Document Type : Biannual Journal
Authors
1 PhD Candidate, Department of Philosophy, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad
2 Professor of Department of Islamic Philosophy, Faculty of Theology, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad (FUM), Mashhad, Iran
Abstract
The question of 'imaginal perception' (al-idrāk al-khayālī) constitutes one of the most complex and important sections of the 'Transcendental Philosophy' (al-hikmat al-muta'āliyya) of Sadr al-Dīn Shīrāzī (1569-1640). Sadr al-Dīn's contribution to the conception of 'imaginal perception' is distinguished from those of his towering predecessors, namely Ibn Sina (Avicenna) and Suhrawardi. In fact, Sadr al-Dīn developed inspiring ideas connected with 'imaginal faculty', 'imaginal perception' and 'imaginal realm', and he did it on the basis of his well-considered and elaborated doctrines such as 'principality and primacy of being' (isālat al-wujūd, that the 'being' of each object is principial vis-a vis its 'quiddity' and that the essential qualities of 'Being', including 'knowledge' ('ilm), are concomitant with 'Being' itself), as well as based on his theories of perception and cognition, of the 'perfection in esse' or 'substantial perfection' of the soul, and of correspondence between the multiple states of 'being' and those of the human being - as a microcosmic image of 'being' itself. In the same line, Sadr al-Dīn also developed Suhrawardī's teachings on the 'imaginal world' as a mediatory realm between the sensory and the intelligible realms. It was on the basis of such elaborated doctrines and theories that Sadr al-Dīn succeeded to explain some particular problems related to the 'soul', among them, one may refer to the problem of 'reward and punshment in the Hereafter' as well as the question of 'bodily or corporal resurrection'.
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