Abstract

Mulla Sadra has a comprehensive view of being and the human both in speculation and action. He is neither like Farabi and Ibn Sina to believe that the knowledge of act is enough for its realization, nor like Suhrawardi to believe that the knowledge of act is enough for it to be realized. In his view, neither are the free will and act primary and essential, and the intellect and speculation secondary and subordinate - as the Ash'arites maintained, nor are the intellect and speculation primary and essential, and the free will and act secondary and subordinate - as the Mu'tazilites believed in. It is based on such an approach that Mulla Sadra discusses the relationship between speculation and action and propounds a number of different ideas in comparison to those of the philosophers before him when explaining "practical wisdom", topics in the philosophy of ethics, philosophy of politics, and the attributes of the first leader of the state.The purpose of this paper is to clarify Mulla Sadra's theory on the relationship between speculation and action and revealing its philosophical consequences in the field of practical wisdom as a theory in which rationality, spirituality, and a legal system based on Shari'ah have a single and consistent interpretation. It also analyzes the various dimensions of Mulla Sadra's theory in comparison to those of his predecessors and criticizes its applications to the new issues and problems in practice. It is a question why Mulla Sadra has not taken much heed of this area or has not discussed it in detail. One might also wonder why he has mainly dealt with individual ethics following a gnostic and Batini approach and has not considered a truth for practical affairs similar to that of theoretical ones. If we decide to revise Aristotle's division of philosophy into theoretical and practical philosophies and present a view different from that of Farabi and Ibn Sina and even that of Mulla Sadra concerning the relationship between thought and the free will and, as a result, the relationship between speculation and practice, as 'Allamah Tabataba'i has, we can grant a high place to practical wisdom or philosophy