That is why the virtue that he discussed meant to maintain a balance between appetite and anger faculties and nothing more. In Aristotle's ethical system, the word "virtue" never had a religious meaning or even the sacred value that it had in Islamic wisdom.[1]
The above comprise a summary of the different definitions of ethics, which led Mulla Sadra to follow another path. Given the tight and bilateral relationship between the theoretical and practical types of wisdom, he believed that attaining practical wisdom depended on an accurate perception of theoretical wisdom. This was a point that he repeatedly emphasized. He even considered practical wisdom as an introduction to theoretical wisdom.
On the other hand, man's happiness, discovering the best method of living, finding correct answers to problems concerning ethics and individual training, that is, family administration and training, and, most importantly, establishing and administering a national or human society are the results and consequences of knowledge and believing in theoretical and philosophical truths.
Like other philosophers, Mulla Sadra argued that monotheism in deed - or the principle of the return of all existences and objects to their true origin in Islam - which is the secret of success in theoretical and practical philosophy, was the first step in practical wisdom and the philosophy of human life.
As the founder of the doctrine of the trans-substantial motion, Mulla Sadra saw the bed of man's developmental and perfection-seeking motion, which is called practical wisdom, in a unidirectional motion towards the Origin of good things and living beings. That is why he repeatedly referred to this hustle and bustle, for which the practical wisdom is the carrier and the responsible agent, as the "second birth" and attainment of the "secondary perfection" of humanity.
In this valuable and profound theory, similar to the natures of man and the world, family and society inevitably experience the same trans-substantial motion in their growth. However, from another point of view, both of them are at all times in a historical process of becoming moving towards the future. Hence, all the individual and social principles of life must be based on a process of spiritual development targeting the end of this goal-oriented process of becoming (that is, gaining absolute perfection and proximity to Almighty God). This point has been emphasized in the Qur'an, which invites all believers to say, "We have come from God, and we will return to Him".
The principle of believing in the Hereafter and resurrection, where man receives his final judgment, and when the fate of man's true life - which is immortality - is determined, is not only an Islamic and religious belief, but also one of the philosophical and kalami principles of practical wisdom.
According to Peripatetic philosophers, attaining virtue and happiness through observing ethical principles in an optimal family and political society was of actual and this-worldly value. In fact, we have no certain proof indicating that Aristotle believed in the other world, although some reference has been made to paradise and hell in Socratic (Illuminationist) teachings.
In Peripatetic philosophy, practical wisdom and happiness apparently concern worldly life. Hence, it must be considered a defective wisdom and imperfect system of thought. In the Peripatetic philosophy a happy person is like a bird having a good nest and eating good seeds.
Nevertheless, in Mulla Sadra's school, practical wisdom is based on a kind of happiness which concerns both worlds. As explicitly stated in the Qur'an, man's true life begins after death; therefore, this practical wisdom has its eyes mainly on man's other-worldly happiness. Here, he is referring to a good fate which is the fruit of the tree of good acts and man's practical wisdom and originates in his individual and social ethics and behavior.
The above and some other philosophical principles in Mulla Sadra's school constitute the main pillars and fundamental doctrines of an intellectual-social system known as practical wisdom (ethics, family, and politics). This system provides a long-term practical and executive program all-through man's life for a better material and spiritual life in both worlds, which is called happiness or well-being.
* * *
In the Transcendent Philosophy, apparently like in other schools, ethics begins with the issue of the soul and agrees with the existence of the three-fold rational, appetite, and anger faculties in human nature. However, in contrast to Aristotle and the Peripatetic philosophers, Mulla Sadra believes that the tasks of the rational faculty are not only to maintain balance and observe justice, but also to supervise the functions of the human soul through learning about it following a supreme approach. In his school, based on the principiality of existence and its gradedness, ethics[2] means man's ontological journey and wayfaring through the various stages of development and perfection, which results in improving the standard of his life, enhancing his spiritual growth, and increasing the breadth and glory of his soulish structure.
Although the soul enjoys a materialistic basis, because of its being "corporeally-created", its potency and substance have been made in such a way to become immaterial and move to the higher "mode" of spirituality and rationality from its "mode" of corporeality. According to another principle of his school, that is, the principle of the trans-substantial motion, the soul's function is primary to move towards its perfection or rationality. Its secondary function is to direct the other two animal faculties, appetite and anger, to their perfection. This motion, which constitutes man's spiritual wayfaring, means the soul's exit from the domain of animal faculties, harnessing them, and pushing them towards man's secondary perfection, that is, the soul's becoming rational and purified from animal deposits and perceiving virtue, which is the same as attaining human secondary perfection.
