Ma`rifat Falsafi

This article deals with Mulla Sadra’s theory about soul-body relationship, which is one of the most debated issues in the history of philosophy. His theory has some points of convergence with that of the Peripatetic theory, but Mulla Sadra thinks it impossible for an immaterial entity to connect to a material one. Benefiting from his general principles such as the principality and gradation of existence, substantial motion, and the integration of matter and form through unification, Mulla Sadra comes up with the theory of the essential integration of soul and body through unification. He considers the reality of soul to be relational, which comes to existence in the form of a purely material and physical entity. It gradually, and as a result of substantial motion, moves toward immateriality while maintaining its previous levels and it is by becoming material-imaginal at the second stage, and may arrive at the level of material-imaginal-intellectual too. As a natural consequence, Mulla Sadra believes in the theory of the unity of the soul and its faculties. On the basis of this theory, he interprets the interrelation between soul and body as an interrelation between different levels of one entity.