Explaining the Relationship between the Soul and the Body: An Approach for Understanding the Relationship between God and Human Based on the Principle of Wanting Possibility1 and Simple Reality is All Things

Mehri Changi Ashtiyani / Assistant Professor in Department of Islamic Teachings Shari'ati Faculty    mehrichangi@yahoo.com
* Hamid Isfandiyari / Student of Transcendental Philosophy Ferdowsi University of Mashhad     hamid.es135@yahoo.com
Received: 2021/08/05 - Accepted: 2022/01/17    

ABSTRACT
Among the important discussions in transcendental philosophy is "the mode of relationship between the soul and the body" wherein Mulla Sadra has dealt with proving the 'sameness of the soul and the body' by his innovation in explaining the 'wanting possibility' and 'copulative nature of the effect' as well as his transcendental view in the 'rule of non-composite reality'. He has also answered, with the same attitude, one of the main questions in this regard, that is the mode of the relationship between God and human in the realm of actions and deeds. Based on Mulla Sadra's foundations, just as the human's faculties and body have no independent existence and are the effects of his soul, one can achieve the mode of human's agency for his actions (which is an effect and possible thing among the possibilities and absolute relation to God's existence, and its existence is a state of God's existence). One can get the important point that the human's agency is neither independent, nor has it even the mediatory role. It is only the modifier of the capacity of capable thing for the grace emanated from the absolute Grace, and the true agency just belongs to God. It is in the light of this view that the subsidiary questions in verses such as "and you did not shoot when you shot" (wa mā ramaita idh ramait)2 are answered. 

KEY WORDS: the soul, the body, collective union, wanting possibility, non-composite reality, true agency.