Abstract

Based on a rational classification, philosophers have divided philosophy into two theoretical and practical types. Some believe that theoretical philosophy is superior to the other one, but some others doubt this idea on the grounds that theoretical philosophy is nothing but a reaction to external objects due to a soulish quality. Or, perhaps, it is the separation of Aristotle's theoretical philosophy from the fundamental principles of practical philosophy which has affected the above idea and led to this incorrect conclusion. Nevertheless, in Islamic philosophy, like in the Illuminationist school of ancient Iran, philosophy is always brought to the fore after the training of Man's innermost. In this approach, the existence of a moral guide and teacher is necessary in order to attain human perfections. Unfortunately, after Aristotle, the role of teachers was ignored in practical philosophy and ethics so that those trained in Peripatetic philosophy turned into its unripe fruit and this by itself paved the ground for the revival of Illuminationist philosophy. In the lifeless Peripatetic ethics, knowledge lacked a holy aspect and was nothing but a middle term.In Mulla Sadra's philosophy, theoretical and practical philosophies have a bilateral relationship. Based on the principle of the return of all existents to their true essence and through resorting to the principle of the trans-substantial motion, he considers Man and society to be in a state of becoming directed towards perfection. While for Peripatetics virtue was a mundane phenomenon, in Sadrian philosophy happiness is both mundane and spiritual and is concomitant with an increase in the standard of being and ontological level. In this school, the faculties of appetite, anger, etc. ultimately turn into some luminous faculties that, in the course of a wayfarer's journey, render ascetic practice into a pleasure which is the same as having self-control in order to gain freedom from the prison of appetite and passion. According to Mulla Sadra, in order to reach this level, in addition to free will, one requires the element of divine effusion, which is the same holy spirit of Illuminationist ethics