THE PSYCHOLOGY OF MULLĀ ṢADRĀ

Author(s): MUḤAMMAD 'ABDUL ḤAQ

Source: Islamic Studies, Vol. 9, No. 2 (JUNE 1970), pp. 173-181
Published by: Islamic Research Institute, International Islamic University, Islamabad
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20832983
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 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF MULLA SADRA
MUHAMMAD 'ABDUL #AQ,

INTRODUCTION

?adr al-DIn Muhammad Shirazi (979-1050/1571/1640), known in

Persia as Akhund MuUa ?adra, was one of the greatest philosophers and

theosophers (hakim) in the later period of Islamic history. He was

an outstanding exponent of Islamic philosophy establishing a new school
after his own name. His was not an eclectic but rather synthetic

harmonizing philosophy, religion and gnosis ('irfan). In the vast

framework of his metaphysical vision, psychology occupies an important
position.
Akhund Mulla Sadra considers psychology or the science of the
soul* as a branch of metaphysics; for the whole of his metaphysics is
centered round the doctrine of Being which is the transcendent origin
and the ultimate end of all things. This unified metaphysical world
view enables him to see the universe as an ordered whole, as a cosmos
and not a chaos. Thus he is not at all ready to judge a thing from its
face value, rather he judges everything in terms of its metaphysical

origin. That is why he could not reduce the human soul to a collection
ofmere thoughts and feelings as some modern psychologists have done,
but traces itsmetaphysical root and develops a consistent and homo
geneous doctrine as to its creation, immateriality and immortality.
Tracing the origin of the human soul, Mulla ?adra asserts that the
first creation of God is intellect and the last creation is he who is the
bearer of this intellect, i.e., the human being.1 Intellect was created
first as the seed of creation the synthetic fruit of which is man who
possesses intellect, the same seed. Thus the bringing of man into
existence is what the whole process of creation has been aiming at2
and man iswhat he is by virtue of his soul and not his body; soul is
the entelechy of body and intellect is the entelechy of soul. It is,

therefore, through the creation of the human soul that God completes
in the end what He has initiated in the beginning.
According to Mulla Sadra, the human body occupies a unique
position only
at the biological level, being the crowning achievement of
material creation, while the human soul occupies the most dignified

In thisarticle, the terms 'soul', 'mind', and 'self have been used interchangeably.

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174 MUHAMMAD 'ABDULIJAO,

position in the whole created order metaphysically and spiritually.3

For in the hierarchy of beings, every species is fixed in its own domain
and any kind of encroachment and overlapping on its part is inconceiv
able.4 But the role of the human soul is wholly different. It has a
is
lowly birth, being contaminated with matter and potentiality, yet
capable of making its entry into all levels of cosmic existence without
as having a tran
losing its ipseity and individuality. He speaks of it
scendental orientation, for it is created with the body biologically but
Thus man is oriented to the spiritual world
spiritually it is immortal.5
throughhis soul and is connectedwith thisworld throughhis body like
an isthmus between two worlds.6

In the view ofMulla Sadra, the human soul in the first stage of
its creation is brought into being with the body itself, like prime matter
full of potentiality, then through substantial motion it becomes

vegetative soul, then animal soul, and at last human soul. This gradual
change takes place within the substance of the body like an alchemical
process in which the power to reach perfection is inherent within the
matter itself.7

Explaining this gradual becoming of the soul, Mulla SadrS writes

a
that human sperm is a mineral object but potentially is plant, and as
soon as it begins to develop within the womb, it becomes a
actually
plant and potentially an animal, because it lacks sensation and volun
tarymotion. But the embryo is distinct from all other plants, for
it is capable of being an animal. After birth the baby is
potentially
an animal and potentially a human being and finally as the
actually
a mature man of about forty, he is actually
baby grows up and becomes
a human being and potentially either an angel or an accomplice of the
devil.8 In the same way that the higher presupposes the lower and a

superior light contains all the degrees of inferior lights, the human
nature ipseity and soul contains the totality of animal,
i.e. human
a metaphysical
vegetative and mineral nature in and synthetic sense
and the human form is the totality of their forms.9
Tosum up, at the initial stage the soul is identical with the body
and then through a process of inner transformation it goes ahead on its
journey of attaining perfection at each stage, getting rid of potentiality
and becoming distinct from the body. For this reason the word "body"
has been used in philosophical definition of the soul to refer to the total

reality, perfection and entelechy of the body.10

The human soul is, thus, in a state of ceaseless journey and God is
the goal towards which it is oriented in its essential nature. The

