Volume 1 . Number 1 . June 2000

Transcendent Philosophy

An International Journal for Comparative Philosophy and Mysticism

Articles

William C. Chittick
On the Teleology of Perception

S. M. Khamenei
Sense Perception

Oliver Leaman
Mulla Sadra, Perception and Knowledge by Presence

M. Araki
The Nature and Stages of Perception in Mulla Sadra’s Philosophy

Cécile Bonmariage
How is it possible to see Ghouls (Ghûl) in the Desert?

G. E. Dinani
Unification of Intelligent and Intelligible

I. Kalin
Knowledge as Appropriation vs. Knowledge as Reprehension

S. Pazouki
Sufi Knowledge in Mulla Sadra

E. Wolf-Gazo
Berkeley, Whitehead, Sadra: From Sense Impressions to Intuition

William C. Chittick, State University of New York, USA

In modern philosophy, the word perception typically designates physical sensation. Earlier philosophers often dealt with the concept in much broader terms, as would be expected from the original meaning of Latin word percipio. So also the Muslim philosophers spoke of perception—using the Arabic word idrâk—in an exceedingly broad sense. For them, perception denotes apprehension and obtaining knowledge by any agent, from animals to God, and on any level, from physical sensation to intellectual vision.

In the philosophy of Mullâ Sadrâ, the concept of perception plays a crucial role both in the explanation of the nature of existence and in the analysis of the goal of human life. This follows naturally from the fact that his philosophy is oriented toward "psychology" in the pre-modern sense. In other words, he attempts to provide an overview of the human self in all its ramifications and to map out the way for the self to achieve the highest of its own possibilities, possibilities that are rooted in its ability to perceive.

At the end of the first of the four books of the Asfâr, Sadrâ provides definitions for some thirty words that are employed in discussing the modalities of knowledge (`ilm). He lists "perception" as the first of these words. In defining it, he begins with its literal sense. As any Arabic dictionary will tell us, it has a variety of meanings, such as attaining, reaching, arriving, catching, grasping, comprehending, and discerning. Sadrâ writes,

Idrâk is encounter [liqâ’] and arrival [wusûl]. When the intellective potency arrives at the quiddity of the intelligible and attains it, this is its perception in this respect. In philosophy, the meaning intended by the word coincides with the literal meaning. Or rather, true perception and encounter is only this encounter, that is, perception by knowledge. As for bodily encounter, it is not really an encounter. (Asfâr 3:507, 323.31)¹

Before going any further, we need to allude to some of the issues raised by this definition. Like all Muslim philosophers, Sadrâ analyzes the human self in terms of faculties. However, the Arabic word for "faculty" is quwwa, which is also the word for "potentiality" as contrasted with "actuality." Given that every faculty is at the same time a potentiality, quwwa can better be translated as "potency." Its dual meaning is especially important in Sadrâ’s writings, because his analysis of the human soul depends precisely on seeing it as a grand potentiality that encompasses every other potentiality designated by the names of the faculties.

In this definition of perception, Sadrâ means by the "intellective potency" the power and potential of the self to know something. When this power reaches an object, it moves from potentiality to actuality. The degree of actuality that it achieves is one of the most basic issues that needs to be addressed.

In the definition, Sadrâ says that through perception the intellective potency arrives at the "quiddity" (or "whatness") of a thing. In other words, when perception takes place, we come to know "what" the object of perception is. The fact that perception entails knowing a thing’s quiddity is emphasized in the second word that Sadrâ defines in his list of technical terms—shu`ûr or "awareness." Awareness, he says, is to perceive something without "achieving fixity" (istithbât), that is, without ascertaining the thing’s whatness.² He adds, "Awareness is the first level of the arrival of knowledge at the intellective potency. It is, as it were, a shaky perception. That is why it is not said about God that He is ‘aware’ of a thing" (3:508, 323.34), though it is said about Him that He "perceives" things.

The thing that is perceived is an "intelligible," that is, an object known to intelligence. The intelligible is called the "form" (sûra) of the thing, in the Aristotelian sense of the word form. Hence it is contrasted with the thing’s "matter" (mâdda), which is unintelligible in itself. The only things we can truly perceive and know are forms, not matter.

Finally, in this definition Sadrâ insists that true idrâk—that is true attainment, reaching, arrival, and encounter—pertains to knowledge and not to the body. This reminds us that real perception of things can only take place if an intelligent agent encounters an intelligible object. Every bodily attainment can only be fleeting and evanescent. So also, any modality of perception that is in any way sullied by the body’s materiality will be deficient in certain basic ways, because the form will be obscured both by the means of perception and by the existential situation within which it is perceived.

In the same list of important terms, Sadrâ provides another definition that can help us understand the final goal of perception. This term is dhihn or "mind." He writes, "The mind is the soul’s potency to acquire knowledges that have not yet been attained" (3:515, 325.35).

In keeping with the general Graeco-Islamic view of things, Sadrâ understands the human soul or self to have many powers and faculties and many corresponding levels of actualization, beginning with the plant and animal levels. The soul actualizes itself by perceiving what it has the potential to perceive. The soul’s goal in its existence is to move from potential knowing to actual knowing. When its potential knowledge becomes fully actual, it is no longer called a "soul" but rather an "intellect," or an "intellect in act." In Sadrâ’s view, then, the human soul’s potential to achieve actual knowledge is called the "mind."

The mind comes to know things through perception. "Perception" is simply the name given to the act whereby the soul comes to know, whatever the object may be. If we look at perception from the side of the perceiver, it has four basic varieties. In each case, the mind encounters the "form" of a thing—that is, its quiddity or intelligible reality—not its matter. However, the circumstances are different in each sort of encounter. These circumstances pertain both to the instrument that perceives and to the modality of the perceptible’s existence.

The first level of perception is sense-perception (hiss). At this level the perceived form exists in matter, and the perceiver finds the form in modes sto material embodiment. These modes are basically the Aristotelian accidents, such as quantity, quality, time, place, and situation. In its external existence as a thing, the form is inseparable from such accidental attributes, and it is precisely these attributes that allow us to perceive it with the senses. As for the matter through which the form exists, it can never be perceived in itself, because it represents the furthest and darkest reaches of existence, a realm that remains almost entirely unintelligible.

The second level of perception is imagination (khayâl, takhayyul), which is the perception of a sensory thing, along with all its characteristics and qualities, in the same way that it is perceived by the senses. Unlike sense-perception, however, imagination perceives the thing whether or not the thing’s matter is present to the senses.

The third level is wahm. The medievals translated this Arabic word as "estimatio," but modern scholars have reached no consensus as to what exactly it means and how it can be appropriately rendered into English. I translate it as "sense-intuition" in order to suggest its intermediary status between intellect and the senses. According to Sadrâ, it is the perception of an intelligible meaning while attributing the meaning to a particular, sensory thing. In sense-intuition, the soul perceives the universal, but within a particular, rather than in the universal itself.

The highest level is intellection (ta`aqqul), which is the perception of something in respect of its quiddity alone, not in respect of anything else.³

What distinguishes the levels of perception boils down to the degree of "disengagement" (tajarrud), a term of fundamental importance in Sadrâ’s writings. Tajarrud is another word concerning whose translation modern scholars have not agreed. Most commonly, it has been translated as "abstraction," a word that thoroughly obscures its basic meaning.⁴ A "disengaged" thing is not only free and quit of matter, but it also dwells in a domain of intensified existence and consciousness. In Islamic philosophy in general, few concepts have been more significant than "disengagement" for describing the ultimate goal of the human quest for perfection. In the purest sense, disengagement is an attribute of God, the Necessary Existence in itself, since the Necessary Existence has no attachment to or dependence upon anything other than itself. More specifically, disengagement is the attribute of the intellect that is able to see things as they actually are, that is, without their entanglement in the obscurities of imagination and sense-perception.⁵ It is also the essential attribute of the forms or quiddities that the intellect perceives.

According to Sadrâ, the four levels of perception need to be differentiated in terms of the degree of disengagement reached by the perceptibles.

The first level, that of sense-perception, can be understood in terms of three conditions (shart) that determine its nature: First, the matter is present at the instrument of perception, which is to say that the soul perceives the thing externally in its material embodiment. Second, the thing’s form is concealed by the perceived qualities and characteristics. Third, the perceived thing is a particular, not a universal.

On the second level—imagination—the perceptibles are disengaged from the first of the three conditions, material embodiment, because there is no need for the external presence of the thing.

On the third level, sense-intuition’s perceptibles are disengaged both from material embodiment and from the object’s specific qualities and characteristics.

