Mullah Sadra
1) His Life:
Mullah Sadra was born in Shiraz, Iran, to a prominent family of court officials in 1571 or 1572, The Safavid dynasty ruled Iran during Mulla Sadra’s reign. Fars Province was granted independence by the Safavid kings and was ruled by the king’s brother, Mulla Sadra’s father, Khwajah Ibrahim Qavami, a knowledgeable and devoted politician. Khwajah was wealthy and well-placed as the ruler of the vast Fars Province. He had no children, but after much prayer and pleading, God gave him a son, whom the family named Muhammad but referred to as Sadra. Years later, Sadra was dubbed “Mulla,” which means “great scientist.”
It was customary at the time for aristocratic children to be educated by private teachers in their own palace. Sadra was a bright, strict, energetic, studious, and inquisitive young man who quickly mastered all of the lessons in Persian and Arabic literature, as well as the art of calligraphy. He also learned horse riding, hunting and fighting techniques, mathematics, astronomy, some medicine, jurisprudence, and Islamic law before the age of puberty, in accordance with old traditions of his time. He was, however, primarily drawn to philosophy, particularly mystical philosophy and gnosis. In 1591, Mulla Sadra moved to Qazvin and then, in 1597, to Isfahan to pursue a traditional and institutional education in philosophy, theology, Hadith, and hermeneutics.
Mulla Sadra rose to become a master of his time’s science. Philosophy, in his opinion, was the most important of these. Sadra learned the majority of his scholarly knowledge in Qazvin from two prominent teachers, Baha’ ad-Din al-Amili and Mir Damad. Shaykh Baha was not only an expert in Islamic sciences, but also in astronomy, theoretical mathematics, engineering, architecture, medicine, and a few fields of secret knowledge. Mir Damad was also well-versed in science at the time, but he limited his expertise to jurisprudence, hadith, and, most notably, philosophy. Mir Damad was an Islamic philosopher who was well-versed in both the Peripatetic (Aristotelian) and Illuminationist schools of thought. Mulla Sadra obtained most of his knowledge of philosophy and gnosis from Damad and always introduced Damad as his true teacher and spiritual guide.
After finishing his studies, Sadra began to investigate unorthodox doctrines, for which he was both condemned and excommunicated by some Shi’i ulam. He then retired for an extended period of time to Kahak, a village near Qom, where he engaged in contemplative exercises. In 1612, Ali Quli Khan, son of Allhwird hn and the powerful governor of Fras, asked Mulla Sadra to return to Shiraz and teach and run a newly built madrasa. Mulla Sadra spent the rest of his life teaching the intellectual sciences, particularly his own Transcendental Theosophy. He died in Basra after the Hajj and was buried in the modern-day Iraqi city of Najaf.
Some of his known works are, Sharh Usool Al-Kafi, The Transcendent theosophy in the Four Journeys of the Intellect, al-Tafsir, Diwan Shi’r, Si Asl, Sharh al-hidayah, Arshiyyah, also called al-Hikmat al-‘arshiyyah, al-Mabda‘ wa’l-ma‘ad, al-Mazahir, Huduth al-‘alam, al-Hashr, al-Masha‘ir and al-waridat al-qalbiyyah.
2) Main Themes in his Writings:
Existentialism:
Although Existentialism as defined nowadays is not identical to Mulla Sadra’s definition, he was the first to introduce the concept. According to Mulla Sadra, “existence precedes the essence and is thus principal since something has to exist first and then have an essence.” It is notable that for Mulla Sadra this was an issue that applied specifically to God and God’s position in the universe, especially in the context of reconciling God’s position in the Qur’an with the Greek-influenced cosmological philosophies of Islam’s Golden Era.
Mulla Sadra’s metaphysics gives priority to existence over essence. That is to say, essences are variable and are determined according to existential “intensity”. Thus, essences are not immutable. The advantage to this schema is that it is acceptable to the fundamental statements of the Qur’an, even as it does not necessarily undermine any previous Islamic philosopher’s Aristotelian or Platonic foundations.
Indeed, Mulla Sadra provides immutability only to God, while intrinsically linking essence and existence to each other, and to God’s power over existence. In so doing, he provided for God’s authority over all things while also solving the problem of God’s knowledge of particulars, including those that are evil, without being inherently responsible for them — even as God’s authority over the existence of things that provide the framework for evil to exist. This clever solution provides for freedom of will, God’s supremacy, the infiniteness of God’s knowledge, the existence of evil, and definitions of existence and essence that leave the two inextricably linked insofar as humans are concerned, but fundamentally separate insofar as God is concerned. Perhaps most importantly, the primacy of existence provides the capacity for God’s judgement without God being directly, or indirectly, affected by the evil being judged. God does not need to possess sin to know sin: God is able to judge the intensity of sin as God perceives existence.
