The Philosophy of Mulla Sadra and Its Influence in India [subcontinent]

[Mulla Sadra’s Intellectual Journey]

Mulla Sadra, as a student at Isfahan, had been taught by or came under the influence of such thinkers as Mir Muhammad Baqir Astarabadi (Mir Damad), Shaikh Baha uddin Amuli (Shaikh Bahai) and Mir Abul Qasim Findiriski.5 The new school of theosophical Shi'ism founded by Sadra, was partly a continuation of the 'School of Isfahan' founded by these three scholars.

Mir Damad, whose poeticnom deplumewas 'Ishraq' , is also referred to as the 'Third Master' (after Aristotle and al-Farabi). He was recognized as a jurist, a mystic and a philosopher. However, it was principally as a philosopher that Mir Damad distinguished himself.7 Kitab al-Qabasat is Mir Damad's most significant philosophical work and it consists oftenqabas ('a spark of fire') and three conclusions.7 Its central theme is the creation of the world and the possibility of its extension from God.8 In it, Mir Damad engaged in the age-old debate over the priority of 'essence' (mahiyya ) over 'existence' (wujud ). He ultimately decided on the priority of essence, a position that was later fundamentally disputed by his distinguished pupil Mulla Sadra.

Like Mir Damad, Mir Abul Qasim Findiriski, who had also taught Mulla Sadra, was deeply influenced by themashsha'i philosophy. He also wrote onIrfan (gnosticism). He outlined a whole theory of visionary experience, which presupposes the idea of 'spiritual senses' the senses ofalam al-misal which were later emphasized by Mulla Sadra.9

In his major workal-Hikma al-mutaliya fi- 'l-asfdr al- 'aqliyya al-arba'a (The Transcendent Wisdom Concerning the Four Intellectual Journeys), known popularly asAsfar , Mulla Sadra confesses to the shift from his teachers' position:

In the earlier days I used to be a passionate defender of the thesis that the quiddities are the primary constituents of reality and existence is conceptual, until my Lord gave me spiritual guidance and let me see His demonstration. All of a sudden my spiritual eyes were opened and I saw with utmost clarity that the truth was just the contrary of what the philosophers in general had held... As a result [I now hold that] the existences (wujudat ) are primary realities, while the quiddities are the 'permanent archetypes' (a'ydn thabita ) that have never smelt the fragrance of existence.10

By taking the position of the primacy of existence, Mulla Sadra was able to answer the objections of Ibn Rushd and the illuminationists by pointing out that existence is accidental to quiddity in the mind, in so far as it is not a part of its essence. An implication of Mulla Sadra's theory of reality and existence being identical is that existence is one but graded in intensity; to this he gave the nametashkik al-wujud (systematic ambiguity).11

According to Sadra, existence can be conceived of as a continual unfolding of existence, which is thus a single whole with a constantly evolving internal dynamic. Reality to him is ever-changing.

The imagined 'essence' gives things their identities. It is only when crucial points are reached that one perceives this change and new essences are formed in our minds, although change has been continually going on. Due to this 'infinite diversification', the so-called realm of 'immutable

essences' does not exist for Mulla Sadra.12 Time, in his view, is the measure of this process of renewal; it is not an independent entity where events take place. Rather, it is a dimension exactly like the three spatial dimensions - the physical world thus is a spatio-temporal continuum.

This theory permitted Mulla Sadra to give an original solution to the problem of the eternity of the world which had continually pitted philosophers against theologians in Islam. In his system, the world is eternal as a continual process of the unfolding of existence but since existence is in a constant state of flux due to its continuous substantial changes, every new manifestation of existence in the world emerges in time. The world, that is, every spatio-temporal event from the highest heaven downwards, is thus temporally originated, although as a whole, the world is also eternal in the sense that it has no beginning or end, since time is not something existing independently within which the world in turn exists. Sadra conceivedhikma (wisdom) as 'coming to know the essence of beings as they really are', or as 'a man's becoming an intellectual world corresponding to the objective world'.

Philosophy and mysticism, hikma and Sufism, are for him two aspects of the same thing. To engage in philosophy without experiencing the truth of its content confines the philosopher to a world of essences and concepts, while mystical experience without the intellectual discipline of philosophy can lead only to an ineffable state of ecstasy. When the two go hand in hand, the mystical experience of reality becomes the intellectual content of philosophy.

The characteristic features, or rather objectives of Mulla Sadra's 'transcendental philosophy' are thus described by James Morris:

[A] condition of intrinsic finality, completion, fulfillment, and inner peace (compatible with the most intensive activity); a unique sense of unity, wholeness, and communion (with no ultimate separation of subject and object); a distinctive suspension (or warping or extension) of our actual perceptions of time and space;

where nature is involved, a vision of all being as essentially alive (in a way quite different from our usual distinction of animate and inanimate entities); a sense of profound inner freedom and liberation (or, negatively stated, the absence of anxiety, guilt or regret); a perception of universal, nonjudgmental love or compassion, extending to all beings; a paradoxical sense of 'ek-stasis' or standing beyond and encompassing the ongoing flow of particular events (including the actions of one's 'own' body).13

Sadra appears to be a man 'fundamentally concerned both with the dialectical interplay between experience and transcendence and a journey towards it, a journey which not just Muslims were making, but the whole of humanity14 . M He was not only the one who brought about a synthesis of traditional and rational knowledge and so was the most notable among the philosophers of the Shiraz school, but he was in effect, a reviver of rational sciences. In the words of Nasr:

[Mulla Sadra], by coordinating philosophy as inherited from the Greeks and interpreted by the Peripatetics and Illuminationists before him with the teachings of Islam in its exoteric and esoteric aspects succeeded in putting

Gnostic doctrines of Ibn 'Arabi in logical dress. He made purification of the soul a necessary basis and complement of the study of Hikmat, thereby bestowing on philosophy the practice of ritual and spiritual virtues which it had lost in the period of decadence of classical civilization. Finally, he succeeded in correlating the wisdom of the ancient Greek and Muslim sages and philosophers as interpreted esoterically with the inner meaning of the Qur'an.15

Sadra laid the basis for what was effectively a new theosophical school of Shi'ism which combined within it elements of various existing systems to form a synthesis whose influence helped inspire renewed debates within Twelver Shi'ism.16