Transubstantial Motion and the Natural World

Transubstantial Motion and the Natural World
Author: Mahdi Dehbashi
Publisher: ICAS Press
Total Pages: 244
Release: 2010-01-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1904063381

Transubstantial Motion is a thought-provoking analysis of Mulla Sadra’s innovative theory of transubstantial motion. Expounding on Sadra’s theory and critique of earlier philosophers, Mahdi Dehbashi explains how the theory of transubstantial motion bridged the physical and spiritual aspects of reality and how Sadra solved the philosophical dilemmas of his era. Also included is a translation of the chapters of al-Asfar al-Arba‘ah (The Four Spiritual Journeys) in which Mulla Sadra presents his theory and takes the reader through a rewarding discourse on the nature of space and time – a discourse only fully appreciated in the light of modern physics. In addition to discussing the physical universe, this prescient work provided a new philosophical base for Islamic metaphysics, eschatology, ethics, and the philosophy of the human soul. An essential read in Islamic philosophy.

A Universe in Constant Change: Mulla Sadra and Transubstantial Change

A Universe in Constant Change: Mulla Sadra and Transubstantial Change
Author: Muhammad Kamal
Publisher: ICAS Press
Total Pages: 314
Release: 2022-01-01
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1907905502

This book is an interpretation of one of the central themes of Mulla Sadra’s philosophy of existence known as ‘transubstantial change’. It provides, for the first time in English, a comprehensive analysis of transubstantial change in light of Sadrian ontology and its impact on some philosophical issues such as identity, values, and truth. As the author elucidates, in transubstantial change nothing is indestructible and everything in the world, including substance, is inconstant renewal.

Roads to Paradise: Eschatology and Concepts of the Hereafter in Islam (2 vols.)

Roads to Paradise: Eschatology and Concepts of the Hereafter in Islam (2 vols.)
Author: Sebastian Günther
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 1549
Release: 2017-02-20
Genre: History
ISBN: 9004333150

Roads to Paradise: Eschatology and Concepts of the Hereafter in Islam offers a multi-disciplinary study of Muslim thinking about paradise, death, apocalypse, and the hereafter. It focuses on eschatological concepts in the Quran and its exegesis, Sunni and Shi‘i traditions, Islamic theology, philosophy, mysticism, and other scholarly disciplines reflecting Islamicate pluralism and cosmopolitanism. Gathering material from all parts of the Muslim world, ranging from Islamic Spain to Indonesia, and the entirety of Islamic history, this publication in two volumes also integrates research from comparative religion, art history, sociology, anthropology and literary studies. Unparalleled and unprecedented in its scope and comprehensiveness, Roads to Paradise promises to become the definitive reference work on Islamic eschatology for the years to come.

The Triumph of Mercy

The Triumph of Mercy
Author: Mohammed Rustom
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Total Pages: 258
Release: 2012-09-10
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1438443420

Winner of the 21st International Book of the Year Prize in Iran This book investigates the convergence of philosophy, scriptural exegesis, and mysticism in the thought of the celebrated Islamic philosopher Mullā Ṣadrā (d. 1050/1640). Through a careful presentation of the theoretical and practical dimensions of Ṣadrā's Qur'ānic hermeneutics, Mohammed Rustom highlights the manner in which Ṣadrā offers a penetrating metaphysical commentary upon the Fātiḥa, the chapter of the Qur'ān that occupies central importance in Muslim daily life. Engaging such medieval intellectual giants as Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī (d. 606/1210) and Ibn 'Arabī (d. 638/1240) on the one hand, and the wider disciplines of philosophy, theology, Sufism, and Qur'ānic exegesis on the other, Ṣadrā's commentary upon the Fātiḥa provides him with the opportunity to modify and recast many of his philosophical positions within a scripture-based framework. He thereby reveals himself to be a profound religious thinker who, among other things, argues for the salvation of all human beings in the afterlife.

