Chapter V: Movement, Time, and World-Order
A. Movement
Sadra's theory of movement is something novel in the history of Islamic thought and rests on the concept of a continuous structure of spatio-temporal events. Solid bodies are liquidated and analyzed into a factor of pure potentiality of movement called matter and an actualizing factor, called “physical form” or “bodily nature” which is continuously changing and giving rise to a continuum which is spatio-temporal in the sense that neither space nor time exists independently but both are integrated functions or aspects of this continuum of movement. Further, this movement is unidirectional and evolutionary, resulting in ever higher forms of existence until material existence reaches the stage where it rises beyond the realm of space-time: this movement is called “movement-n-substance”(haraka fi'l-jawhar)
where the very substance of bodies is subject to change as opposed to the merely qualitative change - i.e., in terms of size, shape, or other qualities - and where this latter form of change is reduced to the former.
But before discussing these substantive points, the objective existence of movement as a process has to be established and this calls for a correction of certain statements emanating from Ibn Sina, the High Priest of Islamic Peripatetic philosophy.
Ibn Sina says that, with regard to movement, two ideas may be distinguished. One is the concept of movement as a continuity, i.e., the passage(tadrij)
of motion from one point to another or from the beginning to the end as a whole.
This can exist only in the mind, since the mental picture conserves the various points that a moving body has traversed involving rise and decay of passage-instants and constructs these into a unified present whole. The second, which is actually observable in the external world, is an unchanging, permanent condition of the moving body, the condition, viz., of being somewhere between the beginning and the end. This second view does not involve the notion of change, since it merely sees the object at some space-point at a time-instant. The first view is called the passage(qat`)
view, the second the “medial(tawassut)
” view. According to Ibn Sina, it is the first, subjective, view which gives rise to the idea of time as an extension, since the observation is concerned only with time-instants.
But Ibn Sina refused to call time as an extension unreal or fictional, since its basis lay in our experience of the external world.
Sadra's teacher, Mir Damad, criticized the view that movement as a process was subjective. He argued that if the idea of a continuous process as a whole or a unity is inconceivable, then it can exist as little in the mind as in the outside world. But that it is not only not inconceivable but can be actually experienced is shown by a body extended in space where its parts are continuous and yet the whole is also given. Just as in time, one part succeeds another, so does in space one part of a body succeed another. The idea of a gradually unfolding process is not antagonistic to its existence as a whole in time which is also an extended unity, although of course it cannot exist in a time-instant.
Sadra accepts his master's view and gives several reasons why Ibn Sina's statements must be interpreted to accommodate the objectivity of movement as process, one of them being that the subjectivity view contradicts certain other statements of the philosopher.
It is surprising, however, that al-Sabzawari in his commentary does not accept Sadra's position and insists on the subjectivity of the passage-view of movement, although it appears to be cardinal for Sadra's fundamental theory of “substantive movement,” which al-Sabzawari certainly accepts.
For, otherwise, it is not at all obvious how one can erect a theory of an objective space-time continuum. It is true, as we shall see, that for Sadra and al-Sabzawari, the essence of the world is change and newness, but it is this change and newness that, as a process, makes the continuum possible.
Traditional philosophy holds that movement, being a stable condition of flow(hala sayyala)
which creates a continuous process only in the mind, needs a substrate to support it, this substrate being at once something stable and moving, i.e., being in a sense actual and in another sense potential since its actualization consists in movement. This view, of course, holds that movement occurs in accidents only, i.e., place, size, quality, etc. It follows also that movement, being confined to accidents, can never produce a difference in the essence or species of the moving body although, as we shall see, this movement does produce specific differences in the accident (e.g., black) in respect of which movement occurs to the substratum.
However, Sadra goes on to say, since motion means moving as a verb, i.e., a “continuous renewal and lapse(al-tajaddud wa'l-inqida')
” of the parts of motion, it is impossible that its immediate cause should be something with a stable or enduring being. For, a stable or enduring entity will contain in itself the passing phases of movement as a present fact, and this togetherness of all passing phases would amount to stability, not movement. Movement, therefore, cannot be established on the basis of a stable entity. Such an entity can have a stable essence, but not a stable being which must consist simply in change and mutation. There is, therefore, beneath the change of accidents, a more fundamental change, a change-in-substance - thanks to ever-changing material forms - to which, in fact, all changes in accidents are finally traceable.
All bodies, be they celestial or material, are subject to this substantial change in their very being and this proves that the entire spatio-temporal world is temporally originated insofar as its existence is ever-renewed every moment.
This view modifies the traditional in three respects. First, it can no longer be held that movement needs an enduring substratum unless we are talking about the static essence of the immediate cause of the movement, not of its real being, which must be renewed every moment. The essence is static because it yields the concept “that which constantly renews itself as the basis of material nature and causes movement in nature”;
or else we mean by movement accidental, not substantive movement.
Secondly, as we shall see shortly, even the substratum of the accidental movement cannot be a stable entity in the traditional sense, for, the substratum of accidents can now be conceived only as body in a general sense, i.e., as a species, not as a definite piece of body, as subjected to a constantly changing bodily or material nature or instant-form. Hence the “enduring” entity for accidents can be only the process or a part of the process viewed as a unity. But truly speaking, accidental change is itself traceable to substantive change, wherein nothing endures except change. For, in that change, movement and that which moves are identical.
Thirdly, what has been called above “the immediate cause of movement,” i.e., that which is self-moving and causes all accidental movements, is precisely the nature with which body or matter is endowed or, rather, it is the specific nature which is commonly held to create real species - heavens, man, animal, plant, mineral. It is this nature which is constantly subject to change and with it all accidents change as well. Traditional philosophy regards this nature as stable, but as a producer of change; and it is held that movement is either the result of nature (as when a stone falls) or constraint of nature (as when a stone is pushed up) or free volition. But it is obvious that all movement is finally due to nature for even in volition the body moves only because it has a nature. Further, Ibn Sina and other philosophers admit that nature does change in order to give rise to movement, but they insist that this change comes upon the nature of the body from the outside in terms of the renewal or emergence of the degrees of distance of the moving body in respect of its goal.
They also talk about a double series in movement, viz., the basic movement itself and the successive degrees of the body's approximation to the goal and assert that each of these two series, together with the stable nature of the body, gives rise to the other series. But this method of explaining motion and linking the moving with the stable is utterly insufficient, for the question is: how does the movement itself start? The two series and their interaction may be helpful in discovering or describing the characteristics of the movement but they cannot explain their own genesis, which must lie in the nature of the body itself. Hence the nature of the body must itself lie in motion.
