The Illuminative Perspective of Falsafa

Suhrawardī’s influence on Ṣadrā’s thought cannot be overestimated. In fact, one cannot grasp Ṣadrā’s objectives and thought without understanding Suhrawardī’s views. One of these objectives and ideas is the notion that falsafa is an intellectual exercise whose purpose is only to prepare the seeker of knowledge to experience the truth through illumination. Thus, Ṣadrā regarded falsafa by itself as not a sufficient means to comprehend realities. Falsafa as a discipline went through a dramatic change in the twelve century through the works of Suhrawardī, the first to undermine Avicenna’s logic and metaphysics. Against Avicenna, he viewed falsafa as only an intellectual exercise and urged the students of philosophy not to consider it as a sufficient discipline for acquiring the truth. Nevertheless, it was only in the seventeenth century that the concept of falsafa as intellectual exercise has flourished in light of Ṣadrā’s attempt to set a different standards for doing philosophy. Although Ṣadrā did not agree with Suhrawardī on major issues in metaphysics and epistemology, Ṣadrā’s method and objectives can be traced back to that of Suhrawardī. In this paper I will show that although Ṣadrā regarded Suhrawardī’s effort of reforming Avicenna’s philosophy as incomplete, he followed the same method as Suhrawardī and shared the same aims and approaches. This also apparent from the fact that Ṣadrā followed Suhrawardī’s approach of writing different philosophical and mystical works each of which contains the same essential content but with different emphases according to their primary audience. Nevertheless, in all these works, the concept of falsafa as an intellectual exercise has been emphasized. First, I will present Suhrawardī’s idea of the meaning and limit of falasfa and how he arranged all his works according to this central theme. This in turn prepares the ground for presenting Ṣadrā’s view of falsafa and how he oriented all his writings toward the implication of this view in a way that is very similar to that of Suhrawardī. Thus, I will show how Ṣadrā’s view is an extension of Suhrawardī’s efforts with important changes and additions made in order to reconcile Suhrawardī’s view with his own approach.