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Death in Islamic Philosophy

In the view of the materialists death is seen as an evil and an end of conscious existence, something unpleasant and undesirable,an illness that needs to be cured but in Islamic Philosophy death is seen as a perfection and a completion of existence, no t as something undesirable and evil, but as a bridge the connects Man with the object of his desire, namely an eternal life of enduring happiness and felicity. In Islamic Philosophy death is classified into two distinct categories namely a) physical death and b) accidental death. In order to understand death it is important to understand the nature of the human soul.   The purpose of the soul's attachment with the body is to attain ontological perfection, and since the soul by reason of its initial existential weakness is unable to subsist and achieve this perfection on its own therefore it needs a material body, that can function as a vehicle for the attainment of the said perfection . The human soul is corporeal in its originatio...

The First-Intellect & Causality

In Islamic Philosophy we study the Rule of One' according to which only one can emanate from that which is One [la yasdiru anil wahid illal wahid], and the first contingent to have emanated from the Simplest Reality [basit al haqiqah] is held to be the First-Intellect [aql-e-awwal] which is identified with the Muhammadan Spirit [ruh-e-ahmadi] or the Muhammadan Reality [Haqiqat-al-Muhammadiya], and for Shi'ite philosophers such as Mulla Sadra and Ayatullah Khomeini this reality which is the source form [ayan-e-thabit] of all the other separable [mufariq] source forms and is the manifestation of the Greatest and Most Holiest Divine Name Allah[ism-e-azam-al-jam'i], represents the True Risalat and Nubuwwat of the Prophet which is ontological [takweeni] in character serving as a conduit of divine grace for the rest of the contingent realms. According to the Philosophers it is not possible for something material, multiple[kathrat], temporal [zamani] and plural to emanate direc...

The Nature of Divine Causality

"The existence of an effect is among the necessary concomitants of the existence of its perfect and complete cause such that the twain are inseparable. The question is that is the agent-cause effective in the existence of its effect directly through it own ipseity [zat] or not; now if the agent-cause is not effective in the existence of its effect directly through it own ipseity, so it is obvious that an additional factor is required for the causal-agency to be effective for instance a condition [shart] or will [irada] would have to be increased over and above the ipseity of the agent-cause, and in that case the entity which had been presumed to be the agent-cause would no longer remain the agent-cause, and instead the ipseity of that agent together with that additional feature in combination will have to be regarded as the true agent-cause and the question which was asked concerning the existent which had initially been presumed to be the agent-cause will then revert to this com...

God, the Efficient & Final Cause of the Cosmos

“Since the Divine Essence is the Efficient-Cause (illat-e-fai’li) of all things therefore He is the First of all the firsts and the Prior of all the priors, and is also the Final-Cause (illat-e-ghaiy) of all things, and from this view point all things are intent towards Him and He is their ultimate object. Everything desires Him, regardless of whether this desire is volitional (iradi) or natural (tabay’i), therefore He is also the most Posterior of all posteriors and the Last of all the lasts, meaning that since He is the Absolute and Pure Good (khayr-e-mehaz) and the True Beloved (mashuq-e-haqiqi) therefore His Essence is the Final-Cause and the End of all things” (Asfar-al-Arba’a, safar#1, marhala#4) For Mulla Sadra God is Pure-Existence and nothing can exist without having received the gift of existence from the Necessary Being because everything besides the Necessary Being is contingent in essence and contingency is nothing but the negation of two necessities namely the necessi...

Life After Death [Hayat ba'd az Mout]

Life after death can be proven by simply proving the incorruptible nature of the soul.Consider the following syllogism ; 1.All material things are corruptible & perishable 2. the soul is immaterial 3.therefore the soul is incorruptible & imperishable. God is a necessary being and a necessary being must be necessary from the aspect of every perfection otherwise if he is not necessary from the aspect of any perfection,and that perfection is absent from Him then God will be necessary from some aspects of perfection and possible from certain others and hence this will render Him a composite of necessity and possibility, which is inadmissible; therefore if God is necessary from the aspect of every perfection so He must also be necessary from the aspect of the perfection of Justice [adl] , meaning that he must be a Just Lord ; now if the material life is the only life or the only realm then it is evident that perfect justice is not available here, since many criminals and sinne...

The Argument from Contingency [Burhan-al-Imkan]

Proofs or evidences can be both rational and empirical where rational evidence is the one provided by the intellect or reason and empirical evidence is the evidence obtained through sense-perception, observation and experience. Now since God is an immaterial or a metaphysical being that is incorporeal and non-sensible, lying beyond time and space therefore there can be no direct empirical or sensible evidence of the existence of the Divine Essence because the senses only perceive that which is sensible, corporeal, physical or material in nature and hence cannot apprehend a reality that is non-sensible and immaterial, because there has to be suitability between the perceived object and the one who perceives and there is no suitability between something metaphysical or immaterial and the human sense organs that are material or physical. However having said that this is not to deny the absence of rational proofs for the existence of God and the philosophers from time to time have advance...

Divine Justice & the Problem of Evil

God is a necessary being and a necessary being must be necessary from the aspect of every perfection otherwise if he is not necessary from the aspect of any perfection,and that perfection is absent from Him then God will be necessary from some aspects of perfection and possible from certain others and hence this will render Him a composite of necessity and possibility, which is inadmissible; therefore if God is necessary from the aspect of every perfection so He must also be necessary from the aspect of the perfection of Justice [adl] meaning that he must be a Just Lord, otherwise if it is assumed that He is not necessary from the aspect of Justice then He must be possible from this aspect, and that would render Him a composite of necessity, because he is necessary from the aspects of the other perfections, and possibility, which is inadmissible because that which is composite is contingent and hence an effect in need of a cause, as has been proven above. Now coming to the quest...