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 fHfePsychology of mullA sadrX
more it rids itself of material contamination and potency, the more it
attains intellectual perfection and actuality and in turn, the more
it
becomes conformable to God, leading to final union with Him. It is,
therefore, clear that the human soul, though born of humble origin, is
pregnant with unlimited possibilities. It is a divine mystery that the
human soul, though an immaterial and heavenly spark, descends and
becomes contaminated with matter and potency; but this contamination
cannot impair itsmetaphysical purity and spiritual plasticity but rather
helps to increase its perfection.11 It is a timeless and non-spatial truth12,

belonging to the world without. Thus the human being is a mixture of

divinity and dust, a meeting point where the creature and the creator
converge, and a link between the finite and the Infinite. This double
role of the human being or, to be more precise, the human soul, motivates
Mulla ?adra to come to the following conclusion: to assert that the human
soul is wholly material is to be ignorant of reality, and to say that it is

absolutely immaterial is to overlook its true identity.13 Viewed physically,

it is the source of all power using mineral, vegetative and animal faculties;
while viewed spiritually it is like a spiritual matter capable of
accepting
every spiritual form. It is a gateway, an opening towards the Infinite.14
According to Mulla Sadra the human soul is the shadow of divine
unity. Just as the unity of Being is hidden under the veil of the
multiplicity of creation, so the soul is the source as well as the totality
of the various powers and faculties of the human
being.15 Employing
various organs as tools, it is the soul which is in
reality instinctive, sensi
tive, imaginative, for its power permeates the whole body. It is the
same soul which as vegetative has the faculties of
feeding, growth and
assimilation of food stuffs, as animal acquires the faculties of motion,
desire, and sensation and as a human develops, in addition to all the
faculties mentioned above, the inner faculties: that which perceives
forms is called "hiss al-mushtarik", that which perceives meanings is
called "wahm" (apprehension), that which preserves forms is called

"khayaT* (fantasy), that which preserves meanings is called "dhakirah"

and that which is a
(memory), combined faculty of imagination and
thought is called ''mutakhayyilah" and "mutafakkirah," the former
dealingwith the sensible object and the latterwith the intelligible
object.16 The "hiss al-mushtarik" which perceives forms is a mental
to which external sense all sensible
power organs bring forms, like spies
supplying information to the minister of a king. It is like a tablet for
the soul, with which it apprehends sensible forms and makes quick
judgments about them all at once.17

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 ifi MUHAMMAD 'ABDULHAQ,
To sum up, the soul is a single reality whose ipseity is one but at
the same time is endowed with manifold powers and faculties. When
the act of sensation is necessary it comes down to this level and by

using the sensory organs becomes identified with the eyes, ears and
other faculties. In like manner, it is the soul which rises to the level of
imagination, apprehension and intellection when need arises. Thus in
every case and in every area it is the soul which is the real doer and
actor of all these activities, without losing its simplicity and unity.18
From the multiple functions of the soul, Mulla Sadra concludes
that whoever is capable of grasping the unity of the soul performing its
various functions and remaining one and the same will also grasp the

unity of Being under the veil of the multiplicity of manifestation, that

the Absolute Being or God alone is real, He alone is present and the
decisive factor at
the centre of every manifestation.19 For this reason
Akhund regards the rational soul as a divine secret, a theophany of
divine names and qualities, a shadow of divine unity, and as such its
knowledge will lead to the knowledge of God.20 He maintains that the
rational soul is to God what light is to the sun. The human body with
all its organs is like a carriage meant for the journey of the soul towards

God, while knowledge is the provision.

