In analyzing the various aspects of Mulla Sadra’s thought we...

In analyzing the various aspects of Mulla Sadra’s thought we are in reality studying the hikmat al muta’aliyah which became a distinct school of Islamic thought much like the Peripatetic (mashsha’i) and Illuminations (ishraqi) schools. Mulla Sadra was in fact so devoted to this term that he used it as part of the title love his major opus which is al-Asfar alarba’ah fi’l-hikmat al-muta’aliyah (“The Four Journeys Concerning Transcendent Theosophy”).

The foundation of the “transcendent theosophy” and the whole metaphysics of Mulla Sadra is the science of being (wujud), which is used by him to denote both existence, in the sense of the existence of objects, and existence that is not in any way privative but which also includes the Divine Principle, bPure Being and even theAbsolute, which is beyond being as ordinarily understood.

Much of his writings, including nearly all of the first book of the Asfar, is devoted to this issue and he returns again and again to it in such works as al-Shawahid al-rububuyyah (“Divine Witnesses”), al-Hikmat al-‘arshiyyah (“The Wisdom of the Throne”), al-Mabda’ wa’lma’ad (“The Origin and the Return”) and especially Kitab al-masha’ir (“The Book of Metaphysical…