The Role of Substantial Motion in the Human Perfection

The issue of motion has as long a history as that of human beings. Human beings were concerned with it before they were concerned with significant issues in philosophy such as “existence” and “intellect”. An early philosopher who was concerned with the issue was Anaximander-the philosopher in the Ancient Greece-who believed in the eternal motion in the world. The theory of substantial motion can be traced back to the philosophy of Heraclitus-another Ancient Greek philosopher. Muslim philosophers also concerned themselves with this issue and discussed many problems regarding motion. The “motion” is a problem in ontology, epistemology, cosmology, and anthropology. In this paper, we will concern ourselves with anthropological problems of motion from a certain perspective; we will evaluate the role of “substantial motion” in the problem of “mind-body relation” and the substantial perfection of human beings. Given that the theory of “physical incipience of the soul” is an implication of the substantial motion, we will examine the theory of soul perfection and its development from a material body to pure immateriality or spirituality, and we will finally evaluate Mullā Ṣadrā’s account given hadiths concerning the creation of the soul.