Ideas in Motion in Baghdad and Beyond

Ideas in Motion in Baghdad and Beyond
Author: Damien Janos
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 489
Release: 2015-10-05
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9004306269

This volume contains a collection of articles focusing on the philosophical and theological exchanges between Muslim and Christian intellectuals living in Baghdad during the classical period of Islamic history, when this city was a vibrant center of philosophical, scientific, and literary activity. The philosophical accomplishments and contribution of Christians writing in Arabic and Syriac represent a crucial component of Islamic society during this period, but they have typically been studied in isolation from the development of mainstream Islamic philosophy. The present book aims for a more integrated approach by exploring case studies of philosophical and theological cross-pollination between the Christian and Muslim traditions, with an emphasis on the Baghdad School and its main representative, Yaḥyā ibn ʿAdī. Contributors: Carmela Baffioni, David Bennett, Gerhard Endress, Damien Janos, Olga Lizzini, Ute Pietruschka, Alexander Treiger, David Twetten, Orsolya Varsányi, John W. Watt, Robert Wisnovsky

Revelation, Intellectual Intuition and Reason in the Philosophy of Mulla Sadra

Revelation, Intellectual Intuition and Reason in the Philosophy of Mulla Sadra
Author: Zailan Moris
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 241
Release: 2013-11-05
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1136858598

This book examines and analyses the legitimacy of the widely held claim that Mulla Sadra's philosophy (al-hikmah al-muta'aliyyah) is a synthesis of principles and doctrines drawn from revelation (wahy), gnosis ('irfan/ma'rifah) and discursive philosophy (al-hikmah al-bahthiyyah). In Mulla Sadra's view, these three major sources of knowledge can be brought together without contradiction and accorded their respective roles in the human quest for true and certain knowledge. This book discusses and demonstrates how Mulla Sadra achieves this synthesis as contained in and exemplified by his text, al-Hikmah al-'arshiyyah or Wisdom from the Divine Throne. An evaluation on whether or not Mulla Sadra's synthesis is successful is also undertaken. The criteria used for the evaluation are the internal coherence of his ideas, their conformity to Islamic teachings and impact on Islamic thinkers after him.

Timing and Temporality in Islamic Philosophy and Phenomenology of Life

Timing and Temporality in Islamic Philosophy and Phenomenology of Life
Author: Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 344
Release: 2007-09-19
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1402061609

The puzzling nature of temporality and timing of reality remains controversial. This book offers a collection of studies that seeks a new answer by initiating a novel investigation informed by the ancient wisdom of the Greaco-Arabic-Islamic sources and inheritance, on the one side, and the contemporary discernment of Occidental phenomenology of life, on the other, in a common dialogical effort to unravel this great enigma of existence.

The different aspects of islamic culture

The different aspects of islamic culture
Author: Ahmad, Maqbul
Publisher: UNESCO Publishing
Total Pages: 517
Release: 2002-12-31
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9231038303

Research into Islamic science and technology is still in is early stages, but there is now sufficient material available for a preliminary study. Volume IV is intended to fill a gap which deserves a major multi-volume work. Part I is a review of the history of science in Islam. It deals with the contribution of Islamic civilization to mathematics, astronomy, and physics, which have long been acknowledged, but also advances made by Muslim scientitsts in the fields of cosmology, geology and mineralogy, zoology, veterinary science and botany.

Knowing the Spirit

Knowing the Spirit
Author: Ostad Elahi
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Total Pages: 168
Release: 2012-02-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0791481204

Ostad Elahi's Knowing the Spirit provides a concise and remarkably illuminating philosophic account of our unique place in the universe: of the creative expressions of the divine Spirit throughout nature, and of the process of the soul's deepening perfection through all the challenges and lessons of our existence in this world and beyond. This revealing book draws together in a single vision those symbolic teachings and spiritual insights familiar to many Western readers today through the classical mystical poetry of Rumi, Hafez, and Attar. The historical context and language of this study are marked by the confluence of classical Islamic philosophy and spirituality, including Sufi thought, and their scriptural sources. But Elahi's thought integrates those influences and marks them with the magisterial imprint of his own profound spiritual experience and characteristic simplicity, openness, and directness of expression. This volume offers a singular masterpiece of recent spiritual thought, opening up fundamental human perspectives and possibilities too often clouded by the distractions of current events. The emphatic universality of both the subject and presentation of Knowing the Spirit points the way to unsuspected bridges between different civilizations and religious traditions, indeed to the prospect of an inclusive "science of spirituality" based on the common ground of each person's spiritual life and experience.

