Alhassanain(p) Network for Heritage and Islamic Thought

Knowledge as a Mode of Being

Having provided a brief analysis ofSadra’s ontological premises, we can now turn to how he develops a rigorous ontology of theintelligibles , which underpins his concept of knowledge as ‘appropriation’ and ‘participation’. To broach this all-important subject and prepare his reader,Sadra makes a number of observations on knowledge. In an important passage of theAsfar titled “concerning that intellection consists of the unification of the substance of theintellector (al-‘aqil ) with theintellected (al-ma‘qul )”, he identifies man's ability to know as the most difficult and baffling problem of philosophy.Sadra states this point in the form of a historical aphorism:

“The fact that the soul is able to intellect the forms of intelligible things is the most mysterious and obscure problem of philosophy, which none of the scholars of Islam has been able to solve up to our own day. When we looked at the difficulty of this problem and pondered over the question that knowledge of the substance is substance and accident, we did not find what cures the disease and what quenches the thirst in the books of the people [i.e., philosophers], especially those of their master Abu ‘Ali [Ibn Sina ] like theShifa ' ,al-Najat ,al-Isharat ,'Uyun al-hikmah and others. Rather, what we have found among his group, likes and followers such as his studentBahmanyar , the master of the followers of the Stoics (al-riwaqiyyin ) [i.e.,Suhrawardi ][29] ,Nasir al-Din al-Tusi , and others who came after them, is that they did not propose anything on which one could rely. If this is the case with those who are considered to be the most respected [in philosophy], think of the situation of the people of fanciful thoughts and imaginations, and those who are the first and foremost in discussions and dialectical argumentation.”[30]

The difficulty is further augmented by the fact that knowledge, like being, does not lend itself to easy definitions. Knowledge is circular in that every time we try to define it, we are bound to do it through itself. There is no way we can exclude the term to be defined from the definition we may provide for it. HereSadra points to a strong parallelism between knowledge (‘ilm ) considered from this point of view and being (wujud ) as the most comprehensive reality that defies definition, and this is the first step in constructing knowledge as a mode of being:

“It seems that knowledge is among those realities whoseipseity (inniyyah ) is identical with its essence (mahiyyah ). Realities of this kind cannot be defined, for definition consists of genus and difference, both of which are universals whereas every being is a particular reality by itself. It cannot be made known through complete description either because there is nothing more known than knowledge as it is an existential state of consciousness (halah wijdaniyyah )[31] which the knower, being alive, finds in his essence from the very beginning without veil or obscurity. It is not [in the nature of knowledge] to allow itself to be known by something more apparent and clear because everything becomes clear to the intellect by the knowledge it has. How does then knowledge become clear by anything other than itself?”[32]

Even though the circular and non-definitional nature of knowledge represents common sense epistemology in Islamic thought and is shared by various schools[33] , this is whereMulla Sadra takes his departure from his predecessors by equating knowledge (‘ilm ) with being (wujud ). ForSadra , the ultimate object of knowledge is being particularized through a myriad of modes, states and instances. In fact, in many places,Sadra defines knowledge simply as a mode of being (nahw al-wujud ): when we say that we know something, we affirm or deny the existence of something, and this cannot be other than being. In this generic sense, being is the standing condition of all knowledge and precedes the discursive considerations of the knowing subject. That is whySadra makes knowledge of being indispensable for a proper understanding of knowledge:

“If someone is ignorant about the question ofbeing , he is of necessity ignorant about all of the principles of knowledge and foundations because it is throughbeing that everything is known, and it is the beginning of all description (tasawwur ) and more known than anything that provides description. When someone ignores it, he ignores everything besides it. As we have mentioned before, the true knowledge ofbeing comes about only through unveiling (kashf ) and witnessing (mushahadah ). It has thus been said that ‘he who has no unveiling has no knowledge’.”[34]

