فهرست مطالب fatemeh soleimani darebaghi

The concept of "inner guidance" refers to the continuous and stable flow of divine guidance provided by the Imam, which aims to lead individuals towards eternal happiness. However, this raises an apparent contradiction: how can humans be guided along a predetermined path by the Imam if they possess free will? Allameh Tabataba'ie's philosophical framework reconciles this tension. He posits that the Imam's inner guidance does not negate human free will, but rather serves to provide the necessary perceptual and cognitive foundations for individuals to make voluntary choices. In other words, the Imam's guidance empowers people with the knowledge and understanding required to freely pursue the path towards felicity. This explanation allows for the rational defense of human free will within the doctrine of the Imam's inner guidance. The Imam's influence is positioned as an existential and perceptual facilitation rather than a coercive force that overrides individual autonomy. This articulation helps resolve the apparent paradox between divine guidance and human free choice.

Q24: 35 (known as the verse of the Light) is among the verses that have been interpreted by some philosophers, some of whom are Avicenna and Mulla Sadra. Avicenna suggests a purely philosophical interpretation and understands the analogies of the verse as the levels of theoretical reason. By contrast, based on the notions of principality and gradation of existence, Mulla Sadra tries to come up with a system of divine grace descent and adapts the analogies of the verse to this system. It is important that although Mulla Sadra tries to prove the existence of God as the Light through Peripatetic approaches, his exegesis of the verse preserves its mystical approach as well as its philosophical one.The difference in aims, attitudes, exegetical methods and the degree to which they consider the apparent meaning are the main factors which distinguish Avicenna from Mulla Sadra on the Exegesis of Q24: 35.