elias mousavi khosravi

Qāḍī Sa‘īd Qumī is one of the greatest philosophers and mystics of Iran during the Safavid era. He was competent in peripatetic and Illumination philosophies, and had mystic tendencies. With regard to the divine attributes, he believes in the negative divinity and believes that what we understand from the existence and attributes of the possible beings cannot be attributed to God. The reasons he gives in for this is that God is the pure Being and has no attribute, and the human intellect does not have the capability to understand God and His attributes. With regard to the ontology of attributes, Qāḍī deems detestable the belief in the addition and sameness of attributes with God, and favors the representativeness of attributes for the divine essence. He extensively discusses the divine knowledge attribute and believes that God’s knowledge is not intuitive, acquired, or differentiated (the views commonly hold by philosophers). This study aimed to adopt a critical view to examine Qāḍī’s viewpoint in the divine attributes’ domain – especially the divine knowledge attribute – and to show that despite its congruence with the outer appearance of some narrations, his viewpoint suffers from some internal weaknesses such as adherence to some questionable principles – such as belief in the overall difference between God and possible beings – and disagrees with some intellectual principles and narrations.

Mulla Shamsa Gilani, one of the shining and famous figures of the 11th century LH in the Isfahan school of philosophy who – like other notable philosophers of his era such as Mulla Sadra and Mir Damad – was skillful in using the qur’ānic verses and Islamic traditions to prove his philosophical discussions. As one of the outstanding students of Mir Damad, he was greatly influenced by him and learned the peripatetic style and foundations from him. Mulla Shamsa opposed many great philosophers – especially the head of the largest school of philosophy in his era, i.e. Mulla Sadra – with regard to some philosophical issues such as the principality of existence, substantial movement, God’s a priori knowledge, and God’s knowledge of Himself. With regard to the relationship between the essential attributes and the essence, Mulla Shamsa adopts a view similar to Mu‘tazila, peripatetic philosophers, and Mulla Sadra, and believes in the sameness of the essential attributes and the essence. Concerning God’s a priori knowledge of the creatures, he believes in a third form (that is, not acquired nor direct), which is the pure and simple Being of God, and considers the existence of creatures as irrelevant and ineffective in God’s knowledge. Mulla Shamsa takes God’s knowledge of Himself as the most direct and does not deem permissible the application of the commonly used conception of the collective knowledge to God. The article at hand adopts a library research method to clarify Mulla Shamsa’s viewpoint about God’s knowledge.