On the final level, the intelligibles are disengaged from all three conditions, because the intellect perceives only universals.⁶

Sadrâ concludes his discussion of the levels of perception by saying that the four levels can be reduced to three, because imagination and sense-intuition both pertain to the intermediary domain between intellect and the senses.⁷

The three basic levels of perception—sense-perception, imagination, and intellection—correspond exactly with the three worlds that are found in the external realm. These are the world of bodies, the world of imagination, and the world of intellect. Discussion of levels of perception is inseparable from discussion of levels of existence. If there were only one level of existence, there would be only one sort of perception. And indeed, this is precisely the view of much of modern philosophy. Reducing perception to sensation follows from the elimination of the imaginal and spiritual domains from serious consideration.

In talk of levels of existence, what is meant by "existence" is possible existence, or formal and delimited existence, not Necessary Existence. Existence in itself—Arabic wujûd—is the ultimate reality of all things, and, as such, it lies beyond the worlds and beyond the levels. In itself, existence remains forever unattainable, imperceptible, and unknowable. However, it deploys itself in degrees of strength and weakness. We come to know it indirectly by perceiving it in various conditioned modalities. The higher the realm of existence, the more it is disengaged from matter and from the conditions and characteristics of things. Correspondingly, the perception that pertains to the higher levels is more intense and more direct.

Each level of existence is typically called a "world" (`âlam), and the sum total of the levels is known simply as "the world," or, as we can also translate it, "the cosmos" or "the universe." Discussion of worlds is plainly a discussion of knowledge and perception. In Arabic, this point is brought home by the word `âlam itself. It derives from the same root as the word for knowledge, `ilm. The lexicographers tell us that its primary designation of "world" is "that by means of which one knows." Thus, the "world" as a whole is a realm that is defined and designated by the fact that it can be an object of knowledge. So also, each world or level within the whole is defined by the type of perception that makes it the object of knowledge. The fact that there are three basic modes of perception derives from the fact there are three basic knowable realms.

One of Sadrâ’s more detailed exposition of the worlds comes in a chapter of the Asfâr called "On the divisions of the sciences," that is, the "knowledges," or the modalities of knowing. There he explains that the reality of knowledge goes back to "formal existence," which is the realm of existence within which forms appear to perception. He then says that formal existence has three divisions—complete, sufficient, and deficient. Complete existence is the realm of the intelligible forms and the disengaged intellects. Sufficient existence is the realm of souls, also called "the world of imagination." Deficient existence is the domain of the sensory forms, which are "the forms that endure through matter and are attached to it" (3:501, 322.10).

Having described the three levels of formal existence, Sadrâ then speaks of a fourth level, that of bodily matter, which undergoes transformation and renewal at every instant. Because bodily matter is immersed in nonexistence, possibility, contingency, and darkness, it is unknowable, even if it is called by the name "existence." As examples Sadrâ cites time and movement.⁸

In explaining the differentiation among these four domains, Sadrâ tells us that they differ in terms of the intensity and weakness of their existence. The stronger a thing’s modality of existence, the more disengaged it is from the transient world of matter. The more disengaged it is, the more intelligible it is, because it is more purely itself. Each of the realms lower than the world of completeness and intellect is immersed to some degree in the muddiness and obscurity brought about by multiplicity, dispersion, separation, and confusion.⁹

The key to understanding Sadrâ’s concept of perception is his concept of existence. It needs to be kept in mind that the English word existence is not an adequate translation of the Arabic wujûd,nor will the situation be any better if use the term "being" instead of "existence." One important dimension of the discussion of wujûd that is immediately lost to sight in translation is the fact that the word itself demands consciousness and perception. The literal meaning of wujûd is "finding" and "being found," and this meaning was much stressed in the writings of Ibn al-`Arabî and his followers, with whom Sadrâ was thoroughly familiar and from whom he often quotes.

However, it is not only the Sufi theoreticians who insisted that existence demands consciousness and awareness. Even a straight Hellenophile philosopher like Afdal al-Dîn Kâshânî (d. ca. 610/1213), who had no connection with his younger contemporary Ibn al-`Arabî and who wrote most of his works in Persian, makes use of this double significance of the word wujûd to divide existence into two basic realms.¹⁰ The first of these realms is "being" (hastî) without consciousness and awareness. The second is being along with "finding" (yâft). Moreover, Bâbâ Afdal uses Persian yâft or "finding" not only as a synonym for wujûd in its higher sense, but also as a synonym for perception (idrâk). He explains that the realm of mere being appears to us through inanimate objects, while the world of finding and perception appears in the realm of souls and intellects.

Once we remember that perception and finding are already implicit in the word wujûd as employed by many of the philosophers, we see that any attempt to reduce existence to mere "being there" seems obtuse. Rather, existence in the full sense is not only that which is there, but also that which finds what is there. The more intensely something is there, the more intensely it finds. The fullest degree of existence is found in the fullest degree of presence, perception, and consciousness.

In a short gloss on the meaning of perception, Sadrâ says, "Perception is the existence of the perceptible for the perceiver" (al-idrâk `ibâra `an wujûd al-mudrak li’l-mudrik).¹¹ In the light of the dual meaning of the word wujûd, this can also be translated as, "Perception is the perceptible’s being found by the perceiver." In several similar glosses on the word, Sadrâ often replaces the word wujûd with the word "presence" (hudûr) or "witnessing" (mushâda),¹² both of which are terms with long histories that can throw light on how he understands the nature.¹³

"Presence" is the opposite of "absence" (ghayba), and it is practically a synonym of "witnessing." Sadrâ sometimes divides the universe into two basic "perceptual" (idrâkî) domains, that is, the world of life and knowledge, which is the realm of intellects and souls, and the world of death and ignorance, which is the realm of inanimate bodies.¹⁴ (These are of course equivalent to Bâbâ Afdal’s "finding" and "being.") When Sadrâ makes this division, he is likely to employ the Koranic terms for these two realms, that is, the "absent" (ghayb) and the "witnessed" (shahâda). The "absent" is everything that we do not ordinarily perceive. The "witnessed" is everything present to our senses.

When we ask if it is possible to perceive and witness the "absent" world, the philosophers will reply that of course it is. We do so precisely by perceiving those things that the senses are unable to grasp. However, in order truly to perceive the realm of absent things, we need to strengthen our perceptual faculties and to learn how to see through the darkness of the corporeal and sensory realm into the domain that lies beyond it. The absent realm must come to exist for us and to be found by us. In other words, it must come to be present in the self and be witnessed by it.

Perception, then, is a mode of existence, or it is existence itself, which is precisely "presence"—being there and being found. Perception is the existence of the perceived object within the perceiver. It follows that in perceiving both the external and the internal worlds, the degree of perception coincides with the degree of existence. To perceive something more directly is to participate in existence more fully.

When Sadrâ says that perception is for the perceptible "to exist" or "to be found" within the perceiver, he clearly does not mean that the thing exists in the same mode internally as it does externally. He explains that when the mind perceives something, it comes from potentiality to actuality, and this actuality of the mind is the presence of the thing’s intelligible form in the mind. This presence is called "mental existence" (wujûd dhihnî), an expression that we can also translate as "mental finding." However, as long as the soul remains the soul and has not become an intellect in act, the soul’s mode of perception and existence is weak, and everything that is perceived and exists within the soul is even weaker. Sadrâ writes that because of this weakness, the specific acts and traces that are ordered upon the soul and come into existence from it have the utmost weakness of existence. Or rather, the existence of the intellective and imaginal forms that come into existence from it are shadows and apparitions of the external existences that emerge from the Creator, even if the quiddity is preserved in the two existences. Hence the traces that are ordered upon the quiddity in the external realm are not ordered upon it in respect of [its existence in the soul]. . . .

This existence of a thing upon which traces are not ordered while it emerges from the soul in this modality of manifestation is named "mental" and "shadow" existence. The other, upon which traces are ordered, is named "external" and "entified" existence. (1:266, 65.27)

In short, the things perceived by sense-perception exist with a true existence in the mind, but their mental existence is a shadow of their external existence. However, as the soul gradually actualizes its potency to know the higher realms, the objects that it perceives undergo a corresponding increase in intensity. At the stage of true intellective perception, the intellect that perceives is identical in existence and consciousness with the forms that are its perceptibles.

Perception takes place within the soul—nafs—a word that means literally "self." Discussion of self or soul begins at the level of plants and extends to the highest reaches of human perfection. The human soul can be described most simply as "all the potencies" (8:221, 777.31). By this Sadrâ means that the rational soul is "the one that perceives with all the perceptions attributed to the human potencies" (ibid.). The human soul, in other words, is pure potency, and as such it has no actuality. The actuality of the soul comes about through perception. When the soul perceives something, the thing comes to exist within the soul in the appropriate mode of existence, and the soul itself comes to actualize in itself the corresponding mode of mental existence.

