Sadr al-Din al-Shirazi (Mulla Sadra) is perhaps the
single most important and
influential
philosopher in the Muslim world in the last four
hundred years. The author of over
forty
works, he was the culminating figure of the major
revival of philosophy in Iran in the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Devoting
himself almost exclusively to
metaphysics, he constructed a
critical philosophy which brought
together Peripatetic,
Illuminationist and gnostic
philosophy along with Shi‘ite
theology within the compass of what
he termed a
‘metaphilosophy’, the
source of which lay in the Islamic
revelation and the mystical
experience of reality as existence.
Mulla Sadra’s
metaphilosophy was based on
existence as the sole constituent of
reality,
and rejected any role for
quiddities or essences in the
external world. Existence was for
him at once a single unity and an
internally articulated dynamic
process, the unique source of both
unity and diversity. From this
fundamental starting point, Mulla
Sadra was able to find original
solutions to many of the logical,
metaphysical and theological
difficulties which he had inherited
from his predecessors. His major
philosophical work is the Asfar
(The Four Journeys), which
runs to nine volumes in the present
printed edition and is a complete
presentation of his philosophical
ideas.
1 The primacy of existence
Sadr al-Din Muhammad ibn Ibrahim ibn Yahya al-Qawami
al-Shirazi, known variously as Mulla
Sadra, Sadr al-Muta’allihin, or
simply Akhund, was born in Shiraz in
central Iran in AH 979-80/AD 1571-2.
He studied in Isfahan with, among
others, Mir Damad and Shaykh Baha’
al-Din al-‘Amili,
Shaykh-e Baha’i, before
retiring for a number of years of
spiritual solitude and discipline in
the village of Kahak, near Qum. Here
he completed the first part of his
major work, the Asfar (The Four
Journeys). He was then invited by
Allah-wirdi Khan, the governor of
Fars province, to return to Shiraz,
where he taught for the remainder of
his life. He died in Basra in AH
1050/AD 1640 while on his seventh
pilgrimage on foot to Mecca.
Safavid Iran witnessed a
noteworthy revival of philosophical
learning, and Mulla Sadra was this
revival’s most important figure.
The Peripatetic (mashsha’i)
philosophy of Ibn Sina had been
elaborated and invigorated at the
beginning of the Mongol period by
Nasir al-Din al-Tusi, and there
existed a number of important
contributors to this school in the
century before Mulla Sadra.
Illuminationist (ishraqi)
philosophy, originated by Shihab
al-Din al-Suhrawardi, had also been
a major current (see Illuminationist
philosophy). The speculative
mysticism of the Sufism of Ibn
al-‘Arabi had also taken firm root
in the period leading up to the
tenth century
AH (sixteenth century AD),
while theology (kalam), particularly
Shi‘ite theology, had increasingly
come to be expressed in
philosophical terminology, a process
which was initiated in large part by
al-Tusi (see Mystical philosophy in
Islam; Islamic theology). Several
philosophers had combined various
strands from this philosophical heritage in their
writings, but it was Mulla Sadra who
achieved a true fusion of all four,
forming what he called
‘metaphilosophy’ (al-hikma al-muta‘aliya),
a term he incorporated into the
title of his magnum opus, al-Hikma
al-muta‘aliya fi’l-asfar al-‘aqliyya
al-arba‘a (The Transcendent Wisdom
Concerning the Four Intellectual
Journeys), known simply as the Asfar. Mulla Sadra made the primacy of existence (asalat al-wujud)
the cornerstone of his philosophy.
Aristotle (§§11-12) had
pointed out that existence was the
most universal of predicates and
therefore could not be included as
one of the categories, and al-Farabi
added to this that it was possible
to know an essence without first
knowing whether it existed or not,
existence thus being neither a
constitutive element of an essence
nor a necessary attribute, and that
therefore it must
be an accident. But it was Ibn Sina who later
became the source for the
controversy as to how the
accidentality of existence was to be
conceived. He had held that in the
existence-quiddity
(wujud-mahiyya) or
existence-essence relationship,
existence was an accident of
quiddity. Ibn Rushd had criticized
this view as entailing a regress,
for if the existence of a thing
depended on the addition of an
accident to it, then the same
principle would have to apply to
existence itself.
