Abstract

The internal transformation and the essential self-flourishing of human beings or, in Mulla Sadra's words, "the substantial perfection of the human soul" is one of the most important discussions in philosophical anthropology and one of Mulla Sadra's innovations in his Transcendent Philosophy. This problem opens the entangled knot of many philosophical, religious, and anthropological problems.Accordingly, it has been tried in this paper to examine and analyze the "substantial perfection of the human soul" from the beginning of its creation until attaining the end of ontological perfection. Therefore, the approaches and hypotheses of "the retaining of previous perfections", "human's spiritual promotion", and "the actuality of the soul and horizontal change" as possible rival hypotheses and "the substantial perfection of the human soul" as the main research hypothesis have been analyzed and evaluated.On the basis of some theoretical principles such as the principiality of existence, gradedness of existence, the intensified trans-substantial motion, corporeality in origination and spirituality in subsistence, the immateriality of the soul and its unity with perceptive faculties and forms, the writer has tried to demonstrate the substantial perfection of the human soul.The human soul is a substance corporeal in its origination and spiritual in its subsistence. Moreover, in the light of its intensified trans-substantial motion, it continually attains its ontological perfections. In this process of essential perfection, through developing some faculties, perceptions, and habits, the soul gradually develops its substantial face and, in line with the gradedness of existence, acquires more faculties, stronger perfections, and more stable habits. Moreover, the soul unites with all of its faculties, some of which, at the same time with the soul, become immaterial. All the faculties of the soul are considered among its different modes and grades