Al-Razi puts the challenge shortly and in conclusive voice...

Al-Razi puts the challenge shortly and in conclusive voice: It is self-evident that pain is an existential entity and there is no disagreement among wise people about this. (Al_Razi and al-Tusi, 1404, Part 2, p. 80) The adherents of TNNE meet this challenge in several ways. Response to the Challenge We may classify the main responses to AEC into three types: I) Some philosophers reject the premise (2) which says that pain is an essential evil.

Al-Tusi, for instance, says: And the case is similar with the pains, since they are not evils inasmuch as they are apprehensions of things or in terms of their existence in themselves or their coming into existence by their causes. Instead, they are evils just in relation to the person who is in pain and lacks the connectedness of an organ which deserves connectedness. (Avicenna, 1404, p.

331.According to a passage cited before, it seems that Avicenna supports this view when he suggests that pains, "even though their meanings are existential, not privative, follow [from] to privation and deficiency." (Avicenna, 2005, 331)19 II) The second response is to reject premise (3); a universal statement which says that all kinds of apprehension are existential entity. Mulla Sadra's response to AEC, in my opinion, could be viewed as a challenge for (3).

He provides a complicated argument its main steps can be formulated in the following way: Pain involves a kind of apprehension which is an item of "Knowledge by presence" (ilm al-hudhuri) and not of acquired knowledge (ilm al-husuli).20 In the case of the knowledge by presence, the apprehension is identical with the very object which becomes apprehended.

The realization of privation and nonexistence is itself a kind of privation and nonexistence, as the realization of a human being is identical with him. Thus, in the case of pain, the apprehension involved is of the kind of privation and nonexistence. Therefore, pains really have non-existential nature in spite of being a mode of apprehension.

According to this line of argumentation, Mulla Sadra concludes that "the pain as an essential evil is one of instances of nonexistence." (Mulla Sadra, 1981, p. 66) III) After Mulla Sadra, some of his commentators criticized his argument and provided a third response which seemingly rejects premise (1) of AEC. In their views, pain, though a kind of apprehension and thus an existential entity, is not a real evil.

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