To know something is to grasp and appropriate[35] its intelligible form (al-surat al-ma‘qulah ), and the intelligible forms are not mere concepts, notions or contents of the mind but substances that belong to the world of theintelligibilia [36] . The key here is to understand the ontological status of the intelligible world from which the intellect obtains the intelligible forms and with which it ultimately becomes united. Following theNeoplatonists before him,Sadra establishes the world of theintelligibilia as an independent realm of existence where the forms and archetypal realities of things reside. In a strictly hierarchical scale of being, the intelligible world occupies a place higher than the physical and/or sensate world, which is construed to be only a dim reflection of the world of Platonic Ideas.[37] To useSadra’s own words, “material forms are nothing but icons and moulds of these disembodied [i.e., intelligible] forms”.[38] Since the Ideas or whatSadra calls ‘intelligible forms’ exist in an immutable world above the world of generation and corruption, they enjoy universality and permanence.

The radical distinction that Plato and his followers had drawn between thesensibilia and theintelligibilia is fully incorporated bySadra with a clear sense of ontological superiority: since theintelligibilia are not bound by such material conditions as generation and corruption or movement and rest, they enjoy a higher ontological status. The epistemic corollary of this view is even more important for our purposes here, and it is the conviction that since theintelligibilia are grounded in the immutable world of being and forms, they are cognitively more reliable than the senses.[39] The senses through which we come to experience thesensibilia help us establish the corporeal reality of things whereas their meaning and intelligible structure is disclosed by the intellect and by its participation in the world of theintelligibilia . The knowledge of things obtained through the intellect, which we must understand in itsSadrean sense of uniting with the intelligible world (ittihad al-‘aqil wa’l-ma’qul ), is closer to the nature of things. Even when looking at sensible objects, the intellect seeks the intelligible form and structure in them; otherwise we would be mistaking the function of the intellect for that of the senses. In fact, this is also the basis of the Aristotelian concept ofhylomorphism and ‘abstraction’: we know things by abstracting and extracting their form from matter. This explains whySadra considers intellection as the ‘disclosure’ of being: by knowing things, we become ‘united’ with their intelligible forms that are beyond their corporeal-sensate attributes.

Now it is clear that whenMulla Sadra , like Plato and Plotinus before him, speaks of intelligible forms and substances, he insists on the fact that they imply an ontological state of being and that this intelligible and ‘formal’ reality is more real and essential than the material properties of things that we detect through our senses.[40] In other words, when the intellect unites with intelligible forms, it does not generate a merenoetic state internal and intrinsic to the mind but becomes united with a particular actuality or, still better, particular aspect of being. InSadra’s words, “when the soul intellects something, it becomes united with its intellective form”.[41] What this view implies is that we perceive the reality of X only by standing in a cognitive relation to the intellective form of X. Every act of intellection involves taking a stance towards being and uncovering an aspect of it, and this is foundational to the unity of being and knowledge – a theme that runs through theSadrean corpus.

To understandSadra’s position fully, we may remember that in the Platonic tradition, sense data, reserved for the transient world of becoming, could only yield opinion (doxa ), which is ontologically imperfect and epistemologically unreliable, whereasepisteme , the real knowledge of things grounded in the immutable world of being, can be obtained only from the world of the Forms, which has a higher ontological status and warrants epistemic credibility.[42] There is thus a clear juxtaposition between thesensibilia (mahsusat ) anddoxa on the one hand, and theintelligibilia (ma’qulat ) andepisteme , on the other. In this context, the opposite of being is not non-being or non-existence but becoming, and this is a crucial point for the understanding ofSadra and theNeoplatonists .[43] AsSadra repeatedly states, being is reality, perfection, existential plenitude, completion, comprehensiveness, permanence, light, clarity, goodness and order whereas becoming is imperfection, confusion, cloudiness, transience and illusion.[44] This accords intelligible forms an epistemic status far more rigorous and reliable than the senses. This distinction is crucial because the primary interest of the philosopher lies not in the transient and contingent world of the senses but in the universal and immutable nature of things – a quest that sets the traditional philosopher radically apart from the (post)modernontologies of the contingent.