Akhund mentions many possible objections and then answers them in
order to avoid misunderstanding. For example, he writes that since the
soul is the real actor in all the physical and mental processes, it should
be objectively conscious of the processes of digestion, circulation of the
is not so. Here Akhund
blood, brain function, etc., but in fact it
answers that it is possible for the average soul to be conscious of all
these processes, but it is difficult for it to be conscious of this conscious
ness for, on the one hand, it is subject to forgetfulness, and on the other
hand these processes are subject to terrible flux. Moreover, the soul's

union with the body coincides with its being determined by time, space,
of its being and for the lack
matter?factors responsible for the weakness
of total consciousness and intuitive awareness.21 He argues that body,
of itself and is totally absent
being itself dead, does not know any part
a
from itself and that, naturally, whatever becomes contaminated with
dead substance will be absent from itself to the extent of its contami

nation.22

to Mulla Sadra, the human soul is created with the

According
at the initial stage of its creation it is identical with
body; in other words
thebody and ishardlydistinguishablefromit. But as thebodygradually
grows, the soul acquires a set of new faculties at each successive stage,

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 THE PSYCHOLOGYOF MULLA SADRA

and the more itmakesprogress, the more its undifferentiated state is

abolished and the more its inherent immaterial nature becomes
actualized. Thus, at the human level its incorporeal nature becomes
manifestly clear and its distinction from the body easily discernible.
Akhund discusses this view vigorously with all its ramifications in order
to prove the creation of the soul, its immateriality and its
immortality.
He maintains that the human soul is an immaterial substance quite
distinct from and independent of the body. He argues that a man
knows his "self" in such a manner that there seems to be
nothing he
could possibly know any better, but by this "self55 he never means his

body, for sometimes he forgets his body or a part of it,while he is never

absent from his innermost "self" a moment, even
in sleep or in a state
of drunkenness.23 Death
also proves this irreducible distinction between
soul and body, for everyone will say that Mr. so and so has
passed away
while no one will say that his has Thus a man is
body passed away.
what he is by virtue of his soul and not his body.24
The disparity between our
physical and personal predicates proves
this insuperable distinction between
body and soul. We attribute our
sorrow and suffering, success and failure, to our "self" and not to our

body. A body can have only one form or a quality at a time, and in
case that form or quality disappears, the body cannot
regain it without
an external cause. But the soul can preserve, remember and
reproduce
any intelligible form at any time it likes. It is like a tablet containing
manifold sciences and the knowledge of innumerable objects.25
Universals and intelligible forms are incapable of being fixed in a
for while a
body, body is infinitely divisible, an intelligible form is
indivisible since it corresponds to the reality of an
object and the reality
of anything is one and of divided. The reality of the
incapable being
number "ten", as it is ''ten", ceases to be "ten" when divided. The
intelligible forms can be contained only in something which is none
other than our mind; but mind is not localizable in any place of the
body and as such is immaterial.26
Akhund goes on arguing that while ceaseless and intense intellectual
activity eventually causes physical weakness which may lead to the death
and disintegration of the body, nonetheless it brings about intellectual
and mental perfection and maturity. And it is illogical that a thing
should be simultaneously the cause of both the perfection and the
destruction of another object. Thus mind is something other than
body.27 Death means a total calamity for the body, but for the soul
it implies an entry into eternal life, a freedom from the bondage of all

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178 MUBAMMAD 'ABDULtfAQ,

relativity and a dynamic journey towards the Infinite.

In fine, the soul is immaterial, quite distinct from the body, but it
is created. If it were not created itwould be an eternal and thus
a perfect being to become con
perfect being, and it is impossible for
taminated by a corporeal body which is wholly imperfect.28 Thus, at
the initial stage of creation the soul is identical with a material form and
then gradually it attains immateriality. According to Akhund it has
various modes of existence: in the pre-human stage it was in the know

ledge of God like the Platonic ideas; at the human stage it has another
mode of existence; and in post-human becoming it will have still
another mode. The relation of these modes of existence is not contra

dictory to one another but is that of cause and effect and as such is

complementary.29

Although body and soul are distinct from each other, nevertheless
the contact between them is farmore intimate and metaphysical than
anything we can think of. That iswhy Akhund writes that body is a
state of hardness and heaviness while soul is light and subtle. How
then, body and soul having nothing in common, can have intimate
contact with each other? In reply he speaks of the contact as being
a divine secret and writes that just as a material wick gets
ready to
accept fire, so the wick of human sperm gets ready metaphysically to
accept the rational soul which is a spark from Heaven.30
Just as the soul is the perfection and entelechy of the body, likewise
intellect is the entelechy of the soul. As mentioned above, the soul
acquires a series of faculties in the course of its onward progress, but
most important faculty which it develops is the intellect. According
to Akhund, the intellective aspect of the soul has two functions: The

practical ('amali) and the theoretical (nazarl). The practical intellect

has four stages: practising the law of a particular religion, cleansing
the soul from all impurities, illuminating the soul with knowledge and

spiritual virtues and finally annihilating it in God.31

The theoretical intellect also traverses
four stages: the potential
or material intellect, which in the inchoate nature is devoid of all forms
but which has intellectual existence potentially, as prime matter has
sensitive existence potentially. It is only capable of accepting forms
and is called <aql aUhayuldnt. Habitual intellect (eaql bVl-malaka) is the
second stage, in which the soul begins to grasp and apprehend simple,
a priori truths and facts of life, such as that the whole is greater than its
In the third stage, active intellect
parts. ('aql bi9l-fi'l)9 the soul rises
above the material level of existence and either the power of
acquires

