Ma`rifat Falsafi

Criticizing the dominant views in their respective philosophical cultures, both Mulla Sadra and Heidegger came to reinterpret the concept of causality in a novel way. They have, thus, provided a fitting ground for a comparative analysis. In his intellectual course, Mulla Sadra has connected the concept of causality to three different notions respectively: "existence connected [for-another]" (wujud rabeti such as an accident whose existence is for substance), "copula," (wujud rabti which connects the predicate to the subject) and "state of being" (tasha'un). While in the first two periods, the conventional meaning of causality is somewhat preserved, in the third period, under the influence of his theory of the "personal unity of existence," the duality between cause and effect is negated. The effect is then understood as a state or development of the cause, and thus the conventional meaning of causality is discarded. Similarly, passing by the traditional account of Aristotle’s four causes, Heidegger links causality to "responsibility" and "letting something for presence." In his critique of the conventional notion of causality as "causality and effectiveness," Heidegger associates it with two key concepts: "poiesis" (bringing forth) and "aletheia" (truth or concealment). In his lectures on the fundamental principle, Heidegger, like Mulla Sadr, rejects the conventional meaning of causality and understands it in terms of the immediate manifestation of being. Despite structural similarities in their approach to the concept of causality, the philosophical foundation, intellectual concerns, and methodology of the two thinkers are clearly distinct from one another.