If nature is in constant flux and every moment we have a new body with a novel form, the question is: whence arises the idea of unity of a “thing” and the idea that a certain thing is, e.g., an animal or a plant. The answer is that in any given “thing” the constantly changing forms are so similar that we imagine it to be the same and subsume it under a stable, static concept, for example, man or plant. This is because concepts or essences are static and serve to describe certain properties which enable a certain set of them to be invested with “thingness”, i.e., an enduring entity. It is only when the culmination of forms reaches a certain crucial stage, as e.g., plant, having exhausted its own potentialities, moves into the higher animal kingdom, that we realize that a change has occurred. Otherwise, this change is imperceptibly taking place all the time.
But man can experience this change within himself if he examines his own consciousness with sufficient subtlety and acuteness and can see that the absolutely changing is the absolutely stable and can visualize the possibility of his finally transcending this spatio-temporal realm and becoming a member of the divine order, since all this change is rooted in and manifestation of that order itself. Existence which is God Himself has a natural impulsion toward taking ever new forms.
A “thing” for Sadra is, therefore, a particular “structure of events,” thanks to the continuity of movement and the similarity of infinitesimal forms which permit the subsumption of a particular event-system under a mental concept or essence. In reality, there is nothing but a flow of forms and since this flow is unidirectional and irreversible, each successive form “contains” all preceding forms and transcends them. The movement is from the more general and indeterminate toward the more definite and the more concrete: this process resembles the rise of ever more concrete species and individuals from the general and indeterminate being of genuses, thanks to the emeregnce of successive differentiae.
Sadra explicitly rejects the atomism of Kalam -theology supported by al-Razi, because, by postulating movement by jerks or “jumps”(tafra)
,” this theory denies the reality of continuity and process.
Whereas in Kalam atomism, therefore, a “thing” is made up of discrete atoms, for Sadra a “thing” is a particular segment of this continuous process regarded as a particular “event system” for purposes of description.
At this point emerges the importance to Sadra's doctrine of the objective existence of movement as process which al-Sabzawari does not accept. For Sadra, an event-system, although it is a part of the process of reality, is not subjective and arbitrary: a “thing” is a real individual having a validity of its own, whereas for al-Sabzawari, what is real is only the flow or movement of a ceaseless succession of rising and decaying forms, segments of which the mind somehow carves out for inspection and description, but this mental operation has really no validity,
although quite often al-Sabzawari accepts the language of his master and calls a particular space-time extension a “real unity” and a “real individual.”
We now come to a more detailed consideration of how movement can be said to occur in the accidental categories of quality and quantity so that we may prove from this the existence of substantive movement or movement in the category of substance itself. A preliminary remark may be in order here. We have indicated earlier (and this will be elaborated here) that movement in accidents is, in the final analysis, linked with and consequent upon substantive movement. It is, therefore, as irreversible as the latter. But it is obvious that qualities not only increase but decrease: cold changes into hot and vice versa; black becomes white and vice versa. Yet Sadra insists that all qualitative change is towards perfection and is unidirectional, like,
and indeed consequent upon, movement-in-substance.
Sadra himself appears to have left this point unexplained, but al-Sabzawari thinks that while traditional philosophers hold that accidents are not really “changed into” but simply “replace” each other, a consequence of Sadra's doctrine is that they “change into” one another. But along with this change, which is purely external and bidirectional, there is an inner, “essential” change in qualities which is unidirectional.
The first point to note is that in the case of motion in accidents, the substratum of movement is not the accidental categories themselves but the substance itself: when “black” increases in intensity, it is not the case that “blackness increases” but that “the body increases in blackness.” This view held by the philosophers is correct and indicates that the substance itself changes in respect of blackness. For, if the subject of increase were blackness itself, then either the original blackness still remains or does not remain. If it does not survive, then obviously it cannot be the subject either and another, new blackness has arisen. If it remains intact, then no increase, no movement has taken place in it. But if it remains and a quantum of new blackness has been added to it, then a new addition from the outside, as it were, has occurred and the original blackness has still not changed. This shows that when blackness increases, a new black comes into existence which the original black has changed into, and it is the substance itself which moves from one grade of blackness to another. That is why the philosophers hold that in qualitative change an infinite series or species of, for example, black arises, each replacing the other in succession but that this infinity is potential, i.e., infinitely divisible by the mind. The philosophers, therefore, assert that, in its intensification in blackness, it is not the case that the body has two blacks, the original and the additional, but an entirely new species of black.
On this account, if the question is asked: What constitutes continuity in view of the fact that nothing original of the quality remains but there are only ever new species arising?, the answer is that the substratum continues and also continues to change. This picture is certainly different from that of the Kalam atomism which does not allow any continuity. But this philosophical doctrine has also to be further modified since it does not make for the qualitative change as a process inasmuch as nothing original in terms of black quality is allowed to remain. Let us imagine that a point, for example, the head of a cone, races over a surface. In this case, there is a single point that persists throughout the time of motion and there are other points, i.e., those on the surface with each of which the former becomes successively identified. In the example of the intensification of blackness, therefore, we must suppose that there is an original blackness which identifies itself with points of ever-increasing blackness and gives them a kind of unity. The unity may be weak since, as we have said before, the original is like an indeterminate genus and concreteness belongs progressively to the emergent species which alone possess existential reality, but it is enough to enable the whole to be subsumed under the concept or essence “black”.
It follows from this that the substratum of qualitative change - in this case, of black - is not just body but body with some degree of black.
This conclusion is important for clarifying the problem of quantitative change, since a great amount of difficulty has been experienced with regard to it. The reason is that when a certain quantity increases (or decreases), the original quantity is no more in existence and when the quantity is destroyed, that which is quantified, i.e., body, is also destroyed. For this reason, al-Suhrawardi and his followers denied movement in the category of quantity altogether.
Ibn Sina also experienced difficulty in quantitative change in organic bodies, particularly in animals and plants, because he thought no persisting factor could be located in these bodies. Sadra quotes a lengthy passage from Ibn Sina where he mentions many successive alternative possibilities, but rejects them all and ends in a prayer that God may bestow a satisfactory solution upon someone who persists in his thinking endeavor, and with the admonition that one must not despair of finding an answer.
Sadra offers two solutions for these two difficulties, one felt by al-Suhrawardi with regard to inorganic quantities and the other felt by Ibn Sina (whom he will criticize again on this point below in Part III, Chapter I, note 28) about the unity of organic body in plants and animals. His solution to the first difficulty on the analogy of the quality of blackness is that the substratum of quantitative change is matter plus some quantity, not a definite quantity
or, in other words, matter clothed in bodily form. For, continuity or extension, i.e., the capacity for dimensions, is the differentia of body as such and with it body as species comes to be constituted. This is called “natural body(al-jism al-tabiì)
” as distinguished from “mathematical body(al-jism al-tàlimi)
” for which definite dimensions are necessary. Now, the substratum of substantive change and all qualitative and quantitative change, according to Sadra, is the former - a bodily form - plus some quantity and quality, but not a definite quantity and quality, for with a definite quantity and quality, the body will become “mathematical.”