This was merely an argument
against the existence-quiddity
dichotomy, but al-Suhrawardi had
added to this another argument,
asserting that if existence were an
attribute of quiddity, quiddity
itself would have to exist before
attracting this attribute in order
to be thus qualified. From this,
al-Suhrawardi deduced the
more radical conclusion that
existence is merely a mental concept
with no corresponding reality, and
that it is quiddity which
constitutes reality.
It was this view, that of the
primacy of quiddity (asalat al-mahiyya),
which held sway in philosophical
writing in Iran up to Mulla
Sadra’s time. Indeed, Mir Damad,
Mulla Sadra’s teacher,
held this view. However,
Mulla Sadra himself took the
opposite view, that it is existence
that constitutes reality and that it
is quiddities which are the mental
constructs. By taking the position
of the primacy of existence, Mulla
Sadra was able to answer the
objections of Ibn Rushd and the
Illuminationists by pointing out that existence is
accidental to quiddity in the mind
in so far as it is not a part of its
essence. When it is a case of
attributing existentiality to
existence, however, what is being
discussed is an essential attribute;
and so at this point the regress
stopped, for the source of an
essential attribute is the essence
itself.
2 The
systematic ambiguity of existence
A concomitant of Mulla
Sadra’s theory that reality and
existence are identical is that
existence is one but graded in
intensity; to this he gave the name
tashkik al-wujud, which has been
usefully translated as the
‘systematic ambiguity’ of
existence. Al-Suhrawardi, in
contrast to the peripatetic, had
asserted that quiddities were
capable of a range of intensities;
for example, when a colour, such as
blue, intensifies it is not a new
species of ‘blueness’ which
replaces the old one, but is rather
the same ‘blue’ intensified.
Mulla Sadra adopted this theory but
replaced quiddity with existence,
which was for him the only reality.
This enabled him to say that it is
the same existence which occurs in
all things, but that existential
instances differ in terms of
‘priority and posteriority,
perfection and imperfection,
strength and weakness’ (making
reality similar to al-Suhrawardi’s
Light). He was thus able to explain
that it was existence and existence
alone which had the property of
combining ‘unity in multiplicity,
and multiplicity in unity’.
Reality is therefore pure
existence, but an existence which
manifests itself in different modes,
and it is these modes which present
themselves in the mind as quiddities.
Even the term ‘in the mind’,
however, is merely an expression
denoting a particular mode of being,
that of mental existence
(al-wujud al-dhihni), albeit
an extremely attenuated mode.
Everything is thus comprehended by
existence, even ‘nothingness’,
which must on being conceived assume
the most meagre portion of existence
in order to become a mental
existent. When reality (or rather a
mode of existence)
presents itself to the mind,
the mind abstracts a quiddity from
it - being unable, except in
exceptional circumstances, to grasp
existence intuitively - and in the
mind the quiddity becomes, as it
were, the reality and existence the
accident. However, this
‘existence’ which the mind
predicates of the quiddity is itself
merely a notion or concept, one of
the secondary intelligibles. It is
this which is the most universal and
most self-evident concept to which
the Aristotelians referred, and
which al-Suhrawardi regarded as
univocal. But in reality there are
not two ‘things’, existence and
quiddity, only existence - not the
concept, but the reality - and so
‘existence’ cannot be regarded
as a real attribute of quiddity; for
if this were possible quiddity would
have to be regarded as already
existent, as al-Suhrawardi had
objected.