The goal of human existence it to bring the soul’s potentiality into actuality. At the beginning of its creation, the human self is empty of the knowledge of things. In contrast, other things are created with actualized knowledge of things, and this fixes them in their specific identities. Since the human soul is created knowing nothing, it has the potential to know everything. It is this characteristic alone that allows it to be transmuted into an intellect in act.

God created the human spirit empty of the realization of things within it and [empty] of the knowledge of things. . . . Had He not created the human spirit for the sake of the knowledge of things as they are, the spirit would necessarily be, at the first of its created disposition [fitra], one of those things in act, and it would not be empty of all. . . .

Although at first . . . the human spirit is a sheer potency, empty of the intelligibles, nonetheless it is proper for it to know the realities and become conjoined [ittisâl] with all of them. It follows that true knowledge [`irfân] of God, of His spiritual realm [malakût], and of His signs [âyât] is the final goal. . . . Knowledge is the first and the last, the origin and tfinal goal. (3:515-16, 326.2)¹⁵

Perception actualizes a potential knowledge of the soul. Actuality demands activity, and Sadrâ tells us that those philosophers who have spoken of perception as the soul’s becoming imprinted with the perceptibles have missed the real nature of perception, because perception is much closer to activity and actuality than to receptivity.

The relation of the perceived form to the knowing essence is the relation of the made thing [maj`ûl] to the maker [jâ`il], not the relation of indwelling [hulûl] or imprinting [intibâ`]. (8:251, 785.32)

Relative to its imaginal and sensory perceptibles, the soul is more similar to an innovating actor [al-fâ`il al-mubdi`] than to a receptive dwelling place [al-mahall al-qâbil]. (1:287, 70.35)

In his discussion of vision, Sadrâ provides a specific example of how the soul comes into act through perception. After rejecting the theories of the natural scientists, the mathematicians, and Suhrawardî, he writes,

Vision takes place through the configuring of a form similar to the thing, by God’s power, from the side of the world of the soulish, spiritual realm. The form comes to be disengaged from the external matter and present to the perceiving soul. The form endures through the soul just as an act endures through its agent, not as something received endures through its receptacle. (8:179-80, 768.8)

Having said this, Sadrâ extends the argument, showing that vision is one instance of the general rule in perception, which is that the perceiver comes to be unified with the perceptible. This is the same principle that he demonstrated previously under the rubric of "the unification of the intellect and the intelligible" (ittihâd al-`aql wa’l-ma`qûl), which he considers one of the cornerstones of his philosophy. He is especially concerned to prove this principle because Avicenna and his followers had denied it.

What we demonstrated concerning the unification of the intellect and the intelligible applies to all sensory, imaginal, and sense-intuitive perceptions. We called attention to this issue in the discussions of the intellect and the intelligible. We said that sense-perception in an unqualified sense is not as is well known among the generality of sages, who say that sensation disengages the very form of the sensible thing from its matter and meets it along with its surrounding accidents; and, in the same way, that imagination disengages the form with a greater disengagement¹⁶. . . . Rather, perception in an unqualified sense is obtained only from the Bestower’s¹⁷ effusion of another, luminous, perceptual form through which perception and awareness are obtained. It is this form that is sensate in act and sensible in act. As for the existence of the form in matter, it is neither sense-perception nor a sensible. However, it is among those things that prepare the way for the effusion of that form. (8:81, 768.10)

Thus, the perceptible is a form that is effused upon the soul by God. Investigating Sadrâ’s elucidations of the theological implications of this statement would demand another study, so here it is sufficient to understand that God’s effusion of the form actualizes the soul’s potential to know. In coming forth from potency to act, the soul gains a mode of mental existence that coincides with the external existence of the perceived thing. The known thing is precisely the intellective or imaginal form, and the form’s presence to the soul is its mental existence within the soul, an existence that is identical with the existence of the soul itself, since there is no plurality of existences in the soul. Rather, the soul’s consciousness of the form is the same as the form’s existence for the soul. In mental existence, perception and existence are one thing. It follows that, as Sadrâ frequently tells us, the perceived object is always of the same kind as the perceiver. Through touch, taste, and vision the soul perceives objects that are of the same kind as itself, for these objects are the forms of the touched, the tasted, and the seen things actualized in the soul.¹⁸

When Sadrâ says that the soul is "all the potencies," he means that the human self is an unlimited potential for knowing. The soul’s good lies in its actualization of its potential, and this potential cannot be circumscribed. The soul, as Aristotle says at the beginning of the Metaphysics, yearns for omniscience, because its potential is precisely to perceive all things.¹⁹ But all things can be found only in pure intellect, where they subsist as intellective forms. Thus the highest stage of perception is for the soul to become an intellect. In other words, the soul comes to perceive in the fullness of its own capacity, and it comes to exist in the fullness of actual finding. Once it realizes the station of full perception and full existence, all things are present to it in act. This is to say that all things are present to the intellect in the clarity of their real, intellective existence, not in the obscurity of their sensory and imaginal existence.

When the soul becomes an intellect, it becomes all things. Right now also, it is unified with everything that it has made present in its own essence—I mean the forms of those things, not their entities that are external to it. This does not require that the soul be compounded of those external affairs, nor of those forms. Rather, the more perfect the soul becomes, the more it becomes a gathering of things and the more it gains in the intensity of its simplicity, because the truly simple thing is all things, as has been demonstrated. (Asfâr 8:253, 786.16)

It needs to be remembered that for Sadrâ, existence is primary, and quiddity is secondary. The quiddities are what Ibn al-`Arabî calls the "fixed entities," and they are "fixed" because they never change. What changes is formal existence, which undergoes intensification and weakening. The levels of perception are differentiated by the weakness or strength of the existence to which they correspond. In Sadrâ’s words, only when existence reaches the level of "the simple intellect, which is entirely disengaged from the world of bodies and quantities, does it become all the intelligibles and all the things, in a manner more excellent and more eminent than the things are in themselves" (3:373, 293.32).

At each level of perception, the soul disengages perceptible things from matter and the other conditions of the ontological levels. Even sense perception necessarily disengages the perceptibles, because the external matter does not enter into the soul. But, when the soul disengages the perceptibles, simultaneously it becomes disengaged from the conditions of the lower worlds.. The movement from sense-perception, to imagination, and then to intellection is a movement from frail existence and weak perception to strong existence and intense finding. Every time the soul actualizes its own potential through knowing, it gains in the strength of its existence, and when it becomes an intellect in act, it has gained full and everlasting existence.

Sadrâ is critical of the expositions of the earlier philosophers concerning the meaning of "disengagement." His rejection of their positions helps explain why "abstraction" is not a proper way to translate the term into English.²⁰ He writes,

The meaning of disengagement in intellection and other perception is not as is well-known—that it is the elimination of certain extraneous things [zawâ’id]. Nor is it that the soul stands still while the perceptibles are transferred from their material substrate to sensation, from sensation to imagination, and from it to the intellect. Rather, the perceiver and the perceptible become disengaged together. Together they withdraw from one existence to another existence. Together they are transferred from one configuration to another configuration and from one world to another world, until the soul becomes an intellect, an intellecter, and an intelligible in act, after it had been potential in all this. (Asfâr 3:366, 292.1)

Contrary to what was thought by some of the earlier philosophers, disengagement dnot imply a rejection of the body. This is because the essential reality of the body is formal, not material. The more the soul is strengthened, the more the body’s intellective form is intensified and the more its existence is consolidated. Sadrâ writes,

Among the things that are necessary to know is that here [in this world] the human is the totality of soul and body. These two, despite their diversity in waystation, are two existent things that exist through one existence. It is as if the two are one thing possessing two sides. One of the sides is altering and extinguishing, and it is like the branch. The other side is fixed and subsistent, and it is like the root. The more the soul becomes perfect in its existence, the more the body becomes limpid and subtle. It becomes more intense in conjunction with the soul, and the unification between the two becomes stronger and more intense. Finally, when intellective existence comes about, they become one thing without difference.

