Mulle Sadia

Mulla Sadra of Shiraz (1571-1641), a key figure in the Safavid Renaissance, was perhaps the greatest Islamic philosopher after Avicenna and yet his life and work remain little known outside of Iran. This book aims to fill the gap and provide an introduction to Mulla Sadra?s life and thought in an accessible form designed for the student and general reader interested in Islamic thought.A renown polymath, Mulla Sadra recognised that philosophy was not an isolated discipline of pure thought detached from social relevance but a critical practice and an ?art? that was influenced by and had major implications for theology, mysticism and textual hermeneutics. For him, philosophy was a profoundly ethical practice that was critically rooted in a tradition that stretched back both to the Greeks and to the wisdom sayings of the Prophet Muhammad and his successors.In the present volume, the authors present the first work on Mulla Sadra?s life and thought in 30 years. It is only once the foundations for studying his thought are in place that scholars can focus on specific problems and take forward Sadrian studies. After an introduction that consider Mulla Sadra?s life and times, Rizvi and Safavi consider the notion of philosophy, its practice and its perceived history in his thought and examine their implications for the study of texts, whether philosophical or scriptural. Key issues within his onto-theology, epistemology, psychology and ethics are then broached such as the relationship between God and the cosmos, the notion of metaphysical variance or modulation of being, panpsychism, immediate knowledge, the ?imaginal realm?, and the notion of the Perfect Man and his duties. The book concludes with Mulla Sadra?s legacy as the dominant Islamic philosopher in modern times and suggests ways in which one ought to read and understand his work.