A Survey of Corporal Resurrection from Hakim-e Sabzevari’s Point of View and Its Comparison with Views of Avicenna and Mulla Sadra

Corporal resurrection and its quality and possibility are among the issues which have been discussed by Islamic philosophers who have tried each to make intellect and tradition compatible in relation to resurrection. One of these philosophers is Hakim-e Sabzevari who has provided intellectual reasons to prove the possibility and occurrence of bodily resurrection and responded to the doubts raised over corporal resurrection and its quality. Hakim-e Sabzavari does not consider the body which will be united with the self in the resurrection day as an elemental body. He rather gives the originality to self and the external form of man and not to his body. As the objectivity of the body is due to its external form not its substance, with the annihilation of the body substance, the external form which constitutes the essence of man remains endlessly to unite the soul in the hereafter. The difference between Hakim-e Sabzevari’s views and those of Mulla Sadra lies in the fact that Mulla Sadra believes that the soul due to its creativity constructs a body similar to the one in this world; while, Sabzevari denies the creation of a new body and believes that what unites the soul in the hereafter is the external form of the body which remains in this world and is transferred to the hereafter through the substantial movement of the soul and its otherworldly evolution.