4- The relation of cause and caused in the light of the...

4- The relation of cause and caused in the light of the fundamental reality of existence: the cause is what gives existence to the caused. It is not only a mental ascription, but a real external relation between cause and caused. However this does not mean that there are three things (cause, caused and what that cause gives to the caused) and two actions (giving by the cause and taking by the caused).

The caused is not other than what the cause brings into existence, which is just the act of giving, nay, the act of bringing into existence. Therefore, the caused is just what is given by the cause, what takes existence from the cause, and the act of giving and taking. It is our mind that considers causality in several aspects compares it with other things, and then creates several notions within it.

In fact, there is nothing in reality but the existence of the cause and dependent existence of the caused. That the caused is a dependent being does not mean that it is a being that has its dependency added like an accident; rather it is not other than dependency and need, the cause. It is just a need, so that its relation to its cause is an illuminative one which has only one side, not a categorical relation that is based on two sides.

In the light of the analogical gradation of existence, the caused is a weaker degree of existence than its cause which gives existence to it continually. The cause has some perfection that the caused does not have, because its essential need makes it posterior to its cause. The dependent identity of the existence of the caused that is naught but need posits it in a situation at the boundary of existence and non- existence.

As soon as this relation is eliminated, it will be in nonexistence, nay it would not be any thing to non-exist. Consequently, being caused produces a kind of limitation that makes the caused tangent to non-existence; the quiddity of the caused is what results from these limitations by the mind. Based on the above foundations two different interpretations have been derived from Mulla Sadra's statements about his Seddiqin Argument.

a: Mesbah Yazdi (1931- ) has posed the rest of Argument as follow2: a.1- The criterion of the need of the caused for the cause is just the dependency and copulation of its existence due to the cause namely to the weakness of its existence.