The affair is not as is supposed by the majority—that, when the soul’s this-worldly existence alters into the afterworldly existence, the soul withdraws from the body and becomes as if naked, throwing off its clothes. This is because they suppose that the natural body—which the soul governs and acts upon freely by an essential governance and a primary free-activity—is this inanimate flesh that is thrown down after death, but it is not like this. Rather, this dead flesh is outside the substrate of free-activity and governance. It is like a heaviness and a dregs that drops down and is expelled from the act of nature, like filths and other such things. Or, it is like the hair, fur, horns, and hooves that are obtained by nature external to her essence for external purposes. This is like a house. A man builds it not because of existence, but to repel heat and cold, and for the other things without which it is impossible to live in this world. But, human life does not pervade the house. (9:98, 846.8)²¹

We have now discussed ten basic points that should be sufficient to clarify Sadrâ’s overall depiction of how perception moves from the lowest to the highest level by a process of disengagement. These can be summarized as follows:

1. Perception is to gain knowledge of a thing by encountering its quiddity, which is its form or intelligible reality.
2. There are four basic levels on which perception occurs, though these can be reduced to three: the senses, imagination, and intellect.
3. The levels of perception are defined by the intensity of perception’s disengagement from matter.
4. The three basic perceptual levels correspond exactly with the three basic worlds that make up the cosmos.
5. The reality of existence is inseparable from the reality of knowledge and perception, so the levels of existence are identical with the levels of perception.
6. The mental existence of the perceptibles is a shadow of the external existence of the things, except in intellective perception, where intellect and the intelligibles have become one through an existence that is permanent and everlasting.
7. The human soul comes into existence empty of knowledge and actuality, so it has the potential to perceive all things. Perception is the soul’s actuality and activity.
8. The more intensely the soul perceives, the more intensely it exists. The more intensely it exists, the more it takes on the attribute of the simple reality of existence that gives rise to all things.
9. The soul’s disengagement of things through perception is at once its own disengagement through the intensification of existence and consciousness.
10. The soul’s disengagement does not involve shucking off the body, but rather transfiguration of the body and all bodily perceptibles.

In conclusion, we can see that for Sadrâ, the final goal of perception is for the human self to see things as they really are. This can only occur when the soul actualizes its unlimited potential to know. This potential is the ability to perceive all things dwelling on all levels of formal existence. The potential can be turned into actuality through a gradual disentanglement, disengagement, and separation (mufâraqa) from all embodiment and materiality and a return to the intelligible reality of the soul, which is nothing but the intellect in act, or the intelligence that perceives all things as they actually are in existence itself. This does not mean that the soul will no longer have any connection with the things of the external world. Rather, it means that it will have come to perceive things clearly, wherever they may be the levels of existence. It will no longer fall into the nearsightedness of perceiving the forms as anchored to the various locations in which they become manifest to the perceiver, locations in which the forms appear through the dark glass of sense-perception and imagination. Having perceived self and all things for what they are and having found itself to be one with all things, the soul attains to its final goal.

1-I provide page references both for the nine-volume edition of the Asfâr (Tabâtabâ'î edition, which began appearing in Qom in 1378/1958-59), as given on the CD-Rom "Nûr al-Hikma 2" (Qum: Computer Research Center of Islamic Science; and for the lithograph edition (Tehran: 1282/1865-66); in the latter case, I also provide the line number. Since the lithograph edition is only partially paginated, I follow the pagination established by M. Ibrâhîm Ayatî in Fihrist-i abwâb wa fusûl-i kitâb-i Asfâr (Tehran: Dânishgâh-i Tihrân, 1340/1961). The latter has also been published in S. H. Nasr, Yâd-nâma-yi Mullâ Sadrâ (Tehran: Dânishgâh-i Tihrân, 1340/1961), pp. 63-106.

S.M. Khamenei, Sadra Islamic Philosophy Research Institute (SIPRIn), Iran

Mulla Sadra’s doctrine of perception- including sense perception, imaginary perception, intellectual perception- begins from the external things and is based on what it is called "essential known".¹

Mulla Sadra regards all the stages of perception, which are a series of bodily and psychical (material and immaterial) phenomena as originated from the external material thing (object). Unlike some idealist philosophers, who regard the mental things as the main ground of perception, or rationalist philosophers, who believe in a priori knowns or Hegel who has taken the "idea" as origin, he believes in the correspondence between the mental knowledge (or the essential known) and the external object. He sees a relation between all perceptions of man and the external facts and says that our knowns and imaginations have their roots in our senses.

Sensualists maintain that in this point the sense perception reaches its end. Some of them mention awareness among the prerequisites of the truth of perception. According to Mulla Sadra, however, the reflection of the external objects on the senses is like the reflection of a picture in a mirror (or on a photographic plate); and it is too trivial to be called perception.

According to Mulla Sadra, the objects’ influencing on our senses is only a part of perception; and naturally those, who like sensualists have not gone beyond the experience and sense, cannot (and should) not deny the perfect process of perception which occurs after sensing.

The man’s senses (for instance the sense of sight) are too weak to reflect the external reality in the mind and, thus, produce the knowledge for us. The signals transmitted by the eye result are nothing other than a phantom (i.e. an dubious picture) and this cannot be deemed as the knowledge. According to Mulla Sadra’s philosophy, the knowledge should be an explicit representative of the external reality, and the phantoms of the material objects are not so. In order to be representative , the knowledge and perception should deal with the quiddities of the external world. (The distinction between quiddity and form on the one hand and phantom, on the other hand, is that the form, if given mentally an external existence, will be same as the external thing; phantom, however, is not so).

The brain is also a processor like that of computer (for, it performs the man’s commands, and is not able to do a duty out of the limits of data. It is not aware of what it does, and is not able to elaborate on the data, without being commanded); and without awareness there is no knowledge.

Therefore, though it is true that our senses are involved in perception and regarded as necessary promises for it, they are not sufficient. The material product of these senses does not constitute our perception; impressions and sensible forms in the brain cannot be automatically transmitted to the mind.²

When the senses have done their duties and the sensible forms have been gained in the nervous system and brain, it is time for the soul and mind to make- employing the important elements, i.e. intention and awareness- an immaterial phenomenon called perception or knowledge- or as Mulla Sadra puts it "illuminative form".³ According to Mulla Sadra the intention and awareness are two main parts of the knowledge and perception.

The "intention" is a psychological phenomenon and a psychical factor. Body and its material organs are not able to do it; it requires a "indivisible entity" (basit al-haqiqah) essence. None of the signals transmitted by the senses can be regarded as perception unless there is the intention of the perceiver involved. And actually, it can be seen that the man, while crossing the street, does not perceives what he sees or hears, except he pays attention to them.

Like the "intention", "awareness" also is not a material phenomenon. It is not in consistency with the matter and refers to the free-of-matter soul. For Mulla Sadra, the awareness is the presence (or recalling) of the quiddity of the external phenomenon or object or the main part of its essential aspects, in the mind. It is only the simple and immaterial soul which is deserved to be presented the self and other objects; for, the essential characteristic of the matter is its unawareness (or as Mulla Sadra says, its absence) of everything. According to the school of Mulla Sadra and his doctrine of "substantial motion" the matter is moving along a hypothetical and temporal line, and its past and future are "non-existing" and "non-existent" and ,thus, absent. Therefore, the matter is unaware of its own self; we do not mention the other things. For example, how can the retina or the cells of brain – on which is formed the picture and which are unaware even of their selves- be aware of an external fact? The awareness is, essentially, an existential and positive thing, therefore the material impressions of the brain- which consist of the existence and non- existence – cannot be regarded as the awareness and perception.

Therefore, awareness is same as the " presence" of the external object (or accidental known) in the man’s mind and revealing or unveiling aspect, which Mulla Sadra regards as the prerequisites of the perception and knowledge.

As we know, this "awareness", "presence", "unveiling" are the exclusive prerequisites for the truth of every perception, and can be regarded as criteria to make distinction between the true perception of a healthy man and the false perception of a neuropath one (hallucinations), and as it is said the unveiling aspect is found only in the quiddities of external objects.

This intention and awareness of the soul is what Mulla Sadra calls the soul’s " knowledge by presence" of its faculties and forms imprinted in them.

In the Islamic philosophy the knowledge is classified under two categories: acquired knowledge and knowledge by presence.

The acquired knowledge is gained mediately (i.e. through the five senses) and through mental stages. Though transmitting the quiddity of the objects to us, this knowledge cannot present the existential characteristics of them (e.g. heat, moisture…) and in the other words the acquired knowledge is an unproductive one.

The knowledge by presence is a knowledge, which reaches the inner self directly and immediately, and in the words, it is an intuitive perception. Unlike the acquired knowledge, this perception or knowledge contains the existential and external effects. Through union with it, man’s (immaterial) soul penetrates it and becomes aware of the depth of its existence.

The man’s knowledge by presence appears in different ways:

1-the perception of the self; the man’s knowledge of the self is an intuitive perception resulted through the knowledge by presence. Even if all five senses are disabled, the man is able to perceive his own self and this is not inconsistent with the fact that he sometimes perceives his self through the acquired knowledge (e.g. through seeing or touching).

2-the man perceives all his inner faculties, mental impressions, perceptions, motivations, desires, sentiments, thoughts, mental acts, and mental ideas through the knowledge by presence (Asfar-155/6).

3-the perception of what is reflected in the five senses- which are our reporters- also is through the knowledge by presence. And they are understood and analyzed entirely in the mind and through the knowledge by presence, and the present article is aimed to indicate this point.

