It is clear that this objection is based on the aforementioned interpretation.

It is clear that this objection is based on the aforementioned interpretation. But we may interpret their project just as an attempt to provide some evidences for TNNE and to answer some possible alleged counterexamples.

Mulla Sadra, after examining the nature of several types of evil such as immoral dispositions and actions as well as some physical evils such as extreme heat and frigidity, puts his defense of this approach in a clear way: The objective of mentioning these examples is not to argue for this claim by means of induction or analogy, but to answer the counterexamples and clarify the distinction between essential and accidental evils and abolish the confusion between these two and reveal that evilness in all things seen as evil refers to or originates from a non-existential aspect.

(Mulla sadra, 1981, p. 62) To present a deductive argument There is no doubt that the main ground for TNNE , if any at all, could be a deductive argument. Philosophers who adopted this approach proposed different formulations some of which are more complicated than others.16 Mulla Sadra's argument, though long and almost complicated, deserves to be cited in detail: And the argument is that if evil was an existential entity, it would be evil either for itself or for another object.

[But] it is impossible for it to be evil for itself since otherwise it couldn't have existence at all because the existence of an object cannot require its nonexistence or privation of one of its perfections. And if an object requires the privation of some of its perfections, the [real] evil will consist in that privation and not that very object….

And it is also impossible for an evil, given that it is existent, to be evil for another being since it would be evil either because it obliterates that object or obliterates one of its perfections or does not obliterate anything. So, if it is evil because it obliterates that object or one of its perfections, then the evil is nothing but the nonexistence of that object or the privation of its perfection and not that existential entity itself.

And if it does not obliterate anything, then it will not be an evil for that object since we certainly know that whatever does not cause the nonexistence of an object, nor the privation of its perfection could not be regarded an evil for that object since that object is not harmed or damaged by it. (Mulla Sadra, 1981, pp. 58-59) 17 In order to criticize this argument I need a broad space.