This “some quantity and quality” is that quantity and quality which is the ''common factor(qadar mushtarak)
” in the successive phases of change and persists through them.
What makes this assumption necessary is the fact of the continuity of the process which, as we have seen, integrates and bestows unity upon the phenomenon of movement. If there were no continued unity of the process, it would be correct to assume that nothing of the original black or original quantity remained in the substratum. The real substratum is, therefore, the continuity of the process itself. Those things which are subject to change and continuous replacement in this process are the definite quantities and qualities (as opposed to quantity-in-general and quality-in-general which do not change) which we have described earlier as the potential infinity of qualitative and quantitative species between the beginning and the end of the movement.
To recapitulate, from the complexity of our philosopher's statements, the following points seem to emerge clearly. All movement is essentially evolutionary and undirectional. All movement has the effect of producing an individual process - entity whose unity is assured by a substratum and an indeterminate quantity or quality which behaves, vis-à-vis the progressively emerging infinity of determinate quantities and qualities, as a genus does vis-à-vis concrete species. The substratum is something nebulous (matter or bodily nature); the persisting unity is something indeterminate like a genus; the infinity of emergent species within the movement is concrete but only potential in the sense that they are mentally divisible ad infinitum, but the resulting unity is objective and strong, a unity of the process-entity or the event-structure as an existential individual.
For grasping the full significance of these conclusions we must await Sadra's doctrine of substantive movement, and the following solution of Ibn Sina's problem will hold a definite clue to that doctrine which rests squarely on Sadra's theory of existence.
Of course, the answer given above to al-Suhrawardi would also hold good for Ibn Sina since the required persisting substratum is only body-in-general(jism mutlaq)
, not a body in particular. This is as true of organic matter in plants as of inorganic matter.
But Ibn Sina's tribulations are due to the fact that he did not fully realize that, in the scale of evolution, every higher differentia contains the lower ones as its potentiality or matter, and is itself equivalent to concrete existence. In our discussion of essence in the second chapter of this first part of the book, we have established the differentia-existence equivalence. Therefore, in a plant, body behaves as matter and “is capable of growth and decay” as differentia. So long as the differentia remains, the being of the plant will remain intact and any changes in its body or matter-principle will not affect it. Thus, with growth or diminution of the body, the body-individual i.e., the definite quantity of the body will be destroyed, but the differentia “capable of growth and decay” will remain intact since the differentia has ensured that some body will remain as its part. So is the case with animal vis-à-vis plant: as long as the animal differentia, viz., “capable of perception and locomotion,” remains, animal will remain intact despite a thousand changes in its body. The existential identity of all higher forms of existence is ensured by their respective differentiae.
It may be noted that the language in which Sadra has formulated this last point appears confused and even contradicts his answer to the first point. We recall that he had said there that the unity of movement in quantity and quality is, in part at least, due to the persistence of the body-in-general and/or quantity or quality-in-general. But now: “capable of growth is the plant's differentia whereby its being is perfected, since its perfection (i.e., concrete existence) is not due to its being a body alone which is only its principle of potentiality. Hence, there is no doubt that the change of bodily entities cannot cause change in the substantial being of the plant itself since body is taken in it only as body-in-general.... Thus it [the plant], insofar as it is a natural body-in-general is destroyed as an entity, but insofar as it is a body capable of growth, is not destroyed, either itself or even its part for its part is nothing, but body-in-general. “
Yet, there is no confusion or contradiction if we take the body-in-general and the quantity or quality-in-general spoken of in the first point (as we have, indeed, done) in the sense of genus, while we regard the body-in-general in the first two cases in the present passage as meaning the matter-principle (as, indeed, we have done in the preceding paragraph), and we take the same expression in its third occurrence in this passage as, again, meaning genus. The context makes it very clear, but the expressions are highly confusing. Such instances abound in Sadra but only occasionally become as acute as this. It is clear that where body-in-general is said to persist and give unity it must mean genus because genus is an inalienable part of differentia; but where it is said to be alienable without affecting the differentia, it must mean matter as principle of potentiality; for when the potentiality is actualized, it dies or, if it is an existent in itself, as, for example, body vis-à-vis plant, its fate becomes indifferent to that of which it has been the potentiality but which is now actual - the higher differentia. (For the difference between genus and matter, see Chapter II above on Essence.)
The fact that, in evolutionary movement, both change and identity are preserved by the emerging differentia which is equivalent to existence, shows that, in the final analysis, substratum-form account is not important for Sadra but essence-existence account. This is because substratum-form account is not sufficient in explaining evolution or change in terms of emergence. It is true that in all change there is some kind of “enduring” substratum but this condition can be satisfied with a body or matter which may become individuated by some form, not any definite form.
The philosophers themselves admit that in a change where one form or nature is succeeded by an entirely different one, as, for example, when water becomes air, the identity of the primary matter is preserved by some form, not a definite form. If tiffs is the case with primary matter which is pure potentiality, a general-bodily-form can a fortiori be preserved because it is already actual and not pure potentiality.
But in order to explain evolutionary change, we have to cast the story of movement not in substratum-form terms but in terms of the principle of existence which, as we know by now, is characterized by “systematic ambiguity(tashkik)
,” which means a progressive unfolding of existence at ever different levels and which, therefore, permits ever-emergent newness with the retention of identity.
For existence, as we recall from Chapter I of this Part, is that principle “which by virtue of being selfsame becomes different.” Let us resume the story of movement in black color.
As we have seen, the Peripatetic philosophers held that when black color intensifies, it is still a continued unity from the beginning to the end, but at every moment during its movement it is different in the sense that it is capable of yielding a different form to the mind, even though, as we have seen, these forms may appear indistinct in normal material objects due to the close similarity of forms and, therefore, a material object appears identically the same. We have also seen that these forms are potentially infinite. From this, two conclusions follow. First, that existence is the primordial or objective reality while forms or essences are subjective, i.e., they appear only in the mind. For, if essence should be regarded as the objective reality and existence something arising in the mind, as later philosophers from al-Suhrawardi onwards have held, then the infinity of forms or essences would have to be an actual infinity, not merely a potential one, which is impossible since a structured infinite can never be actual. Secondly, because an infinity of progressive forms or essences can be yielded by this existent, viz., black body in the mind, it follows that this existence is in perpetual movement towards its goal and, despite its unity, has an infinity of individuals(afrad)
succeeding one another, not as atomic and discrete events but as a continuous process.
