Death and Resurrection in Persian Philosophical Thought

The nature of death and of life after death are among the most important and contested subjects in the Islamic world. Philosophers and theologians have tried to interpret these issues from various points of view, on the basis of reason and of religious texts, especially the Koran. According to the philosophers, the existence of resurrection is obvious, since the refutation of reincarnation leads to the admission of resurrection. Cosmology, ontology, and anthropology directly affected the opinions of meta-physicians. Obviously, philosophers believed that God is the one irreducibly simple Being, whose essence is not composite. His first emanation is one and simple, as is God. This first creation is called the Intellect that can know and conceive itself and its cause. By knowing, it creates the hierarchy of existence including the subsequent intellects, spheres and the world of ideas and imagination. The world of imagination stands between the intellectual and the material worlds: It is called Barzakh in the Koran. It is an intermediate realm and has two aspects: Having shape and quantity, it is similar to the material world; but since it is without matter, time, and space --it also resembles the intellectual world. Avicenna and his followers do not believe in the imaginal world, but Suhrawardi and Mulla Sadra have accepted it metaphysically. The world of imagination and Platonic Ideas and their cosmological results are controversial issues in Islamic thoughts. The question about the ultimate fate of human beings, on the other hand, is related to the resurrection. Whether humans are merely the body, or whether they have an immaterial aspect which is called the soul, can influence the religious belief about corporeal and spiritual resurrection. Some theologians have denied the immateriality of the human soul, and therefore they deny spiritual resurrection, while philosophers advocate the immateriality of the soul and spiritual resurrection. Avicenna has represented three viewpoints on the corporeal resurrection and finally denied it philosophically. Suhrawardi has accepted it only in the world of imagination and has rejected it in the world of lights. Mulla Sadra in the some of his works like Mafatih-al ghaib, has accepted corporeal resurrection in the purgatory, as has done Suhrawardi, and in other works he tried to prove its existence in the intellectual world. He has presented eleven principles to prove the corporeal resurrection, which is criticized by me.