An important premise from whichSadr a draws most of his conclusions can be stated as follows: the mode of being proper to intelligible forms is higher than the mode of being proper to material substances. The order of intelligibility has a higher ontological status because it transcends the limitations of corporeality. Intelligible forms have a concrete existence of their own and are even more concrete and ‘powerful’ than corporeal substances. That is why Sadr a states that “the realization of perceptual forms for [in] the perceiving substance is stronger in realization ( tahsil ) and perfection ( takmil ) than the realization of natural forms in matter and its kinds.” [45] The “intellective horse” ( al-faras al-‘aqli ), i.e., the intelligible reality/form of the horse is more real than the physical horse in the barn: the intellective horse is a simple unique being containing in its simplicity all of the lower species and instances of ‘horse-ness ’. In this sense, the real horse is not the physical horse composed of flesh and bones but the ‘archetypal horse’ detached and disembodied from the entanglements of material existence. An individual horse may die, disappear, take various colors, sizes, and types, all of which lend themselves to impermanency and imperfection whereas the ‘intellective horse’ remains constant and determines the context within which we attribute specific qualities and ‘meaning-properties’ to the physical horse. After all, the idea of horse-ness does not die with the perishing of the individual horse. In Sadr a’s words:

“These forms [i.e., the archetypal forms] are more exalted and nobler than what is to be found in lower existents. Thus this animal in flesh, composed of contradictory qualities and forms in constant change, is a parable and shadow for the simple animal while there is still a higher [animal] above it. Now, this is the intellective animal which is simple, singular, and containing in its simplicity all of the individual instances and classes of material and mental existence under its species. And this is its universal archetype, i.e., the intellective horse. This holds true for all species of animals and other existents … When the being of something intensifies, it passes from its present species to a higher one even though every intensification takes place with full involvement in its current species [i.e., after exhausting all possibilities and potentialities in that species].”[46]

When the mind perceives a sensate object, it transforms it into a mental concept but leaves its sensate and corporeal properties behind. When we look at a mountain, for instance, our minds do not become rock. When we think of fire, our minds do not become hot. ForSadra , this simply means that the mind does not appropriate such ‘weak qualities’ as position, time, matter, growth, etc. By eliminating such material qualities, we do not become less knowledgeable about things but come closer to grasping their intelligible forms and, eventually, uniting with them.

Intelligibility, Disembodiment and Knowledge

In establishing the ontological status of intelligible forms as ‘more’ and ‘higher’,Sadra adopts an old Peripatetic principle[47] and identifies the basis of intelligibility asincorporeality and disembodiment (tajarrud ). According to this view, the more removed a thing is fromcorporeality, the closer it is to have more meanings or meaning-properties. The possibility of a substance becoming more intense in intelligibility is proportionate to its being disengaged and disembodied from the limitations of material existence. Sensible qualities are local and transient whereas intellectual properties are universal and non-spatial. Theexperience of hotness and coldness in physical entities, for instance, is bound by time and space and its existence depends on the presence of hot or cold objects. The particularity of sensible objects makes their experience a limited one in that they can be sensed only as individual objects, under specific circumstances, in definite time and space coordinates, etc. Hotness and coldness asuniversals , however, do not require the presence or absence of any such object, and their application to infinite number of objects is not enhanced or hampered by the quantity of hot and cold objects. Things of such a universal nature are more real in the sense that they have a higher share of intelligibility.[48]

This leads to a tripartite classification of knowledge, whose roots go back toIbn Sina . When a substance is completely immersed in matter and corporeality, it is called sensation (hiss ) and forms the basis of sense-perception. For bothIbn Sina andSadra , this level represents the minimal definition of existence. When it is partially disembodied from matter, it is called “imaginal ” (khayal ) and represents an intermediary stage or isthmus (barzakh ) between matter and pureintelligibles . Lastly, when something is completely disengaged from material attachments, it becomes a pure intellect (‘aql ) and intelligible (ma‘qul ), making intellection (ta‘aqqul ) possible.[49] This new classification is introduced here to substantiate the ontological basis of the degrees of disembodiment as a condition of knowledge.