As we have seen before, unity-in-process can be verified by our own conscious history as an individual and by sinking into our own selves where consciousness reveals a constant stream or flow of existence and proves that each one of us is one individual, yet never the same individual at any two moments. Sadra also quotes an author, whom he does not name, to this effect.
That the human body is in constant flux from embryo to old age is an old idea and Van den Bergh has cited some very interesting passages on the point from Plutarch and Seneca.
Ibn Sina used this flux of the body to prove the non-materiality of the soul which explains abiding human identity throughout and despite physical change. Al-Ghazali and Ibn Rushd both reject this argument on the ground that even in plants and animals this identity remains despite the fact that they are in constant flux.
Sadra differs from this view in two important respects. First, according to him, the entire human being, i.e., both body and mind are in flux, not just the body. Indeed, the example he has explicitly given is of the flow of consciousness, not of the change in the body. Secondly, the flux does not mean simple change but a developmental change where the moving entity progressively realizes perfection until, as we shall see in Chapter V of Part III on eschatology, both soul and body attain an eternal existence.
This is precisely what is meant by Sadra's doctrine of “continuous movement(harakat al-ittisal)
” where both identity and change are present and are guaranteed by the principle of existence which by itself manifests itself in ever-changing forms and yet remains the same. In the case of black we may say that, in intensification, existence of the black object continuously seeks to perfect itself, by passing through ever new and progressive manifestations of black. Hence, says Sadra, “persistent existence is absolutely identical with changing existence and is also absolutely identical with each of its(infinite)
instant-manifestations.... Therefore, if we say that it (i.e., black existence) is one, we will be right; if we say it is many, we are equally right. If we say that it persists identically from the very beginning of change to the end, we shall be speaking the truth; if we say every moment it is a new emergent(hadith kulla hin)
, this will be equally true.”
The same argument from change-in-unity which applies to accidental categories must also apply to the category of substance and it must be conceded that existence moves from one essence to another while retaining its identity. Just as, that is to say, a substratum passes through infinite accidental forms (color, quantity, etc.), so must it be admitted to pass through an infinity of essential forms (mineral, plant, animal, man).
Ibn Sina accepted movement in accidental qualities but rejected movement in substance. His argument is that an essence, as opposed to an accident, is incapable of being “more or less”; a black may become more black or less black but man cannot become more of man or less of man, for man is just man, neither more nor less. This is why whereas accidents accept change, an essence can only be replaced by another essence, for example, essence of plant cannot become more of plant or less of plant but can be replaced either by form of animal or of inorganic matter. If a substance were capable of increase and decrease, then, while it increases or decreases, either the species remains the same or not. If the species remains the same, then there has been no change in the substance but only in its accidents; but if the species changes, then a new substance has arisen and the earlier one has been destroyed. Thus between every two substances, there will be an actual infinity of specific substances, which is impossible. Hence there can be no change in substance at all.
“This argument,” says Sadra, “rests on dogmatism and fallacious thinking rooted in a confusion between essence and existence and between the potential and the actual. If in the statement: 'either its species persists during intensification'
by 'persistence of species' is meant its existence, then we choose that it does persist because existence as a gradually unfolding process has a unity and its intensification means its progressive perfection. But if the question is whether the same specific essence which could be abstracted (by the mind) from it previously still continues to exist - then we choose to say that it does not remain any longer. But from this it does not follow that an entirely new substance, i.e., existence, has arisen; it only means that a new essential characteristic (or specific form) has been acquired by it (i.e., by existence...). That is to say, this substance either has been perfected or has retrogressed (the latter, however, does not actually happen) in the two modes of existence and hence its essential characteristics have been transmuted. This does not mean that an actual infinity of species has arisen (just as it did not mean in the case of black that an actual infinity of black colors had arisen); it only means that there is a single, continuous, individual existence characterized by a potential infinity of middle points in accordance with the supposed time-instants in the duration of its (moving) existence.... There is no difference between the qualitative intensification called 'change' and the quantitative intensification called 'growth' [on the one hand] and the substantive intensification called 'emergence(takawwun)
' [ on the other] in that each one of them is a gradual perfection, i.e., a movement towards the actuality of [ a new] mode of existence.... The claim that the first two are possible and the third is not possible is pure dogmatism without any proof, since the objective reality in everything is existence while essence is merely secondary or derivative as we have recurrently pointed out.”
It should be pointed out that there is a considerable ambiguity of expression in Sadra as to what is persistent and what is subject to change in movement: is it existence or essence? Sometimes he says that essence or form remains stable while existence moves to a higher degree of reality and actuality,
while at other times we are told - as in the preceding quotation - that existence remains stable while essences change. This has been noticed by al-Sabzawari.
Yet, as this commentator explains, the ambiguity is more in expression than in fact.
As for existence, since it is the only primordial and objective reality, it remains the same and God, being absolute existence, possesses absolute identity as well. But in contingent existents, although existence still remains the same, it yet becomes a mode of existence, i.e., it becomes confined to an essence in the mind. This modal existence (called the Breath of the Merciful in the preceding chapter), by passing through different and successive modes or phases, moves towards the absolute existence, viz., God. In each mode it is, therefore, different, yet the same, and this is what the principle of “systematic ambiguity” means. Essences are not systematically ambiguous, but each essence, concept, or meaning is what it is and is, therefore, static, incapable of change. But in each different mode of existence, a different complex of existential reality plus a subjective essence emerges and at each moment a modal existent yields a different form or essence to the mind. Hence one essence is continuously being replaced by another, thanks to ever-emerging modes of existence, which constitute the existential continuum. Essences can, therefore, be said to be stable because they are static. But there is also another more or less Pickwickean sense in which an essence is said to be stable. When, in a given object, the change in essence is imperceptible or infinitesimal, the broad range of form or essence remains apparently the same as a common factor between the beginning and the end of movement within that object which continues to be subsumed under a stable concept, for example, a stone, a plant, or an animal, etc.
Sadra seeks to derive his evidence par excellence for substantive movement from the statements of phiolsophers themselves regarding the movement of the heavens. The heavens, according to Ibn Sina and others, move eternally because their souls create a continuous succession of ideas or images which necessitate the occupation, by the body of the heavens, of successive positions, and, thus, each idea-position complex is succeeded by a new idea-position complex ad infinitum. Two conclusions follow from this view. First, that ideas or forms in the souls of the heavenly body are subject to continuous change precisely in the manner we have defined substantive change, viz., the continuous and infinite rise of forms or essences in a body. Secondly, it follows that positions (with other characteristics) define the very mode of existence of a body: they are either identical with this mode of existence or flow from it necessarily - just as, for example, heat flows necessarily from fire. This being the case, a change in position and in other qualitative and quantitative characteristics of a body is necessarily indicative of substantive change, i.e., change in the very mode of existence of a body. Heavenly bodies are, therefore, subject to substantive flow and change as much as any other body and cannot be eternal as philosophers have held them to be.