***
Abstracts
Mulla Sadra and Science of Kalam
Relying on his school of the Transcendent Philosophy, Mulla Sadra managed to go beyond the apparent conflicts existing among various Islamic sciences, discover their common points, and unite them with each other. At the same time, he succeeded in introducing a new approach to the science of kalam.
Irrespective of Mulla Sadra's kalami ideas and his responses to others' objections, his view of the history of kalam and mutikallimun is also of great importance. He believes that non-Imamiyyah mutikallimun have lost the correct way and method of kalam and the true origin of kalami teachings, which are the same teachings of the People of the Prophet's House. He is also sorry for their refusing to accept their mistakes. That is why neither does he consider himself a mutikallim, nor do we call him one in spite of the existence of several kalami issues in his works.
A study of the history and process of the development of the science of kalam confirms Mulla Sadra's kalami views and ideas.
Key Terms
science of kalam Shi'ite kalam
Mu'tazilah Ash'ariyyah
teachings of the People of the House
the Transcendent Philosophy
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Reflection of the Allegory of Shadow and the
Madd al-Zill Verse in the Transcendent Philosophy
The role of allegory in expressing metaphysical realities in the Transcendent Philosophy is extremely prominent. In this paper, following a descriptive-analytic method, the writer deals with the allegory of shadow (zill) and the reflection of Madd al-zill verse and its effects on the works of Mulla Sadra and the followers of his school. The explanation of the world's relationship with Almighty Truth is formed based on the self-existence relation, according to which the world is the shadow of God and has no independent and self-subsistent existence. The perfect man, like the manifestation of all attributes of the Truth, is the shadow of God and His vicegerent. Moreover, each human ontological level is the shadow of its higher level.
Mulla Sadra has greatly benefitted from the relationship between the shadow and its owner in order to explain the principiality of existence and the mentally-positedness of quiddity, the diving simple existence, the argument of the righteous, manifestation of glory and beauty, and the cause-effect relationship. In his view, the appearance is like a limbo between being (light) and non-being (darkness) and a key for opening the door to understanding some of the major problems of theology, cosmology, and anthropology. Some of the most important aspects of the allegory of shadow which Mulla Sadra resorts to in order to explain the basic issues in his own philosophy include: negation of ontological independence, presentation and representativeness, indication and guidance, covering and hiding, expansion and extension, correspondence among component parts, concomitance and accompaniment, unity and oneness, and returning to the origin.
Key Terms
the Transcendent Philosophy Madd al-zall verse
truth-creation relationship principiality and mentally-positedness
allegory of shadow
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Virtue in Mulla Sadra's View
Comparing to other ethical theories, the theory of virtue has a longer history. However, it has experienced some changes in its historical process of development. The Sophists were the first thinkers who used this term, but by gaining virtue they meant political virtue. Later Socrates introduced this term into the field of ethics (soulish virtues) and equated it with knowledge. In the next period, Aristotle expanded its realm to include intellectual virtues, and all Peripatetics accepted his view with some changes. The main features of Peripatetic-Aristotelian ethics regarding the problem of virtue are being human-centered, distinguishing ethics from religiosity, and focusing the centrality of quiddity. In this view, virtue is a soulish quality that occurs to the soul.
The changes created by Mulla Sadra in this theory are as follows: First, he has made it theocentric, i.e., attaining virtue, in addition to explaining man's relationship with politics, the government, and his fellow human beings (the relationship among human beings), represents man's profound relationship with God. The attainment of virtue is a means of gaining proximity to God and obtaining eternal happiness. In Mulla Sadra's view, virtue is primarily a graded truth, the most supreme level of which is knowledge and believing in God. Second, virtue depends on clarifying the relationship between Shari'ah and politics. In this way, it becomes related with religiosity and establishes a bilateral relationship with religion. Third, Mulla Sadra's theory of virtue is based on ontology. In his view, the concept of virtue, like the concepts of happiness, perfection, and goodness, is an ontological concept and can be understood and perceived in the light of the principiality of existence.
While exploring the various kinds of virtue, its relationship with good attributes, happiness and perfection, the obstacles on man's way towards virtues and perfections, and the difference between Mulla Sadra's method of dealing with virtue and that of Peripatetics, this paper investigates the problem of virtue based on Mulla Sadra's view.
