Mulla Sadra & Islamic Existentialism

there are some figures in history whose brilliant simply can't be ignored figures who have shaped or influenced intellectual climate to Major degrees or who are so original and profound that just reading their Works leaves you in other awe regardless of your own philosophical positions we've talked about some of those characters already on this channel and now we're back at it again if you've been following this channel then you should know by now that the Islamic world has produced some of the most ingenious thinkers in history but even so among that group there are some who stand out even more as kind of watershed moments in Islamic philosophy one such figure was IBN Cena or avisena whose impact on this tradition is so significant that all of Islamic philosophy is often divided into a pre-iben Cena versus post ibncena period it's hard to match the stature and importance of this man but if anyone should be a contender at least in the Easter certain parts of the Islamic world it's probably the 17th century philosopher Mulla sadra in Persia and Central Asia no other figure has had an impact comparable to this man in the last few centuries his transcendental philosophy is one that synthesizes some of the most major intellectual traditions in Islamic history the peripatetic philosophy or Aristotelian philosophy of IBN Cena the illuminationist school of surabadi and the mystical Sufi teachings of IBN Arabi all of them into a magnificent Grand system that still to this day is at the core of some of the most prestigious centers of learning in Iran so strap yourselves in as we dive into the life and thought of Mulla sadra [Music] [Applause] [Music] sadradeen Muhammad ashirazi better known as Mulla sadra was born in 1572 and as his nespa suggests in the city of Shiraz in modern Iran he would spend basically all of his life in Iran during the height of the safavid Empire one of the three great modern Islamic Empires sandwiched between the Ottomans and the mughals as he grew up and after receiving all the standard education so learning the Quran Hadith Islamic jurisprudence Etc he traveled to Isfahan the imperial capital to deepen his studies there under some other great Scholars of his age it is here that he studied under media damad who was probably mainly responsible for teaching him things like the illuminationist philosophy of Surah vardi and the peripatetic School of IBN Cena his second major teacher in hisfahan was better known as Sheikh Baha'i one of the greatest Scholars of the safavid era who was involved with everything from astronomy to mathematics and mysticism it is likely that much of mullah sada's education in Sufism or erfan mysticism as it is often on came from in particular these mystical teachings influenced as they were by the philosophy of IBN Arabi would become one of the major features of the sadrian system the fact that mullah sadra himself eventually became such a renowned philosopher makes this environment one that has become famous for its intellectual flourishing Scholars today often refer to this as the so-called School of Isfahan as his strong Resurgence of philosophical activity in safavid Iran at this point and no one would come to represent this school and its syncretizing of different intellectual Traditions more than molassadra himself but a lot of his renowned and influence would come only after his death because indeed he did run into some opposition once he had finished his studies in Isfahan mulasadra moved back to Shiraz but found the intellectual environment there to be rather hostile he's said to have been harassed by a strict jurists and had little room to develop or teach his own philosophical ideas what was going on here Scholars argue that this was connected to the spread of a movement in 12 varshiism called the achbaris so she is jurisprudence or law had up until then been primarily based on reason and the reasoned interpretations of the jurist called HD had this mainstream group of shi Ilah came to be known as the usulis but around this time the achbaris started to become more popular they were a group that were a lot more strict in their understanding of the law they favored a heavily scriptural approach where only the Quran and Hadith were to be used and wanted to do away with the tradition of rational interpretation in the dominant usuri school and this meant that they were strict in other areas as well including the fact that they were very hostile towards philosophy speculative Theology and even more hostile to any Sufism or edifan than the already skeptical of sulis were it is likely representatives of this akbari movement that mullah sadra encountered in Shiraz and this hostile environment forced him to relocate to a small village outside of Kum where he spent a number of years in contemplation this period of seclusion was very fruitful though as it is here that he writes and lays the groundwork for some of his most celebrated Works he eventually returned to Shiraz in the year 1613 and would kind of settle there for the rest of his life although he would lead a life that involved a lot of traveling he visited different cities in the region frequently went on several pilgrimages to Mecca while riding his great philosophical masterpieces he even returned to teaching officially in Shiraz in the year 1630 and in all of this he somehow managed to raise a family and gradually became a very respected intellectual Authority molassadra passed away in 1635 or 1636 probably in bastra while on his way back from his seventh pilgrimage to Mecca but he left behind a vast Legacy of both students and writings that are still studied in the highest seats of learning in Iran to this day and it is to his philosophical ideas that