A crucial difficulty in this philosophical account, which Sadra exploits to his own advantage, is that the occupation of successive positions by the heavenly bodies during their ceaseless revolutions is declared by the philosophers to be “natural” since heavenly bodies are free from constraint, contrary to sub-lunar bodies which, when they occupy their natural position, do not move away from it except under constraint. Now, says Sadra, if this is the case with the heavenly bodies, this is clear proof that the very nature or substance of the heavenly body consists in ceaseless change, which is nothing other than movement-in-substance. Ibn Sina and his followers do not, however, accept this consequence and say that the heavenly body only requires a position-in-general, not particularly this or that position, and that particular positions only arise because the nature or species of movement cannot be preserved except through particular positions. But this is not correct because in the philosophers' own view the purpose of nature is not to produce something general - or universal - but an existential particular. That is why in their discussion of categories, they say that the primary substance is a particular existent and that universals are only secondary substances. It is, therefore, not correct to say that the heavens move in order to seek a position-in-general. Also, the reality in everything is not essence or a universal - which is only subjective - but particular existence. The fact and nature of the ceaseless revolution of the heavens, therefore, prove the existence of substantive change in them.
But if the substance of the heavens is fluid and unstable, how much more so will be the nature of other bodies?
It is clear from this account that, since the image-position complex of the heavens is in perpetual flux, both the body and the soul of the heavens is subject to change and that the unchanging and eternal part of the heavens is only the Intelligence which ultimately moves the soul-body complex. Indeed, all souls, insofar as they are souls, i.e., have contact with the body, are subject to substantive movement, according to Sadra. But if this is the case, a crucial difficulty arises for Sadra as well, who, as we shall see later in Part III, Chapter III (Section B), and Chapter V of this work. also affirms that the imagination of the heavens is the iepository of stable, unchanging images called “The World of Symbols or Images(Àlam al-Mithal)
,” argues at length against lbn Sina to prove that an image is non-material and holds that even undeveloped human souls which have not passed from imagination to pure intellect as well as animal souls are non-material and hence survive the death of the material body.
It is true that Sadra says there that images are not in a material body but in a symbolic or pneumatic body which has no spatial location and is not liable to material flux, but then the images in the heavenly souls should not be subject to flux either. In sum, the theory of substantive change in the heavenly bodies and souls, upon which Sadra builds their temporal emergence and denies their eternity, is in conflict with his doctrine of the World of Images.
To resume our account of the substantive movement of the heavens: since the body of the highest heaven is subject to change, it follows that that body and its revolution is not the creator of time, as the Aristotelians hold, since it is itself within time. With Plotinus, therefore, Sadra holds that time is created by the Universal Soul or the soul of the highest heaven. This world-soul, according to Sadra, has two aspects: by its intellect-oriented aspect, the soul creates time as a unity, while by its body-oriented aspect, it creates time as a succession. Plotinus, however, rejected the Aristotelian idea that time is the measure of movement and affirmed, on the contrary, that movement is the measure of time.
Sadra parts company here with both Aristotle and Plotinus and regards time as the measure of movement - not of the external movement or revolution of the heavenly body which, as we have just said, is in time itself but of the fluid physical nature or substantive movement of the heavenly body. Precisely in what manner time is the measure of this substantive movement, we shall see in the following section. But it should be noted here that, whereas for Plato the body of the heavens is kept intact by the soul although in itself it is liable to flux just as any other body, for Aristotle that body is in itself unchanging and stable in nature - made as it is of a fifth element called ether - and hence does not need a soul to keep it together. For Plotinus, again, the incorruptible and stable nature of the body of the heavens is due both to the perfect nature of that body and to the nature of the soul that created it. Muslim philosophers, as usual, combine Aristotle with Plotinus (as Plotinus had combined Aristotle with Plato) and admit both that the constitution of the heavenly body is of a fifth element and that the heavenly bodies are ensouled. Sadra absolutely rejects the idea of the indestructability of the heavenly body which, for him, has the same fluid nature as the earthly bodies and affirms that even its soul - insofar as it is soul - is liable to this flux and the whole is kept by the transcendental Intelligence.
It will be objected against me, says Sadra, that I am guilty of deviation from tradition in recommending that substance itself moves and is unstable, while, according to philosophic tradition only movement and time have that nature. It is true, he says, that an intelligent person does not deviate from tradition if he can help it, but there are strong reasons in this case to break with tradition or what is held to be tradition.
Now, the sharp distinction between essence anti existence has led to the establishment of substantive change and whereas the very essence of time and movement consists in change and renewal, in the case of natural forms, their essence is static but their existence is in perpetual flux. Just as in the case of white there are three distinct factors to be taken into account, viz., becoming white, whiteness, and that which becomes white, the first denoting the process or movement, the second that whereby a thing becomes white, and the third that which becomes white, so with regard to substantive movement there are three things or factors. The first is the fact of movement itself, the second that whereby or in respect of which there is movement, viz., bodily nature or natural forms, and the third that which so moves and that, as we have indicated, is matter.
Nor is it true to say, Sadra continues, that “no sage before me has talked about change in substance. For the First Sage who has made statements to this effect is God Himself, who tells us in the Qur'an : 'When you see the mountains, you think they are stable but they are [in fact] fleeting just like clouds';
'These people [Muhammad's opponents] are in doubt about [Our] renewed Creation';
'[The day] when the earth shall be changed into non-earth';
'We shall change your likenesses and cause you to be re-created into what you do not know,'“
etc., etc. Sadra here quotes a host of similar verses of the Qur'an and understands them in the light of his own doctrine. Elsewhere also he illustrates the constant renewal and continuous change of all modes of existence by the famous Qur'anic verse, “'He [God] is every day in a new mode'.”
It is to be noted that the modern Indo-Pakistani Muslim philosopher, Muhammad Iqbal (d. 1938), who also taught the philosophy of dynamism and creative change in terms of vitalistic thought, quoted the last-mentioned Qur'anic verse in his Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam.
It would be worthwhile to find out whether, and if so, how far, Iqbal was influenced by Sadra's thought which he had studied for his doctoral dissertation.
B. Time
Sadra rejects the view that time is an independent, self-subsistent entity. In view of his doctrine of substantive movement, he defines time, not as measure of movement as Aristotelians do, but as “measure of [physical” nature in as much as it [moves and” renews by itself.” Time, therefore, far from being an independent existent “in” which events occur, as in a container, is part of this process. It is an extension or dimension(imtidad)
of physical nature, just like other three spatial dimensions.
