MAAREF E AQLI
Year:2013 | Volume:8 | Issue:1 (26)|Papers Count:6

Unity of the Divine Essence falls into two categories: a) one as being simple or indivisible, composed of nothing; (unicity; absolute oneness) and b) the other as Being with no partner or like (unity). Most of the Pre-Suhrawardi and Pre-Sadrian theologians and philosophers have thought of the Unity of the Divine Essence as a numerical unity. At least, they did not make explicit references to the theory of the true unity of the Nessassary Being. According to the Qur'anic verses, traditions and rational proofs, the unity of God is not a numerical unity of some kind, for numerical unity has the following characteristics:) it is theoretically possible for it to multiply;) it is practically possible for it to multiply;) it has essence and is existentiality limited;) it cannot coexist with all other things and it cannot encompass them sovereignly;) it lacks qualities of all other things;) it can be predicated by littleness. Since these characteristics do not inhabit the Divine Essence, the unity of God is not numerical. To affirm the true unity of God and to negate His numerical unity, one can have recourse to two proofs, i.e. ‘a simple reality includes all other realities’ proposed by Mulla Sadra and ‘a thing per se does not multiply’ suggested by Suhrawardi.

Taking Aristotle’s understanding of reality as the summit of human thought, Averroes (Ibn Rushd) has only described his thoughts and opinions in outline. In contrast, Avicenna has tried to complement, improve and make a number of initiative remarks about Aristotle’s views, thus introducing new ideas into Peripatetic philosophy. Averroes has criticized Avicenna in many cases, for he thinks that the opinions and the views proposed by the latter diverge from those of Aristotle. Making references to some quotations from Avicenna and Averroes, the present article seeks to show how these two philosophers take general approaches towards Aristotle and his thoughts. Accordingly, it also studies Averroes’s attitude towards Avicenna.

The way soul and body are related to each other gives rise to the issue of relation between soul and body or dualism, which is now taken to be a serious concern in the philosophy of mind. No Western philosopher has thus far succeeded in giving a persuasive answer to this problem. Mulla Sadra, however, in the world of Islam, was able to give an unprecedented account of issues related to soul after presenting new philosophical foundations, including priority of existence, trans-substantial motion and gradation in existence. According to him, soul has, in the beginning, takes a physical form with the body as its lower stage, but it reaches other stages through a mode of trans-substantial motion. Basind his arguments on the doctrine of the soul’s corporeal createdness and its tras-substantial motion, he believes that the relation between soul and body is a unifying relationship and that man has a reality of various degrees accordingly. Given these facts, he goes on to explain how soul and body interact.

Time is one of the issues that has been a matter of philosophical concern for ages. The ideas and views expressed by philosophers are very varied and seem to be perplexed. For instance, Kant takes time as something quite subjective characterised by the world of phenomenon and not by the noumenal word. Nevertheless, some opinions concerning time-though of different origins-are prima facie very close to each other. The ideas and thoughts of Mulla Sadra and Bergson fall under this category. Presenting their views concerning time, the present article tries to open up new vistas for the reader to compare these two modes of thought.

Reason plays a significant role in regulating human behaviors and guiding them towards moral virtues. There are some words originating in Mulla Sadra’s philosophical thoughts showing that he takes notice of the application of reason in ethics and thus basing his moral thoughts on rationality. His thoughts concerning the application of reason in ethics can be studied in terms of his epistemic, motivational and ontological approaches. Based on his epistemic approach, theoretical reason is able to uncover basic statements of a moral system and apply them to specific cases. In addition, it is able to find out what is good and what is bad. In his motivational approach, theoretical and practical reasons can also interact with each other. By distinguishing the right from the wrong and shedding light on the consequences of an action, theoretical reason plays an important role in motivating a moral agent to do an action. Ontologically, the case may be that, by making rational selections, man makes his identity. Thus the more he is rational the more he is moral.

In the late fifth and sixth centuries, Islamic philosophy relatively flourished in Andalusia. It was at this time that three prominent Andalusian philosophers, i.e. Avempace, Ibn Oufayl and Averroes, emerged. There seemed to be four readings of Avicenna in this period. Some were opponents of philosophy and were thus trying to impose limitions or even destroy philosophical works including Avicenna’s works. The advocates of philosophy appeared in three groups. Some did not take Avicenna seriously not mentioning his name in their works. Another group considered Avicenna as a person who gives importance to vision or unveiling (mukashifah) and, as a result, they considered mysticism as the main feature of his philosophy. There was finally a third group who took his methodology to be polemical, leading philosophy towards theology. Avimpace ignores him, Ibn Oufayl considers him as a mystic and Averroes deals with him as a theologian. The existing pressures on philosophy and philosophizing and the decline of philosophical thought at that time were the reasons why Avicenna was not correctly understood.