Philosophy
Mahdi Baniasadi Baghmirani; Sayed Behshid Hosseini; Azadeh Shahcheraghi
Abstract
Epistemological issues in architecture are related to the movement of people in space. According to the philosophical concept of movement and MullāṢadrā's theory of substantial motion, perception refers to people's gradual perception of architectural spaces. Deep understanding of mosque-school spaces ...
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Epistemological issues in architecture are related to the movement of people in space. According to the philosophical concept of movement and MullāṢadrā's theory of substantial motion, perception refers to people's gradual perception of architectural spaces. Deep understanding of mosque-school spaces is not possible without movement. In order to achieve a deep understanding of these spaces, the observer must move in the space, and after experiencing physical and mental movements, he should promotes his perception level. The question of this research in the form of a case study is that, considering the variety of accesses in the Agha Bozor Mosque-School of Kashan; How does movement promote perception from the material level to the spiritual level? This research is descriptive-analytical and case study, and its results show that, despite the existence of separate paths (for prayer and educational performance) in the spaces of the mosque-school, the observer experiences three orders of movement (visual, physical and mental) by moving in each of these paths; in the form of four pillars in the mosque and three pillars in the school; It guides the observer's perception (in line with MullāṢadrā's perceptual hierarchy) from the sensory level to the imagination, and then to the intellectual level.
Philosophy
zohre salahshur sefidsangi
Abstract
AbstractAuditory perception, or hearing, is a major human sense, which was investigated by Muslim philosophers and neuroscientists. Muslim philosophers, particularly Mullā Ṣadrā, have provided careful accounts of the issues concerning external senses such as hearing. In his view, auditory perception ...
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AbstractAuditory perception, or hearing, is a major human sense, which was investigated by Muslim philosophers and neuroscientists. Muslim philosophers, particularly Mullā Ṣadrā, have provided careful accounts of the issues concerning external senses such as hearing. In his view, auditory perception occurs in the human soul, while neuroscience provides a fully material account of all perceptions, including auditory perception. From a neuroscientific viewpoint, sounds pass through interior layers of the ear to reach auditory neurons, in the course of which they undergo a complicated process leading to auditory perception.However, Mullā Ṣadrā believes that the whole process occurring in the auditory system is just preparatory for perception of sounds by the human soul. This is the soul that creates the true nature of sounds. On his account, the relation between sounds and the inner self is like that between actions and their agents, where actions are done by their agents, rather than that between a passive entity and what it receives.For this reason, Mullā Ṣadrā holds that the account of auditory perception offered by natural scientists is objectionable, since they involve a confusion between preparatory causes and efficient causes. The accounts provided by natural sciences rest content with an elaboration of material stages of auditory perception, while Mullā Ṣadrā believes that perception is non-material in nature, which is just enabled and prepared by those material processes. Accordingly, Mullā Ṣadrā offers the following account: when the soul has a relation with the natural external world through its attachment to the body, it creates a similar image of the external object, where that image is both caused and known by the soul.After the auditory perception, the human soul draws on the images derived from physical entities or those received from the spiritual world (the imaginal world, or ʿālam al-mithāl) creates images in its imaginary perception as well. Contrary to senses that are limited to material entities, imagination extends to the supernatural world as well. Thus, according to Mullā Ṣadrā’s philosophy, imagination includes a number of perceptions, such as perception of sensible entities while no matter is present, their perception in dreams, and imaginal perceptions. Perception of sounds in the absence of any external material sources does not require material tools or organs, since many material features do not exist in that realm. This is comparable to memory in neuroscience, although it has not yet offered a plausible account of conscious selection of memories.Moreover, the hearing that occurs in dreams does not involve an environmental system. Although some people still perceive the waves of the material world in their sleep, this is a very different process from that of sensory audition. In the hearing that occurs in dreams, one might hear an intense sound like thunders, which affects one’s soul just like hearing in the waking state, although it was not perceived by the material organ of hearing; that is, one’s ears. Hearing in dreams is indeed one piece of evidence adduced by Mullā Ṣadrā as an argument for the immateriality of perceptions, but this type of hearing is investigated in neuroscience as a kind of dream. Despite their accuracy, the findings of neuroscience here merely demonstrate that perception occurs with the stimulation of certain cells in the body, but the stimulation does not show whether the area in question is a center for processing and storing information or a pathway through which information is transferred.Also in imaginal hearing, only external sounds of the imaginal world are heard, without being mixed with inner secretions, and the sound in the imaginal world does not require material factors such as waves and frequencies. For Mullā Ṣadrā, if the human imaginative faculty is strong, the relation with the imaginal world can occur in the waking state such that hidden imaginal forms are presented to the person, who will thus be able to hear sounds from the imaginal world. Because of its non-material character, this stage of auditory perception is not subject to neuroscientific investigations.The final stage of auditory perception is intellectual hearing, which is the highest degree of auditory perception, which has degrees of intensity and weakness, just like light. Intellectual hearing has degrees, the lowest of which has traces of imaginal sounds, but the higher we go on the scale of intellectual hearing, we come closer to a realm in which no imaginal properties are involved, a realm of pure perception. In its evolutionary course, intellectual hearing reaches a degree where it perceives profound supernatural ideas in the most translucent form. This is a hearing that emerges with the rise of the acquired intellect (al-ʿaql al-mustafād) and then gradually grows.