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 THE PSYCHOLOGYOF MULLA ?ADRA ifo

intellectual demonstration or has this bestowed upon it by Heaven. In

the last stage, called acquired intellect ('aql al-mustafdd), the active
intellect gains access to the divine kingdom; this is the highest stage
attainable by man. Thus the whole creation is aimed at bringing into
existence of mankind and the aim of the creation of mankind is to
enable him to reach the stage of acquired intellect and to have a direct
vision of the intelligible world, and finally to realize themystery of non
otherness or supreme contiguity.32

CONCLUSION

This paper has been an outline of Mulla ?adra's psychology. As

has been mentioned above, Akhund has approached the problem with a
unitive world-view which has enabled him to work out a consistent

psychologyputtingeverythingin itsproper place. That iswhy he has

not dealt with the soul separately as an isolated phenomenon?a tendency
in modern philosophy?but has treated it in the light of the
prevalent
total scheme of things. While Mulla Sadra's psychology starts from
a
unity, from metaphysical background, modern psychology tends to
start from multiplicity, from the physical and human level, judging
and on their face value. For this reason a series of
things separately
one another, is to be met with in the history
"isms", incompatible with
of modern psychology. Materialism has simply denied the existence of
of the union betweenmind and
mind in order to avoid the difficulty
reversemaintaining that the
body; while idealism has done just the
body exists only as an idea in the mind. Others have suggested the
relation of cause and effect between mind and body interacting with
each other; this is the theory of interactionism. Still others, unable to
have held that body
accept an immaterial mind having material effects,
acts upon the mind to produce consciousness, thoughts and feelings,
but the mind itself has no physical effects. This is the theory of
the mind as a sort of inefficacious
epiphenomenalism, which regards
Other similar contradictory theories give
by-product of the body.33
of solution.
the impression that themind-body problem is incapable
is deeply conscious that human nature lives in
Mulla ?adra
and is very prone to remain
multiplicity, in the separative illusion,
He is thoroughly
confined to the surface level of sense-perception.
which
aware of limited resources of human experience and consciousness,
cannot be a trustworthymeans to reach the
truth. That is why his
intuition besides discursive
method includes revelation and intellectual
thismethod has enabled him to see
knowledge. And theadoptionof

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 i go MUHAMMAD 'ABDULtfAQ,

all things in their proper perspective and right relation. But the
approach of modern psychology is just the reverse. Thus we find that
Hume bluntly denies the existence of soul by asserting that experience
gives us nothing but a lot of impressions or perceptions, ideas or memory
images the totality of which is identified by him with self devoid of any
metaphysical basis. He reduces mind or self to a succession of

experiences or mental states.34 In the same manner, modern psycho

logists discover that what is given in experience is not a mind or soul
but a stream of thought, so the terms "soul" and c'mind" are looked
upon with suspicion and replaced by c'consciousness". But even the
term "consciousness" does not have an unassailable status and it has
been questioned if consciousness exists at all. This is the history of
modern psychology, in which views and ideas are in a continual state
of flux. Thus modern psychology seems to make a toy out of the
human soul, which is identified by Mulla ?adra with a vital principle,
the source of all power, a timeless non-spatial reality introducing into
the human the mark of the Divine.
Akhund maintains a dualism or distinction
between soul and
body
?a theory very reminiscent of the Platonic tradition. But
Plato,
although an uncompromising spiritualist, was always under the sway of
the ethical interest of the soul.35 To Mulla Sadra, however, the human
soul is oriented towards a spiritual journey and the ethical aspect is

only complementary to a passing phase of this journey. While Aristotle

was interested in the close intimacy of the soul to the
body and in its
biological aspects, and was slightly inclined towards
epiphenomenalism,36
Mulla Sadra's biological and empirical treatment of the soul is
always
subservient to the soul's metaphysical and spiritual aspects, through
which the soul appears to contain the secret of the heaven and earth.
We find some of his ideas and views in medieval Christian
thought,
in the psychology of St. Augustine, St. Bonaventure and
particularly
St. Thomas Aquinas. However were not able to
they develop, such a
coherent and integrated psychology in which the human soul in its
ultimate becoming assumes a global role and becomes identical with all
of the possibilities of the world?a universe inminiature.37

