Chapter 11: Logical and Metaphysical Discussions
In ʿAllāmah’s Presence · Questions 646–671
Learning Islamic Metaphysics
646. What books are to be studied [in order to learn Islamic philosophy]?
Answer: Sabzawārī’s Manẓūmah; Ibn Sīnā’s Ishārāt and Shifāʾ; and [Mullā Ṣadrā’s] Asfār.
647. Should a student study all the nine volumes of Asfār?
Answer: No, one needs to study to the extent that one is able to understand the rest based on what one has studied. It would be better to study the first three volumes which are on general metaphysics (al-umūr al-ʿāmmah).
648. What about the discussion on Resurrection in Asfār? Should we study it as well?
Answer: I would say that you better not study it because it’s difficult, and because of the doubts that are applicable to it.
649. Could the study of Manẓūmah and Asfār be replaced by your Bidāyat al-Ḥikmah and Nihāyat al-Ḥikmah, respectively?
Answer: Yes, it would be a good idea to do so.
650. Were Greek philosophers, like Plato and Aristotle, prophets [of God]?
Answer: It is narrated from Sayyid b. Ṭāwūs that they were prophets. Either way, they were undoubtedly monotheists and propagated a message (within limited boundaries).
651. Are there any philosophical arguments in the Holy Qur’an?
Answer: Chapter 6 of the Qur’an (Sūrah al-Anʿām) is replete with philosophical arguments, which constitutes one-thirtieth (juzʾ) of the Qur’an. Such arguments are also found in some traditions narrated from the Infallible Imams.
The Sophists
652. What do the sophists say? And how can one counter their arguments?
Answer: Sophists reject any objective reality and maintain that all there is, is our mental perceptions and conceptions. In response, we may argue as follows: Fine, we grant you that there exists no reality in the world. This, however, is itself a reality. It’s a statement about an absolute and objective reality, and that is exactly the meaning of the Necessary Being (wājib al-wujūd). Therefore, any negation or affirmation is in fact an affirmation of some reality.
653. Sophists maintain that there exist no objective realities beyond human imagination and mind, and that everything is non-existent. The reality of non-existence is inexistent; there is no underlying reality for non-existence. How does this amount to an affirmation of reality and existence?
Answer: They maintain what they maintain—that “nothing exists in the external world, and that the reality of non-existence is inexistent”—as a fact. Therefore, they too acknowledge some reality.
654. What would be the response?
Answer: Our counterargument is that besides imagination and thought, there exist tangible realities, like Zayd, ʿAmr, sea, and desert. These entities are subject to change and become non-existent; therefore, they cannot be inherently existent. They can’t be objective realities in and of themselves. Thus, there must be some reality by which these transient realities exist. That reality is the Necessary Being (wājib al-wujūd); a reality that’s not subject to change. We cannot maintain that that reality is also subject to change, because otherwise we would also be sophists and back to square one.
655. What types of sophists have there been? What were the views of each group?
Answer: Sophists throughout history can be classified into three groups: (1) Some used to talk about “we and our thoughts,” meaning that we know nothing about the reality beyond ourselves and our thought. By saying this, however, they acknowledged some plurality [because they acknowledge “we”]. (2) Some of them proceeded further and made this individual: “I and my thoughts.” They denied the existence of all objective reality beyond one’s self and thoughts. (3) The third group consisted of extremist sophists who lived in ancient Greece and took a step even farther than the second group. They absolutely rejected reality altogether. They even denied themselves and their own thoughts. They would raise doubts about their own thoughts, and would then raise doubts about their doubts. Overall, sophists deny knowledge as “a perception that is in accordance with external reality.”
656. Could this couplet be interpreted as sophistry?
Your reality is the views that you have in your brain:
the thoughts that you value, hold and entertain;
otherwise you’re bone, flesh and vein.
Answer: No. This poem is rather saying that the human soul—which is a form (ṣūrah) for the material body—is immaterial in its essence, much like knowledge. It isn’t of the same nature as the body which consists of bones, flesh, and skin. Whereas these things are transient, the soul continues to exist. This couplet is apparently by Rumi.
Motion
657. Could something be neither static nor moving?
Answer: If we conceive the world as a single entity, it would be neither moving nor static. In scientific terms, the relation of motion (ḥarakah) and stillness (sukūn) is that of possession (malakah) and privation (ʿadam). Motion means translation (intiqāl) from one position to another, and stillness is lack of motion. However, if we take the entire world, then all positions are contained in it. Hence, there’s neither motion nor stillness for the entire world.
658. Is human knowledge subject to change and development?
Answer: Anything that we know is subject to change. We don’t have any knowledge that is fixed and immutable.
659. What is intended by “actuality without potentiality”(fiʿliyyah bi-lā quwwah)?
Answer: It means immateriality (tajarrud) and total perfection.
660. What is intended by “existence without inexistence” (wujūd bi-lā ʿadam)?
Answer: It means infinitely eternal existence which is not subject to change and motion.
661. What maintains the unity of the mover in any given motion?
Answer: In trans-substantial motion (al-ḥarakat al-jawhariyyah), the mover—that is, the subject of motion—is prime matter (hayūlá, hyle). That is what takes different forms.
662. Does prime matter (hayūlá) exist in the realm of immateriality (tajarrud)?
Answer: No, it doesn’t. Motion is transformation in an existent that has either finite or infinite potentialities. Thus one actuality replaces another, until it reaches some actuality that is devoid of potentiality. That would be an existence that is not subject to transience or inexistence.
663. How may something whose essence and substance is nothing but potentiality [that is, prime matter] transform into actuality?