3 Substantial motion
Another of the key properties of existence for
Mulla Sadra is its
transubstantiality, effected
through what he termed motion in substance (al-haraka
fi’l-jawhar) or substantial motion
(al-haraka al-jawhariyya). The peripatetics had
held that substance only changes
suddenly,
from one substance to another or from one instant
to another, in generation and
corruption (and therefore only in
the sublunar world), and that
gradual motion is confined to the
accidents (quantity, quality,
place). They also held that the
continuity of movement is something
only in the mind, which strings
together a potentially infinite
series of infinitesimal changes -
rather in the fashion of a film - to
produce the illusion of movement,
although time as an extension is a
true part of our experience. What
gives rise to movement is an
unchanging substrate, part of the
essence of which is that it is at an
indefinite point in space at some
instant in time; in other words,
movement is potential in it and is
that through which it becomes
actual. Mulla Sadra completely
rejected this,
on the grounds that the
reality of this substance, its
being, must itself be in motion, for
the net result of the peripatetic
view is merely a static
conglomeration of spatio-temporal
events. The movement from
potentiality to actuality of a thing
is in fact the abstract notion in
the mind, while material being
itself is in a constant state of
flux perpetually undergoing
substantial change.
Moreover, this substantial
change is a property not only of
sublunary elemental beings (those
composed of earth, water, air and
fire) but of celestial beings as
well. Mulla Sadra likened the
difference between these two
understandings of movement to the
difference between the abstracted,
derivative notion of existence and
the existence which is reality
itself.
Existence in Mulla Sadra’s
philosophical system, as has been
seen, is characterized by systematic
ambiguity (tashkik), being given its
systematic character by substantial
motion, which is always in one
direction towards perfection. In
other words, existence can be
conceived of as a continual
unfolding of existence, which is
thus a single whole with a
constantly evolving internal
dynamic.
What gives things their
identities are the imagined essences
which we abstract from the modes of
existence, while the reality is
ever-changing; it is only when
crucial points are reached that we
perceive this change and new essences are formed in
our minds, although change has been
continually going on. Time is the
measure of this process of renewal,
and is not an independent entity
such that events take place within
it, but rather is a dimension
exactly like the three spatial
dimensions: the physical world is a
spatio-temporal continuum.
All of
this permits Mulla Sadra to give an
original solution to the problem
which has continually pitted
philosophers against theologians in
Islam, that of the eternity of the
world. In his system, the world is
eternal as a continual process of
the unfolding of existence, but
since existence is in a
constant state of flux due to its continuous
substantial change, every new
manifestation of
existence in the world emerges in time. The world -
that is, every spatio-temporal event
from the highest heaven downwards -
is thus temporally originated,
although as a whole the world is
also eternal in the sense that it
has no beginning or end, since time
is not something existing
independently within which the world
in turn exists (see Eternity).
4 Epistemology
Mulla Sadra’s radical ontology also enabled him
to offer original contributions to
epistemology,
combining aspects of Ibn
Sina’s theory of knowledge (in
which the Active Intellect, while
remaining utterly transcendent,
actualizes the human mind by
instilling it with intellectual
forms in accordance with its state
of preparation to receive these
forms) with the theory of
self-knowledge through knowledge by
presence developed by al-Suhrawardi.
Mulla Sadra’s epistemology is
based on the identity of the
intellect and the intelligible, and
on the identity of knowledge and
existence. His theory of substantial
motion, in which existence is a
dynamic process constantly moving
towards greater intensity and
perfection, had allowed him to
explain that new forms, or modes, of
existence do not replace prior forms
but on the contrary subsume them.
Knowledge,
being identical with existence, replicates this
process, and by acquiring successive
intelligible forms - which are in
reality modes of being and not
essential forms, and are thus
successive intensifications of
existence - gradually moves the
human intellect towards identity
with the Active Intellect. The
intellect thus becomes identified
with the intelligibles which inform
it.
