The nature of Mullā Ṣadrā’s philosophical paradigm as a comprehensive system of philosophy has always been investigated by researchers in related fields. So far, eight views have been proposed in this regard; some of them consider Mullā Ṣadrā’s school to be a philosophi
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The nature of Mullā Ṣadrā’s philosophical paradigm as a comprehensive system of philosophy has always been investigated by researchers in related fields. So far, eight views have been proposed in this regard; some of them consider Mullā Ṣadrā’s school to be a philosophical one; some others view it as a gnostic one, while others attribute a kalāmī nature to it. Nevertheless, his words and writings contradict these views. He mainly prefers to call his system of thoughts “wisdom”, which means the knowledge of God and His attributes and acts based on a mixed kalāmī-gnostic method. However, the writer believes that wisdom has no independent identity distinguishing it from philosophy, kalām, and gnosis and cannot be deemed as an independent school. Accordingly, in order to provide an accurate explanation of his system of thoughts, in addition to internal and content-based analyses, one should observe the external features of the world Mullā Ṣadrā lived in. Hence, from an external perspective, it apparently follows “consensus-creating functionalism”; that is, his school seeks to create functional unity among the three systems of thought. From an external perspective, it follows an anthropological life-course approach; in other words, one should consider the various philosophical, social, and political conditions of his time in explaining the discussions, problems, and methods embedded in his system of thinking. Accordingly, the writer believes that three points should be considered in adopting an optimal approach to examining the Sadrian system of thought: the distinction between the truths about the intellect and the truths about faith, omission of what is inconsistent with philosophical method, and distinguishing the borderlines of intellect from those of narration and gnosis. In this paper, while presenting Mullā Ṣadrā’s view of his own school, it has been tried to clarify Sadrian thoughts based on their internal content and external conditions in order to provide a new analysis of his thought system.
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