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 The psychology of mullA ?adrA idt
NOTES

x. Sadr al-Din Shirazi, Al-Shawdhidal-Rububiyyah,

pp. 180, 239.
2. Sadr al-Din Shirazi, Iksir aWArifin, RasdHl, p. 307.

3. Sadr al-Din Shirazi, Al-Shawdhid al-Rububiyyah, p. 223.

4. Sadr al-Din Shirazi, Al-Asfdr,

Vol. 8, pp. 346, 347.
5. ?adr al-Din Shirazi, Al-Shawdhid p. 221.
al-Rububiyyah,
6. Ibid., p. 223.

7. Seyyed IJosseinNasr, A HistoryofMuslim Philosophy,

Vol. 2, p. 954.
8. Sadr al-Din Shirazi, Al-Shawdhid al-Rububiyyah, p. 229,
Sadr al-DIn Shirazi, Al-Asfdr, Vol. 8, p. 136.

9. Sadr al-Din Shirazi, Al-Shawdhid al-Rabubiyyah, p. 229.

10. Sadr al-Din Shirazi, Al-Asfdr, Vol. 8, pp. 13, 14.
11. Sadr al-Dm Shirazi, Al-Shawdhid al-Rububiyyah, p. 196.
12. al-Din Shirazi, Al-Wdridat al-Qalbiyyah, al-RasaHl, p. 253.
?adr
13. ?adr al-Din Shirazi,Al-Shawdhidal-Rububiyyah,
p. 196.
14. Ibid., p. 204.
Vol. 8, p. 134.
15. Ibid., pp. 227, 228; Al-Asfdr,
16. Sadr al-Din Shirazi, Al-Asfdr, Vol. 8, pp. 135, 211,
Sadr al-Din Shirazi, Al-Shawdhidal-Rububiyyah,
pp. 193, 194.
17. Sadr al-Din Shirazi, Al-Asfdr, Vol. 8, p. 205.

?adr al-Din Shirazi, Al-Shawdhidal-Rububiyyah,

p. 193.
18. al-DIn Shirazi, Al-Shawdhid al-Rububiyyah, p. 228.
?adr
?adr al-Din Shirazi, Al-Asfdr, Vol. 8, p. 135.
al-Din Shirazi, Al-Asfdr, Vol. 8, pp. 223, 224.
19. ?adr
20. Ibid., Vol. 1, pp. 264, 265.
21. Ibid., Vol. 8, pp. 72, 73.
22. ?adr al-Din Shirazi, Al-Shawdhidal-Rububiyyah,
p. 224.
23. ?adr al-Din Shirazi, Al-Mabda* wal Ma(dd, p. 212,
Sadr al-Din Shirazi, Al-Shawdhid al-Rububiyyah, pp. 211, 212.

24. Ibid., p. 213.

25. Ibid., pp. 213, 214.

26. ?adr al-DIn Shirazi, Al-Asfdr,
Vol 8, p. 280.
27. Ibid., p. 295.
28. Ibid., p. 331.
29. Ibid., pp. 377-78.
30. Sadr al-Din Shirazi, Al-Wdridat al-Qalbiyyah, pp. 256, 257.
al-RasdHl,
31. Sadr al-Din Shirazi, Al-Shawdhidal-Rububiyyah,
p. 207.
32. Ibid., p. 207,
Scyyed IJossainNasr, A HistoryofMuslim Philosophy,
Vol. 2, p. 956.
33. Richard Taylor, Metaphysics, p. 12.

34. G. T. W. Patrick, Introduction toPhilosophy,pp. 245, 246.

35. F. Coplestone, S. I., A HistoryofPhilosophy, Vol. 1,Part II, p. 240,
36. Ibid., p. 241.
37. ?adr al-Din Shirazi, Iksir al-'Arifin,al-RasaHl,p. 289,
?adr al-Din Shirazi, Al-Shawdhidal-Rububiyyah,
p. 245.

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