حکمت معاصر (Jun 2018)
Equality of the Essential Attributes of the Divine in Mulla Sadra’s Philosophy
Abstract
Being familiar with various philosophical sources and schools, Mulla Sadra sometimes provides diverse answers to some of the philosophical or theological problems, including in regard of the elaboration of God’s inherent characteristics for which three different solutions can be inferred from Mulla Sadra’s works. He constantly keeps making a great deal of emphasis on the exemplary objectification of essence with divine characteristics, but three different approaches are observed, namely discourse, philosophical and Gnostic, in his works when it comes to the clarification of a meaning for “objectification”. The primary objective of the present study is to explicate Mulla Sadra’s special approach, and to elucidate the aspects rendering it different from the other two perspectives. Naturally, in order to understand a philosophical response thereto, it is necessary to compare it with the other two approaches, especially with the more general and discourse-based approach, so that the differences could be figured out. These three approaches signify three levels of cognizance: A) Sadra’s general and discourse-based approach is expressive of the existential unification of the reasonable perfections with the unit essence of God, which can be seen flowing in the works of the majority of the verdict interpreters. Besides accepting the classification of the characteristics to inherent and non-inherent in his works, Mulla Sadra largely underlines the abstraction of numerous concepts of extended truth, as mental innovation of Muḥaqiq Ṭūsī and Ḥillī. B) The philosophical or specific approach of this Shirazi philosopher is based on the comparison of the divine essence and characteristics of the possible existence and nature. Based on the Sadraean theory of existence originality, each externally present object is firstly and essentially an example of “existence” (with noun and not infinitive meaning), and secondly and transversally an example of a certain nature. Accordingly, the divine essence is firstly and essentially an example of the “existence”, and secondly and transversally an example of the lofty characteristics and beautiful traits; so, what is immediately abstracted from the divine essence is the nominal concept of “existence”. Moreover, the same way that the existence, as held in Sadraean system, features a conditional mode in every substantive conveyance to the weights thereof, the reasonable perfections of the same type as the “existence”, considered as the inherent characteristics thereof, are all examples of built-in non-acquisitive states with existence dependency. These have been abstracted from the unit essence of God in regard of a single aspect. Thus, besides the objectification of the essence by characteristics, there is a single topic involved in the verity of the characteristics, and such a positive trait as “equality of the inherent characteristics concepts” is the attribute of the divine rank. C) Sadra’s Gnostic and specialized approach leads to the denial of the characteristics of the divine essence. Obviously, resembling the essence and characteristics to existence and nature is effective in the elaboration of such a standpoint, but the divine perfections are to be regarded as rank-based conditional states.
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