Abstract

Displaying great initiative in connecting thoughts and ideas together, Mulla Sadra uses arguments and intuition to reorder a huge collection of Quranic and traditional sciences putting them into a delicately - organized structure. Even a mere glance at his Transcendental Wisdom reveals the amazing cohesion of the issues discussed. Mulla Sadra stipulates that he came up with the transcendental wisdom only after he liked argumentation to intuition. Ruling out the possibility of discovering divine mysteries through dialectical debates, Sadra proposes argumentation and intuition as the only breakthrough. However, he believes that intuition by itself may not work out the problem; argumentation, he maintains, is a requirement for understanding rationalities. Mulla Sadra blames gnostics for failing to get their ideas understood emphasizing that intuitions, if not supported by arguments, are not reliable. According to Mulla Sadra, true argumentation will never turn out to be against true intuition. Believing that the two perceptions are of the same essence, Mulla Sadra argues that the only thing which makes them look different from each other is how and when they are understood. Among Greek philosophers, he greatly respected Pythagorath, Socrates, Plato and Thales, while in the Islamic world, Suhrawardi and Avicenna fascinated him more than others. The most impressive sources for Mulla Sadra's thoughts, as revealed in his own books, were the Holy Quran, hadiths and traditions. Interestingly, Mulla Sadra has given an account of his philosophical innovations in Resaleh Shawahid-al-Robubiyeh.