Substantial Motion:
The theory of “substantial motion,” which is based on the premise that everything in the order of nature, including celestial spheres, undergoes substantial change and transformation as a result of the self-flow (sarayan al-wujud) and penetration of being that gives every concrete individual entity its share of being, is another central concept of Mulla Sadra’s philosophy. In contrast to Aristotle and Avicenna, who only accepted change in four categories, namely quantity, quality, position, and place, Sadra defines change as an all-encompassing reality that pervades the entire cosmos, including the category of substance.
Existence as Reality:
Mulla Sadra was of the opinion that Reality is Existence. He believed that an essence was a general concept in and of itself, and thus does not exist in reality. He believed that existence is the one and only reality. Existence and reality are thus synonymous. Existence is the all-encompassing reality, and there is nothing beyond it. Negative essences require some sort of reality and thus exist. As a result, existence cannot be denied. As a result, existence cannot be denied. Because Existence cannot be denied, it is self-evident that it is God. God is not to be sought in the realm of existence, but rather is the foundation of all existence.
Causation:
According to Sadra, all contingent beings require a cause, which shifts the balance of existence and non-existence in favor of the former; nothing can come into existence without a cause. Because the world is thus dependent on this First Act, God must not only exist, but God must also be responsible for this First Act of creation. Sadra also thought that causal regress was impossible because the causal chain could only work in matter with a beginning, middle, and end: a pure cause at the beginning, a pure effect at the end, and a nexus of cause and effect.
The Causal Nexus of Mulla Sadra was a form of Existential Ontology within an Islam-supported Cosmological Framework. The Causal “End” is as pure for Mulla Sadra as its corresponding “Beginning,” which instructively places God at both the beginning and end of the creative act. God’s ability to measure the intensity of Existential Reality by measuring Causal Dynamics’ and their Relationship to their Origin, rather than knowing their effects, provided an Islamically-acceptable framework for God’s Judgement of Reality that was not influenced by its Particulars. This was a brilliant solution to a question that had plagued Islamic philosophy for nearly a thousand years: how can God judge sin without knowing sin?
Truth:
A true statement, according to Mulla Sadra, is one that is true to the concrete facts that exist. He held a metaphysical, rather than a formal, view of truth, claiming that the world is made up of mind-independent objects that are always true, and that truth is not what is rationally acceptable within a given theory of description. Only linguistic analysis, according to Mulla Sadra, provides access to the reality of being. This Truth Theory has two levels: the claim that a proposition is true if it corresponds to things in reality, and the claim that a proposition can be true if it conforms to the actual thing itself.
3) Freedom according to Sadra:
‘How free is the human in her actions?’ The possibility of both responsibility and freedom is dependent on the answer, which addresses both ontology and causality. The simplest answers are that she is either free or she is not free. At the second stage, each stance would have to explain why she is or is not free. At this level, the school that completely rejects human freedom is also marginalized and has frequently played the role of a rhetorical stance in classical books. Mullah Sadra considers four classes of accounts that attribute some sort of responsibility to human beings in their actions.
Due to the principle of justice, these Mutazilites regard humans as creators of their own actions. Humans were supposed to be completely independent and free in their choices in order to be held accountable for their actions. Thus, not only the ability to act or the choice to perform a specific act, but also the act itself, is attributed to humans. Furthermore, the problem of evil would be solved because the existence of evil is disconnected from God’s will. Mulla Sadra regards this viewpoint as extreme, expressing his dissatisfaction with the concept of two distinct actors – both original and absolute; since humans are considered real agents in addition to God. The second group, the Asharites, can be considered to be on the other end of the spectrum, as they denied humans all power. The all-powerful God created all beings, including humans, and her will and actions are directly created by God. Mullah Sadra clearly distinguishes his position from the Asharite position.
The third group, philosophers, based their concept on the causal possibility upheld by Neoplatonist theory of emanation. According to this viewpoint, all existence emanates from God via secondary agents. Sadra considers the approach to be more advantageous, but he is aware of the hidden determinism in the peripatetic system, where strong causality required necessity in many events in the universe, and animate beings are also bound with their nature. At the end, a fourth approach based on the concept of unity is listed, and it appears to be the Sadra position. According to him, inspired and rare philosophers see the unity in the multiplicity of the universe and observe that every existence is only present because God exists.
