Virtualist Epistemic Elements in Mulla Sadra's Debate on the Unity of the Rational and the Reasonable

According to virtue epistemology, the spiritual transcendence of subject (or agent of knowledge) is one of the effective elements in knowledge acquiring. MullaSadra’s epistemic theory, known as the unity of the rational and the reasonable, has certain similarities with virtue epistemology, because for him, the relation between the subject and the belief or knowledge is transcendental and existential. According to him, in the first step, the relation between the subject and the belief or knowledge is causal. The characteristics of causal relations is that the cause transmits it’s properties to the effect; i.e. the virtues of the subject transmits to the belief and the epistemic property of the belief transmits to the subject and elevates his existential intensity. In the next step of the process of knowledge, the relation between the belief and the subject is unitary compositionof the matter with the form. To add rational belief to the subject results in his spiritual transcendence and this results in supplying the context of producing beliefs which their truth probability is high.