4-extraordinary methods for perception and acquisition of the knowledge, which is acquired through intuition, such as perceptions gained after ascetic exercises or during the sleep and dream.

In Mulla Sadra’s philosophy the most important role in perception is played by the knowledge by presence. Intending to the products of its senses and becoming aware of the imprinted forms in those senses, the soul reconstructs the quiddity of the external object from them.

In addition to being able to be aware of what there proceeds in the senses, brain and its other internal faculties, the soul has creativity. Through this creativity, which is an essential aspect for it, the soul can construct any form and bring it into existence. The man’s soul is said to be even capable to imagine impossible and non-existing things, and even the non-existence itself in its own mind, and maintain for them positive and negative propositions.⁴

Mulla Sadra likens the man, because of his creativity, in some ways, to God. He says the forms, brought into existence in the mind, have not been transmitted to it; but rather they have been produced in, and emanated out from, the shop of the mind. As he himself says: the forms are emanated from the mind and not transformed to it.⁵

Therefore- unlike the other Muslim philosophers- Mulla Sadra does not regard the perception as the "imprinting" of direct picture of the object in the mind, and as a passive and reflective process, but he considers it as the creation and production of the forms of objects through the mind’s creativity and activity. Unlike the Kant’s categories, this creativity of the mind adds nothing to the data of sense, but it creates its counterpart in a mental (and not external) existence. It does not impose a special form or shape on its own percepts.

Thus, through reconstruction of the sensory impressions of quiddities and some secondary knowns- such as what Hume calls ideas- the mind gains acquired knowledge, and as Allamah Tabatabaii says: " it looks for "known", but it gains the knowledge".⁶

The role played by the sensible forms and the impressions of senses in the process of perception are only tools to make the soul and the mind prepared for making the acquired knowledge, i.e. creating a form and quiddity similar and corresponding to what there is in the external reality.

Having got acquainted with Mulla Sadra’s doctrine of sense perception, now it is worthy to mention Mulla Sadra’s other doctrine of perception. As we know Ibn-Sina and his followers regarded the "knowledge" as a "psychical quality". According to them- who followed Aristotle’s doctrine- the mind or the perceptive faculty of the soul is as a tablet on which the percepts are imprinted, and –in technical terminology- supervened and saved on it. These supervened forms are as a "secondary perfection" for man and have nothing to do with his essence.⁷

Though agreed with Aristotle in classifying all things under 10 categories, and though in the first part of his philosophical career, like other philosophers he classified the knowledge under the psychical category (a sub-category of the quality) he seems to have disproved it later and thought that the knowledge could not be classified under any Aristotelian categories and it is like the "existence" a supra-categorical one.

He goes further and, mentioning the well-known doctrine of " the primacy of existence"- claims that the knowledge is a level of the levels of existence and a quality of its qualities. Therefore, unlike his predecessors, he does not regard the "knowledge" as supervening and the mind as being supervened, and even he thinks that the knowledge cannot be regarded as separate from the "knower".⁸

Mulla Sadra says the knowledge is not separate from the existence and the essence of the knower, but it is a part of her/his existence. It is why the man’s existence attains perfect gradually as his knowledge and perceptions increase and his existential level upgrades, like a building which is completed through laying its bricks, that constitute that building altogether, on each other. Therefore, the knowledge and awareness are the primary, and not secondary, as Ibn- Sina and his followers think, perfection for the soul.

According to Mulla Sadra, when the man perceives something, in fact, he causes a quality to become actual and its going from secret potentiality to actuality; and actuality for the soul is as its perfection. Hence, upon every perception the man’s soul becomes more perfect, and the substance of his soul- which is, according to the rule of the substantial motion, in becoming- speeds up in perfection; and in the other philosophical expression its matter receives another form.

It should be noted that there is an important distinction between the substantial motion of the soul and that of matter, and that distinction is the simplicity and indivisibility of the soul’s identity (unlike the matter, which is divisible and composed of particles); and it is this simplicity of the soul and all other separates and immaterial things, which is equal with the awareness of one’s self, situation, and surroundings.

Mulla Sadra’s doctrine of the knowledge reaches its culmination in the rule of union of various levels: perception, perceiver, and perceived.

First- He says that the perception is nothing but the acquisition of the perceived for perceiver, and acquisition is, in fact, same as the existence, and the existence of everything is same as its self; therefore the perception and knowledge are same as the man’s essential known and perceived. That is:

PERCEPTION (KNOWLEDGE) ó PERCEIVED (KNOWN)⁹

Second- as we know the perception or knowledge is same as the perceiver and knower and not separate from him, since the knowledge is same as the awareness of the self and awareness of the self is our selfness and essence. That is:

PERCEPTION (KNOWLEDGE) ó PERCEIVER¹⁰

Comparing these two equality we can obtain:

PERCEIVER ó PERCEIVED( OR ESSENTIAL KNOWN)

This doctrine of Mulla Sadra is a special case of his general doctrine of perceptions. As we have said the philosophers classified perceptions under three categories: sense perceptions, imaginary perceptions, and intellectual one. This doctrine, known as the doctrine of the union of the knowledge, knower and known, or as Mulla Sadra says: union of the intellect, intelligence and intelligible, considers the imagination and imagined as well as the intelligence, intelligible, and intellect as united as the sense, the sensor and the sensible. In the version, which speaks of intellect, the importance of this doctrine can be seen more easily.

Wherever there is a known, there is certainly a knowledge and wherever there is knowledge there is, of course, a knower. These three are correlated, and correlated ones are corresponding ones. Therefore, the knowledge, the knower, and the known are the same thing and nothing else, since they have one existence. By the perceived, " a quior a thing, which has perception " is not meant, and thus, it cannot be considered as separate from the perception and supervened on it. It is, in fact, same as the perception, since the perceived form and the perception itself are not separate from each other.

Therefore the sense and essential sensible and the sensing person or soul are altogether one reality which are regarded as three different things through mental positions and assumptions in philosophy; existentially, however, they are same and of the kind of existence and existent, existing through one existence. Mulla Sadra expresses this relation as the union between "the sensor and the sensible" and the union between "the intellect, the intelligence and intelligibles".

Here it can be understood that why as the knowledge and awareness increase man’s spirit and existence develop and why the man’s existence, while being stable and having an external identity, is constantly in an evolutionary motion; and why as Heraclitus says," the fragrant of a flower cannot be smelt twice."

The rule of the union of perceiver, essential perceived and perception or union of the intelligence, intelligible, and intellect has a high place in Mulla Sadra’s philosophy; and as he himself has said, he had demonstrated it at the age of 58 after long ascetics exercises and prayers. This doctrine is originally very old and remained from the Illuminationist sages of the ancient Persia and Alexandrian philosophers, and particularly Porphyry had detailed it in his book. Ibn-Sina and his followers did not find a proof for it and thus disproved it. Mulla Sadra, however, could prove it through promises and demonstrations.

Evidently, by the "perceived" he does not mean the external object, but he intends a conception, received (or constructed) by the mind, i.e. " the essential known". Here, by the union, the union between two things, such as the union between the motion and the moving thing or the potentiality with actuality or the matter with the form, and not the union between the substance and accident, is intended.

The important issue, preoccupied many philosophers, which we have to discuss here, is the issue of correspondence between the mental concept (the subject) and the external object, or as Mulla Sadra puts it " the correspondence between the essential known and the accidental known".

The realist philosophers believe in the correspondence between the subject and the object. The other group of philosopher, however, could not find such a correspondence. These philosophers have regarded the mental concepts as separate from the external realities, or even considered the external realities as a picture of the mental concepts.

In the "Transcendent Theosophy", the correspondence between the object and the subject is regarded as the main pivot of philosophy without which there remains no issue for philosophy to discuss, and philosophy will turn to a verbal game.

As we saw, Mulla Sadra expresses the knowledge and perception as the "light" (which causes the objects to be exposed) and considers the perception and knowledge as and unveiling the external reality in the mind, and thus names it "unveiling aspect". In Mulla Sadra’s school, the key for the correspondence between the subject and object and a firm link for their real relation is the union of the quiddities of "the essential known" and "the accidental known", since the quiddity of the thing in the external world and in the mind is same.

In acquired knowledge the man always deals with the quiddities; no one can claim that the acquired knowledge is the presence of the objects in the mind; this is only the quiddity and the limits of external entity which enter the mind.

The quiddity is the external reality which appears as a " mental existent". When it is said that the knowledge has an unveiling aspect, it means that it displays the external reality: a triangle is a triangle, and not a square, whether in the mind or in the external world. Therefore, the quiddity is both the knowledge and the known.

