental Wisdom" is the chapter on oriental logic.

Therefore, the purpose of the wirter in this paper is to explore those issues which play a central role in Ibn-Sina's oriental thought and stand in opposition to the views of the Peripatetic philosophers, particularly Aristotle. Such issues include:

1. Ibn-Sina and Aristotle's disagreement concerming the relationship between the soul and the body.

2. Ibn-Sina and Aristotle's disagreement concerning the active intellect.

3. The conjectural intellect and the sacred intellect, which are among Ibn-Sina's innovations.

4. Ibn-Sina's gnostic disposition which is based on emananation and illumination from the outside and is in contradiction Aristotle's intellectual and senseless paganism.

The Paradigm of "Wisdom" and its Role in Solving the Paradox of Absolutism and Relativism

By : M.Khaqani

Believing in the interplay of all sciences, including human sciences and religious sciences, is one of the bases of relativism. In order to explore the truth of this interplay, it has firstly been tried in this article to discuss the "paradigm of wisdom" from the Islamic point of view.

The writer has also discussed the scientists' unsuccessful experience of establishing a relationship between the universalism of wisdom and particularism of experimental sciences, that is, deduction and universalism versus induction and particularism.

In still another part, with reference to the interplay of human sciences, the writer has reviewed the ideas of returning to universalism in frameworks such as the philosophy of science, the general systems theory, semiotics (the study of sign systems) and hermeneutics.

Finally, the interplay of "the unity of wisdom" and "the multiplicity of sciences" has been introduced in contexts sunh as the paradox of the Quran and the criterion (furqan), the path (sirat), religion and Divine Laws, the troops (al-zumar) and mankind (al-nas), and the issue of lack of division in shiite exertion (ijtihad) as a strategic theory in Islamic culture in order to deal with this philosophical challenge.

The Cosmological Argument in Kant and Islamic Philosophers

By: A.Hesami Far

One of the important arguments adduced on the existence of God is the cosmological argument, which has been introduced and explained in different ways and under various titles such as the motion, causality, contingency and necessity arguments in Islamic and western schools of philosophy.

In Critique of Pure Reason, Kant views the arguments of proving the existence of God in the supernature as a product of the debates of the pure reason, coming into being as a result of applying the pure concepts of understanding to the ideas of reason (God, world, soul). In his view, the mo.st important arguments adduced on the existence of God consist of ontological, cosmological and natural-theological arguments. When criticizing these arguments, he reduces the second and third arguments to the first one and then rejects it. This is because, firstly, existence is not a real predicate, and, secondly, predicating existence on the concept of God presents a synthetic (and not an analytic) propisition that could be considered neither an a posteriori synthetic proposition (since God is insensible), nor an a priori one (since a priori synthetic propositions can only be used in relation to the world of phenomena).

In this article, first a summary of Kant's critical approach to the cosmological argument will be presented on the basis of his critique of pure reason. Next, reference will be made to the ideas of some of his commentators and critics in this regard. Finally, in order to portray a clear picture of this argument, some of the related explanations given by Islamic philosophers will be presented and, among all of them, the ones provided by Mulla Sadra and Mutahhari will be dealt with in more depth.