Mulla Sadra
1571-1640 · Islamic Philosophy · Prominent
Sadra was the leading philosopher of Safavid Iran, and he fused Avicenna's metaphysics with Illuminationism and Sufism into the system he called the Transcendent Theosophy. Existence comes first and what a thing is comes after: being is one reality showing up at different intensities, from dust up to God. Substances are themselves in motion, which he called substantial motion, so everything is always becoming more than it was.
Signature
The position Sadra is most identified with in the Profiler:
- Nature of Reality
- leans Unity
- Beginning of Things
- Emanation
Positions on the 8 axes the sources answer
- Natural Processes
- leans Purposeful (75 on a 0–100 scale from Mechanistic to Purposeful)
- Mind
- strongly leans Beyond Brain (96 on a 0–100 scale from Brain Only to Beyond Brain)
- The Divine
- leans Describable (29 on a 0–100 scale from Describable to Indescribable)
- Identity
- leans Unchanging (25 on a 0–100 scale from Unchanging to Changing)
- Meaning
- strongly leans Inherent (96 on a 0–100 scale from Constructed to Inherent)
- Nature of Reality
- leans Unity (21 on a 0–100 scale from Unity to Multiplicity)
- Ground of Being
- leans Transcendence (84 on a 0–100 scale from Immanence to Transcendence)
- Truth
- leans Objective (75 on a 0–100 scale from Subjective to Objective)
12 of 20 axes are left blank: the sources do not answer them, or Sadra refused the framing. Nothing is imputed; a blank is not a middling score.
Foundational questions
- Theology
- Non-Trinitarian Monotheism
What is your position on the existence and nature of God or gods? - Highest Good
- Union with God
What is the highest good? - Good and Evil
- Good Real, Evil Privative
What is the fundamental nature of good and evil? - Perception
- Non-Dual Awareness
What do we directly perceive? - Knowledge
- Intuition / Grounded in God / Receptive Intellect
What is the ultimate foundation of knowledge? - Beginning of Things
- Emanation
What is the origin of reality? - Time
- Process / Becoming
What is the fundamental shape of time? - Authority
- Divine Revelation / Rational Expertise
What is the legitimate source of authority? - Death
- Union with the One / Ascent of the Soul
What happens at death? - Human Nature
- Imago Dei
What is human nature? - Primary Bond
- The Divine
What is your primary bond and loyalty?