A Review and Analysis of Man-Nature Relationship in Mulla Sadra's Philosophy

Abstract

In Mulla Sadra's philosophical system, human being enjoys a specific stance. He is the only contingent being with existential degrees corresponding and conforming to existential degrees and worlds. Mulla Sadra's environmental philosophy can be regarded as based on the principles and rules founding the system, including fundamentality and gradation of existence, particularly the principles of substantial motion and union of the knower and the known, as well as the stages of creation of soul and its relation with body. Such a philosophy can help us to provide ways to explain the relationship between man and nature, according to which environmental crises occurred to the nature can be managed. In the philosophical system of transcendent theosophy, nature is the manifestation and disclosure of a being continually influencing it in its creation and duration, endowed with knowledge, apprehension and consciousness according to its share in the being, and represents the hidden interior and exterior aspects of reality of existence. Therefore, man's interaction with nature as a living thing is totally different from that which is defined in environmental philosophy based on West's philosophy, which believes in an existential unity between man and nature. The present paper seeks to explain and analyze the meaning of man and nature in Mulla Sadra's philosophy and elaborate on their interrelation.

Keywords

• man
• soul
• nature
• existence
• knowledge
• ethics
• environmental philosophy