Transcendence and Immanence in Mulla Sadra's Philosophy
Abstract
In the system of the individual unity of being certain seemingly immanent aspects are attributed to God. These include qualifying Him with the attributes of created and contingent beings, and assuming the identity of the Truth with objects, God as the entire world, and the world as the quality, direction, configuration, and mode of the Truth, which imply an immanent relation between contingent beings and the essence of the Truth, such as the immanence of accident for place. In this paper, the objections concerning the ambiguity of immanence in the individual unity of being are quoted from Mulla Sadra, and the writer has tried to provide some responses to them based on some of his ideas and philosophical fundamental principles in this regard. These basic responses include the following: the distinction between the existence of the non-conditioned as the source of division and the non-conditioned divided existence, the attribution of immanent features to unfolded existence, possible quiddities as the origin of immanent aspects depending on which the unfolded existence, due to its relation with determined existence, develops comparative aspects. Moreover, the impossibility of the generalization of the judgments of possible things, such as the opposition between proximity and distance, to the Necessary is one of the fundamental responses according to which the opposition between proximity and distance, as well as the necessity of proximity and immanence, and the necessity of distance and diversity concerning Almighty Truth are negated, so that His proximity is not in the form of immanence and His distance is not in the form of diversity. In addition, non-associational transcendence, the classical associational transcendence, the individual associational transcendence, and epistemological transcendence are introduced as different forms of transcendence, according on which the mode of God's transcendence in relation to possible things in philosophy based on Sadrain individual unity of being is clarified.