SinceSadra considers intelligibility as a function of being and defines it in terms of complete or partial disembodiment (tajarrud ), he comes back to the concept oftashkik (gradation of being) and argues that things are subject to intensification (tashaddud ) and diminution (tada‘‘uf ) in accord with their ontological state.[50] As stated before, the principle of gradation establishes a hierarchical order of being in which substances undergo an upward or downward journey. When a being actualizes its dormant potentialities and attains further perfection in terms of its properties, qualities, and so on, it intensifies in being. To bring this into sharper focus,Sadra reverses common sense ontology. Instead of defining existential properties of things (lawazim al-wujud ) as qualities acquired by a substance, he construes them as various modes and states of being in which a subject intensifies or diminishes. When a red apple, for instance, is ripened, it increases in redness rather than merely assuming the quality of ‘more redness’. By the same token, when substances actualize their potentialities and become more perfect, they eventually increase in being, namely intensify inexistentiation and intelligibility. This is predicated upon the idea that actuality implies perfection while potentiality signifies privation and imperfection. In the language ofNeoplatonism , actuality means full realization and establishment in existence because such a substance is not deprived of any qualities and attributes it potentially possesses. By contrast, a potential substance is marred by imperfection because it is considered to be ‘non-existent’ until it realizes its potential from within or by an external agent.[51]

The link between the ontological state of things and their proximity to, or distance from, the intelligible world is established by the form (al-surah ) – the very term both Platonists andPeripatetics use profusely to account for meaning in things. ‘Form’ as disembodiment and intelligibility underscores the assumption that the further removed a thing is from corporeal existence, the closer it is to pure intelligibility. [52] Sadr a explains this as follows:

“Forms of things are of two kinds. The first is the material form that subsists with matter, position, space, and so on. This kind of form, due to its mode of material existence, can be neither intelligible in actuality nor sensible (mahsusah ) except accidentally. The second kind is the form that is disengaged from matter, position and space either completely, in which case it is an intelligible form in actuality, or partially in which case it is animaginal or sensate form in actuality. It has become clear in the view of all philosophers that the being of the intelligible form in actuality and its being for theintellector are one and the same thing from one point of view without disagreement. In the same way, the being of a sensible, insofar as it is a sensible, is identical with its being for the sensate substance.”[53]

A peculiar aspect ofSadra’s gradational ontology and its application to the concept of knowledge is what is called ‘axiarchism ’ i.e., the view that the world is grounded in value and that the reality of being can be explained primarily invaluational terms.[54] The ontological hierarchy thatSadra applies to knowledge invests his gradational ontology with an axiological dimension in that the language of ontological states is saturated with qualitative andvaluational terms. An ontologically higher substance is not only more in terms of its existential properties but also more perfect, real, reliable, worthier of consideration, has more light and luminosity, and more likely to be the immediate concern of the philosopher. We can also say that ontologically higher existents are closer to being true, good, and beautiful – terms that are to be understood in their Platonic sense. ForSadra , being signifies pure light (al-nur ) and light is goodness as opposed to darkness that represents ‘evil’. At this point,Sadra , followingIbn al-‘Arabi , defines being as goodness par excellence (khayr mahd ,summun bonum ) because being is not only theontic and/or physical ground of things but also the source of such axiological qualities as reality, meaning, truth, intelligibility, goodness, beauty, plenitude, perfection, etc. The following depiction of the world of theintelligibilia , whichSadra quotes from theTheology of Aristotle , provides a good summary of the axiological overtones of intelligibility:

“The higher world is the perfect living [reality] in which everything is contained for it has originated from the primary perfect source. In it is to be found every soul and every intellect, and there is absolutely no poverty and need here since the things in here are all filled with richness and life as if it is life that exceeds and gushes forth. The life of these things issues forth from one single source, not as if it is just one single heat or one single wind alone but all of them are one single quality in which there is every food [i.e., livelihood for them].”[55]

Referring to Plato this time,Sadra describes the intelligible world as follows:

“There are two worlds: the world of disengaged substances that pertain to the intellect and the soul, and the world of luminous and dark bodies. The world of disembodied substances is the world of knowledge and vitality in which God created a perceptual, intellective andimaginal form vis-à-vis what is to be found in the world of physical bodies, which is their vitality and the mirror of their appearance. The Divine Book refers to this: “For those who of their Lord’s Presence stand in fear, two gardens [of paradise are readied]”.[56] Concerning this matter, the noble Plato has said that the world is of two kinds: the world of the intellect in which are to be found the intellective Forms (muthul ), and the world of sense (hiss ) in which are to be found the obscurities of sensation[57] … The existence of the world of the intellect is the principle of all other beings and their sustainer, active principle, and ultimate goal. Their clear vision is hidden to man because of the excess of their manifestation and our veiling from them because of the distraction of material bodies. We can reasonably point to the unity of this world and the simplicity of everything in it and the multiplicity of this world [of physical bodies] in view of the number of individuals. It should be known that the luminous Platonic Forms are substances in themselves and their being is the source of the substances of this world and theirquiddities . They are also the realities of these sensate bodies.”[58]

Gradation of being, as defined bySadra , leads to the hierarchy of the cosmos on the one hand, and the ultimate reducibility of all qualities to being, on the other. One favorite example thatSadra is fond of using to illustrate this is ‘man’ (al-insan ) and his relation to plant and animal kingdoms. As a higher state of being, ‘humanity’ contains everything that belongs to plants and animals. Plants thrive on vegetation, animals possess vegetative faculty with a host of other qualities missing in plants such as mobility and sensation, and man contains all of these qualities at a higher level or in whatSadra calls ‘ontological simplicity’ (basit ). Man contains the totality of plant and animal attributes in a ‘simple manner’, and being a simple substance vis-à-vis the lower states below it, man gains a higher ontological status.Sadra expresses this with a somewhat cryptic phrase that we do not find in other philosophers: “a simple reality is all things” (basit al-haqiqah kull al-ashya ’ ).[59] The exact meaning of this phrase can be clarified only within the specific context in which it is used. When we apply it to the concept of man, it signifies that ‘man-ness ’ contains all qualities and properties that belong to ‘plant-ness ’ and ‘animal-ness ’. Another example is light and its degrees of intensification. A candle light is imperfect compared to moon light and moonlight is imperfect compared to the light of the sun. The sun, the most condensed source of light, is ontologically higher than all other forms of light. Ontological simplicity, then, implies not only ‘non-compositeness’ but also, and perhaps more importantly, intensity, priority, and completeness.

Sadra applies the same framework to intelligible substances, and this is a crucial difference between him and the Peripatetic philosophers who accept gradation (tashkik ) only for logical concepts. The intelligible world, just like the order of being, allows gradation in terms of intensification and diminution: an intelligible substance becomes more intense and higher when it contains all of the intelligible realities below it. To use our previous example, man contains in himself all possible intelligibility and meaning available to animal and vegetative states. When we talk about the essence of man-ness , we do not exclude from it anything that belongs to the definitions of animal-ness and plant-ness .‘Human-ness ’ as an intelligible form contains all of the lower and imperfect states of meaning in a simple manner. In this sense, man ranks higher than plants and animals not only in the hierarchy of the natural world but also in meaning and intelligibility.