Key Terms
virtue secondary primordial nature (fitrah)
ontology freedom of the soul
perfection happiness
goodness
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An Introduction to Philosophy, Management, and Lifestyle in Mulla Sadra
The necessity of the existence of a management system for human societies has given rise to various and, sometimes, contradictory theories. On the other hand, each management theory is the offspring of a kind of epistemology that has been developed based on different scholars' cosmological and anthropological thoughts and the ultimate goals associated with that epistemology. The purpose of this research is to explore the best management model for creating the best method of living in Mulla Sadra's view. In Mulla Sadra's philosophical literature, this kind of management, which has sometimes been called leadership of the city or Medinah (following early thinkers) and sometimes wilayah or guardianship (based on religious literature), is one of the kinds of practical wisdom. In Mulla Sadra's view, it is only the "religious-philosophical system" that intends to found a specific management model having God's transcendent existence and tawhidi (monotheistic) civilization at its center. In this system, servitude and oneness of God are at the basis of being, and the style and method of living one's life follow moderation, discipline, and virtue. Here, human beings develop specific identities, and life has a particular meaning. This is because the kind of approach to life and the world, the purposefulness of creation, and the meaningfulness of life necessitate a specific kind of human being, a specific kind of world, and a specific kind of management and lifestyle. The permanent concomitance of "Those who believe and do righteous deeds" in this tawhidi civilization indicates the unity of the principles of theoretical and practical types of wisdom in the construction of this system. Accordingly, a close inspection of Mulla Sadra's view of these two kinds of wisdom and its applications for understanding the meaning of life and the method and style of living and managing it is a necessary undertaking.
Key Terms
philosophy meaning of life
life style tawhidi civilization
wala'i management
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Semantic Analysis of Ethical Obligation in 'Allamah Tabataba'i
One of the most important theories in the fields of metaethics and semantic analysis of ethical obligation is 'Allamah Tabataba'i's theory of mentally-posited things. A number of different and, sometimes, contradictory interpretations have been provided for this theory. This paper investigates two important readings and interpretations of this theory. According to the first one, the content of ethical musts is metaphorical and mentally-posited obligation, so that the ethical agent makes his contingent relation and ethical act as an obligatory relation for some purposes. According to the second interpretation, mentally-posited things, in 'Allamah's views, are the same philosophical secondary intelligibles. Thus ethical mentally-posited musts are not, in fact, metaphorical and mentally-posited in the particular sense of the word. Rather, they are some genetic obligations with their origins of objective abstraction in the outside. The first interpretation is mainly discussed in two of his books, Usul falsafah and Rasa'il sab'ah, and the second interpretation is discussed in some scattered writings in al-Mizan and Risalah al-wilayah.
In this paper and at the level of judgment and evaluation, the writers find the first interpretation, which is attributed to 'Allamah, stronger and more justified. In terms of their correspondence or lack of correspondence with reality and internal coherence, the writers believe that 'Allamah Tabataba'i's theory of mentally-posited things lacks solid proof, is inconsistent with human intuitions, is self-contradictory, and lacks exclusivity. Eventually, it seems that his theory concerning the semantic analysis of ethical obligation is not only incomplete but also incorrect.
Key Terms
semantics of ethics ethical obligation
ethical musts and must-nots 'Allamah Tabataba'i
mentally-posited things
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A Critical Study of Leibniz's View of the Soul based on the Transcendent Philosophy
A great part of the philosophical inquiries of thinkers and philosophers into the history of philosophy concerns the nature of the soul and the quality of its relationship with the body. The thinkers of this field, from the highest to the lowest and from the East to the West, have all stepped into this realm and presented some theories. Regarding this topic, Leibniz's approach to the problem of the soul and body deserves deliberation and is, of course, prone to criticism. His works and correspondences indicate that there are two different monadic and polyadic approaches to solving the problem of the relationship between the soul and body. The definitions of the soul and body based on monadology, the issue of the immateriality and spirituality of the soul, believing in the pre-eternity and eternity of the soul, and explaining his two different approaches regarding the body-soul relationship are among the most important problems discussed in his philosophy. In this paper, while trying to explain the problem accurately, the writers have presented Leibniz's theories concerning the soul and its relationship with the body following a critical approach based on the theories of the Transcendent Philosophy.
