Substantial Motion

SUBJECT AND OBJECTIVES : Purpose in this paper is to examine the criticism, explore the main issues raised, show how these issues are related to contemporary philosophical discussions, and suggest how Sadra’s position might be defended. Two kinds of defense will be suggested: first, we can surmise from Sadra’s works how he might have responded to the criticism; second, we can consider how a position like Sadra’s could be defended in view of contemporary philosophy. METHOD AND FINDING : This research is a qualitative research with a critical analysis approach. One of the distinctive features of the philosophy of Mulla Sadra is his doctrine of the soul. He held that the soul evolves from the body. The human soul has its beginnings in material existence, but it evolves beyond the material and achieves eternal immateriality. CONCLUSION : The idea that the incorporeal soul as a seperable substance, might have begun its existence as a corporeal substance and then changed into an incorporeal substance has been criticized by Allamah Misbah. His criticism raises a number of issues in the philosophy of mind, metaphysics, and Islamic theology.

Modern Man, engaging the predicament of “identity” and “self”, seeks “love” as a redeeming power to reach affirmation of life and reconciliation. To discuss the issue, the concept of “becoming” as an innate motion and transformation in the process of love has been scrutinized from Gilles Deleuze and Molla Sadra Shirazi”s perspective. The concept of “becoming” in Deleuze corresponds with Molla Sadra”s “substantial motion” in the notion of “love”, both carrying out the phenomenon of perception and transformation. The concept of “love” in Deleuze”s theory appears as a rhizomatic experience of “expression of the other” and different possibilities with no message and centrality, just to reach a kind of individual and unique “affect”, and this singular affect is sufficient to generate transformation. Sadra, on the other hand, presents love as the seed corn of all being, leading to a hierarchical motion through “systematic ambiguity of existence” towards a kind of cosmic unity and reconciliation. The theories of Deleuzian “becoming in love” and Sadraian “substantial motion and love” have been applied to scrutinize the practicality and confrontation of the notions in the case of redeeming modern man from nihilism, sense of alienation, distress, and bewilderment.