we now turn a system that he himself as well as his followers referred to as hecamat al-muta Aliyah the Transcendent philosophy or the Transcendent wisdom and we get access to this wisdom primarily through his writings even though he lived in Persia and spoke Persian as an everyday language he wrote basically all of his Works in Arabic which was the lingua Franca across the Islamic world for religious and philosophical texts he wrote a lot and we can't go through the full list obviously but there are a few writings that stand out as his most influential and popular first of all he wrote several commentaries on quranic chapters or verses books of Hadith as well as commentaries on philosophical works such as the ashifa by Eben Cena and the heck metal which we have covered in a previous episode as for his own original Works he wrote several treatises that explicated his unique metaphysical ideas his magnum opus the largest most well-known and arguably the most impressive of his entire output is the Monumental work called Transcendent philosophy in four intellectual Journeys often referred to in English simply as before Journeys or in the shortened Arabic this is a massive compendium in several volumes that covers his entire thought and a lot of his other writings are often seen simply as summaries of certain aspects of the asfar among these shorter works we find treatises like the kitabel mashair the book of metaphysical penetrations the heck metal arshia the wisdom of the throne and a book on Sufi principles called Exile artifin elixir of the gnostics all of which have been translated into English the asphalt or four Journeys however sadly remains untranslated for the most part so then what do we find in these Works what is the transcendental philosophy of mulasadra well as you can imagine there's a lot of different aspects and complexities it's a vast system of philosophy that you know obviously we can't cover all of it in a single episode but there are a few Central aspects of his thought often pointed out by Scholars as the most Central or important aspects of this philosophy they include perhaps most importantly the concept of the Primacy and Oneness of a being as well as the gradation of being and then also various ideas that stem or result from that basic principle such as the idea of substantial motion and the something known as the unity of the knower and the known now all of this is just terms that sound confu using to many of you but they will become more clear as we go forward now to fully grasp molassadra it's very helpful to have an idea of the philosophical ground that he stands on because indeed malasada's philosophy is a syncretic one at its core it brings together some of the most important and influential traditions of philosophy and mysticism and just you know Islamic thoughts in history I've often said that I couldn't make an episode on mulasadra before I made one on ibncena one on Eben Arabi and one on Surah vardi because these are essentially the three figures and the three philosophical or intellectual Traditions that he is building his entire system on the peripatetic Aristotelian philosophy of IBN Cena or avisana is harmonized with the illuminationism of Surah vardi which proposes that reality is made up of light and that light is gradational everything is lights only different grades or intensity of light with the most luminous light of lights or neural Anwar being identified with God himself and thirdly the mystical Sufi thought of IBN Arabi which has become known as or the unity of being and which proposes that only God truly exists and is identical to being or existence itself making reality a radical Oneness also has his central place in molassadra's thought so if you want to have an even better grasp of what we're talking about today I suggest you go back and consult my earlier episodes on these figures and their philosophy first in any case at the very heart of molassadra's transcendental philosophy is the concept of being or in Arabic indeed we mentioned the Primacy of being a salad as one of the core features of his thoughts is a complex term it is usually used to mean being or existence but can also literally mean finding as in to find something and to be aware of it is a term that has been used across the history of Islamic philosophy but has been interpreted in slightly different ways very importantly it was IBN Cena that conceptually divided things into being on the one hand and essence or quiddity on the other we already know what wajood is it is being or existence in itself but Essence or quiddity might be more difficult for those who haven't studied philosophy and here the Arabic term might actually help a bit the term used in Arabic is mahiya or literally whatness what a certain thing is think of it like this we can ask two questions about any given object such as a horse for example we can ask what is it and we can ask is it when we ask what is it we are asking a question of essence or whatness the answer in this case horse is the essence or liquidity or the wetness of that object it is a horse its Essence is a kind of hoarseness right but when I ask is it I am asking a question of being the answer to the question is either yes or no either it has existence or it doesn't so this is the distinction between wujood and Mahia between being and whatness or Essence wajood is the pure concept of being itself whereas Mahia or Essence is the whatness of a thing that's all good and well but Islamic thinkers in history have vastly disagreed on the relationship between these IBN Cena himself seemed to think that the distinction between them is only mental followers in the illumination School however famously held to the idea of the Primacy of quiddity in the