The fact that Sadra wrote his books in the 17th century and...

The fact that Sadra wrote his books in the 17th century and was able to influence a whole generation of philosophers, which eventually resulted in the formation of the school known under his name, disproves the two-centuries old claim of the Orientalists and Western historians of Islamic philosophy that philosophical activity in the lands of Islam came to an end with Ghazali’s attack on Ibn Sina in his Tahafut al-falasifah.

Even though this view is no longer held by the serious scholars of Islam, the number of studies on philosophers prior to Ibn Sina is incomparably more than what has been produced on the history of post-Avicennan Islamic philosophy. His school also points to the continuity of philosophical activity in the Persian-speaking world up to our own day. Secondly, Sadra represents the culmination of various philosophical strands of Islamic intellectual history.

Standing at the crossroads of the four major traditions of Aristotelian philosophy ( mashsha’i ) associated with Farabi and Ibn Sina, the School of Illumination ( ishraq ) established by Suhrawardi, Islamic theology ( kalam ), and finally metaphysical mysticism or gnosis ( ‘irfan ) represented chiefly by Ibn al-Arabi and his school, Sadra launched a grand project of synthesizing them into a coherent whole in the form of a highly original and comprehensive philosophical system that he called ‘transcendent wisdom’ ( al-hikmat al-muta’aliyah ).

Thus the Sadrean corpus displays a remarkable blend of various strands of thought from the purely logical and analytical discussions of quiddity and logical categories to the extremely poetic and ecstatic discourses on the all-inclusive reality of being and unveiling ( kashf ) as a direct way of knowing Divine mysteries.

In this regard, Sadra attempts to complete a project whose origins go back to Suhrawardi, namely the reconciliation of analytical and discursive thinking ( nazar ) with mystical experience ( dhawq ) and spiritual training.

To highlight the ‘synthetic’ nature of his thought, Sadra seeks to combine three established sources of knowledge in the Islamic intellectual tradition: burhan referring to logical-analytical thinking, ‘irfan referring to realized knowledge, and qur’an referring to revealed knowledge.

Furthermore, Sadra appears to be acutely conscious of these traditions, their differences and similarities as he analyzes a particular problem or adopts a particular point of view within the context of these intellectual traditions.