Sadrian Metaphysics

Proximity and Remoteness when used in relation to God and the contingent existents are used equivocally [mushtarek-e-lafzi] and not in a univocal [mushtarek-e-man'awi] manner, where by equivocal we mean that it is only the words that are i dentical but the meanings are different depending upon the subject to which they are applied, therefore while proximity and remoteness denote a lesser or a greater spatial or temporal distance between two material or temporal correspondents that exist within a spatial-temporal paradigm, the same is not true in relation to the divine. Therefore in Islamic Philosophy particularly in accordance with Mulla Sadra's Transcendental Philosophy [Hikmat-e-Muta'aliyah] proximity to and remoteness from the One or the Source of all Being are dependent upon factors such as perfection-imperfection, actuality-potentiality, existential intensity and weakness, priority-posteriority, simplicity-composition etc, such that the more perfect, actualized, existe...

It is first important to construct a metaphysical understanding of ascension.That which is material cannot transcend into the higher immaterial or semi-immaterial realms, in so far as it is material, because the intermediate realm [alam-e- barzakh] is devoid of matter but is not devoid of material properties such as color, taste, smell and dimensions; and the intelligible world [alam-e-aql] is an absolutely immaterial realm devoid both of matter and material attributes, therefore it is impossible for anything material to transcend to the immaterial or semi-immaterial worlds in as much as it is material. Secondly it is also important to understand that a body which is defined as a three dimensional substance does not necessarily have to be material, in fact one can visualize or conceive of the corporeal form [surat-e-jismania] without conceptualizing matter, as is the case with the mind's conceptualizing of the mathematical bodies [jism-e-ta'limi]; therefore a body in so far as ...

Sir Bertrand Russell begins this work with his objections on the First-Cause Argument, which are : “Perhaps the simplest and easiest to understand is the argument of the First Cause. (It is maintained that everything we see in this world has a cause, and as you go back in the chain of causes further and further you must come to a First Cause, and to that First Cause you give the name of God). That argument, I suppose, does not carry very much weight nowadays, because, in the first place, cause is not quite what it used to be. The philosophers and the men of science have got going on cause, and it has not anything like the vitality it used to have; but, apart from that, you can see that the argument that there must be a First Cause is one that cannot have any validity. I may say that when I was a young man and was debating these questions very seriously in my mind, I for a long time accepted the argument of the First Cause, until one day, at the age of eighteen, I read John Stuart Mill...

If God exists, does He possess knowledge, and if He does, so what is the extent, if any, of divine knowledge, and How does God know what He knows; these are some of the questions that had eluded the most erudite philosophical intellects since the dawn of philosophy until the greatest Islamic Philosophers such as Avicenna and Mulla Sadra illuminated the issues concerning Divine Knowledge. For Avicenna God not only possesses knowledge but His knowledge surpasses the knowledge of all contingent beings capable of possessing knowledge. Avicenna demonstrates this by stating that all existential-perfections such as knowledge, are consequential upon existence itself, which means that in the external reality a perfection say ‘y’, can only be predicated to a subject say ‘x’, if the subject ‘x’ first exists itself, that is in order for ‘x’ to be predicable with ‘y’, ‘x’ must first be endowed with or possess existence, otherwise it would be meaningless to assert the predication of ‘y’ in the ex...

God is Absolute-Beauty and Absolute-Perfection together with being Omniscient or All-Knowing, such that He perceives all, and nothing escapes His Knowledge and perception; now where there is beauty, love follows, and the greater the beauty of the beloved and the more intense the faculty of perception of the lover and consequently the greater the perception by the lover of the beloved’s beauty, the more intense and fervent the fire of love; therefore God who is absolute-beauty and the All-Perceiving Being, is Himself the lover, Of His Essence, and the beloved, by His Essence; meaning that He perceives and knows Himself, with a knowing and perception that is perfect and most intense, as the most beautiful and perfect reality, and knowing His Essence as He Knows His Essence, He Loves it. God does not love or desire anything external to and other than His Essence because desire is induced by a lack of some good or perfection, but how can there be any desire in that which lacks nothing a...