All the primary and secondary qualities , quantities and positions of the things – which are the manifestations of the quiddities of the things- can be perceived through the senses and thus the quiddity can be reached. It is why Mulla Sadra’s school mentions this relation as the " saving the essentials"(inhifaz e dhatiyat )in both subjective and objective quiddities.

The only distinction, made between the external object and the mental object by Mulla Sadra, is distinction between their degrees of existence. The external existent has a more intense existence and a greater influence on the other objects (for instance fire burns and water wets); the mental existent, on the other hand, has a weak and shadow-like existence and lacks those influences. It is why the Mystics believe that the willful men and jukis can grant the strength and influence to those mental existents and realize them in the external world.

From another point of view and following Muslim Mystics, Mulla Sadra regards the world of existents consisted of three world: sensory, imaginary, and intellectual. In another place, he divides it into four world: the corporeal world, the world of sensible souls and all sensible forms, the world of separate souls, and the world of intellects.

In these three or four worlds, the quiddities of the material existents are one, and in correspondence. In these worlds, despite the important distinctions between them, every quiddity, which is seen in the corporeal world, can be seen in other worlds as well, the degree of its existence is, however, different in these worlds.¹¹

Here a confirmation for the correspondence between the material accidental sensible and the ideal and mental essential sensible, and a link for the union between the quiddity of a thing in the external world and its quiddity in the world of mind and soul, even in the level of the essential intellects, could be looked for.¹²

A thorough study on Mulla Sadra’s needs a more extended time. For the sake of brevity, we content ourselves with mentioning some important points:

First: The first important point, which is worthy to be mentioned, is illusion, which can discredit the forms imprinted by the senses.

It is proved that all the senses are sometimes captured by illusion; for example the eye sees a straight rod, which is placed in water, as a refracted one. Or the senses of hearing, or taste, or touch reports sometimes falsely. For this, some philosophers have regarded the man’s perceptions other than the external world, and entirely as the ideas created by the mind.

The subject of illusions or error in perceptions has been studied in details, in Islamic philosophy. It is said that the error is never committed by the senses and the error is, in fact, the error made by man’s mind in judging; and in philosophical expressions: the imagination faculty of the man is involved in recognizing it. As Ibn ‘Arabi says: "the senses are witnessing and the judge is the reason".¹³

The hallucinations of the psychopath ones, on the other hand, are caused by other things. Melancholic ones see and hear things, which are not in the external world, and in fact the imagination faculty or the mind of the psychopaths creates them.

In universal statements also, the error is possible to be committed, this also is caused by the involvement of the imagination faculty. Following Ibn ‘Arabi and Mystics, Mulla Sadra regards these kind of the statements, which are issued by the mind of the path and lead him to skepticism and sophism, as the devil temptations and devil phenomena.¹⁴

Yet the Islamic philosophy does not claim that all the man’s perceptions correspond the reality, and content itself to say that- in general- the perceptions may be in correspondence with the external objectivity, and the man also naturally thinks so.

Second. The man’s perception is not restricted to the sense perception. But, in addition to this perception, there are two other perceptions, following it, and these three perceptions consist the chain of the man’s perceptions. (It may be said that he does no accept the imaginative perception, which has had its own place in Islamic philosophy).¹⁵

The sense perception is defined as the presence of the form of every particular and material thing, which has accidents, for the perceiver, but free of matter and corporeality. The imaginative perception is the presence of every particular, but immaterial thing; and, the intellectual perception is the presence of the universal form of every sensed or imagined thing, which is called "intelligible", and the perceiver is called "intellect", and that universal perception is called "intelligence".

Mulla Sadra classifies this intelligible under " the first" and " the second" philosophical intelligibles and the second logical intelligible. In general, the levels of the perceptions are as follows: the sense perception, the imaginative perception, the intellectual perception (including the first and the second philosophical intelligibles and the second logical intelligible); there is a real and connective relation established between these various levels of the perception. That is, they are like the changes in the warmth of the water and not like the discrete points on a ruler; and the origin of all of them are the external existents and sensibles.

Third. The Arabic term " Dhehn"- which is translated sometimes to mind and sometimes to understanding-is applied, according to Mulla Sadra and Islamic philosophy- to a faculty of the soul which is able to perceive the external entities and things as well as the man’s psychical ones. This is same as the " understanding power" of the soul and perhaps on can say that it is other than the English understanding or Deutsche verstand or entedement in French. Also it is not same as Kantian term and is not restricted to the " understanding power".

Evidently, according to him, Dhehn is not same as the brain or another bodily organ. Also as we have said, it should not be regarded as a container for the knowns and percepts, which there is before the acquisition of the knowns and percepts; but it is same as the percepts, acquired for man, and simultaneous with them.¹⁶

Fourth. The philosophers, hitherto, defined the philosophy as " man’s becoming to an intellectual world, resembling and corresponding with the sensible and external world". At the end of his perception theory, Mulla Sadra comes to the conclusion that, according to the rule of union between the sensor and the sensible, and the union between the intelligent and intelligible as well as the rule of union between the knowledge and existence, the man is an aware existent, who, in every life and in every existential stage (sensory, imaginative, intellectual), unites through his perception and awareness , with the existents of that life or stage.

As a result: through his perceptions of this material world and by the transformation of the quiddities of external existents to his mind and spirit, the man becomes, in fact, a mental and intellectual world, similar to the material world; and in Plotinic expression, because of perceiving the truths of the world, the micro anthropo becomes equal with the world and universe( or the macro anthropo). Thus, the intellectual perception of the truths and entities, i.e. philosophy is, in fact, correspondence with the external world; a realistic correspondence, which is opposite to idealistic correspondence of Hegel and his school.

Fifth. There are some distinctions between the man’s perception and those of the other animals- who have sense perception and even imaginative perception. Among these distinctions is the intellectual perception and perceiving the universals, from which originate the philosophy and the other sciences.

The other is perceiving the one’s perception or knowledge of the knowledge, which is called apperception by Leibniz, and is called the compound knowledge as well.

Abstraction, generalization, and classifying the concepts under universal, particular, imagination and judgment are among the man’s characteristics. This article is devoted to the "imaginations", and those perceptions which have statements or judgments, on which Mulla Sadra presents the summit of his thought and designs, with his magic pen the most beautiful scene of the man’s perception, require another study.

1-Asfar;, vol. 8, p. 202
2- ibid., p.181
3- ibid.
4- ibid. 1/264; al Shawahid al-Rububiyyah, pp. 31-32
5- Asfar, vol.1, 265
6- Rawish e Realism ( the method of realism), vol.-, p.-
7- Asfar, 3/327-328
8- Asfar, 6/136
9- Asfar- 2/227
10-Asfar, vol.8, p.181
11- Asfar, vol.3, p.363 &p.506
12- Correspondence between three material, imaginary, and intellectual worlds. C.f. Asfar; vol. 6; p. 277;vol.7; p.18; and other points.
13- Ibn ‘Arabi; Futuhat al-Makkiyah( Meccian Openings); vol. 2; p. 395.
14- ibid.
15- Asfar; vol. 3; p. 360-362 and vol. 2; p.293.
16- Asfar;, vol. 1, p. 264

Oliver Leaman, Liverpool John Moores University, UK

According to many ishraqi thinkers, there is a type of knowledge which is so self-evident that it cannot be doubted. Of course, many philosophers have sought such a kind of knowledge, since if they could base their arguments on such incorrigible knowledge, those arguments would be soundly based indeed. We are familiar with Cartesian strategies which argue from a proposition which cannot be doubted, and even the opponents of the idealists, the empiricists, sought a level of knowledge which was certain on which they could construct different kinds of belief of varying degrees of reliability. What counts as self-evident knowledge for the ishraqi thinkers is that level of knowledge which is so intimately tied in with our perception of ourselves that in doubting it we would doubt ourselves, which is to imply doubting that with which the doubting is possible in the first place. The conclusion is taken to be that such doubt is impossible. The truth which is presupposed by any perception is that the subject of perception exists, It is perhaps Suhrawardi who explores this notion of immediate knowledge, `ilm al-huduri, most precisely, and he argues that it is so immediate and incontrovertible that it is known in far more than an intellectual sense. That is, there are propositions which we know through reason and which we know perfectly, in the sense that we grasp all aspects of them and can hold them in our minds all at once perfectly. We cannot doubt these propositions, but these are propositions, and they are only attainable through reason. The sorts of knowledge which are called `ilm al-huduri are not only indubitable, but we experience their indubitability. The light of knowledge which shines on them makes evident to us in more than merely an intellectual sense what truth they possess. Of course, another advantage which perception of the self has over discursive knowledge is that the assumption is made that the self is basically a simple thing, so the use of our intelligence implies the activity of a simple self, a self which is characterizable in terms its pure agency.

