Soul - Eschatology

 
1. Corporeal Origination of the Soul
In the past, two major theories concerning the human soul were quite popular among
philosophers. One of these theories was the Platonic theory of the spirit and the soul,
suggesting that the existence of the soul was eternal, spiritual, and prior to the creation of
the body (Timaeus). The second theory belonged to Peripatetics, and Ibn-Sina provided a
thorough explanation for it. This theory dealt with the immaterial or non-corporeal
origination of the soul, along with the corporeal origination and creation of the body. Later
Mulla Sadra presented an innovative theory in this regard. He proved that although man’s
soul ultimately becomes immaterial in its particular course of development, it is corporeal at
the outset of creation, and is born from the body.
In Mulla Sadra’s view, man’s soul is initially solid, and then, after leaving the stage of
solidity behind, turns into an embryo and steps into the vegetative stage (vegetative soul).
Later it arrives at the animal stage (animal soul), and then, in the process of its real maturity,
reaches the stage of human soul and becomes a ‘rational soul’. After this stage, in the light
of its efforts, practice, and rational and spiritual training, it can also achieve human maturity
(which he calls the holy soul and actual intellect (intellectus in actu)). This is a stage which
quite a few are capable of reaching.
All these stages, in fact, represent moving in the same route in order to leave potency and
enter actuality. Each succeeding stage is a potential for the preceding one, and going through
them means passing through grades of intensity, and moving from weakness to strength.
However, the collection of these stages comprises the points of a line called ‘human life’ and
‘line of development’, and which is formed on the basis of the principle of graded existence
and the trans-substantial motion.
It is important to know that entering each stage does not mean getting away from the previous
stage; rather, each higher stage, at all times, embodies and includes the weaker stages prior to
itself, as well. The rule here suggests that every strong existence – according to gradation of
existence – embraces all the weaker existential stages before it.
Mulla Sadra blames philosophers like Peripatetics who consider the soul a static substance
which remains in the same state from the beginning to the end of life, and has no trans-
substantial motion. Obviously, he also disagrees with people like Descartes who believe in
the absolute separation of the soul and body.
Like other Muslim philosophers, Mulla Sadra believes in the abstraction (immateriality) of
the soul, but not in the sense intended by his preceding schools of thought. In his view, the
immateriality of the soul is gradual owing to its ascending and developmental journey, and,
in his own terms, due to its trans-substantial motion. This motion leads to body’s senility
and annihilation; however, it is a motion towards rationality in the soul, and becomes more
powerful and active day after day. The developed soul, after separating from the body and
becoming needless of it, ultimately, turns into the ‘abstract intellect’, and continues its life in
a space which is more desirable than the material one.
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Mulla Sadra’s philosophical psychology is based on his other philosophical principles, which
are considered exactly the very reasons he adduces to prove his theory. Such principles are
presented below:
1. Material substance naturally enjoys a developmental motion, and, unlike what
Peripatetics say, nature is not static; rather, the trans-substantial motion is at the heart of its
dynamism.
2. The ultimate goal of the creation of each existence leaves a series of predispositions in it
which must be divulged through its trans-substantial motion. Although both the body and
the soul are in the matter of the existent’s body, the difference between their ultimate ends
has left two different types of predispositions in them, which is quite natural, since as we
can see, both a plant and an animal are born from matter, yet one obtains an animal soul, and
the other remains vegetation.
3. Man’s soul is his very ‘I’ and ‘self’, and, in spite of the graded difference between the
soul and body, man’s ‘self’ or ‘I’ cannot be decomposed. The synthesis of the body and the
soul is in the form of unity, rather than annexation and external synthesis.
4. Although the body is made of the matter, and consists of several components, the human
‘I’ or soul is simple and indivisible. According to the philosophical principle stating that ‘the
simple truth is everything’, all man’s internal and external effects, acts, and affections
belong to his ‘self’ and soul and originate from his unity. In other words, the soul, while
having unity and simplicity, consists of all his faculties.
5. Despite being abstract and independent, the soul is practically dependent on the five
senses, the brain, and nerves for its perceptions. Likewise, for its physical activities, it
depends on the related organs. All these organs and senses are the soul’s tools for its
affections and activities. Mulla Sadra considers the soul the director and guide of the body
rather than vice versa, and states that it is the wind that directs the ship forward rather than
the other way round.
6. The more the soul is developed in the course of the trans-substantial motion, the less its
dependence upon the body will be. Natural death (one that is not due to accidents) is the
result of the voluntary separation of the soul from the body and its actual abstraction. Such
an interpretation of death by Mulla Sadra is in contrast to that of both ancient (Galen and
Hippocrates) and modern medicines.