The Fundamental Principles of Mulla Sadra's Transcendent Philosophy

The Fundamental Principles of Mulla Sadra's Transcendent Philosophy
Author: Reza Akbarian
Publisher: Xlibris
Total Pages: 322
Release: 2009
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN:

Mulla Sadra, known also as Sadr al-Muta'allihin, the greatest Iranian-Muslim philosopher and founding father of the Transcendent Philosophy', was born in Shiraz, Iran in the year 1571 and died in 1641. His writings focus on philosophy and commentaries on the Qur'an and Al-Usul Al-Kafi. His most important philosophical writings include Al-Asfar Al-Arba at Al- Aqliyyah, Al-Shawahid Al-Rububiyya, Al-Hikamat Al- Arshiyya, Kitab Al-Masha ir, and Al-Mabda' wa Al-Ma ad. The present work consists of five chapters, written on two categories: The Transcendent Philosophy and Mulla Sadra's School, and Comparative Studies of Mulla Sadra and Other Philosophers. Several years of work enabled Dr Akbarian to complete some parts of this project, which concerns the relation of Mulla Sadra to the totality of the Islamic tradition, and the characteristics of his Transcendent Philosophy' being used in its original sense. We hope, therefore, that in this form the work will serve as a complete intro¬duction to the teachings of Sadr al-Muta'allihin in philosophy, as well as aid in making better known the doctrine of Mulla Sadra in synthesising between revelation, illumination and ratiocination in a world which is suffering so grievously as a result of it having separated these paths to the Truth from each other. Chapter One of this book discusses the question of what Transcendent Philosophy' is. When we turn to the writings of Mulla Sadra himself, we do not find any passages in which he explicitly designates his own school as Transcendent Philosophy' (al-hikmat al-muta'aliyah). Mulla Sadra expands the mean¬ing of falsafah to include the dimension of illumination and realisation as implied by the ishraqi and also Sufi understanding of the term. For him, as for his contemporaries as well as most of his successors, falsafah or philosophy was perceived as the supreme science of ultimately divine origin, derived from the niche of prophecy', and the hukama' as the most perfect of human beings, standing in rank only below the prophets and Imams. This conception that philosophy deals with discovering the truth concerning the nature of things, and that it combines mental knowl¬edge with the purification and perfection of one's being, has lasted to this day wherever the tradition of Islamic philosophy has continued; it is in fact embodied in the very being of the most eminent representatives of the Islamic philosophical tradition thus far. Both their works and their lives were testimony, not only to over a millennium of concern by Islamic philosophers with regards to the meaning of the concept and the term philosophy', but also to the significance of the Islamic definition of philosophy as that reality which transforms both the mind and the soul and which is ultim¬ately never separated from the spiritual purity and ultimately, the sanctity that the very term hikmah implies in the Islamic context. Chapter Two, "Being and its various polarizations", consists of four sections: 1. Existence as a Predicate; 2. The Metaphysical Distinction between Quiddity' and Existence' (The Fundamental Principle of Ibn Sina's Ontology); 3. The Principle of Primacy of Existence' over Quiddity' and its Philosophical Results; 4. Mulla Sadra's Proof of God's Existence (Burhan-e Siddiqin/The Argument of the Righteous). The question of existence as a predicate' enjoys an outstanding significance from the historical and comparative point of view. Kant, the eminent German philosopher, claimed that existence could not be a real predicate for its own subject since existence is not a concept that could add anything to an object. According to Kant, existence in its logical sense is, merely, copula (rabit) rather than either of the terms. The copula of the proposition on the other hand, does not indicate something that owns a real referent. Its exclusive role is, rather, to establish a nexus between the predicate and the subject. Mulla Sadra accepts existence as an