“Time is related to the physical nature (or form) in respect of its time-dimension just as spatial magnitude is related to the bodily nature (or form) in respect of its space-dimension.”
Whoever reflects a little on the nature of time knows that it has no reality except in the observer's mind. It is not a quality which externally characterizes body like black and white but arises only through mental analysis. Since it does not exist externally, it cannot be described as “arising” or “passing,” attributes which characterize physical nature itself, thanks to its perpetual, substantive movement. It is, therefore, odd that Peripatetic philosophers have attributed these qualities to it, as though it were an independent existent.
Indeed, just as spatial magnitude has no independent existence apart from a body, so does time have no independent existence apart from it: The measure and the measured are the same.
What Sadra is concerned to show in these statements is: (1) that just as all body or “physical nature” has a spatial magnitude, so it has an inherent time-dimension, thanks to substantive movement, and that time does not attach itself to it “from the outside”; (2) that since this movement is continuous, the entire physical field is a spatio-temporal continuum; and (3) that this continuum is an evolutionary process which has, as its goal, the attainment of a level of divine existence which is free from change and mutation, and hence beyond time. Al-Tabataba'i, Sadra's modern commentator, suggests on the basis of this interesting language, that we have here a form of the theory of relativity of time and that for Sadra time is a “fourth dimension.”
Sadra does not actually say that time is relative, although the idea that everything has an inherent and unique movement-time factor, in conjunction with Sadra's doctrine of tashkik or relativity of being, may be manipulated to yield some such inference.
The absolute standard of time is the movement of the outermost heaven - the movement, that is, in the substance of that heaven which produces the visible circular motion in terms of endlessly successive positions. As we have seen towards the end of the previous section, the Intellect (being the Divine Logos) is the creator of time, while the soul-body complex of the heaven is its primary recipient, for time is an inherent function of a body, and the soul, insofar as it is attached to the body, is also like a physical form. Since, as we have also seen above, time itself does not change or arise or pass - being a subjective entity - is called “eternity(sarmad)
” when related to God or Intellect, “perpetuity(dahr)
” when it is related to heavens and “time(zaman)
” when it is related to things that come into existence and pass out of existence. It is, however, obvious that it is not quite consistent on Sadra's part to locate the standard of time in the outermost heaven, for substantive movement is not a peculiarity of the heavens but of all physical nature and this substantive movement is not intermittent but continuous.
Time, as a subjective analytical factor, is eternal and has no beginning, just as substantive movement is eternal and without a beginning. As for God and the Intelligence, they are beyond successive or serial time. All other beings, including souls, are within time since they are subject to substantive movement. Time is eternal because whatever is conceived to be ''before” time necessarily turns out to be in time, since “before” in this context must involve time. The very temporality of time, therefore, involves the eternity of time.
Time, in this respect, is different from space, according to Sadra, since the “limitedness” of space does not involve space beyond space. Of course, “beyond space” can exist as an image or an idea in the mind, but this does not mean real space; with regard to time, however, the mere idea of a “time before time” involves real time because the reality of time is only in the mind, as we have said.
There is something queer about this argumentation: although the idea of time arises only through a mental analysis, nevertheless, time is a function of substantive movement which is not subjective but real. It would, therefore, follow from this account that the eternity of (substantive) movement is inferred from the impossibility of conceiving a time before time. Otherwise, there is no difficulty in conceiving a beginning for movement, for we can conceive that the world-movement starts after it was not there since there is no a priori reason or rational necessity for the beginninglessness of movement.
Although the notion of time arises from a mental analysis, yet its status is different from that of an essence which also arises from a mental analysis of a concrete existent into essence and existence. Whereas essences are “nothing positive” by themselves, time is something positive and has a “peculiar existence”
of its own, and, of course, has an essence as well. It is on the basis of this distinction between the essence and existence of time that Sadra seeks to solve the difficulty that time is something merely relational(mudaf)
. What is relational is the essence or concept of time which is “a non-stable and continuous extension or quality.” Hence the concept of time is relational. But the existence of time i.e., every point of time, is an existential fact or reality and is not relational, i.e., its reality is not exhausted by relationality
When Sadra says that time is “not an objective reality,” he, therefore, means that it is neither an independently existent reality nor yet like physical qualities as black, round, etc. But it is a reality in the sense that it “measures movement” and its reality is no more or less than the reality of movement as measured. But since “measured” adds nothing to the reality of movement, time is, in that sense, not real, i.e., non-existential: it is only something that is calculated just as space-dimensions are no more than calculations.
It is because of this that movement - which is real, and time - which is not real, are said to have similar characteristics. Just as we disthinguished at the beginning of the preceding section two aspects of movement, viz., its passage from one point to another(tawassut)
and its continuity(illisal)
, so, in the case of time, a “flowing moment(an sayyal)
” which “persists through” may be distinguished from time as a continuity(zaman muttasil)
.
But we must not attribute to time - a mere measure of movement - existential characteristics of movement, viz., “arising(huduth)
” and “passing away ('adam)” because that which arises and passes away is movement or, strictly speaking, physical reality.
On the controversy between theologians and philosophers over the question of the eternity of time and the world, Sadra recounts several arguments of the theologians against eternity and refutes them. Whereas his refutations are essentially borrowed from al-Suhrawardi almost verbatim, his positive solution of the problem rests squarely on his doctrine of the substantive movement which allows him to say, on the one hand, that the world as a process is eternal and, on the other, that the world is temporally originated in the sense that everything in it is changing continuously in its substance and hence cannot last even for two moments, let alone be eternal. Among the specific arguments against eternity is one which says that an infinity in the past, which is actual, is impossible. Sadra's reply, which is taken from al-Suhrawardi
but which comes originally from Ibn Rushd's reply to al-Ghazali,
is that in things which exist successively and not together or simultaneously, there is no harm in infinity because there is no existing whole.
The trouble with this reply seems to be that the past, being actual, does exist in some sense. But a more serious objection against eternity, Sadra's second, is that if an infinite past has to be traversed in order to reach the present, the present will be impossible since an infinity can never be traversed. Sadra's reply, again borrowed from al-Suhrawardi, is that if the present were dependent upon an “unrealized infinite,” it would be impossible but since the past is realized, the present is possible. It is obvious that, besides there being a contradiction in the term “realized infinite,” this reply also contradicts Sadra's reply to the first objection, for that reply consisted essentially in the assertion that the past is not actual or realized.
