The other point is that in spite of the close friendship between Faydh and Muhaqqiq
(Mulla Muhammed Baqir) Sabziwari and their common jurisprudential, gnostic and philosophical ideas (for example, both believed in the necessity of the Friday prayer), there is no name of him in Faydh's works.
* * *
* * * *
A more thorough and profound study of the life of this prominent scholar and teacher of ethics requires more time and space; thus we will have to ignore the other details of his life and limit ourselves to what finally happened. The destiny of this man of God and model of jurisprudents and heirs of Imamat
(leadership) was what he had always prayed for before the Almighty. Finally, the divine favor fell upon him, and Faydh returned to Kashan to the corner of his beloved village and got involved in teaching, prayer and writing books. In this way, he spent the last part of his life in spiritual retreat with his Companion of solitude more than ever before and left the malodorous carcass and worldly wealth to vultures and hyenas.
Faydh spent the last years of his blissful life with some of his children and a few of the scholarly elite, until in 1991 A.H., at the age of 84 or 87, the sun of his life passed beyond the walls and fortifications of Kashan and set, and his soul flew towards his Beloved.
* * *
* * * *
Faydh is one of the brightest stars of the sky of knowledge and science and one of the most prominent Islamic scholars. Some have compared him to Abu Hamid Gazzali and equated him with this scholar. They have even nicknamed him as the Shi'ite
Gazzali. However, we believe that such a praise and admiration is so little for him, for Faydh was always superior to Gazzali in fields in which both competed with each other. He was Gazzali's master in hadith, interpretation, philosophy and gnosis, and Gazzali could never bear comparison with him in such areas. Faydh was an equal to Gazzali in ethics and, like his master, Mulla Sadra, admired him in this field; nevertheless, he did not heartily agree with Gazzali in other areas. One of the reasons for Faydh's attention to Gazzali was modifying and restructuring his famous book Ihya al-ulum. He corrected and summarized this book under the title of Muhajjat al-baydha and removed its defects and problems.
Faydh's major superiority over Gazzali is his independent and self-sufficient spirit, which is the greatest of all human gifts. As we mentioned previously, he kept away from kings (who even pretended to being his disciple) and evil instinct of ambitiousness; he counted leadership and status for nothing, much less to seize the everyday meager material opportunities and, like Gazzali, spend most of his life according to the wishes of the government and mammonists, such as Nizam al-Mulk Tusi, the minister of Saljuk Malik Shah, and get involved in idle talk.
From his early youth, Gazzali was at the service of Nizam al-Mulk and his anti Shi'ite
Batinis (esoterics) policy. He also supported this minister's harsh opposition to Isma'ili people and, consciously or unconsciously and aimlessly, wrote in favor of the corrupt caliph in Baqdad and the Iranian Saljuk ruler. He boasted of his mastership in Nizamiyyah schools (schools founded by Nizam al-Mulk founded at that time) in Nishabur and Baqdad and was so satisfied with being fed by Shah's supreme minister and caliph's apple of eyes. That is why after the minister's death and the instability shaking the foundations of Saljuk dynasty, he started wandering aimlessly in search of a lost thing which could be called mysticism and Sufism
- and, in fact, that lost thing was he, himself - ; wherever he went, in spite of a life which he spent in dogmatism, pretension and absurd prejudice, he talked of gnosis and intellectual intuition.
His defending the oppressors of the time and his ill-speaking of Shi'ites and calling them rascals gave rise to terrible bloodsheds; the honor of a great number of Muslims was trampled for centuries and horrible seditions and calamities were excited. The resulting catastrophes were so deep and immense that even tons of books written on ethics could not compensate for the miseries they brought about. God will not easily forgive those scholars who trade science and piety, bring distress to Muslims' souls and disrupt the unity of believers.
Gazzali's opposition to philosophy and rationalism, which led to Muslims' (non-Shi'ites) lagging behind advancements in philosophy and wisdom, was due to his greed for status, power, authority and wealth, which were granted to him by Nizam al-Mulk, Saljuk rulers and the Abbasi caliph, rather than due to an inner motif. However, Faydh never wrote a word unless to praise his God and never said a word unless to obtain the Truth's satisfaction. In fact, each page of his books weighed together with the worship of all pious people of his time in terms of value.
Nowadays, in order to know about Faydh's sublime character and conduct, one can only refer to his books, works and poems. There is an honest and frank face hidden beyond these works; a face that reveals Faydh's bravery, self-confidence, faithful soul and piety, and tells us about his heart, which overflows with dutifulness and love of God's people.