hikmatology he argues that it is the essence of things that truly exist and that existence is only an arbitrary category that we mentally impose upon them but which does not really exist in reality paradoxically he essentially says that existence doesn't exist it's quite a complex argument and you can watch my episode on surabandi for some more context to this but the idea had become quite popular by the time of molassadra it seems to have been the idea that his teacher meeted Ahmad held and that Sadler himself ascribed to earlier in his life but at some point he changed his position completely perhaps inspired by the teachings of IBN Arabi mullah instead argues that it is being or existence that is the only reality and that Essences orquidities are only mental constructs that we impose upon the reality of being the only thing that is out there so to say the only thing that is is being itself and it gives many arguments for why so imagine for example an apple you can think about an apple in other words the essence of an apple can exist in your mind but if you're hungry that mental image isn't going to help you quench that hunger only if there is an apple that exists out there an Apple that has existence can it be effective quote that these things won't existent in reality have all these effects must then be down to something else than their Essence Essences can have real examples for all that they mean only if being is attached to them reality is being being is all there is in essence then this is a monistic outlook on things because indeed being is one there aren't a bunch of different examples of being there's only one being one existence which is all of reality remember what we said about the thought of IBN Arabi and the unity of being he identified being or would as God and said that God is all there is adopt a lot of IBN arabi's thinking about here too God is God is being existence itself God doesn't have existence God isn't a being he is being or existence itself just based on this fact and considering the central Islamic teaching of monotheism that God is one this necessarily leads to conclusion that being or existence is one in other words all of reality is simply the one being this is the idea of the Primacy of being as well as the unity of that being which set mulasada apart from his teachers and figures like surravardi he took the idea that it was the Essences that truly exist and turn it around completely instead arguing for the very opposite but how does this account for multiplicity clearly there are different things in the world at least as we experience it we don't experience reality as a single Oneness so what's going on here well as we saw malasadra argued that the Essences or wetnesses of things the things that make things distinct from each other are only mental constructs that we impose upon the Oneness of being but still there certainly seems to be a difference between me and the dinosaur or a leaf and the Sun Well I said that is not a radical monist in that way he's not saying that there is no reality to a multiplicity that multiplicity is simply an illusion as many other perhaps Mystics in history have he does leave room for a kind of Multiplicity within this Unity of and it is applies the fascinating thought of Surah vardadi if you remember sort of already conceived of the world as made up of Lights in different grades or intensities the difference between things or quidities can be explained by the fact that there are different grades of light and thus become different things molassadra sees in this a perfect solution to his problem with the only difference that he applies to the concept of or being in other words molassador argues that being itself can be more or less intense there is a gradation of being which goes from the most pure and intense the absolute being of God to the less intense such as matter and the physical world so everything in the universe is simply a mode of wizard or being it is all won by the fact that it is all Buju but that wujood has different grades of intensity which leads to the multiplicity of things quote being is a reality which in its Unity runs through all things in different degrees and gradations just like an Essence such as whiteness can have different levels of intensity a snowflake can be more white than the color of your sort of creamy white wall he instead argues that it is being itself that has these grades of intensity this leads to claim that different things in the world can exist more than others I can exist more than you and the sun can exist more than a worm this is a little jarring to the modern mind which usually conceives of reality in very different ways but it is key to molassadra in his own words quote the modalities of existence have different degrees some are intellective some are related to the soul and some are dark without any perception to him language is based on a misunderstanding and thus the way we use language to explain reality leads to further confusion to say that the horse exists is absurd because everything is being including the horse which means that we're essentially saying that the horse exists before it exists you know if you look grammatically at that line you say horse exists and according to certain grammar rules the subject of the predicate is supposed to exist before the predicate so we're saying that the horse exists before it exists where at the very least we're simply saying that being exists or that being is which is not saying anything at all in the words of Saya hemisami quote according to molassadra the problem is simply a misunderstanding since Essences are nothing but the reflections of beings in the mind that is the limitations of the one reality in reality there are only