Key Terms
monad soul
body polydeism
monadism Leibniz
the Transcendent Philosophy
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The Extent of Abandonment of Indication per Nexum in Muslim Logicians
The problem of the abandonment of indication per nexum was first propounded by Ibn Sina. The logicians following him considered it a logical problem, following which various related views were developed. These views in order of their comprehensiveness and inclusiveness are: general abandonment of language, abandonment of the language of science, and complete abandonment, which have been presented by Ghazzali, Ibn Sahlan Sawi, and Tusi, respectively. The abandonment of indication per nexum is not merely a verbal description; rather, it is in the form of a principle and recommendation. Accordingly, the application of this kind of indication is not allowed in knowledge or understanding.
In this paper, after reporting and reviewing the related ideas of logicians, a fourth view is introduced by the author himself. Based on this view, indication per nexum is abandoned in scientific language and at the level of expressing jurisprudential, legal, and ethical duties. Nowadays, some psychologists have revived the first view by adopting the element of explicitness in a decisive communicative style.
Key Terms
abandonment of indication per nexum
indicative and non-indicative concomitants
finitude and infinity of concomitants
rationality of concomitants
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Ibn Arabi and the Theory of "Imitating God"
In Ibn Arabi's philosophy, knowledge means knowing about the essence of objects. In his view, it is only God who can attain the knowledge of objects by essence without resorting to the existence of an extra affair. Thus, except for God, everyone possesses an imitative kind of knowledge. That is why imitation comprises the basic pillar of Ibn Arabi's epistemology. Because of the limitations of perceptive faculties, he believes that their grasp of the truth is only accidental. Hence, he maintains that imitating God is prior to imitating perceptive faculties.
Imitating God, which is the gist of Ibn Arabi's epistemological theory, means that man should gain knowledge through eliminating the mediation of perceptive faculties and appearances of objects. In this way, he will encounter the essence of objects directly. This theory, which is the main concern of this paper, is based on Ibn Arabi's anthropology. Here, the authors intend to explore this epistemological theory in depth and, after describing its accurate meaning, importance, and levels, discuss the conditions and characteristics of correct imitation in Ibn Arabi's view. It is necessary to mention that, in his gnosis, imitation is considered an epistemological theory when it functions as an attribute for intellectual and wise people. This imitation is formed in the bed of spiritual wayfaring towards God and leads human beings up to the level of becoming similar to the Necessary Being until they turn into a rational world matching the objective world.
Key Terms
imitation knowledge
revelation anthropology
servitude intellect
[1]. Plato and, then, Aristotle attribute virtue (Arte) to those body organs or individuals that perform their essential functions and duties in the best ways possible. This is other than what virtue means in Islam, where it has a sacred meaning.
[2]. According to this definition, ethics means the study and recognition of man's acquired habits in his ontological process of development.
* President of Sadra Islamic Philosophy Research Institute, Email: siprin@mullasadra.org
** Associate Professor, Payam-e Nur University. This paper is based on a research project conducted by the writer at Payam-e Nur University. Email: Zamani108@gmail.com
*** Associate Professor, Islamic philosophy and wisdom, Shahid Beheshti University.
Email: z_baharnezhad@sbu.ac.ir
**** Associate Professor, Islamic Philosophy and Kalam Department, Tehran University. Email:kermani@ut.ac.ir
[3]. First author, Assistant Professor, Islamic Philosophy and Wisdom Department, Islamic Azad University, Tehran Branch. Email: gohari_a@yahoo.com
[4]. PhD student of Islamic philosophy and wisdom, Tarbiyat Modarres University, Tehran.
[5]. Associate Professor, Islamic philosophy and kalam, Isfahan University.
[6]. First author, PhD student of the Transcendent Philosophy, Isfahan University.
Email: ganjvar78@gmail.com
[7]. First author, MA in Islamic philosophy and kalam, Tehran University. This paper is based on the writer's MA thesis with Nadia Maftooni and Ahad Qaramaleki as his thesis advisor and reader, respectively. Email: hosseinrashidzadeh@yahoo.com
[8]. Professor, Philosophy and Kalam Department, Tehran University.
[9]. Assistant Professor, Philosophy and Kalam Department, Tehran University.
[10]. First author, PhD student of Islamic philosophy, Shahid Beheshti University, Tehran.
Email: sarmadi.na58@gmail.com
[11]. PhD student of Sufim and Gnosis, University of Religions and Denominations, Qum.