Philosophy
Abstract
Abstract: Mullasadra in Asfar attributes to Suhrawardi an argument against the existence of existence as follows: To exist means to have existence; now, if existence exists, it has existence, and by repeating this argument a vicious regress arises; then existence does not exist. The followers of transcendent ...
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Abstract: Mullasadra in Asfar attributes to Suhrawardi an argument against the existence of existence as follows: To exist means to have existence; now, if existence exists, it has existence, and by repeating this argument a vicious regress arises; then existence does not exist. The followers of transcendent philosophy after Mullasadra and almost all contemporary researchers attribute such an argument to him. I give some reasons against this attribution. Suhrawardi himself attributes versions of this argument to the opponents of the followers of the Peripatetics, namely Ibn Sahlan. Moreover, he claims that the followers of the Peripatetics have their own response to this argument. I provide some evidence for his claim. I then analyze his real regress arguments and show that none of them rests on a semantic premise about 'to exist'. Instead, they have metaphysical assumptions, as they should. I conclude that the said regress argument is a misinterpretation of his texts in Hihmat al-Ishragh. This misinterpretation goes back at least to Qutb al-Din Shirazi's commentary. Finally, I present a proper interpretation of Suhrawardi's real regress argument in Hihmat al-Ishragh. I argue that the struggle with this argument is harder than it seems: there is no easy way out of the argument other than to admit the unity of existence.
davood hosseini
Abstract
In the contemporary literature on Mullasadra there is a controversy on his view on the reality of quiddity; on whether, according to his texts, quiddity is in-the-World or just in-the-Mind. This paper aims to argue that from Mullasadra’s viewpoint, it is in-the-World. Among Mullasadra’s expressions ...
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In the contemporary literature on Mullasadra there is a controversy on his view on the reality of quiddity; on whether, according to his texts, quiddity is in-the-World or just in-the-Mind. This paper aims to argue that from Mullasadra’s viewpoint, it is in-the-World. Among Mullasadra’s expressions about quiddity, these are mostly supposed to be against quiddity’s being in-the-World: first that quiddity is abstract; second that quiddity, in itself, is non-existent; and third that quiddity is a predicate of existence. In order to show that from Mullasadra’s viewpoint, quiddity is in-the-World, I will argue, based on textual evidences, first that if the context is considered, those texts that normally are supposed to be counter-evidence for quiddity’s being in-the-World from Mullasadra’s viewpoint, are just apparently so; and second that if all relevant texts are examined, there is just one possible reading of Mullasadra’s view about the reality of quiddity: he constantly takes quiddity in-the-World.
