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Doctor of Philosophy in PHILOSOPHY CONCEPT OF ULTIMATE REALITY IN MULLA SADRA AND UPANISHADS: A COMPARATIVE STUDY THESIS SUBMITED FOR THE DEGREE OF Doctor of Philosophy IN PHILOSOPHY BY HOSSEIN KOHANDEL Under the Supervision of PROF. JALALUL HAQ DEPARTMENT OF PHILOSOPHY ALIGARH MUSLIM UNIVERSITY ALIGARH (INDIA) 2016 DEPATMENT OF PHILOSOPHY ALIGARH MUSLIM UNIVERSITY ALIGARH, INDIA Dated……………………….. CERTIFICATE This is to certify that Mr. Hossein Kohandel has done his research work on “Concept of Ultimate Reality in Mulla Sadra and Upanishads” under my guidance and supervision. I am satisfied that his thesis is original and has not been submitted elsewhere for the award of any other degree. He has consulted all relevant works of Upanishads and Mulla Sadra along with other works on the subject. In my view, Hossein Kohandel’s present work is original and fit to be submitted for the award of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy of Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh (India). (Prof. Jalalul Haq) Supervisor ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This is the best opportunity and a pleasant duty to express the profound sense of gratitude that I have for my esteemed teacher and supervisor, Professor Jalalul Haq, former chairman, Department of philosophy, AMU, Aligarh. I thank him from the innermost core of my heart. Without his able guidance and unfailing encouragement and inspiration this thesis could not be completed. I also express my gratitude to Prof. Tariq Islam, Chairperson Department of Philosophy, AMU and all other teachers of my department. They all encouraged and helped me in various ways throughout the present study. I would like to thank all the non-teaching staff of the department for their help and cooperation. Maulana Azad Library (AMU, Aligarh), and other institutions and libraries for proving me materials for my research work. CONCEPT OF ULTIMATE REALITY IN MULLA SADRA AND UPANISHADS: A COMPARATIVE STUDY ABSTRACT The first chapter of this dissertation consists of two parts. The first part deals with metaphysical ideas of Greek and Islamic philosophers whom Sadra followed and whose systems he modified through his creative critique. In this part a brief historical introduction to the metaphysical theories of Plato, Aristotle and Plotinus is made followed by a discussion of the main themes of the philosophies of Ibn Sina, Ibn Arabi and Shahabuddin Suhrawardi who were Sadra’s predecessors and to whose works he constantly refers while expounding his own ideas. It should be remembered here that for all the Islamic philosophers Neo-Platonism, besides the scripture, was their chief source of inspiration and they worked within the framework provided by Plotinus and Porphyry who were themselves inspired by Plato and Aristotle. A brief study of this Hellenist and Hellenist-Islamic tradition is therefore attempted for the understanding of Mulla Sadra’s own philosophy. It is clearly seen that the thought processes of the Islamic philosophers ultimately end up in the re-affirmation of monistic mysticism of Plotinus and a modified reiteration of his emanationist cosmogony to explain the origination of physical universe that is both united and separated from the ultimate reality called One. This is followed by a brief description of the life and works of Mulla Sadra and throwing some light on his method which was to combine the 1 speculative reasoning with mystical experience on the one hand and with the verses of scripture on the other. It is here seen that Sadra as an Iranian Shi’ite philosopher established a new philosophical system which he himself called ‘transcendental wisdom’ (al- hikma al-muta’āliya). The appearance of this gnostic philosophical system was in the tenth century after the emergence of Islam and it compressed and encapsulated the gist of more than eight hundred years of Islamic reflection, opinions and thoughts. It started with important Muslim philosophers like al- Kindī and al-Farabi who were the first speculators to introduce Hellenistic and Alexandrian philosophy to the Islamic world. Those thoughts were improved upon by Ibn Sina and then merged with Suhrawardi’s illuminationist school of thought on the one hand and the pantheistic thoughts of Ibn Arabī on the other. By constructing his new philosophical system of ‘transcendental wisdom’ Mulla Sadra affected significant variations in the conventional ways of philosophical thinking. In the second part of this introductory chapter an attempt is made to deal with the historical and literary background of Upanishads and to answer the question how they interacted with the preceding Samhita and Brahmana literature. Mysticism found within the Vedas and Upanishads will be examined as possessing noticeable similarities and differences. The sacrificial mysticism within the Vedas will be linked to the philosophical mysticism found in the Upanishads. The Upanishadic internalization of sacrifice is an important difference between the Vedas and Upanishads, yet this need not constitute a 2 major cleavage between the two texts. It is argued that Vedic and