But surely, it will be said, there is far more to the self than merely a simple substance. Are not selves highly complex? Indeed they are, but what is being argued here is that the key to the self is merely its capacity to represent our existence, and as such it is simple. As Mulla Sadra points out, in knowing anything we know ourselves, and that self-knowledge is primitive epistemologically.¹ He goes even further and suggests that we cannot even formulate that basic form of knowledge in propositional form, since it is so direct that we cannot construct a proposition around it, describing it as though from outside, as it were. We cannot do this because the knowledge is so much part and parcel of thought itself that expressing it propositionally would be to make complex that which is paradigmatically simple, and introduce issues of truth and falsity where they have no place.

This theory fits in nicely with Suhrawardi's suspicion concerning propositions which are complex, the basis of his critique of the notion of definition. Suhrawardi argues that the Aristotelian technique of basing the syllogism on a definition, which is supposed to be a sound basis for such an argument, is fatally flawed, for the parts of the definition which are supposed to be the logical properties which characterize the notion themselves require a proof before they are accepted as parts of the meaning, and so on ad infinitum.² Suspicion of the complex is quite plausible, since how can one be sure that in one grasp of apprehension, as it were, all the characteristics of a thing have been captured? At this point we need to distinguish between two kinds of knowledge in Mulla Sadra, knowledge which is huduri and directly present to us, and knowledge which is husuli and which is acquired from without. There is nothing wrong with such knowledge, on the contrary, it represents our role in the world of constant movement in which we seek to perfect our understanding by aligning our consciousness so that it matches better the plurality of existence which describes reality.

What is perception for Mulla Sadra? We have to recall here his antipathy to essences, as evidenced by his adherence to an ontology in which existence is more basic than essence. ³ We also need to acknowledge the significance of change in his view of reality, so that we should not regard the perceiver as someone who seeks to come into contact with stable and pre-existing essences, which themselves in some way reflects divine reality. It is certainly true that when we know we come into contact with the divine creation, and we do this by moving from being able to know to knowing in actuality. Mulla Sadra is rather suspicious of the traditional mashsha'i understanding of knowledge as grasping the abstract forms which lie within things, since this is to reify essences in objectionable ways. He does adhere to the traditional idea of there being a variety of realms of understanding, ranging from the ordinary perceptual level to the higher intelligible, separated by the barzakh of the imaginative, but we certainly should not see this as a progress towards ever-increasing levels of abstraction. On the contrary, as we perfect ourselves we come closer to ever more basic forms of existence, and in this way come closer to the deity.

Now, there is an interesting aspect of light which makes it a popular concept in talking about knowledge, and that is the way in which it reveals that which exists, and yet which is literally invisible until it is affected by light. And light itself, of course, is also invisible, so that which is itself invisible brings to our attention what would otherwise be invisible. Light plays a large part in a large number of philosophies from different cultural traditions, and is certainly not limited to Islamic philosophy. For example, within Buddhism there is a traditional way of conceptualizing the mind as like a mirror reflecting the light of (potential) enlightenment which is ever-present in the universe. All we need to do is to blow the dust off the mirror, and then the pure light will be accessible to us! Some Buddhists like Huineng go ever further and claim that the light is always present within us, and the idea that anything could really impede it is mistaken.⁴ It is this idea that when something is illuminated then one cannot be mistaken about it, one cannot not notice it, as it were, which is such a crucial aspect of Mulla Sadra's notion of perception. For at theroot of our perception of everything outside us is our perception of what is within us, and the nature of the subject which is doing the perceiving must be known to us if anything is, since it is ever-present in the action of perceiving. There are many things which we can doubt, but as Descartes argued, the fact that we can doubt itself relies on certain facts which we cannot doubt, and those facts present themselves to us (they are huduri) in ways in which more dubitable forms of experience do not.

Many objections have been made to the attempt at identifying such incorrigible experiences, and these objections are soundly based. They basically suggest that even if there are such incorrigible experiences, they do not actually provide us with anything which is really information. For example, the knowledge that my experiences are the experiences of a subject does not reveal anything about the nature of that subject, apart from the fact that it is a subject, and anything we want to know about the subject has to be discovered in the normal sort of way. So the idea, which is quite evidently there in Suhrawardi, of a series of fixed and final objects of knowledge, facts which we cannot doubt and which ground further claims to knowledge, rests on a shaky philosophical foundation. But this should not worry Mulla Sadra too much, given the very different ontology which he constructs based on the notion of tashkik al-wujud. Although there is no doubt that Mulla Sadra also adheres to a doctrine of wahdat al-wujud, of the unity of existence, it is what he does with this idea of unity which is so interesting. The very same concept, the concept of light, which brings everything together also serves as its grounds for differentiation, since it is the degree of light which determines the level of reality of each individual thing in existence. As we increase our knowledge, we reach ever higher levels of perfection, we come into contact with more abstract and significant existences which are brighter and closer to the source of being itself, the deity.

Is this knowledge part and parcel of mysticism? It is difficult to know what to say about such a claim. Much of the technical language which Mulla Sadra uses comes from ibn al-`Arabi, and we know that he was interested in exploring a range of mystical approaches to knowledge. There is certainly a good deal in Mulla Sadra which acknowledges the significance of hikma, by contrast with other forms of rational thought, and which prioritizes the sorts of understanding of reality which come about through the personal contact between the individual and his or her creator. I have argued previously that we can understand Mulla Sadra's notion of the priority of existence over essence without bringing in any particular notion of mysticism, and that is true also of his use of the idea of the imaginal realm (al-`alam al-khayali).⁵ All these concepts have profound mystical implications, yet there is no need to draw these implications in order to understand them. This is hardly surprising, since most ideas have two sides, the zahir (open) and the batin (hidden), and we can understand them on each level without necessarily having to explore both levels. And it is fortunate that this is the case, since if it was the case that one could only understand ideas which are used mystically from a mystical point of view, it would not be possible to understand those ideas at all unless one were a mystic, and as we know on most accounts of Islamic mysticism this is a difficult and protracted process. I would not want to argue that the mystical aspects of Mulla Sadra's views on knowledge are not important, but in the spirit of the School of Isfahan we should accept that the mystical and the rational levels of discourse are capable of operating independently of each other,⁶ and it is within that spirit that the concept of knowledge will be explored here.

One of the most interesting defenses of the notion of `ilm al-huduri is that provided by Mehdi Ha'iri Yazdi, and he concentrates on the description of this kind of knowledge as specified by al-Suhrawardi, but it is essentially the same as that used by Mulla Sadra.⁷ The basic argument is that at some level knowledge of ourselves is not to be classified as prepositional knowledge, consisting of statements which could be true or false. If this knowledge was capable of being true or false then it would have to be assessable, yet any such assessment already presupposes the self which is doing the assessing. To take an example, there is much about which I could be mistaken, but I could not be mistaken that there is a self writing these pages. I could even get the name of the self wrong, but that there is a self acting here is incontrovertible. There are a variety of ways of expressing this idea. One is to say, as Wittgenstein does, that nothing could be evidence for the absence of such a self, since nothing could give us more grounds for disbelieving in such a self than in believing in it. That is, a world which turned out to justify the denial of such a self would be such a different world from that with which we are familiar that we would not know how to go on. In that case there is no more reason to deny the self than to assert it.

Another way of expressing this supposedly incontrovertible truth is to say that experience of the self is so perfect that it is undeniable. This is to take up a Cartesian strategy of taking some beliefs to be so clear and distinct that we can see everything that there is to see about them all at once, and are unable to deny them. The metaphor of light here is important, since once something is lit up, it is there in front of us and we are aware of it. But could we not be mistaken about its nature? We could be, we might for example imagine that we see something, that something is lit up, but really do not. We may be dreaming or merely having a powerful image before us to which nothing objective corresponds. Actually, this sort of objection will not work when brought up against ishraqi thought, since imagination and dreaming are here regarded as just as capable of yielding objective and significant experience as our everyday experience. In fact one might go further and suggest that dreaming and imagination is more capable of expressing reality than our ordinary experience, since it is while we are using our imagination that we are better able to represent to ourselves what is really important, as compared with what seems to be important.

The main problem with describing a particular type of experience which cannot be challenged is that to be persuasive the example has to yield very little detail. For example. it may be that as I am writing this I am having an experience of an I' doing the writing which I cannot challenge. I then say that this is an example of `ilm al-huduri because the experience of the self is so direct that it cannot be separated from the experience itself except as yet another example of the same experience. That is, if I consider the status of my experience of the self, then I am doing it through yet another experience of the self. But what does this actually show? It shows very little if anything about the nature of the self in question, merely that someone is having experience. It does not even show that it is the same subject which is having the experience of writing this paragraph that wrote the earlier paragraph, or is going to write the next one. Perhaps we need the mysticism after all to establish this sort of knowledge, and through such knowledge we can establish links between the different manifestations of the I'. If that is the case then it would be disappointing, since it is very much the direction of the argument that it will lead us to incorrigible propositions through the use of reason alone, and without making any specific religious commitments. After all, if to paper over the gaps in the argument we can use principles from mysticism then there seems little point to trying to establish the argument in the first place.

