Four centuries later another Iranian philosopher...

Four centuries later another Iranian philosopher, Sadr al-Din Shirazi, criticized this argument and established the theory of the priority of existence ( asalat al-wujud ) over essence. In his analysis, Shirazi makes a distinction between the concept and the reality of existence. He holds that it is essential for existence to be real and that the reality of existence is an external reality by itself not through another existence.

Here we must distinguish between logical concepts which are only in minds and philosophical concepts which describe external reality (see Secondary Intelligible, chapter 2). Previous…