Upanishadic forms of mysticism can be linked if that is one’s interpretive goal. However, there are important differences between Vedic and Upanishadic forms of mysticism that should be recognized. Chapter two begins with a discussion of the philosophy of Upanishads whose literary works will finally provide the basis of comparison. Because this is a comparative study with a circumscribed focus, it mainly deals with Upanishads but attention is also given to later interpretive works such as those of Shankara and Ramanuja. The focus all along is on the philosophical and mystical ideas of Brahman and Atman as absolute and ultimate reality in their identity and as the basis for the origination of phenomenal world that includes man’s lower self. Such a discussion naturally throws up a host of difficult issues and opens up the possibility of multiple interpretations as we witness in the history of Vedantic thought. By limiting our discussion to philosophical principles, and avoiding religious and mystical speculation, it is possible to elicit features within the structures of mystically oriented thought systems that are notoriously elusive. New perspective is offered when ontological statements are interpreted as possessing inherent presuppositions that have foundational influence. Furthermore, this project will demonstrate that the metaphysics that governs one’s mystical ascent can be partially credited to the suppositions that each mystic employs before the mystical journey is embarked upon. As this chapter also deals with the commentators of Upanishads like Ramanuja and Shankara it also emerges 3 that the Upanishads cannot be credited to uphold any single ontological or cosmological theory. There are so many concepts and issues where a considerable ambiguity exists which though is expected given the rather intellectually ungraspable nature of mystical-intuitive experiences of the seers and the difficulty of their articulation in the ordinary language. In the third chapter the concepts of existence and essence according to Mulla Sadra are at first explained. The issue of fundamentality of existence and subjectivity of quiddity or essence was a sort of novelty in the Sadra’s system which he never failed to emphasize and argue about. The existence is a necessary presupposition of all ontological discourse while the essence is subjective and derivative. It is true that our knowledge of reality is confined to phenomena but the phenomena can subsist only in an existence that is out there, external to us and is the substantial basis of all existent beings. A discussion of the fundamental issues of existence and quiddity leads to further discussion of the issues of relation between unity and multiplicity or God and the phenomenal world. In Sadra’s system the emergence of the world is seen to be interpreted as the step of transference from necessity to possibility, from transcendent to empirical, from unity to multiplicity, from inside to outside. Especially for man, the fall or Habut means cutting off of the direct relation between God and man and his being entangled into the phenomenal world of opposition and multiplicity. Sadra’s proofs for existence of God called Seddiqin argument is the next subject of our discussion. The goal of this section is to answer the question if 4 there are any arguments for the existence of God in which reason can have confidence? Islamic philosophers have always endeavored to find a rational way to God but the most famous version of it has been given by Mulla Sadra. It is not easy to fully comprehend the foundations of this argument that were written down in his books, particularly Asfar. This argument is given in the framework of Islamic philosophy. An attempt however is made here to explain the argument of Sadra and show the advantage of it over philosophers like Ibn Sina. The relation between soul and body is the next issue that has been dealt with. Sadra’s view of the soul can be understood only with reference to his views on trans-substantial motion. This is because one of the main implications of trans- substantial motion in the school of Sadra is the creation and subsistence of the soul. By accepting transsubstantial motion of the soul many of the problems regarding its originatedness and subsistence will automatically be solved, since on this basis the bodily origination and spiritual subsistence (the immortality) of the soul can be justified and a coherent theory can be presented. However, as none of the philosophers before Sadra believed in trans-substantial motion and its basis, they were not able to present a complete theory about the soul. Sadra did not consider the soul and the spirit as two separate things. He took the soul and the spirit as a single thing and tried to deny the reasons and evidences which were contrary to his idea. It will also be seen how in the books which he wrote in the last years of his life, he came to accept that the spirit existed before the creation of the body and this can confirm the separation of 5 the soul and the spirit which is in fact a denial of his own previous opinion on this matter.
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