beings and therefore existential statements should be read in Reverse for example man exists should be read as this mode of being is man being is all there is and everything is the one being but that being becomes delimited into various things through its gradation of intensity according to Ibrahim Kalin quote there is only one single reality in existence but it travels through the entire circle of existence leaving a different Mark at every level existence remains a single immutable reality at the roots of all things but it also displays an infinite number of Shades colors modes and modalities however this is not some kind of crude pantheism is also very adamant to remain a kind of difference or distinction between God and created things the absolute independent being is of course very different from dependent and relational things all things quote unquote other than God are referred to as being in another just like a horse can have a collar which is dependent on the horse being there even though the color can be thought of in the mind as a thing of its own and even though out there in reality they are unified so there is a distinction between Creator and created molassador here very cleverly Compares it to a light source and its streams of light there is a certain difference between the sun itself and the Rays that emit from it even though they are also kind of the same thing at the same time quote apart from the one Transcendent truth every being is only a ray of the light of his very being he is the truth and the rest are his manifestations he is the light and the rest are the streaks of that light in a very clever move molassador refers to God as quote that simple reality which is all things but none of those things in particular the thing that is all things cannot be any of them in particular in fact he uses arguments similar to that of the Christian Mystic Meister Eckhart where the indistinctness of being is the very thing that makes being the most distinct because being is all things that is what makes it different from everything because it is the only thing that can be everything it is a complex and masterful metaphysics that has significant implications many of you may note that these ideas are very similar to those of the famous Mystic event Arabi and again this is true for the obvious reason that IBN Arabi was one of the main influences on his thinking possibly the most important influence but there are also significant differences between them perhaps Chief among them mulasadra was a philosopher and IBN Arabi wasn't what do I mean by this well even Arabi is usually described as a Mystic and he can't really be counted as a philosopher in the more narrow sense of that word if an Arabi doesn't construct thought out Arguments for his ideas or attempt to build any kind of system instead he has mystical insights and visions and simply retells them in often disjointed ways as well as simply commenting on and interpreting scripture on the other hand was a trained philosopher and it takes many of the core features that we can find in the mystical writings of the bin alabi and his successors and kind of places them within a philosophical framework using arguments and actually building a breathtaking system from it it's amazing stuff but aside from this molassadra still places a major importance on mystical insights he uses rational arguments sure but he also is very careful to point out that to truly experience these things one cannot reach this knowledge through through the intellect or through at least through rational argumentation or thinking but rather through mystical unveiling and a direct experience of these truths so in other words the Sufi influence is very strong here but it's worthwhile here to explore the relationship between Mula sadra and his regeneral environments and Sufism at this time because it is quite complicated molassadra was a shi Muslim living in safavid Persia Sufism or tasawof on the other hand has mostly been a Sunni affair with some exceptions and indeed during the safavid era Sufism was being increasingly looked down upon by the 12 Rishi scholars in this region to them it represented Innovation that had led the sunnis astray Sufism had become something dirty however a distinction was drawn between this Sufism which had come to refer to the different practices associated with the tradition like things like grave visiting Victor sessions Sama musical riots Etc on the one hand and the more speculative esoteric metaphysical teachings associated with certain Mystics like IBN Arabi on the other this theoretical side of Sufism started being referred to as erfan and this was accepted to a much larger degree so when figures like molassador are talking about things which many would associate with Sufism they would never say that this is Sufism that they are involved with rather it would be erfan the mystical knowledge of hidden realities or simply hikmah wisdom words that they would use rather than Sufism indeed Mala himself is very critical of quote-unquote Sufism and its practices in his writings even though he clearly takes influence from its theoretical teachings particularly in his ideas about or being which as we have seen lie at the very core of his system it is from this principle of the Primacy Oneness and gradation of being that all other aspects of his philosophy stem and allows him to solve quote unquote some long-standing problems in Islamic philosophy and present some truly innovative ideas one such core often quoted idea is that of the unity of the knower and the known just like surabaldi before him molassadra rejects the peripatetic idea that knowledge of things come about from a mental abstraction of universals based on an experience of a sensible