ভূমিকা

Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books Philosophical Instructions Lesson Twenty-Seven: The Fundamentality of Existence Arguments for the Fundamentality of Existence Our aim is to know whether entified reality is the same as that which is denoted by whatish concepts or whether whatnesses only represent limits and frameworks for objective realities.

If whatnesses only represent limits of existence, that which denotes the reality itself and the contents of a conceptual framework is the concept of existence which is considered to indicate reality itself. The mind, by means of the concept of existence, understands reality itself. In order to know whether whatness is fundamental or existence, there are various ways, of which the easiest is reflection upon these concepts themselves and their meanings.

When we focus upon a whatish concept, such as the concept of ‘man,’ we see that existence may be negated of it without changing its meaning, no matter how many external existents to which it applies, and of which it may be predicated, where this predication is literal, according to ordinary language, and not metaphorical. This is a matter upon which philosophers are agreed, namely, that whatness, in that it is whatness, is neither an existent nor a nonexistent.

It neither requires existence nor nonexistence ( al-māhiyyah min ḥaythu hiya hiya laysat illā hiya, lā mawjūdatun wa lā ma‘dūmah , i.e., Whatness as such is what it is [and only that], it is neither existent, nor nonexistent). It is for this same reason that whatness may be both the subject for existence and for nonexistence.

Therefore, whatness in and of itself cannot represent objective reality, otherwise the predication ‘nonexistent’ to it would be considered the predication of one of a pair of contradictories to the other, such as is the case with the predication of existence to nothingness.

Another reason that whatness does not represent entified reality is that in order to denote an objective reality we have no choice but to employ a proposition which includes the concept of existence, and until we predicate existence of a whatness we will not have spoken of its real occurrence. And this very point is the best reason for claiming that it is the concept of existence which denotes entified reality.