186 - To Be, Continued: Mullā Ṣadrā on Existence

I think there is a problem in Sadra's theory in that the level of the divine (noted by Rahman, I think I mention it in the next episode), and in particular the Platonic Forms, seem to be unchanging whereas everything else is in substantial motion - but insofar as tashkik goes hand in hand with motion we don't really want him maintaining that standard Platonist picture of a flux-ridden world and a stable intelligible realm. I think most Sadra scholars want to say that God Himself is dynamic in His relation to all things and that terms like the breath of the merciful are supposed to reflect this. Hence I would say that on balance the best reading has Sadra maintaining universal change/motion but also retaining some metaphysical elements for the intelligible that don't sit so well with the overall theory. Would be interesting to see what other Sadrians think though.

That isn't fully clear. The preface to the so called "Theology of Aristotle" (in fact a part of the Arabic Plotinus) says it is by Aristotle, so the confusion arises there; then the question becomes who wrote this (part of) the preface and when. Probably we're talking 9th century, either in Kindi's circle itself or in the early reception. Farabi (or whoever wrote "On the Harmony of the Two Philosophers," who should at least be a contemporary of Farabi if not Farabi himself) already knows that the Theology is (supposedly) by Aristotle and he is first half of the 10th century, so no later than that in any case.

By the way I wrote the article on the "Theology" on the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy so you can check that out for further info (I also wrote my first book on this text).

No, I don't think so. I would say it's more an extension of the (actually quite reasonable) idea that philosophy should, or can be at least, a critique of social norms and of authority. After all philosophy asks us to reflect on our beliefs and see if they are really justified, so it goes well with such critique. Then that leads to the next natural thought, which is that a "real" philosopher is bound to run into trouble with the authorities who he or she criticizes. In fact though this seems to be rare, in part because philosophy has historically often been about many other things besides social or political critique. And in fact philosophers have more often than not been members of the ruling elite!

Well, first of all it might be that individuals within a given species (e.g. various horses) share the same degree of intensity and differ only "in number". I'm less sure about, e.g. a horse vs a giraffe - perhaps he could even say that the whole genus of non-human animals shares a degree of existence but I think probably he can't, since he wants to replace essences with intensities of existence. Still I don't believe there is any attempt to give a rank ordering of all species in levels of existence in Sadrian philosophy, it is usually handled more generically than that. We'd have to find texts on the question though, maybe someone else knows.

Hm, well I am not the world's biggest Hegel expert but I don't really think so. I think Hegel's dialectic has a different structure and also is historically embedded in a way that seems not to apply to Sadra. But if you want to say what you think they have in common I would be interested to hear it!