Transcendental Statements of the Founding Philosopher Āqā Ali MudarrisIn the Theory, The Return of the Dynamic Body toward the Inert Spirit

Portraying the quality of bodily Resurrection requires providing for various approaches; and the difference between philosophical and theological theorizing is concerned with more complete coverage of these dimensions. With a profound attention to these dimensions, metaphysicians have undertaken to explain and reinforce its various principles. First of all, these principles are themselves in need of a powerful and deep-sighted philosophical system. The Divine, methodological, epistemological, humanistic, and cosmological principles are needed to guarantee the successful solution of the multi-faceted problems of the Return (ma‘ād). Concerning the Return, in general, the Ash’arites and their peers are on one side and the philosophers on the other. The Ash’arites are among the pioneers and advocates of the “elemental bodily Resurrection”, who have expressed their opinions with their specific principles of soul studies, including materiality of souls and denial of the soul’s detachment and by relying on Divine random volition (irāda-yi jazāfiya), disconnected from wisdom, and denial of the causal order and have utilized the apparent meaning of some traditions fancied as “textualism”. On the other side, there are the metaphysicians in a wide expectrum, who with rational and religious principles have considered the elemental Return as impossible and assessed it as the continuation of the world and not transfer to the Hereafter. More than anyone else, Mullā Ṣadrā, with his scholarly endeavors in the expanse of transcendental philosophy, has presented a scheme to make the quality of bodily Return justifiable and the transcendental philosophers have each in turn followed this path in different periods. In the meantime, while maintaining the Ṣadrā’s philosophical system, the founding philosopher plans to provide a reconciliation between these two sides; neither consider the soul as returnable to the world and the elemental body as pivot of Return, as the theologians claim, nor regard the world by totally invalid in the Resurrection.