فهرست مطالب زینب کریمی قدوسی

This article examines the issue  of life  in Mulla Sadra’s Philosophy. To provide a comprehensive and accurate explanation, the Mulla Sadra’s analysis of life should be addressed with respect to his framework of philosophy and his existential attitude to the universe. Life in Sadra's philosophy is coextensive with existence and, so,  runs through everything. Life has an analogical gradation in its nature which has different manifestations at different levels; e.g., the mundane world is the manifestation of being and life at its lowest level. In Mulla Sadra's existential attitude toward the universe, the world is a manifestation of God and a nessecary stage of existence stages. The important principles of transcendental philosophy, such as the graded unity of existence and the intensified substantial motion, play an important role in explaining the nature of life in Mulla Sadra's view. This article explains the issue of life in the framework of two theories: “graded unity of being” and “pantheism” in Sadra's philosophy.

God-centered theories about the meaning of life maintain that a certain relationship with God is an essential condition for life to be meaningful. Different interpretations have been proposed in regard to this theory, but the most important God-centered interpretation is the Divine purpose theory. According to this theory, fulfilling God’s purpose is the only source of the meaningfulness of life. Different criticisms have been leveled against the Divine purpose theory such as the conflict between God’s purpose and God’s morality, as well as God’s omnipotence. However, according to Thaddeus Metz, the most important objection facing this theory is its incompatibility with some of the basic assumptions of all God-centered. According to this objection, the Divine attributes – such as atemporality, immutability and simplicity, which lead to the belief that God is the only source of the meaningfulness of life, are incompatible with God’s being purposive. The aim of this article is to provide answers to this objection based on the ideas of Allamah Tabataba’i. From his point of view, the Divine goal behind the creation of the world is His Transcendent Essence. This is to say that humans traverse the levels of being towards God through their innate and voluntary motion and thereby give meaning to their lives.