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Transcendent theosophy or al-hikmat al-muta’āliyah (حكمت متعاليه), the doctrine and
philosophy Philosophy ('love of wisdom' in Ancient Greek) is a systematic study of general and fundamental questions concerning topics like existence, reason, knowledge, Value (ethics and social sciences), value, mind, and language. It is a rational an ...
developed by Persian philosopher Mulla Sadra (d.1635 CE), is one of two main disciplines of
Islamic philosophy Islamic philosophy is philosophy that emerges from the Islamic tradition. Two terms traditionally used in the Islamic world are sometimes translated as philosophy—''falsafa'' (), which refers to philosophy as well as logic, mathematics, and p ...
that are currently live and active.


Overview

The expression ''al-hikmat al-muta’āliyah'' comprises two terms: ''al-hikmat'' (meaning literally, ''wisdom''; and technically, ''philosophy'', and by contextual extension ''theosophy'') and ''muta’āliyah'' (meaning ''exalted'' or ''transcendent''). This school of Mulla Sadra in Islamic philosophy is usually called al-hikmat al-muta’āliyah. It is a most appropriate name for his school, not only for historical reasons, but also because the doctrines of Mulla Sadra are both hikmah or theosophy in its original sense and an intellectual vision of the transcendent which leads to the Transcendent Itself. So Mulla Sadra’s school is transcendent for both historical and metaphysical reasons. When Mulla Sadra talked about hikmah or theosophy in his words, he usually meant the transcendent philosophy. He gave many definitions to the term hikmah, the most famous one defining hikmah as a vehicle through which “man becomes an intelligible world resembling the objective world and similar to the order of universal existence”. Mulla Sadra's philosophy and
ontology Ontology is the philosophical study of existence, being. It is traditionally understood as the subdiscipline of metaphysics focused on the most general features of reality. As one of the most fundamental concepts, being encompasses all of realit ...
is considered to be just as important to Islamic philosophy as
Martin Heidegger Martin Heidegger (; 26 September 1889 – 26 May 1976) was a German philosopher known for contributions to Phenomenology (philosophy), phenomenology, hermeneutics, and existentialism. His work covers a range of topics including metaphysics, art ...
's philosophy later was to
Western philosophy Western philosophy refers to the Philosophy, philosophical thought, traditions and works of the Western world. Historically, the term refers to the philosophical thinking of Western culture, beginning with the ancient Greek philosophy of the Pre ...
in the 20th century. Mulla Sadra brought "a new philosophical insight in dealing with the nature of
reality Reality is the sum or aggregate of everything in existence; everything that is not imagination, imaginary. Different Culture, cultures and Academic discipline, academic disciplines conceptualize it in various ways. Philosophical questions abo ...
" and created "a major transition from
essentialism Essentialism is the view that objects have a set of attributes that are necessary to their Identity (philosophy), identity. In early Western thought, Platonic idealism held that all things have such an "essence"—an Theory of forms, "idea" or "f ...
to existentialism" in Islamic philosophy.