object that I see a horse and then my mind abstracts Universal Concepts from the horse to give me knowledge about what it is that I'm seeing instead molassadra adopts to ravari's idea of el malhoduri knowledge through presence we come to know things through their direct presence to our awareness we know the particular things that we experience not just universals but but the particular things as they are present to us building on this molassadra also incorporates his principles of by also stating that presence is the same as being in other words when we know a thing we are united with that thing the subject is united with the object as it were in this way the human soul can Ascend on the ladder of being from the lower physical or sensible world through the imaginal and the highest intellectual world through gaining knowledge being present and uniting with knowledge which takes him higher on this ladder to our spiritual goal it is a complex epistemology that is deeply connected to his metaphysics of being and was quite unique at the time similarly Scholars will often point to the principle of substantial motion as one of the most important features of the sadrian system because it allows him to present some really interesting perspectives on eschatology and the soul the idea of substantial emotion is kind of exactly what it sounds like it proposes that substance itself is changing and evolving so in the philosophical tradition particularly Aristotelian philosophy the consensus had been that things are made up of substance and accidents things have a substance that is fixed and unchanging but this substance can have accidents which vary and change so for example both me and you are human beings this is a kind of substance which doesn't change but we have accidental attributes which differ us I may be taller than you or we have different hair colors maybe you are a woman and I'm a man or to steal an analogy apples on a tree can have different sizes and colors or be in different places while all remaining the same substance Apple you've been seen identified a couple of accidents that could be in motion quality quantity place and position but while a theme can be in different places varying in accidental features there is a substance which remains unmoving and unchanged so to say but molassadra disagreed instead arguing that both accidents and substance are in constant motion they are constantly changing and moving towards perfection why is this well because everything is simply being and different grades of that being this means that being can change while remaining the same so substance being modes of being are also changing think of a tree it begins as a seed then as a small Bush later it becomes a full-blown tree and eventually that tree will Blossom and result in things like apples Adra there aren't different instances of substances here Apple being one substance and tree being another because all things are simply the unfolding of being the substance is moving towards its Perfection the seed becomes the Apple in a continuous flow it is only us that mentally frees that flow at a particular time to say that this is a tree or this is an apple but really it is a constant motion of being moving towards increasing perfection everything in the world is constantly changing and being renewed in its very substance or being and this may not sound like something revolutionary but it really allows malasada to make some significant contributions to a few of the most hotly debated topics and questions in Islamic Theology and philosophy for example the question of the eternity of the world this had been very famously argued by figures like IBN Cena and araklazali the philosophers like IBN Cena and those of his of his kind would often argue generally not all of them but generally would argue that the world was eternal because time is a concept that only exists in the created world so to say this means that there couldn't be a time before the universe began right so while God originates or creates the world he does so outside of time and so from our perspective creation is an eternal thing right God is ontologically proud prior to the world but not temporally prior to the world theologians such as al-hazali strongly disagreed and basically saw this as pure unbelief they believed that the Quran very clearly states that God created the world at a specific time created the world from nothing essentially and so they were very adamant to hold to this particular belief but mulasada takes a kind of middle position he denies the idea of the eternity of the world and affirms that he believes in its temporal origination but unlike the theologians he does not believe that the world or creation was originated at a specific point in time in its entirety that all of it just came about in one instance partly for the same reason that time is a product of creation and so there can't be a time before there is bodies so it can be a time before there is there are things there's a there's a cosmos in which time can can make sense and because of the doctrine of substantial motion that everything is constantly in motion changing and being renewed he asserts that creation is taking place at every instant just like even Arabi he states that because everything is being renewed at every moment this means that quote every particle of the world is forever being temporarily originated rights of the world is temporarily originated or created but that creation is taking place at every single instant technically it takes place outside of time right because God is outside of time but from our perspective at every moment creation is being renewed there's a new creation at every instant this is an idea that we find in Arabi and molassadra seems