Mulla Sadra and Metaphysics

Mullā Ṣadrā and Metaphysics is the first English-language monograph devoted to an examination of the central role of tashkīk al-wujūd (gradation or modulation of being) in Ṣadrian ontology. Understanding the manner in which tashkīk figures in Ṣadrā’s metaphysics is of utmost importance in coming to terms with how he manages to tackle some of the most vexing philosophical problems, such as the relationship between unity and multiplicity, or how it is that we can employ language to make positive statements about seemingly disparate things in the world. Consequently, it can also present us with a clearer picture of what it is that Ṣadrā is doing that is so unique at such a late stage in the history of Islamic thought. The first part of the book, ‘Preliminaries’, is comprised of two chapters. Ch. 1 offers a summary of the current state of Ṣadrā studies, which already boasts some sixteen monographs on aspects of his life and thought in English alone (with at least two more books due out in 2012). Rizvi also offers his own methodological insights about Ṣadrā’s role as a philosopher-sage for whom philosophy functioned as a way of life and an art of becoming more human. Since philosophical inquiry in medieval Islam was inextricably linked to the pursuit and acquisition of virtue, the philosophical life was nothing other than Socrates’s ‘examined life’. This explains why self-realization, knowledge of God, and the quest after virtue can be said to lie at the heart of Ṣadrā’s philosophy (pp. 25–6)

Art · Epistemology · Islam · Literature · Metaphysics · Nothing · Ontology · SOCRATES · Soul · Theology · Virtue · Education and Islamic Studies · Islamic Studies and History · Medieval and Classical Philosophy · Philosophy