Furthermore, for Mulla Sadra
actual intelligibles are
self-intelligent and self-intellected,
since an actual intelligible cannot
be deemed to have ceased to be
intelligible once it is considered
outside its relation to intellect.
As the human intellect acquires more
intelligibles, it gradually moves
upwards in terms of the
intensification and perfection of
existence, losing its dependence on
quiddities, until it becomes one
with the Active Intellect and enters
the realm of pure existence.
Humans can, of course,
normally only attain at best a
partial identification with the
Active Intellect
as long as they remain with their physical bodies;
only in the case of prophets can
there be complete identification,
allowing them to have direct access
to knowledge for themselves without
the need for instruction. Indeed,
only very few human minds attain
identification with the Active
Intellect even after death.
5
Methodology
Even this brief account of Mulla Sadra’s main
doctrines will have given some idea
of the role that is played in his
philosophy by the experience of the
reality which it describes. Indeed
he conceived of hikma (wisdom) as
‘coming to know the essence of
beings as they really are’ or as
‘a man’s becoming an
intellectual world corresponding to
the objective world’. Philosophy
and mysticism, hikma and Sufism, are
for him two aspects of the same
thing. To engage in philosophy
without experiencing the truth of
its content confines the philosopher
to a world of essences and concepts,
while mystical experience
without the intellectual discipline
of philosophy can lead only to an
ineffable state of ecstasy. When the
two go hand in hand, the mystical
experience of reality becomes the
intellectual content of philosophy.
The four journeys, the major
sections into which the Asfar is
divided, parallel a fourfold
division of the Sufi journey. The
first, the journey of creation or
the creature (khalq) to the Truth
(al-haqq),
is the most philosophical;
here Mulla Sadra lays out the basis
of his ontology, and mirrors the
stage in the Sufi’s path where he
seeks to control his lower nafs
under the supervision of his shaykh.
In the second journey, in the Truth
with the Truth, the stage at which
the Sufi begins to attract the
divine
anifestations, Mulla Sadra
deals with the simple substances,
the intelligences, the souls and
their bodies, including therefore
his discussion of the natural
sciences. In the third journey,
from the Truth to creation with the Truth, the Sufi
experiences annihilation in the
Godhead, and Mulla Sadra deals with
theodicy; the fourth stage, the
journey with the Truth in creation,
where he gives a full and systematic
account of the development of the
human soul, its origin, becoming and
end, is where the Sufi experiences
persistence in annihilation,
absorbed in the beauty of oneness
and the manifestations of
multiplicity.
Mulla Sadra had described his blinding spiritual
realization of the primacy of
existence as a kind of
‘conversion’:
In the earlier days I used to be a passionate
defender of the thesis that the
quiddities are the primary
constituents of reality and
existence is conceptual, until my
Lord gave me spiritual guidance and
let me see His demonstration. All of
a sudden my spiritual eyes were
opened and I saw with utmost clarity
that the truth was just the contrary
of what the philosophers in general
had held…. As a result [I now hold
that] the existences (wujudat) are
primary realities, while the
quiddities are the ‘permanent
archetypes’ (a‘yan thabita) that
have never smelt the fragrance of
existence.
(Asfar, vol. 1, introduction)
Therefore it is not
surprising that Mulla Sadra is
greatly indebted to Ibn al-‘Arabi
in many aspects of his philosophy.
Ibn Sina provides the ground on
which his metaphilosophy is
constructed and is, as it were, the
lens through which he views
Peripatetic philosophy. However, his
work is also full of citations from
the Presocratics (particularly
Pythagoras), Plato, Aristotle, the
Neoplatonists (see
Neoplatonism in Islamic philosophy) and the Stoics
(taken naturally from Arabic
sources), and he also refers to the
works of al-Farabi, and Abu’l
Hasan al-‘Amiri, who had
prefigured Mulla Sadra’s theory of
the unity of intellect and
intelligible. This philosophical
heritage is then given shape through
the illuminationism of al-Suhrawardi,
whose universe of static grades of
light he transformed into a dynamic
unity by substituting the primacy of
existence for the latter’s primacy
of quiddity. It is in this shaping
that the influence of Ibn al-‘Arabi,
whom Mulla Sadra quotes and comments
on in hundreds of instances, can be
most keenly felt. Not only is that
apparent in Mulla
Sadra’s total dismissal of any role for quiddity
in the nature of reality, but in the
importance which both he and Ibn
al-‘Arabi gave to the imaginal
world (‘alam al-mithal, ‘alam
al-khayal).