Philosophy
efat alsadat hashemi; Alireza Kohansal; seyed morteza hoseini shahrudi,
Abstract
There are Quranic verses that cannot be interpreted without rational or intellectual exegeses and merely by drawing on their prima facie meanings, such as those that do not square with explicit Quranic doctrines, including those in which “hands” or “face” are attributed to God. ...
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There are Quranic verses that cannot be interpreted without rational or intellectual exegeses and merely by drawing on their prima facie meanings, such as those that do not square with explicit Quranic doctrines, including those in which “hands” or “face” are attributed to God. Another group of verses of a similar vein are those concerning “treasuries of Allah” (khazāʾin Allāh). The predicament is that people tend to collect valuable things in treasuries only because they have a limited power and cannot have what they want whenever they do, but this is not true of God, because of His unlimited, unconstrained power and knowledge.
According to Quranic exegetes, there are two types of “divine treasuries”:
Worldly treasuries
Otherworldly treasuries (those of the absolute hidden world)
There are different views of the nature of “divine treasuries” proposed by exegetes of the Quran and Muslim philosophers. We begin with views propounded by Quranic exegetes in philosophical-theological exegeses of the Quran. Major views of this sort have been offered in the exegesis of verse 21 of Sura al-Hijr in the Quran. These views might be classified into four:
Rains
Material elements and occasions of creation
Divine predestinations
Divine knowledge
In a number of his exegetical and philosophical works, Mullā Ṣadrā has presented his account of “divine treasuries.” In line with his philosophical principles, he construes divine treasuries as intellectual entities; that is, as a particular stage of divine knowledge (after that of divine grace or ʿināyat), which mediates the emanation of divine blessings or grace to creatures—a stage in which the forms of everything inheres in an intellectual way. A systematic, rational rendering of Mullā Ṣadrā’s account of divine treasuries requires a proper elaboration of his philosophical principles associated with divine knowledge, including the primacy of existence (iṣālat al-wujūd), gradation of existence (tashkīk al-wujūd), objectivity of knowledge and existence, etc.
The following are the questions we consider in this paper:
How do theological exegeses of the Quran account for the notion of “divine treasuries”? What problems do they face?
What are Mullā Ṣadrā’s philosophical principles underlying his account of divine treasuries? How does his account treat the problems faced by other accounts?
What other account of divine treasuries might be yielded, which is still compatible with the principles of Mullā Ṣadrā’s philosophy?
To answer these questions, we begin with a literal definition of “treasuries of Allah” and then overview the accounts provided by exegetes and their problems. Next, we offer a detailed account of Mullā Ṣadrā’s philosophical principles as preliminary to a proper account of “divine treasuries.”
Articles have been published about “divine treasuries,” including “Divine treasuries” by Muḥammad Ḥusayn Ḥishmatpūr (2005), “A critical analysis of Mullā Ṣadrā’s view of treasuries in light of structural semantics” by Mahdī Bāqirī and Aḥad Farāmarz Qarāmalikī (2018) and “A critical application of the theory of conceptual mixture in al-Mīzān’s reading of divine treasuries” again by Mahdī Bāqirī and Aḥad Farāmarz Qarāmalikī (2017).