to adopt it to a large degree similarly substantial motion allows him to present solutions to the problem of bodily resurrection and the afterlife of the Soul as we've seen this was another one of those very contentious issues figures like IBN Cena philosophers arguing that the idea of a bodily Resurrection at the day of judgment could not be proven and could not be sort of believed in from a rational point of view instead arguing that that belief should be taken simply on faith or that those verses should be read in some way kind of metaphorically and again theologians accused IBN Cena for these reasons of being an unbeliever and stated that belief in an actual bodily Resurrection is required belief for all Muslims molassadra again comes with a kind of conciliatory approach according to the principle of substantial motion the human soul can travel or evolve from being strongly connected with the body and the material world to eventually become increasingly refined and enter the imaginal and lastly the intellectual worlds now after death the soul is able to create a kind of body in the imaginal world this is not a physical body but rather an imaginal body what does this mean well according to thinkers like IBN Arabi there is an imaginal world that stands in between the material world and the higher intellectual world this world of imagination becomes very important for many mystical ideas but we don't have time to fully explore it here in any case the state of the Soul upon death that is how refined the person has managed to make the soul through following religious laws and pursuing knowledge will determine what kind of body that soul will get or creates in the imaginal world a very greedy person can take on the body of a pig whereas a spiritually accomplished Soul can create a subtle beautiful body higher in the great of being and thus closer to God it is these imaginary bodies that determine the state of one's afterlife a refined intellectual solar body will be high in the chain higher in the gradation of being and thus closer to God and this is Paradise but those of a dirty Soul who get a body that instead experiences the Pains of the fire or what is often termed hell so as you can tell he again takes a kind of middle position he allows for bodily Resurrection but this is a body that isn't physical but rather imaginal there are many other aspects of malasada's philosophy and theology that could be explored but we would be here all day needless to say his system includes rational arguments for things like prophecy and Revelation Divine attributes and because he was a Shiite the concept of Wallah and the authority of the Shiite imams who represented the very height and Pinnacle of sainthood to him for all these reasons that we have discussed molassadra is perhaps the pre-eminent Islamic philosopher in Iran today his legacy is massive and he is often perhaps rightly referred to as the most significant Islamic philosopher after IBN Cena at least in the East while he had students who carried forward his transcendental wisdom his popularity didn't pick up right away the later years of the safavid Empire saw an increasing distrust of anything related to mysticism or philosophy on part of the more strict akbari Scholars and there was a lot of suppression of such intellectual Endeavors it is really in the kajal and palavi periods that molassadra really starts becoming the incredibly influential figure that he is today over the course of the 18th to 20th centuries his work became Central aspects of study in the major centers of education and some of the most famous and important she Scholars have been deeply involved with his thought figures like said Abu Hassan Rafi al-kleswini Muhammad Hussein and even perhaps surprisingly to some Ayatollah Khomeini were all experts in sadrastat and hugely influenced by him we also have major thinkers such as said Jose Nasser who founded the Imperial Iranian Academy of philosophy dedicated to studying the so-called perennial wisdom in which sadhara played a major role Nasser and his efforts have been important for introducing molassadra and other Islamic thinkers to a worldwide audience together with colleagues and students such as Andre carbon William chiddick and James Morris just to mention a few as we find ourselves in the 21st century molassadra is recognized worldwide as one of the most spectacular thinkers in Islamic history and is studied in many different parts of the globe there was even a World Congress of molassadra in 1999 in which Scholars from all around the world participated with a philosophical Legacy as a rich deep and complex as that of sadradeen Muhammad ashirazi we are still trying to understand some of the nuances of his amazing thought any understanding of the Islamic intellectual world today is not complete without some familiarity with molassadra whose incredible syncretic approach of bringing together some of the most important strands of Islamic thought in history from mysticism to Greek inspired philosophy into a grand amazing system has earned him a place as one of the most significant thinkers in history I'll see you next time [Music]

Channel: Let's Talk Religion

Views: 159,568

Keywords: Mulla Sadra, Islamic philosophy, Mulla Sadra and Islamic Existentialism, Existentialism, Islamic monism, mysticism, mystical philosophy, Iranian philosopher, Islamic theology, theology, pantheism, spiritual islam, Persian Islam, Sadr al-din Shirazi, monism, religion, islam, let's talk religion, Ibn arabi, Suhrawardi, Ibn Sina, Avicenna, Oneness of Being, Primacy of Being, Substantial motion, transcendent philosophy, mulla sadra philosophy

Id: wMPB6Wj3Fwc

Length: 37min 23sec (2243 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 25 2022