The Book of Metaphysical Penetrations: a parallel English-Arabic text

The Book of Metaphysical Penetrations: a parallel English-Arabic text

Metaphysics -- Early works to 1800
Islamic philosophy -- Early works to 1800

Mulla Sadra (ca. 1572{u2013}1640) is one of the most prominent figures of post-Avicennan Islamic philosophy and among the most important philosophers of Safavid Persia. He was a prolific writer whose work advanced the fields of intellectual and religious science in Islamic philosophy, but arguably his most important contribution to Islamic philosophy is in the study of existence (wujud) and its application to such areas as cosmology, epistemology, psychology, and eschatology. Sadra represents a paradigm shift from the Aristotelian metaphysics of fixed substances, which had dominated Islamic philosophy, to an analysis of existence as the ultimate ground and dynamic source of things. He posits that all beings derive their reality and truth from their wujud and that a proper philosophical analysis must therefore start and eventually end with it. The present work{u2019}s focus on Sadra{u2019}s gradational ontology provides a strong foundation for the reader to understand Sadra{u2019}s other works and later texts by other philosophers working in the same field. This edition contains parallel English-Arabic texts and a new translation by preeminent scholar of Islamic philosophy Seyyed Hossein Nasr.

Muḥammad ibn Ibrāhīm Ṣadr al-Dīn Shīrāzī

Provo, Utah : Brigham Young University Press

Translated by Seyyed Hossein Nasr ; edited, introduced, and annotated by Ibrahim Kalin

Series: Islamic translation series.

The Opening 6 -- Concerning research into the concept of wujud, its conditions, the proof of its reality, and its states -- The First Penetration 6 -- Concerning the explanation that it is free of the need to be defined -- The Second Penetration 9 -- Concerning the manner in which wujud comprises things -- The Third Penetration 11 -- Concerning the verification of wujud objectively -- The first witness 11 -- The second witness 13 -- The third witness 14 -- The fourth witness 15 -- The fifth witness 16 -- The sixth witness 17 -- The seventh witness 18 -- The eighth witness 19 -- The Fourth Penetration 20 -- In responding to doubts that have been brought against the objectivity of wujud -- The Fifth Penetration 28 -- Concerning the manner in which quiddity is qualified by wujud -- The Sixth Penetration 35 -- Concerning the particularization of individual existences and their ipseity-in a summary fashion -- The Seventh Penetration 40 -- Concerning the subject that what is by essence the object of instauration and what emanates from the cause is wujud without quiddity -- The first witness 40 -- The second witness 42 -- The third witness 42 -- The fourth witness 43 -- The fifth witness 44 -- The sixth witness 45 -- The seventh witness 46 -- The eighth witness 47 -- The Eighth Penetration 48 -- Concerning the modality of instauration and effusion, and the proof of the First Creator, and the reality that the Effusing Instaurer is one, there being no multiplicity in it and no partner unto it -- The first penetration 48 -- Concerning the relationship of the instaured and the originated to the Instaurer -- The second penetration 49 -- Concerning the Source of all existence, His qualities, and His effects -- The first path 49 -- Concerning His wujud- transcendent is He-and His unity -- The first penetration 49 -- Concerning the demonstration of the Necessary-sublime is His invocation-and that the chain of beings that are instaured of necessity ends in the Necessary -- The second penetration 51 -- Concerning that the Necessary Being is unlimited in intensity and power and that what is other than It is finite and limited -- The third penetration 51 -- Concerning His oneness -- The fourth penetration 33 -- That it is the origin and the end of all things -- The fifth penetration 54 -- That the Necessary Being is the plenary perfection of everything -- The sixth penetration 54 -- That the Necessary Being is the point to which all affairs return -- The seventh penetration 55 -- That the Necessary Being intellects its own essence and, by its essence, intellects all things -- The eighth penetration 57 -- Concerning that wujud in reality is the One Keality- transcendent is He-and all that is other than it, if it be considered in itself, is perishing except His august face -- The second path 59 -- Fragments concerning the states of His attributes-transcendent is He -- The first penetration 59 -- Concerning that His attributes-transcendent is He-are the same as His essence -- The second penetration 60 -- Concerning the modality of His knowledge-transcendent is He-of all things, according to an illuminative principle -- The third penetration 61 -- Concerning the allusion to His other attributes of perfection -- The fourth penetration 61 -- Concerning the allusion to His word-transcendent is He- and His book -- The third path 63 -- Concerning the allusion to formative creation (sunc) and creation without intermediary (ibdac) -- The first penetration 63 -- Concerning the activity of the agent -- The second penetration 63 -- Concerning His activity-transcendent is He -- The third penetration 68 -- Concerning the temporal origination of the world -- The Seal of the Treatise 12.

Book