Mullah Sadra’s human is defined neither by ultimate obligation nor by absolute freedom. Only God, he believes, is truly defined as the owner of power. However, act and establishment can still be attributed to humans. In this account, human power and creation are made possible by God’s providence and are thus regarded as manifestations of God’s power. The first proposition in this approach is that God has all power and action because he is the only true possessor of power. The conclusive claim is that humans have the ability to choose and act, and that obligation and freedom are synonymous in humans. If human freedom is claimed, there must be a space in the determined universe for human action.
4) His Influence on other Philosophers:
Sadra’s works influenced many philosophers and theologians in Persia and the Indian subcontinent. Sadra’s thought has been studied in European and Islamic languages in modern scholarship.
In modern scholarship, there is a growing literature on Sadra. The majority of secondary literature views Sadra’s thought as an attempt to integrate various currents of Islamic intellectual tradition and situate him within the historical context of Safavid Persia. Corbin 1972 places Sadra firmly within a Persian-Shiʿite context. Rahman 1975 considers Sadra to be an illuminationist-cum-Peripatetic philosopher with interests in such mystical figures as Ibn al-ʿArabi and Dawud al-Qaysari. Nasr 1996 and Nasr 1997 present Sadra as a philosopher who sought to combine philosophical arguments with realized knowledge. Kalin 2006 provides an overview of Sadra’s views on existence, knowledge, philosophy of nature, spiritual psychology, and eschatology. Akbarian 2009 is an introduction to Sadra’s philosophy, dealing with the main aspects of Sadra’s thought. Sajjadi 2000 provides a useful dictionary with extensive quotes from Sadra’s works. Khamanei 2000 is a detailed study of Sadra’s life, youth, family, teachers, training, intellectual development, and students.
5) His Relevance Today:
Mulla Sadra has emerged as the dominant philosopher of the Islamic East, and his approach to the nature of philosophy has had a significant impact. Apart from his doctrinal propositions, his real achievement was to affect a culmination of a tendency within the post-Avicennan philosophical schools, namely to synthesize and reconcile reason and intuition, faith and rational inquiry, philosophy and mysticism within a largely late Neoplatonic paradigm of doing philosophy. Thus, philosophy is a practice and a way of life in which spiritual practices and exercises are always supplemented by reflection, reading, and learning. One cannot become a sage solely through intellectual efforts, nor can an illiterate ascetic relying solely on mystical intuition truly comprehend the nature of reality.
Mulla Sadra is regarded as the ultimate philosopher, whose ideas and arguments ‘transcended’ discursive Peripatetic philosophy as well as intuitive and allusive mystical arguments and discourse in favour of a higher synthesis that combined ratiocinative arguments with mystical insight, complete syllogistic demonstrations with narrative, allusion, and allegory. In more recent times, some of the key thinkers involved in the 1979 Islamic Revolution, such as Ayatollah Khomeini and Mortaza Motahari, were profoundly influenced by Mulla Sadra’s thought, and some have even attempted to appropriate Mulla Sadra as the “philosopher of the Revolution” despite his work’s distinct lack of engagement with political philosophy. Mulla Sadra’s thought has been the dominant philosophical paradigm in Shi’i seminaries in the Islamic East since the early nineteenth century, and it has also had a large influence in South Asia. Today, it serves as the philosophical foundation for the Shi’ite seminaries in Qum.
Mulla Sadra’s modern reception is similar to that of other great thinkers of the past, and at least four types of scholars engage in his thought. The traditional Shi’ite seminarians consider themselves to be disciples of Mulla Sadra, thus carrying on a scholastic tradition that dates back to the 17th century. They do not engage his ideas critically, nor do they take subsequent criticisms of him seriously. They could be referred to as traditionalists. Second, we find thinkers influenced by analytic philosophy who wish to champion his ideas and attempt to reformulate them in terms understandable to Anglo-American analytic tradition. In that sense, they regard Mulla Sadra in the same way they regard Kant, Locke, or Aristotle. They could be referred to as analyticisers. Third, some argue that Mulla Sadra’s true interests were mystical, and that rather than engaging in analytic philosophy, one might find some common ground with continental philosophers, but more fruitfully with those interested in mysticism and the occult. They could be referred to as theosophists. Finally, we have scholars who are working with Mulla Sadra to develop their own pride in their Iranian heritage and regard him as Iran’s greatest intellectual contribution. They might be referred to as nativists.
These classifications are not mutually exclusive. What is clear, however, is the numerous ways in which Mulla Sadra’s legacy is contested and used in the modern world. It would be a more significant accomplishment if they took his rejection of authority more seriously and embraced his idea of the need to rethink and reanalyze philosophical problems for themselves.