Existentialism

A concept that lies at the heart of Mulla Sadra's philosophy is the idea of " existence precedes essence", a key foundational concept of existentialism. This was the opposite of the idea of "
essence Essence () has various meanings and uses for different thinkers and in different contexts. It is used in philosophy and theology as a designation for the property (philosophy), property or set of properties or attributes that make an entity the ...
precedes
existence Existence is the state of having being or reality in contrast to nonexistence and nonbeing. Existence is often contrasted with essence: the essence of an entity is its essential features or qualities, which can be understood even if one does ...
" previously supported by
Avicenna Ibn Sina ( – 22 June 1037), commonly known in the West as Avicenna ( ), was a preeminent philosopher and physician of the Muslim world, flourishing during the Islamic Golden Age, serving in the courts of various Iranian peoples, Iranian ...
and his school of Avicennism as well as Shahab al-Din Suhrawardi and his school of Illuminationism. Sayyid Jalal Ashtiyani later summarized Mulla Sadra's concept as follows: For Mulla Sadra, "existence precedes the essence and is thus principle since something has to exist first and then have an essence." This is primarily the argument that lies at the heart of Mulla Sadra's philosophy. Mulla Sadra substituted a
metaphysics Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that examines the basic structure of reality. It is traditionally seen as the study of mind-independent features of the world, but some theorists view it as an inquiry into the conceptual framework of ...
of existence for the traditional metaphysics of essences, and giving priority Ab initio to existence over quiddity. Mulla Sadra effected a revolution in the metaphysics of being by his thesis that there are no immutable essences, but that each essence is determined and variable according to the degree of intensity of its act of existence. In his view, reality is existence, in a variety of ways, and these different ways look to us like essences. What first affects us are things that exist and we form ideas of essences afterward, so existence precedes essence. This position referred to as primacy of existence (). Mulla Sadra's existentialism is therefore fundamentally different from Western existentialism of
Jean-Paul Sartre Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre (, ; ; 21 June 1905 – 15 April 1980) was a French philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and literary criticism, literary critic, considered a leading figure in 20th ...
. Sartre said that human beings have no essence before their existence because, there is no Creator, no God. This is the meaning of "existence precedes essence" in Sartre's existentialism.


Substantial motion

Another central concept of Mulla Sadra's philosophy is the theory of "substantial motion" (''al-harakat al-jawhariyyah''), which is "based on the premise that everything in the order of nature, including
celestial spheres The celestial spheres, or celestial orbs, were the fundamental entities of the cosmological models developed by Plato, Eudoxus, Aristotle, Ptolemy, Copernicus, and others. In these celestial models, the apparent motions of the fixed star ...
, undergoes substantial change and transformation as a result of the self- flow (''fayd'') and penetration of being (''sarayan al-wujud'') which gives every concrete individual entity its share of being. In contrast to
Aristotle Aristotle (; 384–322 BC) was an Ancient Greek philosophy, Ancient Greek philosopher and polymath. His writings cover a broad range of subjects spanning the natural sciences, philosophy, linguistics, economics, politics, psychology, a ...
and Ibn Sina who had accepted change only in four categories, i.e., quantity (''kamm''),
quality Quality may refer to: Concepts *Quality (business), the ''non-inferiority'' or ''superiority'' of something *Quality (philosophy), an attribute or a property *Quality (physics), in response theory *Energy quality, used in various science discipli ...
(''kayf''), position (''wad’'') and place (''‘ayn''), Sadra defines change as an all-pervasive
reality Reality is the sum or aggregate of everything in existence; everything that is not imagination, imaginary. Different Culture, cultures and Academic discipline, academic disciplines conceptualize it in various ways. Philosophical questions abo ...
running through the entire cosmos including the category of substance (''jawhar'')." Heraclitus described a similar concept centuries earlier ( - panta rhei - "everything is in a state of flux"), while
Gottfried Leibniz Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (or Leibnitz; – 14 November 1716) was a German polymath active as a mathematician, philosopher, scientist and diplomat who is credited, alongside Isaac Newton, Sir Isaac Newton, with the creation of calculus in ad ...
described a similar concept a century after Mulla Sadra's work.


See also

* Transcendence (philosophy) * Hikmah * Ma'rifa *
Islamic philosophy Islamic philosophy is philosophy that emerges from the Islamic tradition. Two terms traditionally used in the Islamic world are sometimes translated as philosophy—''falsafa'' (), which refers to philosophy as well as logic, mathematics, and p ...
* Iranian philosophy * Existentialism *
Martin Heidegger Martin Heidegger (; 26 September 1889 – 26 May 1976) was a German philosopher known for contributions to Phenomenology (philosophy), phenomenology, hermeneutics, and existentialism. His work covers a range of topics including metaphysics, art ...


Notes


References

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Transcendent Theosophy Persian philosophy Iranian philosophy Islamic philosophy Theosophy