On the whole, the entire defense of Sadra of the eternity of time seems to me very weak. However, in his discussion of the last and eighth objection of the theologians, he gives a good account of the real weakness of the theologians' stand and then brings his own doctrine of substantive change into play. This famous theological objection is formulated as follows: “The world is never free from temporal emergents, but that which is never free from temporal emergents is itself a temporal emergent. Therefore the world is temporally originated.” Sadra criticizes the phrase,
“that which is never free from temporal emergents,” saying that if it relers to the totality of emergents, this is fallacious because the “totality” has no existence over and above the individual items.”
It is, indeed, difficult for most theologians to precisely formulate the point at issue and hence they become confused. For when a theologian says that the “world is originated” and is asked what he means by “originated,” he does not know what to answer. For if he says that ''originated” means “it is not self-sufficient but depends upon God,” he finds that his opponent agrees precisely with this. But if he says he means “it was preceded by time,” he finds that he himself does not believe this, since for him, as well as for the philosopher, time cannot be preceded either by time or by mere nothing. And both hold that only God precedes the world and time, this “precedence” not being temporal but essential or logical. The dispute, then, turns out to be verbal, unless the theologian comes out with some statement which says that the world depends not only upon God's being but, say, upon His Will as well - in which case he becomes guilty of a form of polytheism.
The essential point here is that even the theologian cannot hold that time is originated, i.e., that there was time before time. This is correct, for even al-Ghazali had taught that time is generated and originated but that there was no time before time even though he held that there could be an empty time when there was no world.
But, surely, this is admission of the “eternity” of time - which is, in any case, a tautology - and if time can be “eternal” in this sense, why not the world? It is obvious, however, that “eternity” in this context is not equivalent to “infinity” in the past but simply means “co-extensive with time.” And the crux of the matter between Muslim theologians and philosophers is not eternity in this sense but the question of infinity in the past, i.e., the beginninglessness of the world. It is strange, however, that, in this context of infinity of time, Sadra accepts the existence of an infinite number of souls, which he had emphatically denied in his discussion of the finitude of the causal series and had accused the philosophers of holding this view.
Sadra then seeks to vindicate the theological preposition, “the world is [temporally” originated” on the basis of his own doctrine of substantive movement. Since everything moves in its very substance and nothing remains the same for two moments, everything, i.e. every event, is a temporal emergent. The world is, therefore, a temporal emergent (although the entire process is without beginning and without end). The conclusion is, of course, based on the further premise that a “whole” like this has a reality over and above its parts. This, in turn, is vindicated by his principle that continuity(ittisal)
bestows a real unity upon a thing and that a “thing”, although it is structured by an infinity of spatio-temporal events, is, nevertheless, one. Still, it is difficult to see, why the world, since its movement is continuous, cannot be regarded as unoriginated more especially because the process is not and cannot be a finished product since it is infinite at both ends.
In this context, Sadra also reinterprets John Philoponus' famous argument for the creation of the world from the finitude of the potentialities of all bodies. Al-Suhrawardi had criticized this argument by saying that although the world by itself may be finite in its power of existence, nevertheless, since God is its cause, He may cause it to exist forever so that its eternity of existence is borrowed continuously from its Cause and is not inherent in it. Sadra comments that this is possible only in the sense that every moment a new power comes into existence in a body and this entails that every physical reality undergoes movement in its substance and then declares, “This is the view that the world [continually” comes into existence and passes away, i.e., that every individual [event” in it is preceded by a temporal non-existence - a temporal non-existence which is an eternal fact. And this is the real intent of those [who hold that the world is created and” who belong to one of the three religions - Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.”
It is obvious, however, that John Philoponus, who did not believe in substantive movement, simply intended to prove that the world is finite in its existence, i.e., just as it was created in the beginning, it will be necessarily destroyed at the end.
C. World-Order
The perennial problem of classical philosophy has been to explain diversity and change in terms of a unitary, unchanging principle and to establish an intelligible relationship between the two or, in other words, between necessity and contingency. Plato found this explanation in the two aspects of the world soul, the “Same” and the “Different,” in his Timaeus and in the “Realm of Ideas” and the “Realm of Material Nature.” Aristotle explained this link in the relationship between an unmoved Mover and the world of matter mediated by the perpetual circular motion of the heaven. According to the Muslim Peripatetics, this mediation is made Possible by the fact that the circular motion of the heaven, being eternal, is related in this aspect of eternity to God or the Active Intelligence, on the one hand, and, being movement and change, is related, in this respect, to the temporal world of change, as the latter's cause. In its aspect of eternity, this circular motion does not need a further temporally originated cause because movement and change is its very essence, and something whose essence is movement does not require a temporal mover but only an unmoved mover.
Since, however, the heaven - the substratum of this eternal movement - is eternal according to the philosophers in both its body and soul, Sadra, who believes that the heaven itself is subject to perpetual substantive mutation, rejects the account given above of the movement of the heaven and its mediation between the changing and the changeless: the perpetual change of positions of the heavenly body is only an outward symptom or effect of its inner, substantive instability and constant mutation.
Sadra then gives his own explanation of the origin of continuous and eternal movement in terms of the substantive change of all physical nature. This physical nature, whose eternal and unchanging idea - the Platonic Paradigm - exists in the mind of God, is such that, when it exists, it necessarily exists as subject to change and evolutionary mutation. Change, therefore, is not a characteristic of the essence of physical nature, i.e., its idea or concept, but of its existence.
Most things, when they are transformed into concepts or essences, shed their existential characteristics: for example, physical quantity and volume have extension in existential reality but their concept is not extended. But in the case of existence itself, as we have shown in the first chapter of this Part, its nature can never be captured by the mind and formed into a concept; hence existence is a unique fact which has no real essence. Now, all physical nature, at the existential level, is a constant flow which cannot be captured by the mind: it can be known only through a direct intuition.
At this point, it may be objected that there must be some recipient of this constantly changing physical nature and these successive bodily forms, since it is not possible to conceive that these forms exist by themselves without a substratum. But if that is so, then Sadra's denial of a permanently identical body, for example, to the heaven stands nullified by the acceptance of a permanent, indeed, eternal matter which is the substratum of successive forms. This question is, in fact, about the identity of the substratum of change which Sadra has already dealt with in the first section of the present chapter and he more or less repeats the same solution here. Since matter is in itself pure potentiality and has no numerical unity - i.e., an existential identity - but only a generic unity, it can be actualized by any given form, not by any special, permanent or eternal form. So, at any given point of the flow of existence, the form actually obtaining is the form which actualizes the potentiality of matter: it is not the case that matter first stands actualized by a specially privileged form and then other forms supervene upon it successively so that matter must be regarded as eternal. It is, of course, true that successive forms supervene upon earlier ones, and it is their cumulative process which constitutes evolution; but the essential thesis is that at each point the present form actualizes matter.
