Islamic Philosophy: Mulla Sadra and the quest of "Being": Mulla Sadra and the quest of "Being" - Taschenbuch

The nature and significance of the philosophy of Mulla Sadra cannot be fully understood by those who approach it as if there had been nothing before it. When he himself began to teach philosophy, Mulla Sadra was well aware of the general context i.e. Islamic philosophy in which his own work was necessarily going to be done. To attempt to bring out the meaning of this philosophy would be to commit oneself to the production of some proof of its existence-or to the admission that it never existed. Here, however, I found myself face to face with the same kind of difficulty although on another plane; for if the existence of a philosophy in the Islamic world has been denied, the very idea of an Islamic philosophy has been held to be impossible. It will be found, then, this book converges to this conclusion: that Islamic civilization pro¬duced, besides Islamic literature and art as everyone admits this very Islamic philosophy which is a matter of dispute. No one, of course, maintains that Islamic philosophy was created out of nothing, nor yet that all philosophy in Islamic world was Islamic-just, as no one maintains that Islamic literature and art were created out of nothing or were wholly Islamic. The word Islamic philosophy does not belong to the philosophy of Mulla Sadra, but it is the name under which, in his Asfar, Mulla Sadra designated the doctrine of the Common Doctor of revealed teachings in Qur'an and Hadith. Such as it is described in this text, Islamic philosophy is that way of phi¬losophizing in which the Islamic faith and the human intellect join forces in a common investigation of philosophical truth. The study and the teaching of Islamic philosophy are both beset with many difficulties.