To demonstrate the immateriality of the soul,[1] Muslim philosophers have adduced a
number of arguments, including the following:
- In addition to sensing and perceiving particulars, man is capable of apprehending and
analyzing abstract and universal issues and concepts, and developing some judgments for
them. All abstract and universal affairs are immaterial (since all the related characteristics
have been previously negated to them), and each immaterial thing ranks higher than matter,
and cannot depend on it; it should possess an independent and immaterial receptacle and
field for itself to predicate it;[2] otherwise, it will become material.
- The independent field containing the universals (man’s universal and abstract perceptions) is
called ‘mind’ by philosophers. This field must be viewed as being separate from the material
tools and layers of the brain (cortex).
- Denying the immateriality of the soul or the mind is a kind of leniency in research, and
philosophical laziness. This is because paying attention to philosophical reasons could lead one
to the immateriality of the soul and mind, which does not seem an easy undertaking to some
people.
Philosophers have also adduced some others reasons which have been presented in Mulla
Sadra’s books, as well as in those of others.
Experiences such as the sixth sense, telepathy, after-death perceptions for those who have
come back to life, true dreams, and the like are among those meta-psychological and
supernatural phenomena that are not in conformity with the structure of the body, and can
refer to the immateriality of the soul.
2. Resurrection
One of the important topics of the philosophical discussions related to the soul is ‘death’, which
Mulla Sadra has borrowed from natural sciences, and introduced and discussed in the field of
philosophy.
Mulla Sadra views death as the soul’s desertion of the body. He disagrees with this idea of
biologists and physicians suggesting that death is the effect of the destruction and
annihilation of the body, and the derangement of its natural order, like one whose house has
been destroyed and is forced to seek shelter somewhere else.
He maintains that death is of two types: natural death and accidental death. In natural death, the
soul, in its journey towards perfection, leaves the body when it does not need it anymore. He
assimilates the body to a ship, and the soul to the wind that pushes the ship forward, and says
that if there is no wind, the ship will stop moving; likewise, when the soul departs with the body,
there will be no life.
By reference to a hadith from the Holy Prophet (saas), stating that ‘the soil will rot the
whole body except for the substance[3] from which it has been created’, Mulla Sadra states
that, after death, man takes the faculty of imagination away with himself. This faculty is his
substance, contains all forms and data of the worldly man, and is immaterial and
independent from the material world. The personality of the same worldly man is
reconstructed in the Hereafter with more abilities and faculties in the light of this very
faculty of imagination.
Death does not ruin the body; rather it disperses it, and, while maintaining its origin and
substance, takes its attributes away from it, and ,whenever it wishes, it can return those
attributes to the original substance of the body.[4]
In the Iranian Islamic gnostic literature, particularly in Rumi’s Mathnavi, death is considered a
rebirth and a gate for entering another world, and it had better to call it life rather than death. Rumi
uses the words ‘dying’ or ‘being reborn is stages’ to refer to the change of the human embryo from
spiritless matter into the vegetative form, then into the animal form, and finally into the human
form. He maintains that the developed man can turn into an angel by death, or even go higher than
angels.
3. Metaphysics of Death
The issue of resurrection can be considered as one of the neglected themes in philosophy
and metaphysics. Although resurrection is one of the subcategories of the issue of the soul,
and although its mortality or immortality after death is among the themes dealt with in
philosophy, before Mulla Sadra, it was classified under the subjects studied in theology.[5]
The most non-philosophical answer to this problem is the denial of resurrection, the world,
or other worlds that religions and Illuminationst philosophers have referred to.
Mulla Sadra could propound this subject in the mould of a philosophical issue, and place it
among the discussions following the issues related to man’s soul and his faculties and
perceptions. According to Islamic and Qur’anic beliefs, the world of matter has a destiny in
which the matter changes shape[6] or is completely annihilated. However, in a repeated
event (which can be called the big explosion or the second Big Bang), human beings and
objects will appear in a specific form.
Mulla Sadra stated in a new theory that ‘revivification’, or collective presence in the
resurrection day, is not restricted to human beings and includes all existents.[7] This theory
of resurrection is more in conformity with the theories of the end of the transformation of
the physical quiddity of the world.
Resurrection or the day of deranging the order and form of nature is followed by the scene
of revivification, i.e., the presence of all human beings and things.
According to Mulla Sadra, time is the cause of separation among people in its course of
passage, and when time and place, which are the two factors causing dispersion among
people, are annihilated, all of them will come together in the same place. In Mulla Sadra’s
philosophy, the world of the Hereafter is another world which is no different from this world
except in its matter, mass, body, and time, yet the form and shape of objects are apparently the
same as before.