When animal comes into existence, animal attributes are not additional to, say, the attributes of plant but the form of animal yields both tire attributes of plant and animal. But there is no discontinuity in the succession of forms, which is a continuous, single process. This process, therefore, does not involve the existence of an identical, eternal matter as substratum, although at each point the emergent form has a substratum.
Indeed, as al-Tabataba'i luminously interprets Sadra here,
the concept of matter is really needed as bearer of the potentiality which precedes the actual existence of a thing, but this is only with reference to essences or specific forms, or, rather, since the preceding matter is always conjoined with a certain form, the bearer of the potentiality of a thing is the preceding form. Hence there is no matter free from a form, which may be characterized as bearing the potentiality of a thing; or, in other words, there is no free matter at all. But at the level of existence, as opposed to essences or specific forms, an “underlying” matter is not really needed at all, for the meaning of “being material” is simply to be resolved into “process of change.” All we have is a continuous spatio-temporal process of forms, which the mind can artificially divide into segments called essences.
Sadra, therefore, says that the question as to why a certain form (or a certain event) occurs at a particular time is to be answered, not on the basis of a continuing, underlying matter which bears its preceding potentiality, but on the basis of the internal structure of the process itself.
Every spatio-temporal occurrence is, therefore, sui generis. Just as one cannot ask why today is today and not yesterday or tomorrow, since every point of time is sui generis, this is also the case with any given point within the world-process; and time is, in fact, something which arises by an analysis(tahlil)
of this process. This process itself is also self-explanatory and does not require an outside temporal cause to explain it.
In other words, what the philosophers say about the eternity of the movement of the heavenly body, Sadra says about the eternity of the world-process. To be a process, a continuous succession of forms is the very nature of physical existence. God certainly made or produced the world but he did not cause the world to change or be a process; to change and to be an eternal process is the very nature of the world. We, again, have a case here of “simple causation(ja'l basit)
”, not of “compound causation(ja'l murakkab)
.”
In another sense, of course, there is a reason - although not a cause - for the world-process. This reason is to be found in the fact that every form of existence in the world “loves” and “yearns for” the higher and wants to be like it and, therefore, moves towards it. It is this primordial yearning that makes for a cosmos, i.e., the universe as an orderly whole. Ibn Sina had found it diffiicult to affirm that primary matter was capable of such a love and yearning and had characterized this view as talk of Sufis rather than a philosophic argument. He gave as his reasons that a psychic yearning can never be attributed to matter and that so far as a physical propulsion is concerned, that also must be excluded from matter: primary matter, being never devoid of a form, cannot have a yearning for a form and primary matter, being a pure passivity, has forms come upon it from the outside so that matter itself has no movement.
This, despite the fact that Ibn Sina himself wrote a special treatise on cosmic love where he affirmed that primary matter possesses love.
In order to prove this primordial yearning, Sadra urges the following argument.
Primary Matter, although it is a pure potentiality, nevertheless is not mere nothing, since a potentiality is something positive. Matter, therefore, is endowed with some kind of positive being and hence shares some kind of existence. Now, existence is fundamentally the same in all existents although it differs in all existents as well, being systematically ambiguous in terms of “more or less.” Since wherever existence is to be found, the consequences or essential attributes - knowledge, power, will - must also be found in varying degrees of intensity, we must attribute some kind of consciousness to matter, hower potential and nebulous. Granted this nebulous consciousness and the fact that matter is capable of receiving an infinity of forms in succession, we must conclude that matter has a yearning for forms. As for the intensity of this yearning, although the nebulousness of consciousness of matter argues for a weak degree of yearning, the fact that it is possible for it to receive an infinity of forms, argues for an intense yearning since the intensity of yearning depends not only on the degree of consciousness of the yearner but equally on the degree of the perfection of the object of yearning.
Matter, therefore, is characterized by the greatest intensity of yearning for the higher in the entire existence since it is the most deficient in all existence.
Sadra corroborates this argument by another derived from a consideration of the idea of contingency or possibility itself.
Since contingency or possibility belongs to the very nature of Intelligences - which, as we have seen, are the content of God's mind and His Attributes - everything that flows from them is contingent, this contingency being intensified in proportion to the degree a being is removed from the source of existence, God. Now, the essential or pure possibility or contingency(imkan dhati)
which characterizes Intelligences comes to assume the character of the possibility in the sense of potentiality(imkan istìdadi)
in matter. All potentiality and its actualization, therefore, are due to the nature of matter which seeks ever higher forms at different levels of existence in the physical world - inorganic matter, plants, animals, and man, including both the body and the soul in the case of the latter two. This upward movement is inconceivable without an innate yearning on the part of matter. It is because yearning is a characteristic of matter that, for example, images, which do not have matter but are pure extension, do not have potentialities to be realized and do not change.
This yearning, then, satisfies itself in two directions. In the vertical direction, matter, after progressively attaining different levels of being, allows material forms to reach a point where they enter the Divine Realm in the form of the Perfect Man who has perfected his moral and intellective powers. He becomes, in a sense, one with the Intelligences or the Attributes of God. These Intelligences themselves have little to attain by way of perfection since all their perfections are already realized, for, as Divine Attributes, they are united with God's existence. They do not, therefore,
“yearn” for anything higher except that when they contemplate their own proper being, they are overcome by the negative self-feeling arising from their innate contingency which - as opposed to the pure and authentic existence of God - is non-being, darkness, and imperfection which characterize all essences and are then lost in the contemplation of God's being itself.
But all other beings are subject to a genuine yearning simply because their nature needs to be perfected.
In the second, horizontal direction, matter goes through an infinity of successive forms. This direction is characterized by infinity in the sense that it has neither a beginning nor an end. But this does not mean that the endless series is purposeless. As we have seen in our discussion on causation, the endless series has as its purpose that those forms or species which cannot be perpetuated as such should be perpetuated in individual manifestations; each succeeding individual behaving, as it were, as the purpose of the preceding.
If matter did not have this kind of potentiality and inherent impulsion for change, it would always be with the same form which would, therefore, be eternal. God, therefore, bestows new forms upon it every moment, since God's creative impulse is ceaseless.
Since the temporal series is endless, it is obvious that the “other life” or the “hereafter” cannot take place in this horizontal direction. It is the vertical order which means “hereafter” in the proper sense, although the common man and the theologian conceive of the after-life “after” the end of time!
This motivation to establish an after-life in some sense certainly plays an important role in Sadra's distinction between the horizontal and the vertical orders of reality. Certain basic currents in the preceding Muslim philosophic and mystic thought - from Ibn Sina to Ibn 'Arabi - have undoubtedly facilitated this distinction, which is not really congruent with the idea of evolutionary process in time, which Sadra at other times and in a more fundamental sense formulates and expounds.
Notes
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Author: Dr. Fazlur Rahman
