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Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books Philosophical Instructions Lesson Twenty-Three: Entified Reality The Self-evidence (Badāhat) of Entified Reality The subject of philosophy is considered to be the ‘existent’, as was explained in the two previous lessons. Now, we shall present the explanation of the self-evidence of the belief in the entified reality of being.

The truth is this, that existence is like*‘ilm* (knowledge) both with regard to its concept and with regard to its objective reality. And just as that concept requires no definition, its entified reality also is self-evident and without need of proof. No intelligent person imagines that the world of being is nothing but nothing, and that no person exists nor any other existent. Even the Sophists who considered man to be the measure of all things, at least accepted the existence of man!

There is only one sentence from Gorgias who is considered to be the most extreme of the Sophists, which apparently is an absolute denial of all existence, as was mentioned in the discussion of epistemology. However, it does not seem that his intention—assuming that it has been correctly narrated—is that of the apparent meaning of his words, such that it would include his own existence and that of his speech, unless he was severely afflicted with mental illness, or uttered the words out of spite.

In Lesson Twelve about doubts leading to the denial of knowledge, we said that these doubts themselves presupposed knowledge, to which we may add here that this same doubt requires the acceptance of some existents which correspond to the mentioned knowledge. However, if someone would deny his own existence and the existence of his denial, he would be like the one whom, in the previous problem, denies the existence of his own doubt, and he must be treated practically to make him accept reality.

In any case, an intelligent person whose mind has not been polluted with the doubts of the Sophists and skeptics, not only accepts his own existence, the existence of his perceptive powers, mental images and concepts, and his own psychic activities, but also is certain of the existence of other people, and the external world, and for this reason when he becomes hungry, he eats food of the external world, and when he becomes hot or cold, he decides to make use of things in the external world.