Answer: If its essence is potentiality, then it can accept [forms and actuality]. And once it accepts [a new form], it becomes actualized [by it].
664. Is trans-substantial motion possible without believing in gradation (tashkīk) of existence?
Answer: Believing in gradation is not an essential prerequisite for trans-substantial motion. There are other arguments for trans-substantial motion, as mentioned by the late Mullā Ṣadrā. It’s not about gradation of being, although no gradation is possible without some motion.
Existents in Divine Knowledge
665. Does the reality of every being lie in its conceptual existence (wujūd ʿilmī)?
Answer: Has anyone said this?!
666. Yes, Rumi says:
Your reality is the views that you have in your brain:
the thoughts that you value, hold and entertain;
otherwise you’re bone, flesh and vein.
Answer: This may be true to some extent about knowledge by presence (al-ʿilm al-ḥuḍūrī), where we may say that knowledge of anything is the reality of that thing. Nevertheless, acquired knowledge (al-ʿilm al-ḥuṣūlī) consists of mental forms and the quiddities of beings—which lack the attributes of objective existence.
667. At the level of divine knowledge, could we say that existences of things are undifferentiated (ijmālī) while their quiddities are differentiated (tafṣīlī)?
Answer: Based on the principle that “a simple reality is all things” (basīṭ al-ḥaqīqah kull al-ashyāʾ), that perfections of all beings exist in the Necessary Being in their most sublime and most perfect manner, without any distinction between them, in a way that does not result in multiplicity [in the divine essence]. Accordingly, at the level of His essence, the Necessary Being has both undifferentiated and differentiated knowledge of the perfections of beings. His differentiated knowledge means the immediate presence of all entities in their entirety.
That is with regards to existence (wujūd). But in terms of quiddity (māhiyyah), it may be argued that knowledge of the cause comes with knowledge of the effect, and knowledge of the cause of quiddities necessitates knowledge of the quiddities. Quiddities are the effects of immaterial intellects (that is, the higher causes), which are themselves the effects of the Necessary Being and are thus known to Him. This, of course, pertains to God’s knowledge at the level of His acts, not at the level of His essence.
668. Could we argue that God has knowledge of the quiddities as follows: (1) Knowledge of a cause necessitates knowledge of its effect. (2) The Necessary Being has knowledge of the immaterial intellects and higher causes, which are the causes of quiddities.
Answer: Knowledge of quiddities is a form of acquired knowledge (al-ʿilm al-ḥuṣūlī), which is not conceivable about the Necessary Being. Peripatetic philosophers argue that God’s knowledge of things is ʿināʾī (attentive, caring). This means that the conceptual form of an entity in the realm of God’s knowledge causes the objective form of that entity in the realm of existence.
Logic
669. Syllogism based on the first form (shakl awwal) of the four logical figures would be something like: (a) The human is an animal. (b) Every animal has movement. (c) Thus every human has movement. Abū al-Khayr has a criticism against this, saying that the conclusion is already embodied in the premises. In these syllogisms, the major premise is universal and it includes the minor premise. Since we know the major and minor premises, the conclusion is already obvious to us. Hence, such deductions are redundant because we already know the conclusion. Is this criticism sound?
Answer: No, since the conclusion is neither the minor premise nor the major premise, but it is a third proposition produced by ascertaining the minor premise and the universality of the major premise.
670. Do you believe in affirmative propositions with a negative predicate (qaḍiyyah mujibah sālibat al-maḥmūl)?
Answer: I cannot make sense of it! How could the predicate of a proposition itself involve a proposition? The above concept means that there is an affirmative or negative statement, where its predicate is also a negative statement. How could this be a single statement? How could a single proposition consist of two negations or one negation and one affirmation?
671. What is the meaning of this statement: “The intensity of oneness (waḥdah) requires oneness”?
Answer: This statement is false.
The last two questions were asked to the ʿAllāmah privately after a general meeting. Thus, it could be that his answers are specifically applicable to the inquirer, not to everyone. ↩︎
Rumi, Mathnawī, vol. 2, line 277. ↩︎
TR: Note that this is not just about the physical world. Position and motion are meant in their broadest sense, not in their specifically physical or material sense. ↩︎
TR: This refers to immaterial intellects, which are non-gradual and non-temporal beings. Since they are not material, they do not have a potential state, and thus they do not have movement towards actuality. They are rather created with their full perfection. ↩︎
Ibid. ↩︎
TR: In other words, conceptual existence only includes the quiddity (māhiyyah) of the known, not the reality of its existence. ↩︎
TR: Since God’s essence is absolute existence, His knowledge at that level applies to the existence (or perfection) of the beings. Quiddities come into play at the level of God’s actions, where creation takes place. ↩︎
TR: According to this view, there is no other cause for the existence of things beyond God’s foreknowledge of them, albeit that knowledge is additional to the divine essence. This is called caring or attentive knowledge in the sense that the Superior looks at the inferior—a look by which the inferior comes to existence—not for any benefit to the Superior, but only for the benefit and perfection of the inferior. A more refined version of this is that God is an actor by love or manifestation (fāʿil bil-ʿishq or fāʿil bil-tajallī), where His knowledge of things is nothing additional to His knowledge of His essence, as maintained in theoretical mysticism and Mullā Ṣadrā’s transcendent theosophy. ↩︎
TR: This concept was formulated by the late Mehdi Ha’iri Yazdi, who was a student of ʿAllāmah Ṭabāṭabāʾī. There is some correspondence on this topic between these two great philosophers in the book Barrasī-hāyi Islāmī, where ʿAllāmah does not recognize this (qaḍiyyah mujibah sālibat al-maḥmūl) as another category of propositions because it is rather a compound proposition. ↩︎