In spite of his religious emotions and love of faithfulness and piety, Faydh was also a gnostic and frenzy poet; however, we dare say that his overflowing spiritual intuition dominated his poetic taste. Although he was a tavern-haunter, unlike his long-standing companion, Muhaqqiq Lahiji, he was a dervish rather than a rake.
Despite his quick temper, which he had inherited from his master, Mulla Sadra, he also employed prudence, compromised when necessary, and dropped his shield before fools and those who traded religion for worldly wealth and left the battlefield. He loved people and enjoyed serving them, and a lot of his Persian books which are written in a simple language reveal his diligence in providing service and guidance to laymen and spreading his ideas among them. Moreover, unlike some others, he did not remain in seclusion and refused to stay away from people, neither did he consider writing in Arabic an honor or sign of supremacy and writing in Persian a mark of low status.
Faydh was a prolific writer and believed that written works are everlasting, while all other things have a transient life. This point has also been emphasized in some of his poems.
Abstracts
Reza Davari Ardakani
Key Terms
political philosophy theoretical politics
practical wisdom Utopia
prophethood guardianship (wilayah)
philosophers' governorship Farabi
Plato Mulla Sadra
A study of Mulla Sadra and Bergson's views concerning motion and an analysis of the similarities between their ideas reveal that, in spite of the differences among their interpretations of the issue, their language and their cultural outlooks, unlike Plato and his followers, who believed that the reality hidden behind the world of appearances is timeless and unchanging, both Mulla Sadra and Bergson believed that the ultimate metaphysical reality can only be found in what is permanently in motion. In Mulla Sadra's view, the reality hidden behind all appearances and phenomena of the world of matter is a fluid existence that is always moving between the present and the future: an existence which is always in motion and renewal. Another conclusion of the above studies is that, unlike the common tradition in philosophy that sees the intellect and intellection as the keys to attaining the ultimate reality hidden behind sense perception, according to Mulla Sadra and Bergson, the key to reaching this reality is intuition. Meanwhile, both of them believe that the realities of time and motion have an unbreakable unity with each other; they are, in fact, one thing from which two concepts are abstracted in the process of mental analysis.
Key Terms
motion reality
intuition time
Mulla Sadra Bergson
Faculties of the Soul in Gnosis
Key Terms
gnosis soul
sense imagination
estimation heart
intuition
Particulars and Catharsis of Perception
Monireh Palangi
1. Could we infer 'identity' from 'unity in multiplicity'?
2. Is the embodiment of the soul the product of this union, identity or the catharsis of faculties?
3. Is the idea of identity consistent with the pure catharsis of perception?
soul perceptual faculties
sense perception simple truth
multiplicity in unity unity in multiplicity
identity union
catharsis of perception
Mulla Sadra owes a great debt to gnostics and sufis in developing his gnostic thoughts, as well as his other thoughts. Interestingly enough, he has not paid equal attention to all gnostic and sufis sects; rather, he has followed a specific method to select some of their ideas. This method is, of course, in line with his own philosophy and can be clearly traced in his books and treatises. In fact, his major aim is to disentangle the complexities of gnostic thought in his own time.
Key Terms
pleasure and pain gnosis
ethics spiritual guide
subject and object vision
This article presents an analysis and critique of some of the inferences Mulla Sadra has expounded under the influence of his philosophical ideas. To accomplish this task, it has been tried to compare Mulla Sadra's inferences with the surface meaning of the related verses, as well as with those of other verses and hadiths. In this comparison all the verbal and rational indications in the verses and their related contexts have been taken into consideration.
Key Terms
world of the intellects union of the intellect and intelligible
Idea soul of heavens
universal soul the trans-substantial motion
levels of divine knowledge
Guardianship or wilayah is one of the issues discussed in all branches of Islamic sciences. Jurisprudents, commentators, theologians and gnostics have, each, talked about guardianship and its related issues in a way. Although they have viewed this topic from different standpoints, there are some commonalities among their ideas. The gnostic approach has a profound view of this issue, and a major part of books written on theoretical gnosis are devoted to clarifying it. In this paper, it has been tried to explore Mulla Sadra's view of guardianship, which is mainly of a gnostic nature.
Key Terms
wali (guardian) general guardianship
particular guardianship lover
beloved Be stationed!
perfect servitude miracle
grace
* * *
At the end of World War II, after years of being involved in educational activities, extensive research studies and pastoral work, he was appointed the professor of religious studies at Kerms on the
Cardinal Konig was deeply interested in