In Ibn Sina’s psychology,
the imaginal faculty (al-quwwa al-khayaliyya)
is the site for the manipulation of
images abstracted from material
objects and retained in the sensus
communis.
The imaginal world had first
been formally proposed by al-Suhrawardi
as an intermediate realm between
that of material bodies and that of
intellectual entities, which is
independent of matter and thus
survives the body after death. Ibn
al-‘Arabi had emphasized the
creative aspects of this ower to
originate by mere volition imaginal
forms which are every bit as real
as, if not more real
than, perceptibles but which subsist in no place.
For Mulla Sadra, this world is a
level of
immaterial existence with which it is possible for
the human soul (and indeed certain
higher forms of the animal soul) to
be in contact, although not all the
images formed by the human soul are
necessarily veridical and therefore
part of the imaginal world. For
Mulla Sadra, as also for Ibn al-‘Arabi,
the imaginal world is the key to
understanding the nature of bodily
resurrection and the afterlife,
which exists as an immaterial world
which is nevertheless real (perhaps
one might say more real than the
physical world), in which the body
survives as an imaginal form after
death.
Philosophy has always had a
tense relationship with theology in
Islam, especially with the
latter’s discourse of faith (iman) and orthodoxy.
In consequence, philosophy has often
been seen, usually by non-philosophers, as a school with its own
doctrines. This is despite the
assertions of philosophers
themselves that what they were
engaged in was a practice without
end (for, as Ibn Sina had declared
that what is known to humankind is
limited and could only possibly be
fulfilled when the association of
the soul with the body is severed
through death), part of the
discipline of which consisted in
avoiding taqlid, an uncritical
adherence to sects (see Islam,
concept of philosophy in). It is the
notable feature of Mulla Sadra’s
methodology that he constantly
sought to transcend the
particularities of any system -
Platonic, Aristotelian, Neoplatonic,
mystical or theological - by
striving to create through his
metaphilosophy an instrument with
which the soundness of all
philosophical arguments might be
tested. It is a measure of his
success that he
has remained to the present day the most
influential of the ‘modern’
philosophers in the Islamic world.
See also: Existence; Ibn al-‘Arabi; Ibn Sina;
Illuminationist philosophy; Islamic
philosophy,
modern; Metaphysics; Mir Damad; al-Sabzawari
JOHN COOPER
Routledge
Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Version
1.0, London: Routledge
List
of works
Mulla
Sadra [Sadr al-Din al-Shirazi]
(c.1628) al-Hikma al-muta‘aliya
fi-’l-asfar al-‘aqliyya
al-arba‘a (The Transcendent Wisdom Concerning the
Four Intellectual Journeys), ed. R.
Lutfi et al., Tehran and Qum: Shirkat Dar al-Ma‘arif
al-Islamiyyah, 1958-69?, 9 vols;
vol. 1,
2nd printing, with introduction by M.R. al-Muzaffar,
Qum: Shirkat Dar al-Ma‘arif
al-Islamiyyah, 1967.(This is Mulla Sadra’s major
work, often known simply as Asfar
(The
Four Journeys). The full edition includes partial
glosses by ‘Ali al-Nuri, Hadi al-Sabzawari,
‘Ali al-Mudarras al-Zanuzi, Isma‘il al-Khwaju’i
al-Isfahani, Muhammad al-Zanjani and
Muhammad Husayn al-Tabataba’i.)