We conclude that, of the four accounts outlined in this paper, the first three suffer from numerous problems, and thus they fail to yield an adequate account of the Quranic notion of divine treasuries. In our view, the fourth view—that is, Mullā Ṣadrā’s philosophical account—has failed to offer a full-fledged account of instances of divine treasuries. Accordingly, we propounded a fourth view, which is an extension of Mullā Ṣadrā’s account. We argue how a proper, reasonable account of the notion of divine treasuries can be made possible by an elaboration of Mullā Ṣadrā’s philosophical principles concerning divine knowledge and its degrees, and by drawing on characteristics of divine treasuries as outlined in the Quran, particularly verse 21 of Sura al-Hijr. We show that this revised Sadraean account is immune to the objections raised against other theories. On this account, divine treasuries suggest God’s knowledge of the measures of everything before its descent; that is, its creation. Moreover, on Mullā Ṣadrā’s principles, treasuries are of two sorts: worldly and otherworldly, where the latter is of two kinds in turn: objective and subjective (or cognitive). Objective treasuries are entities existing in imaginal (mithāl) and intellectual (ʿaql) worlds, and subjective treasuries are entities existing in the world of divine names and attributes. This is an “existential account of divine treasuries,” which might apply to all degrees of existence and creation.
zohre zarei; Qodratullah Qorbani
Abstract
IntroductionThis research deals with Mullā Ṣadrā’s objections to constructed (iʿtibārī) concepts in Illuminationist philosophy. A major philosophical issue in Islamic philosophy today is a division of universal concepts into quiddity-based (māhuwī), logical, and philosophical. Suhrawardī ...
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IntroductionThis research deals with Mullā Ṣadrā’s objections to constructed (iʿtibārī) concepts in Illuminationist philosophy. A major philosophical issue in Islamic philosophy today is a division of universal concepts into quiddity-based (māhuwī), logical, and philosophical. Suhrawardī and philosophers before him had just discerned the difference between real (ḥaqīqī) and constructed concepts, placing them respectively into objective and subjective categories, and until Mullā Ṣadrā’s time, the division was restricted to first intelligibles (al-maʿqūlāt al-ūlā) or quiddity-based concepts and secondaryintelligibles (al-maʿqūlāt al-thāniya) or logical concepts, and the place of philosophical concepts was not clear.Accordingly, Suhrawardī subsumes concepts such as existence, unity, multiplicity, necessity, possibility, and colorfulness under constructed concepts without drawing a distinction between logical and philosophical concepts. This was mainly because there is no distinction between these concepts in the external world, and because repetition and vicious regress would follow if infinite attributes coextensively existed.In addition to his critique of Suhrawardī for having distinguished concepts into subjective and objective, Mullā Ṣadrā challenged Suhrawardī’s views of each of these concepts.Research Method or ApproachThis research adopts a fundamental descriptive-analytic method and relies on Mullā Ṣadrā’s commentaries on Suhrawardī’s Sharḥ ḥikmat al-ishrāq (Exposition of the wisdom of illumination) to elaborately deal with Suhrawardī’s remarks concerning constructed concepts and Mullā Ṣadrā’s objections to these views. Data of the research have been collected through a library method, and cases were extracted by indexing. Finally, by drawing on the intellectual method, the indexed contents were analyzed and criticized, and the views were critically analyzed and considered.Discussion and ConclusionHere is a summary of findings of the research:A major contribution of Suhrawardī concerning concepts was a division of concepts into subjective and objective, by which all philosophical concepts such as existence, unity, multiplicity, necessity, possibility, colorfulness, and relation are subsumed under purely constructed concepts, without corresponding to anything in the external reality.Suhrawardī’s main reason for the negation of external distinction in the case of philosophical concepts is that the coextensive existence of infinite attributes implies vicious regress and repetition, since in his Talwīḥāt, Suhrawardī proposes a criterion for the distinction between the subjective and the objective and for the impossibility of the distinction in the external world, according to which everything whose occurrence implies repetition and regress counts as constructed.Major objections raised by Mullā Ṣadrā against Suhrawardī’s account of constructed concepts, which serves as the foundation and tenet of the rest of his objections, are as follows:Absence of any distinction between philosophical and logical secondaryintelligiblesConfusion between concepts and their instancesFailure to take account of the organic composition (al-tarkīb al-ittiḥādī) between quiddities and existencesConflation of the name and what is namedConfusion between primary essential predication (al-ḥaml al-awwalī al-dhātī) and common technical predication (al-ḥaml al-shāʾiʿ al-ṣunāʿī).Given these findings, the obstacles, problems, and proposals of the research are as follows:While most of Mullā Ṣadrā’s objections are accurate and based on his insights into the problem of intelligibles, some of his objections are not plausible because of their anachronistic nature.Although in some cases, Suhrawardī’s remarks are attacked and even undermined by Mullā Ṣadrā’s objections, in some cases it is open to us to criticize and adjudicate the two parties and even offer novel contributions to the debate since Mullā Ṣadrā has rested content with Avicenna’s views, among other predecessors, and did not offer an alternative account.