Fortunately we can say that such a strategy of using mysticism as philosophical glue would go entiragainst the principles of the School of Isfahan of which Mulla Sadra is such a distinguished representative. There is no doubt that according to the School of Isfahan the level of `irfan is the most superior form of knowledge, but it does not follow that there is no scope for using arguments appropriate to other kinds of knowledge within their own universes of discourse. As Seyyed Hossein Nasr argues, the main issue confronting the School of Isfahan is the reconciliation of shari`a, `aql and tasawwuf/`irfan.⁸ Different thinkers had different lines on how to accomplish this, but what is important here is to appreciate that no one type of explanation should be seen as precluding another type. For example, within the area of law the appropriate mode of argument is legal, and although it is doubtless true that the issues in law have other aspects, both rational and mystical, it would not be appropriate to resolve problems in law by referring to these different ways of working theoretically. We can use this argument to suggest that the criticisms which have been made of `ilm al-huduri cannot be resolved by importing concepts from a different logical level of discourse.

Must we conclude, then, that there is nothing of value in this concept of presential knowledge? What it seems to prove, if it proves anything at all, is that we can have a sort of knowledge which is beyond doubt, but that that sort of knowledge is literally content less, and as such is of no use to us. It certainly will not serve as the foundation of higher sorts of knowledge, nor will it transfer its incorrigibility to any of these other candidates for knowledge. But perhaps we are asking the wrong question here. We seem to be asking the question What sort of propositions are we unable to doubt?'. This is certainly the question which Ha'iri Yazdi raises and he seeks to link it both with ishraqi thought and with the sorts of claims which modern thinkers like Russell make about knowledge. Yet are they asking the same sort of question? I do not think they are. What we need to notice here is the very different ontology constructed within ishraqi thought as compared with the subject/object ontology of modern Western philosophy, the sort of philosophy in which the sceptical issues of how we know when we know or otherwise arise. Descartes and his successors tend to take the line on essence and existence that the former precedes the latter, so that we have all sorts of ideas and then wonder how or whether those ideas are instantiated. Of course, that ontology leads automatically to the sceptical question as to whether our ideas are anything more than ideas, i.e. do they have any existence connected with them? Now, Mulla Sadra's ontology works in the other direction. What we are confronted with primarily are different forms of existence, and the ideas we form of this are relatively unimportant. Why are they unimportant? After all, we cannot form ideas of existence without ideas, and these essences must be for us the route to understanding that existence. Here we have to recall the doctrine of transubstantial movement. There are no stable essences which reflect existence, since existence itself is forever changing and altering, and so there is little point in concentrating on essences as a guide to the character of existence. Just as one had grasped an essence the reality on which it is based would be changing, and so there is little point on looking to essences if we are interested in understanding the way things really are.

This suggests that raising the sorts of questions about the reliability of our knowledge claims is to miss the point. Mulla Sadra is not asking the question What can we know?' but rather What exists?'. Once we have decided what exists, it then remains to us to explain how we have access to that existence, It is at this stage that we can distinguish between two different kinds of knowledge, knowledge which is huduri and knowledge which is husuli. But it is all knowledge, and the latter kind of knowledge also provides us with a secure route to the truth. This is where we have to remember the significance of light as the main principle of definition here. There is a tendency to think of knowledge which is huduri as being more brightly illuminated than other kinds of knowledge, but this is misleading. My knowledge of myself is no more real than is my knowledge of scientific facts about the external world. What explains gradations of light is what explains gradations of reality, and as we grasp increasingly significant levels of knowledge we come into contact with different and higher levels of light. It is important when looking at the ontology here to realise that there is far more to existence than just facts. After all, what has come to be known as the imaginal realm (al-`alam al-khayali) is even more real than the world of generation and corruption, yet it appears to consist of nothing more than ideas. Similarly, there is a long tradition in ishraqi thought of meetings with imaginary people, yet these meetings are far from illusory. They represent very real meetings between different ways of thinking, and they result in an advance in understanding. Here the metaphor of light is helpful. An imaginary event may well be far more important to someone than a so-called real' event. The imaginary event may bring to light a previously unconsidered hypothetical possibility which changes our lives, because it shows us for the first time what it would be like for the world to be very different. There is a lot of empirical evidence that unless an individual is able to contemplate a particular situation, then he or she will be a lot less likely to be able to attain it, or avoid it. So the contemplation of a possibility, the possibility of an event which has not yet happened and which may never happen, may be of a far deeper significance for us than a boring empirical fact. This brings out nicely what is wrong in putting essences before existence. An essence, an idea or concept, may seem in itself insubstantial and far less real than a different concept, perhaps of something far more solid and present to us in the everyday world. Yet the former may be far more important to us than the latter, it may be far more vivid and real. In short, it may represent far more presciently what is real, what exists, and as such the question as to whether it is true rather misses the point.

Let us compare this way of arguing with a much more recent form of argument, that provided by Wittgenstein in On Certainty.⁹ Wittgenstein argues that there are some propositions which could in themselves be false, and yet which are so crucial to entire ways in which we do things that we cannot doubt them, at least not while we carry on with those familiar activities.¹⁰ In addition, even though those propositions could be false, it is not possible to doubt them, since there is no alternative proposition which could be any more certain than they are. Wittgenstein has often been accused here of being an idealist, since it seems that he is far more concerned with the ways in which our concepts relate to each other than he is in the question as to whether they actually correspond to something in the real world. This is a relevant question to ask him since after all he is contending with the traditional puzzles provided by the sceptic, whether what we take to be knowledge is really knowledge, whether the propositions which we take to be true are in fact true. And precisely the same questions may be put to Mulla Sadra, it may be asked whether we can ever really know anything by examining our concepts, given that the underlying reality is constantly changing and that existence is far more significant than essence. We could look for some transcendental guarantee, of course, by claiming a basis in divine reality, but this would be to go against the principles of the School of Isfahan, as we have already suggested. But what makes the question seem perplexing is not because it is difficult to answer, but because it is the wrong sort of question. We have to get away from the traditional subject/object, concept/object, language/reality dichotomies of modern philosophy. which Wittgenstein was also trying to transcend. He argued that the link between our language and extra-mental reality is a complex one. As he says, it is not that the former is dependent on the latter, but it is also not the case that there is no link between them. After all, if the world were a very different place, then different concepts would make sense, and he spends a great deal of his philosophical work examining alternative ways of going on conceptually, to explore the nature of the relationship between how things actually are and how that frames for us a particular range of possible ways of talking about that reality.

For Mulla Sadra also the act of perception is not essentially an act in which the agent tries to emerge from his private self to gain access to an external and public world. It is an attempt at understanding an aspect of a changing world, and any claim to truth will have to be limited by a certain reference to time, since everything is changing all the time. What is changing is not the world outside us, though, but we are part and parcel of that world, we change with it, as do our ideas about it. Our ideas and the world which those ideas describe are all parts of the same world, and they are all capable of being just as real as each other. This comes out nicely in his account of knowledge, which often leads to perplexity. It is a familiar thesis in Islamic philosophy that in knowledge there is an identity between the knower, the object of knowledge and the process of knowing itself. This is what happens in the highest form of knowledge, where the object of knowledge is actually something created by the knower (ultimately, God) and where the knowledge itself is part of the essential activity of the knower and not just a casual event. Of course, for us, given the constant change of things themselves, there is in perception a move from potentiality to actuality which is only capable of grasping the truth as it stands at a particular time. In the case of perfect knowledge the constant changing of the substances does not matter, since what is known is more the pattern of change than the particular changing events themselves. One of the problems with such a view of knowledge as unifying knower, known object and process of knowing is that these all seem to be different. That is, I am different from what I am now observing, and the way in which I am observing it is something I might well not be doing, and so it seems strange to see it as part of me. Yet these distinctions only make sense if we adhere to the traditional subject/object ontology of modern philosophy. In Mulla Sadra's ontology there is no essential difference between the changing substance of which I am a part and its states (like perception), and the objects of my perception, since these are all ultimately reflections of higher principles and the activity of the deity. We draw distinctions between them, of course, but at a philosophical level we should appreciate the unity which brings all these different features of reality together. After all, it is just one principle, that of light, which serves as the key criterion both of identity and of differentiation, and any subjects and objects which we then construct out of this one principle is entirely the reflection of a way of thinking appropriate to a relatively low theoretical level of thought. That is how light operates, of course, it illuminates what seem to be a variety of different things which exist independently of it, but on