Mulla Sadra [Sadr al-Din al-Shirazi] (c.1628) Kitab al-masha‘ir
(The Book of Metaphysical
Penetrations), ed., trans. and
intro. by H. Corbin,Le livre des pénétrations
métaphysiques, Paris: Départment d’Iranologie de l’Institut Franco-Iranien
de Recherche, and Tehran:
Librairie d’Amerique et
d’Orient Adrien-Maisonneuve,
Bibliothèque Iranienne vol. 10,
1964;
French portion re-edited
Lagrasse: Verdier, 1988; ed. and
trans.
P. Morewedge, The Metaphysics of
Mulla Sadra, New York: Society for
the Study of Islamic Philosophy and
Science, 1992. (Corbin is a synopsis
of Mulla Sadra’s ontology, with a
useful bibliography of Mulla
Sadra’s writings and introduction
by Corbin. Morewedge provides a
parallel Arabic-English edition; the
translation is based on Corbin’s
edition of the text.)
Mulla Sadra [Sadr al-Din al-Shirazi]
(c.1628) al-Hikma al-‘arshiyya
(The Wisdom of the Throne), ed. with
Persian paraphrase by G.R. Ahani,
Isfahan, 1962; trans. and intro. J.W.
Morris, The Wisdom of the Throne: An
Introduction to the Philosophy of
Mulla Sadra, Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1982.(A
useful summary of Mulla Sadra’s
views on theology and eschatology;
the introduction to the English
translation provides an informative
general introduction to Mulla Sadra
work.)
References and further reading
Izutsu Toshihiko (1971) The Concept and Reality of
Existence, Studies in the Humanities
and Social Relations 13, Tokyo: Keio
Institute of Cultural and Linguistic
Studies.(Although
concerned primarily with the philosophical ideas of
Mulla Sadra’s principal nineteenth
century follower, Mulla Hadi al-Sabzawari,
this work contains an extremely
valuable exposition of the history
of the existence-essence controversy
in metaphysics, and deals with Mulla
Sadra’s views in many places.)
Nasr, S.H. (1978) Sadr al-Din
Shirazi and His Transcendent
Theosophy: Background, Life and
Works, Tehran: Imperial Academy of
Philosophy.(The first part of a
planned, but so far uncompleted,
two-volume work, the second volume
of which is intended to deal with
Mulla Sadra’s philosophical ideas;
contains the best bibliography of
Mulla Sadra’s works.)
Nasr, S.H. (1996) ‘Mulla
Sadra: His Teachings’, in S.H.
Nasr and O. Leaman (eds) History of
Islamic Philosophy, London:
Routledge, 643-52.(Short summary of
Mulla Sadra’s thought.) Rahman, F.
(1975) The Philosophy of Mulla Sadr
(Sadr al-Din al-Shirazi), Albany,
NY: State University of New York
Press. (To date, the only full-scale
study of Mulla Sadra’s philosophy
in English.)
Ziai, H. (1996) ‘Mulla Sadra: His Life and
Works’, in S.H. Nasr and O. Leaman
(eds) History
of Islamic Philosophy, London: Routledge,
635-42.(Biographical essay
discussing Mulla
Sadra’s influence and works.)
Routledge Encyclopedia of
Philosophy, Version 1.0, London:
Routledge
50.
H004 Mystical philosophy in Islam
51.
K050 Mysticism, history of
52.
H003 Neoplatonism in Islamic
philosophy
53.
K057 Occasionalism
54.
H014 Orientalism and Islamic
philosophy
55.
H001 Platonism in Islamic philosophy
56.
H012 Political philosophy in
classical Islam
57.
K073 Prophecy
58.
K092 Salvation
59.
H016 Science in Islamic philosophy
60.
H045 Shah Wali Allah (Qutb al-Din
Ahmad al-Rahim) (1703-62)