This world has been called the ‘Ideal world’, and its characteristics are mainly similar to the
characteristics of pure energy.
The ‘Ideal world’ is one of the three-fold worlds Mulla Sadra – in line with sophists – agrees
with in his worldview. These worlds consist of the world of matter, the world of Ideas (or
imagination), and the world of intellect and intelligibles.
The above worlds are not three separate places; rather, their classification is based on their
strength, weakness, perfection, imperfections, and, in Mulla Sadra’s words, their proximity
to or distance form the Pure Origin or God.
In this theory, the world of intellect is more complete than other worlds, and has complete
dominance over its lower worlds. This dominance has a philosophical sense rather than a
geometrical one, thus the world of intellect possesses all the positive aspects of the lower
world. The world of matter is an imperfect world, and its existents are the prisoners of time,
place, and corporeality, and suffer from numerous physical and natural limitations.
A higher world is the world of Ideas, with no temporal, spatial, and corporeal limitations
(like man’s faculty of imagination). The existents of this world have a more perfect life, and
their existential degree is higher. The world of intellect is even more infinite and perfect
than this world.
In Mulla Sadra’s view, after death or the destruction of the world, although man apparently
loses his outward body, he will own another body which is like his previous one, and has its
characteristics.[8] He also possesses in the new mould the scientific data which had been
stored in his faculty of imagination (it was previously mentioned that, according to Mulla
Sadra, this faculty is immaterial). As a result, after his death, man’s ‘I’ appears as a body
possessing a soul with all his attributes, characteristics, and worldly desires. And all human
beings will see each other in that world in the same form (without matter), and with the
same worldly characteristics, and will recognize each other quite clearly.
Some of the theologians who agreed with bodily resurrection assumed that on the Day of
Resurrection the soul must return to its previous material status in retrogression. Mulla Sadra
argues that this idea merely originates from the common sense, and tries to prove that the body
will possess a body without retrogression to the previous material status; a body which he
believes is like a dress which is worn under the dress on the top; it is in the innermost of this
outward body, and functions as the mould of man’s soul. This body has been made of apparent
chemical and organic substances (and its cells change everyday), and since it has no stability, it
does not deserve to belong to the abstract soul.  
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Mulla Sadra believed that his solution for demonstrating man’s corporeal resurrection is in
conformity with the Qur’an; however, some of his succeeding philosophers have some
doubts in this regard, or completely deny this idea. They maintain that this brave and
innovative theory is in need of completion, and that future scientific advancements might
contribute to the perfection of man’s ideas of after-death life and eternity.
*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *
Mulla Sadra harshly attacks the idea of reincarnation and rejects it by philosophical reasons. He
tries to justify the theories attributed to some pre-Socratic philosophers, and argues that man’s
real body, which accompanies his soul after death, is influenced by his thoughts and conducts
and changes face. Those people with prominent animal characteristics turn into the same animal,
and are embodied and imagined in the same form in the Hereafter and the Day of
Revivification. He maintains that the intention of early philosophers and some religions of
reincarnation was this very transformation of man’s inner nature.
 
 
 
Note:
[1]. Henry Corbin believes that ‘mujarad’ (abstract) in the terminology of Islamic
philosophy is the same as the Greek ‘khoristos’ and an equivalent to ‘transcendent’ rather
than to ‘immaterial’ or ‘incorporeal’.
[2]. Such independence for abstract things from the matter is not in contrast to the idea that
the material body should make the provisions necessary for abstract things; for example, the
upper layer of the brain and the nervous system serve as tools for exerting the soul’s will or
transferring affections to it. In real life instances we see that electrical keys and tools are not
electrical by themselves, but they can (and must) be at the service of electricity and its
connection to other parts, and manifest its benefits.
[3]. We can consider it as DNA or something like it but unknown. It is called ‘ajb al-
dhanab’ in the hadith.
[4]. In the Qur’an, human death has been assimilated to vegetations’ hibernation.
[5]. Considering the entropy of the world matter, and the assumption of the subsistence of
energy, natural sciences and physics, too, should inevitably deal with this problem, and find
out about the fate of the world and the universe after the ‘Big Bang’ or another possible
event.
[6]. In physicists’ words, anti-matter will dominate the matter, and the present matter of the
world will be destroyed.
[7]. Mulla Sadra’s treatise, Risalat al-hashr, is on this issue.
[8]. Mulla Sadra emphasizes that, unlike the common belief, the body is not the guard and
carrier of the soul; rather, it the soul that preserves the body after its own establishment.
Thus the soul has a body for itself after death.