Mullā Ṣadrā Shirāzī emerges as an original philosopher who had a sure understanding of his Greek and Islamic predecessors. He is worthy of study by scholars concerned with the development of Islamic philosophy because of his attempt to reconcile various currents of Islamic philosophical thought, particularly the peripatetic tradition of Ibn ʿArabī. Modern existentialists will be interested in his basic concern with the reality of existence and the unreality of essences or general notions.
This study looks at how the seventeenth-century philosopher Sadr al-Din al-Shirazi, known as Mulla Sadra, attempted to reconcile the three major forms of knowledge in Islamic philosophical discourses: revelation (Qur'an), demonstration (burhan), and gnosis or intuitive knowledge ('irfan). In his grand synthesis, which he calls the 'Transcendent Wisdom', Mulla Sadra bases his epistemological considerations on a robust analysis of existence and its modalities. His key claim that knowledge is a mode of existence rejects and revises the Kalam definitions of knowledge as relation and as a property of the knower on the one hand, and the Avicennan notions of knowledge as abstraction and representation on the other. For Sadra, all these theories land us in a subjectivist theory of knowledge where the knowing subject is defined as the primary locus of all epistemic claims. To explore the possibilities of a 'non-subjectivist' epistemology, Sadra seeks to shift the focus from knowledge as a mental act of representation to knowledge as presence and unveiling. The concept of knowledge has occupied a central place in the Islamic intellectual tradition. While Muslim philosophers have adopted the Greek ideas of knowledge, they have also developed new approaches and broadened the study of knowledge. The challenge of reconciling revealed knowledge with unaided reason and intuitive knowledge has led to an extremely productive debate among Muslims intellectuals in the classical period. In a culture where knowledge has provided both spiritual perfection and social status, Muslim scholars have created a remarkable discourse of knowledge and vastly widened the scope of what it means to know. For Sadra, in knowing things, we unveil an aspect of existence and thus engage with the countless modalities and colours of the all-inclusive reality of existence. In such a framework, we give up the subjectivist claims of ownership of meaning. The intrinsic intelligibility of existence, an argument Sadra establishes through his elaborate ontology, strips the knowing subject of its privileged position of being the sole creator of meaning. Instead, meaning and intelligibility are defined as functions of existence to be deciphered and unveiled by the knowing subject. This leads to a redefinition of the relationship between subject and object or what Muslim philosophers call the knower and the known.
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Exploring the thought of Mulla Sadra Shirazi, an Iranian Shi'ite of the seventeenth century: a universe of politics, morality, liberty, and order that is indispensable to our understanding of Islamic thought and spirituality.
This book introduces the readers to the fascinating world of Mulla Sadra's thought, one of the most important figures of the later Islamic intellectual tradition. Sadra's "Transcendent Wisdom" is based on the fundamental insight that all things derive their reality and truth from the all-inclusive reality of existence. Along the "four journeys" of his philosophical quest, Sadra produces a world-picture that is a reflection of the infinite symphony of existence and its modalities. His penetrating deliberations on the human state and spiritual anthropology provide one of the most profound statements of the underlying unity between humans, the universe and the Divine. The book takes the reader through the elaborate and rich world of Sadra's intellectual journey and shows its relevance for today's philosophical issues in the Islamic and Western worlds.
This book is a comparative study of two major Shīʿī thinkers Ḥamīd al-Dīn Kirmānī from the Fatimid Egypt and Mullā Ṣadrā from the Safavid Iran, demonstrating the mutual empowerment of discourses on knowledge formation and religio-political authority in certain Ismaʿili and Twelver contexts. The book investigates concepts, narratives, and arguments that have contributed to the generation and development of the discourse on the absolute authority of the imam and his representatives. To demonstrate this, key passages from primary texts in Arabic and Persian are translated and closely analyzed to highlight the synthesis of philosophical, Sufi, theological, and scriptural discourses. The book also discusses the discursive influence of Naṣīr al-Dīn Ṭūsī as a key to the transmission of Ismaʿili narratives of knowledge and authority to later Shīʿī philosophy and its continuation to modern and contemporary times particularly in the narrative of the guardianship of the jurist in the Islamic Republic of Iran.
This volume translates Brentano’s intentionality into medieval psychological and ontological discussions through Sadrian theories of sense perception and mental existence. Applying a new methodology, it reframes various parts of Sadrian theory around the problem of intentionality, which results in a refreshed reading of the philosopher Mulla Sadra. The book starts out by defining intentionality problem and discussing the historiography of Brentano’s conceptualization. It examines immateriality, content and aboutness, and sense perception. In its conclusion, the book claims that intentionality in Mulla Sadra combines ontological and psychological realities and that as a result of Sadrian monism, the intentionality, intentional object, the agent, and the reality are different versions of same reality.
Sadradin Shirazi (1571-1640), known also as Mulla Sadra, spoke of the primacy of Being and promoted a new ontology, founding a new epistemology. Mulla Sadra's ontology is an important philosophical turn and contribution to the understanding of the development of Muslim philosophy and thought. This comprehensive study of Mulla Sadra's philosophical thought explores his departure from tradition; his turn to the doctrine of the primacy of Being; the dynamic characteristics of Being and the concept of substantial change; comparisons with Heidegger's fundamental ontology; and the influence of Mulla Sadra's ontology on subsequent Muslim philosophy. Of particular value to students of philosophy, Islamic and Middle Eastern studies, philosophy of religion, and general readers who seek to understand Muslim philosophy, this book explores the significance of the doctrine of Mulla Sadra and its impact on subsequent debates in the Muslim world.
This work marks the meeting point of 4 different traditions of the Qur'anic commentary: philosophical, Sufi, Shi'ite and theological. It also presents the author's metaphysical commentary and records the earlier commentaries on the Light Verse. It is significant from the point of view of both the history of Qur'anic commentary and Islamic Philosophy. The most outstanding characteristic of the book is that he explains the meaning of light by establishing its metaphysics, encompassing ontology, cosmology, epistemology, psychology and spiritual wayfaring.