maryam abbasabbadi arabi; Ali Haghi; Alireza Kohansal
Abstract
Philosophers and intellectuals have always been concerned with the problem of life. Many have considered it from different points of view. In ancient philosophy, life was attributed to the soul. Pythagoras was the first to treat the soul as the origin of life. He was followed by Anaxagoras who referred ...
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Philosophers and intellectuals have always been concerned with the problem of life. Many have considered it from different points of view. In ancient philosophy, life was attributed to the soul. Pythagoras was the first to treat the soul as the origin of life. He was followed by Anaxagoras who referred to the life force, which gave life to the material world, as Nous (intellect or spirit). Just like his predecessors, Plato believed that the soul was the origin of life, and in the case of real entities, life, spirit, motion, and reason are inseparable. Following Plato’s lead, Aristotle traced the cause or origin of life to the soul. These ideas left a great impact on Muslim philosophers. Avicenna—a prominent philosopher in the Islamic world—appealed to Plato’s and Aristotle’s accounts to argue that life is essential to the soul, believing that the soul is by itself alive, and physical objects come to be alive by virtue of the soul. Accordingly, the criterion of life for Avicenna is perception and action. After Avicenna, Mullā Ṣadrā provided the same definition, developing it by drawing on his own philosophical principles.Mullā Ṣadrā argues that life is the origin of “perception” and “action,” incorporating the two notions in his definition of life. In his view, a living being is a perceiving acting entity; that is, an entity with knowledge and consciousness, which does certain actions. In other words, it should be such that it knowingly and consciously does the action. Given his philosophical principles such as the primacy of existence, its simplicity, and its gradation (tashkīk), he establishes the idea that life is a graded entity pervasive throughout all stages of existence. On this account, every living being’s life is the way of its existence, which determines its vital effects. The nobler and stronger the existence is, the more perfection the perception and the firmer the action will be. Hence, every being enjoys life as much as it enjoys existence. We refer to certain existing entities as non-living because we cannot perceive the effects of life in them. For volitional sensation and motion are indications of life, and beings that tangibly have such characteristics are living, and this is not to deny life in other beings. For instance, Quranic verses affirm that there is such a life in beings which cannot be perceived by human senses. Thus, according to Mullā Ṣadrā’s philosophy, all existing entities are ipso facto alive, whereas pre-Sadraean philosophies attributed life only to animals and humans on account of their perceptive and motive faculties, lacked by plants and solid objects, and thus they saw these entities as non-living. This is incompatible with Quranic verses and the principles of Mullā Ṣadrā’s philosophy. There are Quranic verses referring to the exaltation of God by all beings—something not perceived by human senses. These verses indicate that all beings enjoy consciousness and life. Mullā Ṣadrā argued for such general consciousness and life by drawing on his philosophical principles. In this way, the widespread view that only some beings are alive is implausible in terms of Mullā Ṣadrā’s transcendent philosophy, and once life is proved for a stage of existence, it will be proved for all other stages of existence by dint of the principles of the primacy, simplicity, and gradation of existence. This is compatible with many Quranic verses and hadiths in which the power to talk, to hear, and to know is attributed to apparently non-living beings, which implies a degree of life in them.On this account, life is a graded reality that exists as an existential perfection in the necessary being, humans, animals, plants, and solid objects in different degrees. Thus, the necessary being is essentially alive, giving existence and life to other entities. Such existence is the same as life, and solid objects, plants, animals, and humans enjoy degrees of life to the extent that they enjoy degrees of existence. The view is confirmed by Quranic verses, denoting that all beings exalt God, which imply that all beings are alive. Mullā Ṣadrā cites the Quranic verse, “There is not a thing but celebrates His praise, but you do not understand their glorification,” and then comments that all beings prostrate for God and praise Him in a volitional conscious manner, and perfective attributes such as life, knowledge, and power are not separable from these beings.
